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8. THE GERMAN VIEW OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE, Saturday Review,

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NUMBERS OF THE LIVING AGE WANTED.

The publishers are in want of Nos. 1179 and 1180 (dated respectively Jan. 5th and Jan. 12th, 1867) of THE LIVING AGE. To subscribers, or others, who will do us the favor to send us either or both of those numbers, we will return an equivalent, either in our publications or in cash, until our wants are supplied.

PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY

LITTELL & GAY, BOSTON.

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FOR EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually for warded for a year, free of postage. But we do not prepay postage on less than a year, nor where we have to pay commission for forwarding the money.

Price of the First Series, in Cloth, 36 volumes, 90 dollars.

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Any Volume Bound, 3 dollars; Unbound, 2 dollars. The sets, or volumes, will be sent at the expense of the publishers.

PREMIUMS. FOR CLUBS.

For 5 new subscribers ($40.), a sixth copy; or a set of HORNE'S, INTRODUCTION TO the Bible, unabridged, in 4 large volumes, cloth, price $10; or any 5 of the back volumes of the LIVING AGE, in numbers, price $10.

RED LEAVES AND DEAD LEAVES.

By shaded sinuous pathways once our mood Chased us all day, till each was found of each, And hands and eyes met eyes and hands in speech,

While no word spoken named our hap for good; But on, still on, we wooed the deepening wood To show the inmost rose-bower we would reach,

To rest and learn somewhat, and somewhat teach;

And red leaves smote our faces where we stood.

For we stood, surely knowing the bower was found,

And trod the threshold; and when some sudden dart,

With thunder above and earthquake in the ground,

Cleft in between, and startled us apart, Never to meet save in this roseless land, Where dead leaves smite our faces as we stand.

Tinsley's Magazine.

THE FALL OF THE YEAR.

Now flowers of deeper hue and scarlet glow;
Or in rich purple the white bosom lies;
And leopard-spots of blossom's golden eyes
On hill-sides green and sky-domed commons
show;

And the blue Heaven over her doth throw

Her thinnest web of fair and lawny haze; And suns retire from proud accustomed ways, At nearer tides of Night's great overflow; And green-flushed Earth in dreamy Autumn light

I know that thou, O amber morning wind
O'er Kernan's meadow blowest,
And thou, heart-warming nightingale!
My father's orchard knowest.
The merchant hath stuffs of price

And gems from the sea-washed strand, And princes offer me grace,

To stay in the Syrian land.

But what is gold for, but for gifts?
And dark without love is the day;
And all that I see in Bagdad
Is the Tigris to float me away.

Public Opinion.

ON THE MOORS.

RED lie the moors, the glorious autumn moors,
Crimson, and red, and scarlet, with the glow
Of twice ten thousand nodding heather-bells;
With wealth of colour, gorgeous as the tints
Of Iris' purple robe: What time the bee,
Gauze-winged and eager-eyed, and amorous,
Drunk with the nectar of his paradise,
Hums o'er the honeyed blooms, his song of love.

The grouse-cock whirs, exultant, from the whins,
Proud covey-sultan, spreading his brown wings,
Nor boding coming doom; the red deer bears
Grandly aloft his many-antlered head,
As yet untrodden by the sportsman's foot,
And o'er the rippling burns, and o'er the fells,
Falls soft the mellowing silver of the night.

On the hill-side, the white flocks rest and browse,
Nor heed the shepherd's tyke: sweet Even

comes

With folded hands, with soft, full, limpid eyes, Grey-robed and placid from the golden West, A gilded change to many colours sees And from her starry lap, drops asphodels Through all her shrubby lanes and branch-On eyes of tired mortals: silence reigns,

ing-trees,

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And all around is beauty — all is peace!

MY LOVE.

"MARK her slender form bend low
As the Zephyrs lightly blow;
Mark her robe, like blossoms rare,
Scatter fragrance on the air;
See her face as soft moon beaming,
From her smiles ambrosia streaming,
And on brows more white than snow
See the raven tresses glow!
Lotus-like, her dewy feet
Treasures yield of nectared sweet;
Light as on her footsteps pass,
Blushes all the bending grass;
And rings of jewels, beauty's powers,
Freshen into living flowers,

While brighter tints and rosier hues
All the smiling earth diffuse."

Broughton's Popular Poetry of the Hindoos.

From Macmillan's Magazine.

THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF THE

NINETEENTH CENTURY.

BY PROFESSOR SEELEY.

