of the seventeenth century no doubt produced abundance of work by men of undoubted sanity, which is in some respects as quaint as this sketch of a "Venetian Constitution" (very different from the meaning later attached to that phrase) for "Oceana" (England), “Marpesia” (Scotland), and "Panopea” (Ireland). But the quaintness of Burton and Browne, of Fuller and Digby, of Glanvill and Wilkins, never induces us to doubt the sanity of the writers for a moment. It is their pleasure to be far-fetched, allusive, abrupt, full of conceits and "metaphysical" oddities, to parade learning in and out of season; but it can hardly be said that their wildest conceits ever run away with them. It is impossible to read even a few pages of Oceana without suspecting that in this case the running away is an accomplished fact. Harrington is full of ability, he has studied theoretical politics with immense care, he has observed certain sides of actual politics not without acuteness : he has just censures of Leviathan to which his own work is in a manner a counterblast: he is extraordinarily ingenious in the arrangement of the Tribes and the Troops, of the ballot machinery and the "Provincial Orb." But in all this and in the relish with which he draws up accounts for the ballot boxes and the balls of metal and the pavilions, devises elaborate and rather poetical titles for his tribes and their officers, intersperses comic speeches by the "Lord Epimonus" (a genial fanatic of reaction), and adjusts rejoinders to them by the Lord Archon (Cromwell), which are in some respects almost startlingly like Cromwell's own speeches in all this I say it is almost impossible not to detect what is familiarly called the bee in the bonnet. The abstract principles of Harrington's polity, which may be said to be a fixed maximum of property to be held by individuals, a strict rotation of office-tenure by ballot, and a complicated regulation of all public and even some private details of life, after the model, now of Venice, now of Lacedaemon, might not in vacuo be absurd. But it is evident that Harrington had neither the least desire to adjust nor the least faculty of adjusting these abstract ideas to the concrete facts of English character, life, and history. He was seriously taken by his own time, and long afterwards references are found to the Oceana in Swift's first serious political work the Dissensions in Athens and Rome. But Oceana is really moonshine,- -a Midsummer Night's Dream of politics, compared with which Utopia and Atlantis are practical projects.

Such things, however, can in literature be very agreeable :

and Harrington's book has many charms. What has been called in other matter "the rich marrowy quality" of it is especially remarkable. Even such a small thing as the constant omission of "law" in the long discussion on the Agrarian provisions of his scheme ("there is in this Agrarian a homage to pure and spotless love," "the Agrarian gives us the sweat of our brows without diminution") gives a singular zest to the treatise. My Lord Epimonus's speeches have throughout an almost Shakespearean, a more than Jonsonian savour of farce, and though the Archon is frequently unintelligible, as indeed was his great original, he is the equal of that original in pregnancy and his superior in brilliance. The boldness of the metaphors ("this order was thus fleshed by the Lord Archon": "this if they be planted popularly comes to a commonwealth ") is unsurpassed even in the seventeenth century, and certainly not equalled elsewhere in English literary history. This novel and sustaining quality of style carries us through what has been and would otherwise have been justly called the "prolixity dulness, and pedantry" of the book, supports us in its argumentative atmosphere, as of an exhausted receiver, and enables us to do justice, and sometimes perhaps more than justice, to the solid and acute observations which occur from time to time. Harrington was almost certainly mad: and his madness may be a little exasperating when we think of the state of the times and of the necessity which existed for every good citizen to come out of his study and do practical work. But it was a fine madness in its way, and would have been an eminently harmless one in other times.

GEORGE SAINTSBURY.

THE POLITICAL WISDOM OF GIRLS

MANKIND then must either be less just than the creature, or acknowledge also his common interest to be common right. And if reason be nothing else but interest, and the interest of mankind be the right interest, then the reason of mankind must be right reason. Now compute well; for if the interest of popular government come the nearest to the interest of mankind, then the reason of popular government must come the nearest to right

reason.

