though," says the Piper. Then why should I read it, and waste my time, even if a hundred 'Pall Mall' counsels thunder anathemas at me. But it is just as absurd to tell people not to read Darwin, as Mr. Ruskin does, as not to read Grote, if people like Grote. Either book might be the making of a man's mind, and the beginning of an honourable career in science, or politics (if a career in politics can be honourable), or in historical study. Mr. Ruskin, that fine practical humourist, denounces Darwin and Grote and Voltaire and Thackeray and Kingsley; he does not like them, he thinks they are not good for us, he thinks they do not tell him enough about the habits of the shrimp and other insects. But who made Mr. Ruskin a judge or a nursery governess over us? A great many well-meaning young people hang on his lips, and perhaps do not read Thackeray, and miss those beautiful. examples of noble life which Thackeray shows us, and miss all that charitable philosophy of the humourist, and all the magic of his style, because Mr. Ruskin happens to be one of the people who are so constituted as to think the author of Esmond' a cynic. Nor is Kingsley good enough for this critical gentleman, so difficult to please. He blames the horror of 'Hypatia,' which Kingsley thought worth mentioning at a moment when monkery was rather fashionable in England. And he either forgets or dislikes Westward Ho,' with all its vigour, its pathos, its poetry. Gibbon, too, lacks "wit," and we remember that William Wordsworth thought Voltaire dull. He may not agree with Mr. Ruskin, just as coffee or tobacco or Bass's beer may be pernicious to Mr. Ruskin's constitution. But that is no reason why this great irresponsible humourist should bid the rest of us enter on a career of total abstinence from 'Pendennis' and 'The Newcomes.' As to Grote's History,' Mr. Ruskin's remarks would be provoking in a critic less obviously determined to be wildly

humourous. Mr. Grote's style was cumbrous and clumsy; with his dangerous Radical opinions I have no sympathy. But Mr. Grote had sense, and what a pleasure it is, after months of wandering among German and Anglo-German mares' nests, to return to his straightforward, simple sagacity. He had, moreover, immense and amazing knowledge of the facts preserved in the whole mass of Greek literature. But Mr. Ruskin holds that any headIclerk of a bank could write a better history than Mr. Grote's, if he had the vanity to waste his time on it.

As to Mr. Darwin, he is "barred," because it is "every man's business to know what he is;" as if Mr. Darwin— that modest, strenuous, honest, and gentle labourer in a field which, personally, one happens not to wish to enter-as if Mr. Darwin did not know what is in man, and could prevent others from knowing themselves. object to him because he has a queer "tail" of followers does not become Mr. Ruskin, whose own "tail" would not much grace a march through Coventry.

Το

To return to Sir John Lubbock's list and the origin of the game of the Hundred Best Books who are the people who should read Confucius? or the Koran? Is it necessary to intellectual salvation? Why not the Upanishads;' why not all the Brahmanas, whose names Lucy rattles off in 'Le Monde où l'on l'ennuie'? And Lewes's "History of Philosophy!' Of all hopeless books, put together on a subject which the author was congenitally incapable of knowing anything about Lewes's History of Philosophy,' to my mind, is the most deplorable. Then the Ethics' of Aristotlewho is to read them, and is it to be in Chase's, or Williams's, or Peters's version?" With a great price "-namely, by many toilsome hours in company with Liddell and Scott, after many and many months of college lectures "bought Ithis freedom," namely, the possession of some shadowy notions as to what Aristotle is driving

6

at in the Ethics.' To that intelligent working man, or conscientious and highly-educated young lady, who proposes to begin the Ethics,' I venture to cry, "Don't. You will be dreadfully bored, and you are not at the historical point of view from which you can understand the Stagirite. He is either laboriously hammering out into articulate speech ideas which have long been commonplace, or he is in a region of mystic speculation where you cannot follow him, or he is dealing with moral problems peculiar to a society all unlike that in which you are living. Nor is it likely that the 'Sheking' will please or interest you, more than the 'Tractatus Theologico-Politicus' of Spinosa. There is a Chinese work which Dr. Legge calls a Sacred Book, a kind of Bible, and which M. Terrien de la Couperie takes for a sort of Dictionary of Synonyms. Should this be among the hundred best books? Greek and Oriental classics are, with rare exceptions, meant for a few scholars and highly-educated specialists, not for working men or young ladies."

The literature is good for us which we find to be good in our progress through books, and amongst men, not the literature which is highly recommended to us. We do not appreciate Horace and Virgil at school. We are not capable, yet, of knowing what style is, and what thought means. Later in our day we return to these great poets, and to Sophocles; at school we are well enough content with Macaulay's 'Lays,' and, at all ages, Homer and Scott appeal to us and delight us. But, if we are to draw up a list of the best books for pleasure and delight the true ends of reading -then individual taste comes in, and a proper list is impossible. We scarcely get beyond Shakespeare, and even then we are not thinking so much of what women can enjoy, as of what is matter for men. Helen Pendennis sometimes read Shakespeare, "whom she pretended to like, but didn't," and many excellent ladies are like Helen.

