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alike demonstrate the fact that federation of free men must be federation by mutual consent. No South African Federal Government could work smoothly if any of the parties to it were forced into the union. Such a government could not avoid wreckage if the statesmen who had to work it could blame Downing Street for any failure or hitch in the machine. It could not even be started unless both Dutch and English were allowed an absolutely free voice in the settlement of the details. We must wait till the fruit is ripe before we can gather it.

But until South African federation is accomplished, and the Australian federation has survived the crises of infancy, it would be vain to discuss the larger question. If the Empire is ever to be federated under either a Council or a representative Parliament, that step will probably be brought about by a new shrinkage of the world' such as will make Australia as near to Great Britain as Europe is now.

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'What was before us we know not,

And we know not what shall succeed.'

The present linkage of so many distant colonies has been rendered possible only by that developement of railways and telegraphs which was the specific work of the nineteenth century. British Columbia could not be linked to the Maritime Provinces without the Pacific Railway. New South Wales could not throw in her lot with Queensland without steamships to link together the ports of that great continent. It is thus mechanical invention which has done the chief work in the past, and it may do it again in the future. Men like Signor Marconi may be true federators, and the politicians must wait upon their achievements. We cannot tell what further victories over time and space may await us. We have not yet even exhausted the possibilities of our present achievements. Australia has yet to fall in with the Imperial penny post. We have yet to see what changes may be produced by the new Pacific cable, or the new lines of steamships between Canada and South Africa that are at present being projected. We must let these things grow. We must allow time to draw our colonies closer together, and watch the slow workings of natural forces until they give us the proper chance for human intervention. We must be ready to take time by the forelock, but not hurry to snatch her by the back hair.

But as to our colonies, they are at present for the most part still in the age of infancy. They have not finished growing, and growth requires freedom. No wise parent will check

the free play of a child's limbs by tight or heavy clothing. No wise statesman would check the free developement of our colonies with iron laws and regulations. They need population above all things, and Europeans chiefly migrate to reach a freer air. They go to escape the bondage of ancient traditions, the grip of the dead hand, or the rod of the military martinet. The emigrants of Europe are for the most part tired of aristocracies and monarchies, and they go forth to escape from them. If Canada and Australia adopt these things, and cramp their young limbs in all the cast-off clothing of the Old World, they may become mimics of ourselves, very flattering to our vanity, but they will never have a life of their own. The United States have grown because they have kept free of Europe, and it is a significant fact that even the average British emigrant still prefers the States to our own colonies as a settling ground. Man does not live by constitutions, but by freedom.

The last word, then, is, Give the Empire air. Let it grow. Interfere with it as little as possible, and then, if its component States ever come into a closer union, they will come as proud equals, grown in wisdom and stature, and not as subordinates hoping for some profit from the union.

Our first task is to put aside the two vices of Empirethe pride of power and the desire for profit. It was these vices that lost us our first Empire, and will, if they grow, surely imperil our second. It was only when Lord Grey and his fellows deliberately set aside the idea that our colonies should be used as a source of profit, that the modern spirit of free and mutual loyalty between ourselves and our colonies arose. Let us not go back to the old days of greedy haggling, when 'colonies' meant 'estates,' and were only valued as sources of trade revenue. There is a fatal risk in relying on the maxim Trade follows the flag.' For what if we discover that it does not? Are we to turn our back on the flag? It is too dangerous a throw of the dice. The great moral discovery of the nineteenth century within the British Colonial Empire was that the tie of sentiment grew as the tie of law weakened. That is as much a fixed point now in the field of politics as the power of electricity in the field of applied mechanics. It is part of our capital. We go back on it at our peril. Our best courage lies in trusting to it absolutely and without any shadow on our confidence. For thus only shall we become, like the comrades of Ulysses

'One equal temper of heroic hearts

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.'

ART. VIII.-The English Novel: Being a Short Sketch of its History from the Earliest Times to the Appearance of Waverley.' By WALTER RALEIGH. Fifth impression. London: Murray, 1901.

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T is tolerably certain that criticism will find in prose fiction, if not the greatest, at least the most characteristic achievement of European literature during the nineteenth century. We should be the last to underrate those great outbursts of poetry which attended, and were in part inspired by, the first and second French Revolutions; and doubtless in England Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, and Byron are names fully the peers of Scott, Dickens, Thackeray, Miss Austen, and Miss Brontë. But there have been other poetic periods not less notable than the age of Wordsworth in England, of Hugo in France. There has never before been a period in which the imagination of mankind gave itself over so completely to shaping imaginative thought in prose as that which began with the publication of Waverley.' For although the title of this paper refers to the nineteenth century, we are really concerned with that literary developement to the opening of which Mr. Raleigh brings readers in his brilliant little monograph; wisely stopping short where the subject grew beyond the compass of any reasonable volume. After the appearance of Waverley,' for a few years yet the constellation of poetic genius shone with growing lustre ; but soon three of its great lamps-Keats, Shelley, and Byron-plunged suddenly into darkness. Wordsworth began to pale an ineffectual fire, Coleridge to gutter out; while Scott, with a genius that had at last found full scope, went on from strength to strength, uniting in masterpiece after masterpiece the two elements that had hitherto been kept apart in work of the prose imagination-the element of comedy, satiric or good-humoured, and the element of romance.

