manifold and grievous, Mr. Lecky, if he could give three or six months to a study of the subject, would not fail to perceive. The consequence was, that we gradually passed into a state of opinion which condemned the tax outright in its existing form, and would only endure it if differentiated, that is to say, imposed at varying rates on the several schedules. This alternative was approved, partly under the authority of Mr. Hume, by the great mass of the Liberal party. But, in the creed of the practical authorities from Pitt to Peel, the reconstruction of the tax was impossible; while its repeal, as matters then stood, would have involved the utter disorganization of our finance. In these circumstances Mr. Disraeli, when proposing his Budget of December 1852, undertook, without the knowledge of the Board of Inland Revenue, to differentiate the tax by a reduction on Schedule D. He was defeated. The Ministry of Lord Aberdeen took office. They had to face a position of financial danger, to which I say without hesitation the last fifty-five years afford no parallel. But they escaped from the dilemma and obtained a renewal for seven years. And how? By a large plan of finance, based upon the gradual diminution and the final extinction of the tax. The abandonment of the impost was thus promised in a form the most binding that could be devised. Those who gave the promise, believed the thing they promised to be politic and right, and for the promise they received large value in the stability both of the finance and the Administration. They bound themselves to get rid of "the principal direct tax ;" and none but the nation could absolve them from the attempt to fulfil their offer. Public exigencies postponed for fourteen years the practical acknowledgment of the obligation; but it had never been forgotten. The way had been carefully prepared by the Ministry of 1868-74, through successive reductions of the tax from 8d. to 3d. In 1874, for the first time since 1845, the opportunity arrived. The nation had its opportunity, and took its choice. It may have been wise or unwise; but it was made by competent authority. The result is told in our present expenditure of ninety mill

ions. What in Mr. Lecky's mind is a piece of unequalled political profligacy was in prospect, and is in retrospect, according to my conviction, the payment of a debt of honor, and the fulfilment of a solemn duty.

This cramped and contracted statement is, I am aware, charged with a vein of involuntary egotism. I therefore regret the less that want of space forbids me to expand it. It refers chiefly to my first query, but throws some light upon the others. As the thing was ob ligatory, so the time was eminently proper. We had the tax already lowered below any previous rate, and before us there lay a solidly estimated surplus of six millions. No such opportunity for a large and various improvement in our taxation had theretofore, or has since, occurred. Of this Mr. Lecky is not bound to know anything; but he ought to have known, and to have stated, that with the proposal to repeal the income tax came a proposal to reconstruct and enlarge the death duties. Direct taxation of a kind most vexatious to trade and industry was to be removed: direct taxation, the least of all unfavorable to trade and industry, and going, as a direct tax should wherever possible go, straight to property, was to be imposed.

I must mention one other among the considerations which show the eminent propriety of the time. The Parliament was in its sixth year; and would in regular course have been dissolved in the autumn of 1874. During the session, it would have been a moribund Parlia ment; the least fit of all to deal with great questions, the most prolific of dishonesty and intrigue. By the dissolution, we sent Antæus back to kiss his mother earth, and we secured that a great subject should at any rate be considered by an Assembly exempt from personal fears and temptations, and clothed with the amplest and most unquestionable authority.

One word, lastly, as to the proposer of the plan. As Chancellor of the Exchequer, he obtained the tax in 1853 by means of the promise; as Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1874 he was the person bound beyond all others to redeem it, when at length it could be redeemed. He was not altogether a

novice, for he had already produced and carried ten Budgets, and he knew that what he proposed, for a Parliament that was to meet in February, he must in March make ready to perform. Except under (what I think) the absurd contention that the nation is never to be consulted upon the exercise of its chief and primary right of giving or withholding taxes, it appears to me, I frankly own, that in this case Mr. Lecky's con

demnation ought to be itself condemned. But, beyond all doubt, the sentence was passed by him as a debt due to justice, such as he conceived justice to be; and its appearance on his pages does not make me one whit less grateful for these conscientious and able volumes, or less anxious that, in his noble profession as an historian, there may still be reserved to him many long years of happiness and fame.-Nineteenth Century.