A crowd of modern folk "cannot read Dickens." Then let them leave him alone. It is a weary thing to see a person "trying to educate himself into liking Dickens." Hawthorne cannot be universally recommended; Scott is eclipsed by Ouida. It would be pedantic to recommend Scott, or Fielding, to people who prefer Ouida; do not let us even say to them, moriemini in peccatis vestris. It is much less a sin to like Ouida, and say so, and read that adventurous author, than to pine for her secretly, and waste time in struggling for apples "atop of the topmost bough," struggling to like the comedy of Dickens, the wit of Molière, the style and the humour of Thackeray, the manly charm of Scott, the romance of Dumas. These good things are beyond the reach of many worthy people. And why should they not prefer Keble to Mimnermus, and Artemus Ward to Swift, and the author of Phyllis' to Miss Burney, and Miss Braddon to Miss Austen!

For my part I can be happy with all these writers, except, perhaps, Keble; but there is no reason why one should be discontented with one's favourites because the lady one sits next at a dinner party cannot resi Rabelais (Heaven forbid it !) or Dickens. It takes all sorts to make a world. Let me confess that I don't care for Don Quixote,' or Cicero's 'De Officiis' (or his de anything else), or Titus Livius, or the 'Rig Veda,' or Chaucer, or any of the Elizabethans except Shakespeare and Marlowe. Who else is there that I fail to enjoy! There are Pope, and Dryden, and Juvenal, and Paradise Lost.' I pre fer Horace, and Herrick, and the Georgics,' and 'Lycidas,' and Ronsard, and Beloe's 'Anecdotes of Books,' and Homer, and Herodotus.

A man can have these little preferences without making a religion of them. I dislike roast mutton and roast beef-am I to put them in an index expurgatorius? Mr. Ruskin may, and doubtless would do So, if any editor asked him for a

ist of a hundred dishes, and if he happened not to be a great eater of beef. Let us permit people to go their own way, in reading as in eating, unless a riend asks us to recommend a novel. Even then let us be cautious not to let the poor man see that we think him a crétin because he cannot stand Le Crime et le Chatîment,' or 'Le Crime de l'Opéra,' or 'Modeste Migron,' as the case may be. Personally I am extremely partial to Popol Vuh,' but I do not desire to thrust that remarkable book on any reader. It has not, so far, been added to the lists of the multitude of counsellors of the Pall Mall Gazette.' What is a Century of Books without 'Popol Vah'? As to these counsellors, their advice is sometimes entertaining, when it illustrates their habit of mind. In an age of scandals and horrors, what happiness it is to reflect that we have still the pure taste of Lord Coleridge with us. him "the splendid genius of Aristophanes does not seem to atone for the bareness and vulgarity of his mind." This would never have occurred to an ordinary person-a mere judge of

To

literature.

But this is better still: "with the poem of Malory on the 'Morte d'Arthur' I am quite unacquainted." Well, I have heard of the man who never heard of Scott, and there is a legend that Lord Coleridge never heard of Mr. Corney Grain. But Lord Coleridge is not alone in his ignorance of Malory's compositions in verse. Here his judicial nescience is universally shared.

Some other lists are interestingMr. William Morris's, because it is so earnest; Mr. Swinburne's, because it is so good-really good for real lovers of books, not for people who want to educate themselves. Mr. Stanley's account of how he dropped books all across the Dark Continent, as in a paper-chase, is diverting; so is Lord Wolseley's characteristic and very brief roll of works that travel with a general. But who does not hail with pleasure, after so much of the intellectual game, Mr. Matthew Arnold's resolute refusal to play? Lists, such as Sir John Lubbock's, are interesting things to look at, but I feel no disposition to make one."

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I.

PEASANT FARMING IN LE BERRY.

ENGLISH tourists in the regions familiarised to them by George Sand's immortal pastorals are few and far between. Nowhere, perhaps, throughout Europe is the great novelist more read and appreciated than among ourselves, yet I was told at Châteauroux that the sight of an English face was phenomenal there. It is now ten years since the author of 'La Petite Fadette,' la bonne dame, as the village folks called her, was laid to rest in a quiet corner of her own garden; I was nevertheless the first English pilgrim, so the servants at Nohant assured me, to pay a visit to the illustrious grave. Stranger still, American tourists have not discovered George Sand's country, so full of beauty and interest. It must be added that Nohant, the author's home, and La Châtre, the little town now adorned with her statue, were, till within the last year, quite out of the beaten track. When George Sand quitted her country house for a visit to Paris, or anywhere else, she had to take the slow, tumble-down diligence to Châteauroux, in company of her humbler neighbours. The ancient, prettily situated little town of La Châtre led nowhere. Now, however, it is made accessible by a most convenient line of railway, connecting Tours by Châteauroux and La Châtre with Montluçon. The conveniences of this line to travellers in France are very great, as it enables them to get from east to west without going to Paris; but at present the guide-books ignore it, so that I journeyed from Dijon to Paris and from Paris to Châteauroux, whereas the direct line would be from Dijon thither by Chagny, Moulins and Montluçon.