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It may, perhaps, help readers to realise the extraordinary change in estate which the novel has undergone since the early days of last century, if we revive some specimens of the critical opinions expressed in this Review. No one will wish to assert that the Edinburgh Review' has been consistently inspired in its judgements; but probably no one will care to deny that it has represented more than adequately the normal standard of well-informed criticism. In the first twelve years of its existence, or in the first

forty-eight numbers, the editor only devoted ten reviews in all to novels; and of these, five were concerned with stories by Miss Edgeworth, an authoress whose design of affording instruction' entitled her novels, in the editorial eyes, 'to 'more consideration than is usually bestowed on works of this description.' Yet, let it be remembered, almost every issue of the Review devoted one article at least to some work in verse, even though the poets to be reviewed were of no greater merit than Mrs. Opie or Joanna Baillie, and often, indeed, were writers whose share has been a still more perfect oblivion. There were, no doubt, novelists doing work not inferior in merit to Mrs. Opie's poems; but the plain fact is that the novel was excluded from the Review's survey because the novel had fallen into the deepest disrepute. Richardson, Fielding, Goldsmith, and Sterne had each been followed by a crop of imitators, but had never established a school. The one writer of the eighteenth century who had succeeded in setting a fruitful example was Miss Burney, among whose disciples we may reckon Miss Edgeworth and another lady who was far greater than Miss Edgeworth, but of whose productions the Review, it must be admitted, took no contemporary cognisance. Miss Austen's 'Sense and Sensibility' appeared in 1811, and her five other books within the next decade; but it was not till long after that a first mention of them was made in these pages. Yet among a wide circle of readers the vogue of the novel was, relatively speaking, as great as at present.

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'From the Minerva Press in Leadenhall Street,' says Mr. Raleigh (and the Edinburgh Review,' noticing Delphine,' bears him out by a contemptuous reference to this same institution), 'romances poured forth in shoals during the years before the appearance of "Waverley." Of this vast body of worthless literature the single characteristic is imitation -shameless and unintelligent-of the most popular English and French authors. Mrs. Radcliffe, Godwin, and "Monk" Lewis, Rousseau, Madame de Stael, and the Baronne de Montolieu (whose best-known novel, "Caroline de Lichtfield," had been early translated by Thomas Holcroft) furnished the stuff for innumerable silly composites of sentiment and horror. . . . It is worth noting that the largest and readiest sale was found by writers since forgotten.'

Mr. Raleigh adds statistics. Two thousand copies of "Vicissitudes Abroad; or, the Ghost of my Father'-a work in six volumes by Mrs. A. M. Bennett-were disposed of at thirty-six shillings on the day of publication. Two thousand copies at thirty-six shillings may be counted equivalent to twelve thousand at the modern price, and in those days the

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Review computed that 'there are in this kingdom at least eighty thousand readers.' The staple reading of these eighty thousand was afforded admittedly by these works of 'fiction,' which, said the Review, in its notice of Tales of my Landlord,'' are generally regarded as among the lower * productions of our literature.'

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But, as the reviewer then admitted, this summary classification had been upset by the apparition of Waverley'―a work of genius which was promptly hailed by Jeffrey with its true title. Yet it is not a little curious to note how gradually, and, as it were, grudgingly, the long-standing prejudice was relaxed. The reviewer of 'Tales of my Landlord' was at some pains to explain that prose fictions might very conceivably prove preferable to epic poetry. The great objection to them, indeed,' he wrote, 'is that they are too entertaining. . . and are so pleasant in the reading as to 'be apt to produce a disrelish for other kinds of reading which may be more necessary. Neither science nor ⚫ authentic history, nor political nor professional instruction, 'can be conveyed in a popular tale. To this opinion (expressed in 1817) the Review adhered for a period, though noting in 1826 the continuously increasing application of talent to this branch of literature. 'For every one good ' novel thirty or forty years back there are now a dozen.' But still the view was held that the novel is only meant to please; it must do that or do nothing.' When Mrs. Gore, in her 'Women as They Are,' showed signs of writing something that should not be a mere novel,' but should convey information, the reviewer disparaged the attempt, maintaining that nothing should be in a novel which would appear tedious or displaced in a play. But in 1830 an article (dealing with various novels of military or naval life, by Marryat and other officers) opened with a full recantation of this heresy :

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"This is truly a novel-writing age! . . . Persons of all ranks and professions, who feel that they can wield a pen successfully, now strive to embody the fruits of their observations in a work of fiction. One man makes a novel the vehicle for philosophical and political discussion; another smuggles in under similar disguise a book of travels, or, as in the case of two recent travellers in Turkey, first sends forth the record of his tour and then a novel by way of corollary.' The case of the officer, the critic goes on to show, is analogous; soldiers and sailors can now without breach of discipline give the world an insight into the very heart of military life. In short,

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