III.

great expectations, and actually accomplished some reforms. But it is not to be supposed that he was in every respect superior to his predecessor, or that his predecessor was altogether incompetent: even those who welcomed him most warmly, I HAVE endeavoured to describe the and expected most from him, probably power which is at work in all the changes considered him only better on the whole, of our time, the power of organized public and may have been prepared to acknowlopinion. I have also described to you the edge him inferior in some respects. It changes themselves, and have represented was not, therefore, to be expected that the them as being mainly of one kind; namely, new régime would shine in every kind of abolitions of monopoly. Now, there are reform. If enlightenment was wanted, many who complain of the partiality shown the new power was not clearly more enby the ruling power of the time for this kind lightened than the old. The Lonsdales of work, maintaining that much more nec- and Fitzwilliams of the old régime had at essary tasks are neglected for it. At any least education and leisure, which a large rate, it is evident that some very necessary proportion of the new voters entirely tasks remain undone, and that public wanted. If genius was wanted, the old opinion at least does not show any great power knew better than the new how to forwardness to undertake them. Pauper- find it, and had the wisdom to allow genius ism is as great an evil perhaps as Church a good deal of scope. Moreover, under ascendancy, but it is not dealt with so promptly. National education has waited forty years, and about twenty years ago the Ministry of Lord John Russell expressly declared that a system of national education was rendered impossible by the opposition of religious bodies: this was equivalent to a declaration that public opinion was not sufficiently pronounced or resolute for such a scheme; in other words, that it was not so zealous in this matter as in matters of another kind. It appears, then, that public opinion chooses among things was the new régime favourable. abuses, that it is not animated with an equal hostility to all. There must be something either in the peculiar nature of this power or in the conditions under which it works, or in both, to give it this particular bias. Why is it that, instead of an outcry against abuses and evils that afflict the State, we have had simply a cry of "Down with monopolies "?

the old régime governments were more stable and steadfast than they have been since, and therefore the change removed one almost indispensable condition of all difficult reforms, the feeling of strength and security on the part of the Ministers that preside over them. Now, the highest works of statesmanship require these three things-great power in the Minister, genius to counsel and support him, enlightenment in Parliament to weigh and decide upon his plans; and to none of these

Where, then, was its superiority? Its superiority was not a general one, but confined to a special point. It was not a class régime. Any other fault it might have as much or more than the régime it superseded, but it had not so much exclusiveness. It speedily threw open Parliament to a multitude of interests which had scarcely been represented there before, There are, I believe, some general rea- and in that far mightier parliament which sons arising out of the very nature of pub-is the true deliberative organ of this régime lic opinion which help to explain this; but in the Press-all interests were repreperhaps the main cause is to be found in a special influence which is at work. I will consider the general reasons first. What was the sovereign power in England to which public opinion succeeded? The influence of a certain number of great families. The new monarch was installed with

sented from the beginning, and every voice was free to make itself heard. A régime, therefore, which had one special virtue would be likely to distinguish itself by a special class of reforms. When the spirit of exclusiveness was expelled from the Government, it was to be expected that

the monopolies would fall which that ex- the very schoolroom where its children are clusiveness had sustained.

learning to read and to tell the truth. It would be likely enough to intrude the maxims of the shop and of the racecourse into the school; one would not be surprised if it proved unable to conceive a university except in one of two ways— either as a fund to be divided in fellowships among a number of people, according to certain rules, or as a system of violent and dangerous competitive struggles, carried on partly in the schools and senate-house, partly on the Thames and at Lords' Cricket Grounds. To deal with subjects like this, in fact, to deal with the whole department of culture, it is evident that you must have a Government of the wisest, and no one has ever supposed that the government of public opinion, at least such as we see it in this age, answered that description.

