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With every upward

liminary and unpaid labour is requisite. step in the great hierarchy of labour, from the brick-moulder to the educated statesman, the severity of the early toil is enhanced. The cultured man, in the prime of his power, may well delight in the exercise of his splendid faculties. But the work in itself is extremely difficult, whatever the delight with which it may be performed after long preparatory training. The demand, moreover, which most intellectual work makes on the vigour of the constitution, unless great care is bestowed on the maintenance of physical health, is far more exhausting than is the case either with artificers' work, or even with the work of the artist. The entire productive power of a country, whether manual, æsthetic, or intellectual, is, if rightly viewed, bound together in one great brotherhood of labour; and increased activity of life, and increased freedom of consumption of all articles of necessity, of luxury, and of intellectual creation, tend, like the raised temperature of the hive of the bee, to stimulate the perennial fountain of national wealth.

That great system of communication of which we have sketched the outline, has been the creation of human labour, guided by human intelligence. As matter of history, this labour, and this intelligence, have been applied under conditions highly disadvantageous. They have been called on to act spasmodically. At times the Legislature has authorised, and so far as it had the power compelled, the completion within a brief space of time of public works for the execution of which there was not an adequate supply of labour. At other times all the advantage derivable from the formation of a picked body of workmen, and from the experienced skill of the engineer, has been thrown away by a stagnation of enterprise, at which the Legislature has looked in helpless dismay, without acknowledging its own share in producing the misfortune.

It is customary to speak of the organisation of great national works, of a highly remunerative character, as the result of the application of capital; and the corollary is added that the proprietors of capital are the exclusive judges of the mode of its application. Nothing has more directly tended to prevent the systematic study of the laws of the application of labour than this view. In order to test its accuracy it is desirable to consider what is included under the general term Capital.

The term Capital, in political economy, is held to include not only the necessary means of sustenance from harvest to harvest, but the general store of a country so far-some say as

it is applicable, and others as it is applied to the purpose of production. Without going into the question of the dif ferences between the meaning of a word we can all understand -namely, wealth-and that of a word which is a favourite creation of economic writers, it is clear that all appliances for facilitating work come under the appellation of Capital. Tools, engines, factories, all those contrivances by which a few men can now perform the work once requiring the labour of many, are portions of that capital which is said to regulate labour. The assumption which underlies this part of the theory is, that if one man, in a well-appointed factory, can do the work of ten men without such aid, the one man, and his fellows, will do all the work required, and the ten men, and their fellows, will do nothing. This view is a natural consequence of the principle that everything is determined by competition, or by the rate of purchase and sale. It entirely loses sight of the fact that the ten men will be more likely to do the best they can, under all the disadvantages they endure, than to remain idle. In discussing the subject of peasant proprietors, and of the application to the soil of labour that would be entirely unapplied but for the interest taken by the small owner in his holding, the value of this secondary power of labour is fully admitted by Mr. Mill. In the railway history of Europe we have a yet more remarkable illustration of the absolute creative power of labour. The whole group of magnificent factories, shops, engine-houses, and other appliances necessary, not only for the activity, but for the formation of railways, have been constructed within the last forty years. Labour has, within that time, invented and created its own tools, from the grafting shovel to the locomotive.

The large experience of Mr. Brassey must have furnished a host of facts illustrative of the organisation of labour, and of the methods by which industry has actually been directed to the creation of the great system of railways. We know that he prescribed for his own guidance certain wise and simple rules, to the neglect of which, by some of his contemporaries, may be ascribed the manner in which their rapidly accumulated riches vanished like fairy gold. Had not sound principle and steady purpose controlled every operation, the expenditure of so large a sum as seventy-eight millions sterling by one man would have produced a colossal confusion, and left to his family a rich inheritance of lawsuits.

Mr. Brassey takes a hasty glance at the relations between the labour and the future condition of this country, compared with those which exist abroad, as to which the experience of

his father has furnished such valuable data. It is a glance partly hopeful, partly the reverse. England occupies, industrially, a position somewhat similar to that which she holds geographically, between Europe and the Western World. The higher rate of wages paid, especially for skilled labour, in the United States, is causing a perceptible flow of emigration from our shores, as well as from those of the Continent of Europe. The price per ton for puddling iron, for example, is cited as being, at Pittsburgh, three times as much as in England, or from 21s. to 27s. compared with 8s. 6d. In 1868, according to a report from Commissioner Wells to the American Congress, labour in America was paid, in the following branches, in these ratios, as compared to English prices. In woollen mills wages were 25 per cent. higher; in cotton mills, 29 per cent.; in iron-rolling mills, 40 per cent.; in ship-yards, 48 per cent. ; in foundries, 58 per cent. The position of the artisan in the United States, if we compare on the one hand rate of wages, and on the other hand cost of living, is not, indeed, so good as it was before the war. But the 1,400,000,000 acres of land still at the disposal of the United States is a fact the influence of which on the future of the labourer it is not easy to estimate or to predict.