A PICTORIAL joke in this week's Punch marks what may be the high tide of a mannerism among the rising generation which deserves more than a passing notice. "Ah!" remarks the gentleman ; everybody's getting too clever nowadays. I assure you, my chief object in society is to conceal my ignorance, and prevent people from finding out what an abject fool I really am." "And do you succeed?" smilingly asks the lady. The opportunity was perhaps irresistible, at least in our day, when no girl thinks of concealing her cleverness; but we are not sure that the savage snub was entirely deserved. The "masher" who spoke seemed guilty, no doubt, of an affectation which, when the next generation studies this volume of Punch, will seem incredible; but it was in a great degree only seeming. He did but express in exaggerated language a feeling among the young, and especially the young and prosperous, which is one of the most marked, as it is one of the least intelligible, signs of our generation. The young man of to-day not only affects self-depreciation, but he is hon estly self-depreciative. The old selfconfidence, upon which Dons like Dr. Thompson were so effectively bitter, appears, except in Dons, to have temporarily disappeared, and young men gravely pronounce themselves young idiots. They do not know anything, they say; they are not clever, and they shall, they think, never do much in life. They preface every statement with the remark that they do not know much about it ;" and if they want to contradict, do it in the formula, "I always thought, don't you know, that it was thus the exact opposite of what you

had said—" but that is just like me, I never can get my facts right." So far from being dogmatic, they are not sure of the multiplication-table, and only grow absolute where the question is of a false quantity, when they may ask if such-and-such a quotation is not "irresistible evidence." They "are not very popular," they say; people are kind to them because they are kind, they do not know why ;" and as for friends, they have more than they deserve. deed, it is currently reported, though we will by no means vouch for anything so absolutely incredible, that a young man was recently heard to say, with a deprecatory smile, that he thought, on the whole, pretty girls did not like him much. To listen to the new generation, you would think they were the humblest of mankind, thought of themselves as school-boys, and were gravely convinced that knowledge, so far from ending with themselves, could never filter down to them. Apart from an indefinable difference of manner, they talk as workmen talk upon statistics, a topic upon which the half-educated are, for some inexplicable reason-unless it be that the evidence, when found, must be absolute-invariably reverential toward their superiors in culture. Nor is this merely a manner, or a recurrence toward that Chinese form of politeness which cannot allude to self without asking pardon for the existence of anything so insignificant and worthless. There is affectation in it, no doubt, as there is in all politeness which become so general ; but there is also sincerity. have acquired a new self-distrust. So far from believing that they are fit to be Lord Chancellors, or Premiers, or Phy

The young

sicians to the Queen, as we all believed thirty years ago, they doubt whether they can do as well as their neighbors, ask for all manner of protections from competition, and start for a competitive examination, or an interview with a patron, with a warning to their friendsquite sincere-that they are not to expect anything, because "other fellows, don't you know, know such a lot that I don't." They are sure of their own weak places, and of nothing else. That is a very curious phase of feeling to appear in such a number of nice lads, and one not easy to explain. A little of it, perhaps, is due to the new truthfulness born of culture which is developing itself in society, and which has, for example, entirely revolutionized the old etiquettes about references to money. Our fathers lied about money, to speak plainly, habitually and systematically, constrained by etiquette. The rich man never admitted that he had any money, unless he meant to boast; while the poor man thought a plea of poverty, if clearly made in so many words, was either an immodesty or an affront to his interlocutor. That has completely passed away, and the rich man of to-day says, if necessary, "I have some money, you know;" or the poor man, "I cannot afford it," as simply as they would mention any other indifferent fact. Truthfulness must with some be a cause of self-depreciation; but then, it is not so with all, for all do not deserve it. All the confident youngsters of a passedaway day cannot have been consciously fibbing, and, besides, they acted, often to their own grave hurt, under the influence of that self-confidence. Vanity, again, cannot have diminished very greatly in this generation or any other. It is, to a certain extent at all events, as instinctive in men as in animals, and it certainly has not vanished either from boys' dress or from their unconscious demeanor. They "preen" themselves, just as the birds do, as much as ever they did. We might suggest, as we believe many do, that the unconscious influence of "the age" is toward disbelief, and that disbelief in themselves is only the final expression of this tendency; but then we are met by the great est puzzle of all, the almost total exemption of the girls from any tendency