Again, some evils in the State are flagrant and conspicuous, and others, though they may chance to be greater, are of a more subtle character. With these more subtle evils public opinion is not remarkably well qualified to deal. It has not the blindness which was sometimes created in the old régime by its class prejudices. The accomplished Windham was a steady opponent of popular education, not because he did not know the value of education, but because he felt the régime with which he was identified to stand in need of popular ignorance. Men much inferior to Windham in these days escape such a warp of the mind; the removal of exclusiveness has been to this extent equivalent to an increase of enlightenment. But the other kind of blindness which is not produced by special circumstances, the common blind- Again, there are some great political ness which arises from want of cultivation, works which may be evidently needed, and has not been removed by the change of may ever be acknowledged to be indispensrégime, and public opinion is more unculti-able, but which are of extreme difficulty, vated, at the same time that it is more which require a vast collection of facts equitable, than the class opinion it sup- and a patient application of contrivance planted. There was no reason, then, to and discretion to a multitude of details. expect that public opinion would be par-Now for such works the régime of public ticularly keen to detect abuses that were opinion has one great advantage over the not obvious. Its reign was likely to be old régime. The old régime, it may be said, characterized rather by a rough fairness had no ideal of statesmanship. Conservaand honesty than by deep wisdom. In tism being universal, no one contemplated this very matter of education that I have such a thing as constructive legislation. just mentioned it would not be capable of If the constitution was a thing settled and condemning a whole class to ignorance on complete, so that the only question was of considerations drawn from the reason of interpreting it rightly, a statesman could State; but, on the other hand, its concep- scarcely be called upon to create or contion of the value of education would not trive upon a large scale. Only some great be very distinct, nor its notion of what catastrophe which had reduced part of the constitutes a good education very accu- constitution to ruins could furnish such an rate. It would therefore not oppose edu-occasion, as the Irish Rebellion of '98 made cation, but it would be quite likely to the Legislative Union possible. The aptrifle with it, to misunderstand it, and to mismanage it. In discussions about education it would be apt, from want of thoughts and feelings about the subject itself, to slide off into side issues; and when the question is of turning young savages into citizens and Christians, when the question is of the very souls and characters of the young, it would be quite capable of getting on its hobby of tests, quite capable of hunting a monopoly through

pearance of a vast reforming party, and the familiarity with large changes which their exertions have gradually produced among us, have enlarged our conception of what statesmanship may do, and have led us to conceive of such a thing as an art of progress, have made us change our conception of a state as an unchanging thing, which has only to be watched and protected from the impact of foreign bodies for a conception of it as a growing

spirit of the age. The Whigs only shone when they were in opposition, and Sir Robert Peel when he gave up one of his principles. The consequence was that the régime was not simply that of public opinion, but of public opinion ill-directed and reduced to feel its own way. If this want of able leaders were an evil incident especially to the régime of public opinion, if public opinion is likely always to have the best statesmanship of the age resisting it, and to be served only by the second best, it must certainly be considered an unfortunate form of government. Perhaps, however, we may consider that this is already disproved by later experience. In any case it is possible to point out the special and exceptional circumstances which damaged the statesmanship of the Whigs of the Reform Bill, while it is not surprising that Sir Robert Peel, a veteran servant of the old régime, should have been out of sympathy with the new from the influence of his training, and not at all from any natural repulsion of high statesmanship from the sovereignty of public opinion.

and developing thing, a thing perpetually perpetual unsuccessful warfare with the shifting, advancing, and putting forth new organs, and requiring therefore to be studied with method, to be helped and directed in its changes with boldness and expertness, and capable of being indefinitely developed and improved by genius. But though the present régime has given us the idea of this higher statesmanship, it has at the same time placed enormous difficulties in the way of the idea being realized. The actual result has been that the statesmen of the present age have not appeared great in proportion to the greatness of the changes they have introduced. This is not perhaps a necessary effect of the dominion of public opinion, but rather a consequence of the particular way in which its dominion was established. Had public opinion made its way by gradual advances, and gained for itself from politicians, first respect, and then in course of time deference, it might have become great itself without too much eclipsing the greatness of statesmen. But it gained its sovereignty by wrestling with and defeating the first public men of the day, and therefore its victory was won at the expense of the prestige of statesmanship. What is important for us, however, is The influence which should naturally sup- to remark that the present period for port the statesman, and receive direction the most part has not been favourable to from him, dictated to him. The popular the higher statesmanship. The dislocamovement, while it humiliated by defeat tion of parties at one time, and their even the statesman who opposed it, was greater balance at another, has kept statesmen and more commanding than any of the perpetually occupied in maintaining their statesmen who joined it. Hence the part positions, and has thus disabled them from of the statesman for a time lost some of its undertaking great public works. Anxiedignity. There were statesmen who had tate careus animus a mind free from the administrative skill, character, and the sense of insecurity-is as necessary for tact of government; there were others great works of statesmanship as for great who had the sympathy and confidence of works of poetry. Such security being out the people, and who understood the signs of the reach of the statesmen of this age, of the times. But there was an unfortu- they have necessarily leaned on their oars nate want of statesmen who combined and drifted very much before the tide of both sorts of qualification. Those who popular feeling. Whatever the people understood the time best had been so long wanted, if it was not too difficult to accomin opposition that they had not acquired plish, they could have; but difficult tasks, the art of administration. They were men felt, it was not the season to underbetter agitators than rulers; they could take. The measures of this age are, represent the popular movement better therefore, to be considered not merely than they could direct it. Meanwhile the as what public opinion was capable of other side had a leader with the expe- demanding and supporting, but what rience and all the qualifications of a without much help from skilled statesstatesman, but he passed his life in a manship it felt safe in carrying through.

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