One of the great elements of the industrial superiority long claimed by Great Britain is already losing its power to turn the scale in our favour. There is no doubt that, at all events in some cases, its future effect will be rather against than in favour of British industry. We allude, of course, to coal. However temporary recent disturbance in the price of this prime feeder of industry may prove, it is certain that a continuance of anything like the recent ratio of increase in annual production must be accompanied by rise of price. Nor can it. be expected that our possession of less than four per cent. of the known coal basins of the world can very long secure to us that priority which our first application of the mineral to industrial purposes so fairly insured.

There remain to us our position as a maritime emporium; our natural qualifications for maritime enterprise; and the great element of the industrial capacity of the English workman. As to this, there is no doubt that it is, in many respects, of the first order. This is not, of course, the case in everything. In occupations where artistic taste is concerned, the Englishman is not in the first rank. For fertility of invention, the palm must probably be given to the United States. In the adoption of long hours of work many countries go far beyond us; but we have above had the satisfaction of seeing that long

VOL. CXXXVIII. NO. CCLXXXII.

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hours are not really economical. The chief good quality of the English workman is-or used to be-his thoroughness. As compared to others he is more trustworthy. Physically he is stronger than the working man of almost every other country; and this power of muscle, and vigour of brain, has been kept up by more nutritious food, and by greater personal comfort. With such a premium to be obtained by industry as the cooperative system shows to be practicable, there ought to be little reason to fear either that higher wages will tempt the English workman to emigrate; or that cheaper labour, or even cheaper coal abroad, will enable the foreigner triumphantly to compete with him for generations yet to come.

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ART. III.—1. Ludwig van Beethoven's Leben. Von ALEXANDER W. THAYER, nach dem Original-Manuscript deutsch bearbeitet. Vol. I. Berlin: 1866. Vol. II. Berlin: 1872. 2. Chronologisches Verzeichniss der Werke Ludwig van Beethoven's. Von W. THAYER. Berlin: 1865.

3. Beethoven's Letters, &c. Translated by Lady WALLACE. London: 1866.

4. Biographische Notizen über Ludwig van Beethoven. Von RIES und WEGELER. Coblenz: 1838.

5. Beethoven und seine Werke. Von OTTO MÜHLBRECHT. Leipzig: 1866.

6. Beethoven, eine Kunststudie. Von WILH. VON LENZ. Cassel: 1855.

7. Ludwig van Beethoven, Leben und Schaffen. Von A. B. MARX. Berlin: 1863.

CERTAIN statues of ancient fame are known to us only from

a comparison of the copies of them which exist in different museums. One copy preserves features which another has lost: size, workmanship, material lend their concurrent aid. Bronze may restore what has perished in marble; but it is only by bearing in mind all the existing copies that a complete conception of the original work can be formed. The same may be said of portraits: our idea of Shakspeare, Cromwell, or Mary Stuart does not rest on one work of a man of genius, a Raphael or a Reynolds, who paints the man for ever at his best and fullest,' but is made up of partial glimpses caught from various pictures from the hands of

commonplace artists. It is so with biographies. Written ast they are, some with an antiquarian view, some to propagate a dogma or serve a political purpose, those which have literary merit rarely represent but to distort; whilst those which are faithful to their original resemble photographs rather than pictures, and, sacrificing perspective to completeness, become exhaustively dull. How few biographies are to be found which are at once readable and trustworthy; and of these few how few again are written by Germans! The German mind would seem to have all the necessary qualities of biographers; yet no biographies are so unreadable as German biographies. French tact and insight give reality to a picture which owes little to research or honest attention to facts. English common sense seldom wholly misconceives its subject, seldom fails to have some idea of arrangement, some sense of proportion, some reticence. But the German biographer is possessed by the demon of detail; like the leaden mantle of the Inferno, detail weighs him down so that he cannot lift himself up and see the land in which he is walking. He is like Percinet in the fairy tale, sitting amidst mountains of unsifted feathers, and, alas! with no hope of a fairy godmother to come to his help. His work is full of facts, great and small, relevant and irrelevant, but will never have a place in literature, nor be fit for more than material: invaluable material, it is true, but not yet literature. There were many biographies of Goethe before Mr. Lewes gathered them up into a work which is the delight of all who read it. Sed omnes-but who reads them now? Who shall give us a life of Weber, Gluck, or Schubert? There is no want of biographers; but they only escape from facts to be lost in clouds of enthusiasm. It is no relief to turn from Mr. Thayer (who, by the way, is not a German, though his work appears in the German language, and has all the excellences and defects of a German book) to Herr Nohl or Madame Polko: for the German biographer is never so dull as when he is sentimental, never so commonplace as when he is inspired.

Beethoven has fared no better than his brothers in art. Many volumes have been written about him. His pupils and contemporaries have said nearly all that can be said by the friends of so lonely a man. His life has been written from

different points of view by several authors. His works have been arranged, analysed, criticised. And when Mr. Thayer has published his last volume the collection of materials for a life of Beethoven will be complete. But the life of Beethoven will not have been written. It is impossible to wish for a more

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