But it may be said that the difficulty remains yet; for be the interest of popular government right reason, a man does not look upon reason as it is right or wrong in itself, but as it makes for him or against him. Wherefore, unless you can show such orders of a government as, like those of God in Nature, shall be able to constrain this or that creature to shake off that inclination which is more peculiar to it, and take up that which regards the common good or interest, all this is to no more end than to persuade every man in a popular government not to carve himself of that which he desires most, but to be mannerly at the public table, and give the best from himself to decency and the common interest. But that such orders may be established as may, nay must, give the upper hand in all cases to common right or interest, notwithstanding the nearness of that which sticks to every man in private, and this in a way of equal certainty and facility, is known even to girls, being no other than those that are of common · practice with them in divers cases. For example, two of them have a cake yet undivided, which was given between them: that each of them therefore might have that which is due, "divide," says one to the other, "and I will choose; or let me divide, and you shall choose." If this be but once agreed upon, it is enough; for the divident, dividing unequally, loses, in regard that the other takes the better half; wherefore she divides equally, and so both

have right.

"O the depth of the wisdom of God!" and yet "by the mouths of babes and sucklings has He set forth His strength; that which great philosophers are disputing upon in vain, is brought to light by two harmless girls, even the whole mystery of a commonwealth, which lies only in dividing and choosing. Nor has God (if His works in Nature be understood) left so much to mankind to dispute upon as who shall divide and who choose, but distributed them for ever into two orders, whereof the one has the natural right of dividing, and the other of choosing. For example:

A commonwealth is but a civil society of men: let us take any number of men (as twenty) and immediately make a commonwealth. Twenty men (if they be not all idiots, perhaps if they be) can never come so together but there will be such a difference in them, that about a third will be wiser, or at least less foolish than all the rest; these upon acquaintance, though it be but small, will be discovered, and, as stags that have the largest heads lead the herd; for while the six, discoursing and arguing one with another, show the eminence of their parts, the fourteen discover things that they never thought on; or are cleared in divers truths which had formerly perplexed them. Wherefore, in matter of common concernment, difficulty, or danger, they hang upon their lips, as children upon their fathers; and the influence thus acquired by the six, the eminence of whose parts are found to be a stay and comfort to the fourteen, is the authority of the fathers. Wherefore this can be no other than a natural aristocracy diffused by God throughout the whole body of mankind to this end and purpose; and therefore such as the people have not only a natural but a positive obligation to make use of as their guides; as where the people of Israel are commanded to "take wise men, and understanding, and known among their tribes, to be made rulers over them." The six then approved of, as in the present case, are the senate, not by hereditary right, or in regard of the greatness of their estates only, which would tend to such power as might force or draw the people, but by election for their excellent parts, which tends to the advancement of the influence of their virtue or authority that leads the people. Wherefore the office of the senate is not to be commanders, but counsellors of the people; and that which is proper to counsellors is first to debate, and afterward to give advice in the business whereupon they have debated, whence the decrees of the senate are never laws, nor so called; and these being maturely framed,

it is their duty to propose in the case to the people. Wherefore the senate is no more than the debate of the commonwealth. But to debate, is to discern or put a difference between things that, being alike, are not the same; or it is separating and weighing this reason against that, and that reason against this, which is dividing.

The senate then having divided, who shall choose? Ask the girls for if she that divided must have chosen also, it had been little worse for the other in case she had not divided at all, but kept the whole cake to herself, in regard that being to choose too she divided accordingly. Wherefore if the senate have any farther power than to divide, the commonwealth can never be equal. But in a commonwealth consisting of a single council,. there is no other to choose than that which divided; whence it is, that such a council fails not to scramble—that is, to be factious, there being no other dividing of the cake in that case but among themselves.

Nor is there any remedy but to have another council to choose. The wisdom of the few may be the light of mankind; but the interest of the few is not the profit of mankind, nor of a commonwealth. Wherefore, seeing we have granted interest to be reason, they must not choose lest it put out their light. But as the council dividing consists of the wisdom of the commonwealth, so the assembly or council choosing should consist of the interest of the commonwealth: as the wisdom of the commonwealth is in the aristocracy, so the interest of the commonwealth is in the whole body of the people. And whereas this, in case the commonwealth consist of a whole nation, is too unwieldy a body to be assembled, this council is to consist of such a representative as may be equal, and so constituted, as can never contract any other interest than that of the whole people; the manner whereof, being such as is best shown by exemplification, I remit to the model. But in the present case, the six dividing, and the fourteen choosing, must of necessity take in the whole interest of the twenty. (From Oceana.)