that naval hostilities in the future should and would be confined to the ships of each country built as warships, commissioned as warships, and employed only as warships. This intention is frustrated by the employment of any merchant vessels whatever, and the halfhearted schemes initiated by our own Government some years ago for the employment of our swift ocean steamers in time of war were an infringement of the spirit of the Declaration. Spain, though not bound by it, observed it as much as any other Power when in 1897 she appropriated her merchant steamers of over 1000 tons. But this is a monstrously expensive way of waging war. The privateers, at all events, cost the country nothing and increased her national wealth; they may almost be said to have made the fortunes of Liverpool when the loss of the slave trade threatened ruin. But to hire steamers not to make prizes but simply to destroy, would be to pay for mischief without profit. The privateers did for nothing what was far better, and even paid for the privilege of doing it. That nothing will be done without payment now was obvious when the Government asked the ocean liners in 1877 to turn themselves into half-warships.

Real warships of the kind described are obviously what Lord Brassey1 means when he says, "If any future naval contest in which we may be engaged is confined to the fighting ships on

either side, we shall be the greatest gainers." Yet he himself quotes Baron Grivel as saying (apparently in 1877), "If we had to compel such an enemy as the United States to make peace, we should have to commission our best frigates, and to supplement them with a certain number of Alabamas; and this policy would entail much less financial pressure than the construction of armed cruisers." In the face of declarations such as this it is mere trifling to talk of the naval wars of the future as likely to be confined to the "fighting ships."

That the revival of privateering in its old form would be to our disadvantage is probably true. That our great-nay, our immense losses in the Napoleonic wars (10,871 vessels in all) did not cripple our trade was due to the circumstances of the time. We had practically the whole carrying

the de

trade of the seas; mand for English ships to transport the world's goods was such that it paid well to build two vessels for every one captured. But times have changed; there are half a dozen nations which would probably be neutral during our coming struggle, and which are quite capable of taking up the carrying trade-as the Germans at the moment of writing are taking up the trade with the Far East-and of keeping it too. But most of all we are crippled in our choice of action by our dependence upon foreign

nations for our food-stuffs. It would not be plate - ships or Acapulco galleons in which the enemy would find his best prize, but in the vessels laden with the commonest and the cheapest necessaries of life the cereals of America and the cattle of Argentina. It might profit him little; it would mean death to us.

The only logical position, and the only safe one, for this country to adopt is that of the United States, that private property should be in time of war as safe on sea as on land. It is monstrous that the same plundering of the goods of noncombatants, which is (nominally at least) punishable with extreme penalties in land warfare, should so soon as those goods are embarked on the high seas become a legitimate and a laudable action. It may be asked, By what means, supposing we adopted this principle, could we enforce it? We may answer, By the same means by which the United States, without use of actual

force, but simply by strong assertion backed by strength known to exist, have within a few years elevated what was nothing more than a pious opinion into a principle of international law. If the Monroe Doctrine could be so enforced, it speaks little for our boasted naval superiority if we cannot in our turn insist upon the observance of a principle conceded in theory if not in practice by all civilised peoples, and by one great and kindred nation in both respects.

Until some agreement of the kind is arrived at, and is supplemented, moreover, by some general consensus as to what constitutes contraband of war, not dictated by actual combatants during a contest but calmly decided by the impartial publicists, and invested with all the sanctions of international law, the Declaration of Paris is not worth the paper it is written on. Indeed it "is and remains abolished."

21

VOL. CLXXVI.—NO. MLXVIII

overmuch that individualism of the artist, for which SainteBeuve has striven in the higher courts of criticism. Ardent literary honeymooners forget this; and when their love is a great literature, in which evidence of the maddest theory is to be found for the seeking, they may be excused from suspecting any break in the harmony which they have helped to establish. But Valvèdre must find, some day, that his dear Alida will upset his laboratory views of life, and put bachelor science to the test.

They order this critical matter better in France since Taine's day. Thanks to him, devotion to English study has grown; but that study, even of the strictest historical type, has departed from the first model. It has been less concerned with the justification of an idea, less with the discovery of some théorie maitresse, than with the interpretation of the movement of English literature by the direct testimony of the English books themselves. Not that there is, of necessity, aught amiss in approaching a subject with some preconceptions more or less tentative, but it is especially dangerous in criticism of this kind, in which, if we would adjust our "foreign" vision, we must base our induction on the widest possible array of known facts. We need not name the writers who unite, for our pro

fit, a thoroughness which would be creditable to the most plodding savant beyond the Rhine, with the critical elegances which thrive to perfection on this side of Göttingen. Our book-censors keep them before us at each weekly opportunity.

So far good: but we expect more from the French genius than excellent monographs. We learned long before Taine's day to look to it for broad canvasses, or, if a more modish metaphor be preferred, for Pisgah-views of literature, for the free air and clear light of generalisation. It is now forty years since Taine gave us his History. Throughout this period, and despite all reserves as to its value to the general reader, it has held its own. It has had no rival in France: even in England, till recent years, the four red octavos of Van Laun's translation have had something of the domestic credit of a literary Buchan. A life of forty years is long for a book written from a special point of view; and so much has been done in the study of English since its appearance that France may well clamour for a new guide. 'Ael Aißún pépei TI Kaivóv: which is equally appropriate to French critics and to histories of English literature; and not less true now that we have the first instalments of Monsieur Jusserand's 'Histoire littéraire du peuple anglais.'1

Des

It is just this illumination and fresh colour in Monsieur Jusserand's treatment of the noble story which has given his literary work the honourable place which it holds among us. We hope it is no disrespect to the remarkable series of studies which has come from his pen to push the limner-metaphor a little further, and to call them the first sketches-and the second and third, if the reader knew the labour which has been spent on them-done in preparation of the finished canvas of the 'Literary History.' We admit that the

figure strains, for had the chefd'œuvre not been undertaken, we should still have praised the thoroughness of his pictures of the wayfaring life of medieval England, or of the growth of our Novel and of our Drama-even of the minaturework on the royal author of the 'Quair' and his traducers. The formal relegation of these to a second place in Monsieur Jusserand's labours is an object-lesson, to craftsmen and readers, of strenuous devotion to method, which proclaims the serious critic and does honour to a great subject. This is not the passion of a "literary honeymoon." It but adds point to our appreciation of this record to remember that our author, who has engineered the series of the 'Grands Écrivains' and will soon give us a volume on Ronsard, has carried out this work amid the duties and (what is perhaps more trying) the distractions of a busy diplomatic life. It is easy for the Temples to make a hobby of literature, and to cultivate the genteel essay on men and manners between the hours of reception and promenade. It is another thing, even in the untroubled atmosphere of the Bredgade, and with the occult aid of Elsinore, to read a tithe of the authorities which go to the making of a chapter of a 'Literary History of the English People.' It is in itself a triumph for France's ambassador at Washington to have read the proofs of the thousand pages of the second of these volumes, and to have kept touch