Châteauroux is a cheerful, pros

perous, thoroughly French town on the Indre, and may conveniently be made the tourist's head-quarters in these parts.

As English notions on the subject of* French geography are apt to be some what hazy, let me mention that the department of the Indre, of which Châteauroux is the capital town, was chiefly formed in 1790 of that district called Le Bas Berry, in contradistine tion to Le Haut Berry, now forming the department of Le Cher, with Bourges as its capital town. If, how ever, English notions as to French geography are not so accurate as they might be, still more incorrect are they on the subject of land tenure in France. It is an accepted theory in England that all France is cut up into those "little scraps of land," of which Lady Verney speaks so contemptuously. Nothing can be farther from the truth. There are large farms and middling-sized farms in plenty throughout France, and every kind of tenure may be studied there; the peasant freehold of ten to thirty acres, the métairie of several hundred, and the large farms let on lease or cultivated by their owners, precisely as in England. My object, then, in visiting the Indre or Le Bas Berry, was twofold. I wanted to visit friends in the country, and to judge for myself of the condition of peasant proprietors in this part of central France; and I had a no less keen desire to visit the scenes described in George Sand's lovely pastorals, 'La Petite Fadette,'' François le Champi,' and others, and to see the statue and tomb of the great writer.

No department in France offers better opportunities of studying the land question than the Indre. It is a purely agricultural region. It is a region in which, during the last fifty years, large tracts of land have passed

to the hands of the peasants. Side side, moreover, with the smallest oldings, farms of five acres, acquisions of yesterday, may here be seen rms of several hundred acres, manged on the system known as that of étayage.

My host, a large landowner, living ithin a few miles of Châteauroux, was he very person to instruct an inirer like myself. Formerly the wner of an entire commune, he has radually reduced the size of his estates y selling small parcels of land to his eighbours, and in former days his arm labourers, the peasants. He has een induced to take these steps by nixed motives, personal and philanhropic. From a commercial point of iew he is a gainer. The expense of keeping such large tracts of land in good cultivation would be very great, and he could not realise anything like he returns of the small farmer. His and, often consisting of much that has been hitherto unproductive, is hus turned into capital, whilst the results of the transaction as regards the condition of the people and the land are incalculable. The cultivator of the soil is raised, both socially and morally; he is able to advance his children still further in life; future, as well as their own, is assured from want; and having a stake in the welfare of his country, he is certain to be found on the side of law and order. He is thus, in his own person, a guarantee of the political stability of his country.

his

"When we have solved the like problem in our cities and large towns,' observed my host to me, "when the French artisan, like the French peasant, becomes a possessor, a freeholder, then the condition of France as a nation will be firm. as a rock (inébranlable)." Great as are the moral gains alike to the individual and the State by this extension of peasant proprietorship, the material benefits accruing to the nation are yet more considerable. Land in the country round about Châteauroux-I do not here

allude to suburban building plots, but to purely agricultural districts-has doubled, trebled, and quadrupled in value within the last forty or fifty

years.

Roads and railways have contributed to effect this rise in value, but the change has been chiefly brought about by the indomitable perseverance and laboriousness of the peasant. As all readers of George Sand's novels know already, Le Berry is a region of landes, or wastes. Owing to the exertions of the peasants, the extent of these waste lands is being gradually reduced. Every acre of ground that is sold, therefore, every thousand francs the peasant expends upon land, is so much added wealth to the country. Much of the scenery lying between Châteauroux and the village in which my friend lives, is very pretty. Very English, too! But for the patches of vineyard here and there, the grapes now of deepest purple amid the crimsoning leaves, one could have fancied oneself in Sussex, or in a Devonshire lane. The road was bordered with tall hedges, trellised with wild clematis and briony, and ferny banks, whilst beyond we got glimpses of wide fields and vast pastures, divided, as in England, by close-set hawthorn. Yet the English notion prevails that not a hedge worth speaking of is to be found in all France! Quiet shady paths led into woodland nooks, or by winding rivers bordered with lofty poplars; and in every meadow the beautiful tancoloured cattle of the district were taking their ease. Here and there, at some little distance from the road, one saw a large farm-house, manoir of some gentleman-farmer, or a métairie, standing in the midst of farm buildings-a sight in itself sufficient to disprove the accepted theory that France is divided into tiny holdings, each with its cottage-or hovel !

Soon we entered the vast forest of Châteauroux, and for a time followed a broad beautiful road, winding amid oak, chestnut, and walnut trees; a warm blue sky lending fresh