of the kind. They are all as self-confident as can be, quite elate with the sense of capacity, ready to study anything, to do anything, to trust themselves anywhere, to undertake any possible career, except life in a man-ofwar. Their one complaint is that they are debarred from so many things which they could do quite as well as the men. They are boiling over not only with energy and force, but with mental pluck and conceit, and are not a little inclined to tell their brothers and lovers that a good deal more self-appreciation is essential to manliness. He is so diffident, they say, not without a gleam of contempt. Girls go in for stiff examinations with a serenity the boys can only admire from a distance; and when they have passed them, face life with a certainty of getting along which seems to their mothers almost miraculous, -a sign of a changed world. The change is there, too. The very bearing of the new generation of girls is different from that of their seniors, and different through the development of the confidence which has decayed or disappeared in the young men. Ask Mr. Du Maurier else.

Now, what can be the cause at work the operation of which is so strong that its results attract the attention both of satirists and moralists, yet are not only not identical, but are positively opposed in the sexes, though both are equally exposed to the silent influences of "the age"-that is, to the total influence of new habits of thought—and both in some respects-e.g., in freedom of thoughtobviously respond to them alike? We can suggest only one, and though it does in some measure explain the two contradictory sets of facts, it is by no means completely satisfactory to our own minds. We think it possible that the influence of the modern system of examination-that is, of bringing all capacities and acquirements to positive and, as it were, undeniable tests-has been unexpectedly far-reaching and profound. The boy trained more or less to belief in himself-for that is the effect, and the beneficial effect, of the mother's training-is tested almost incessantly for six or seven years of his life, is pitted habitually against others, is taught by circumstances a habit of self-meas

urement, does measure himself a good deal in an unintended direction-that is, against the old-gets a great many illusions scattered, and, as a result, does lose a great deal of his confidence. It is knocked out of him by defeat in what is to him battle; and being knocked out, he suffers, or it may be benefits, from the recoil. (We must wait to know whether the result is benefit or loss. The new modesty is in many ways very pleasant; but then, it is also disheartening, and is somehow not quite natural. Cock-crowing is a nuisance; but ought cocks to leave off crowing?)

The lad underrates himself as he formerly overrated himself, and instead of being of himself the sum of wisdom, is to himself, like Punch's exaggerative friend, an abject fool." It would seem to be evidence of this theory that lads who always succeed under the tests, who win examinations from boyhood to twenty-four-and we have known boys never defeated-remain as conceited as it is possible to wish; while others bred at home, or from any other cause exempt from tests, are as self-confident as the last generation, able in their own judgments, if they only got the chance, to command a fleet without seeing a ship, or to cut for cancer with

out having heard a lecture on anatomy. The girl, on the other hand, is trained by the home influence-for men rule the home intellectually, when all is said-to a certain self-distrust, and the new habit of submitting to tests tends to remove it. She can do more than she thought she could, she measures herself like her brother, and she acquires from every measurement a confidence which, as in her brother's case, produces a recoil. Only her recoil is from self-distrust, and his from self-belief. She becomes as confident as he becomes diffident; and both being made truthful by the new realism, both say so aloud. Both the processes we have mentioned certainly go on, and they do in a measure explain facts which look mutually self-destructive; but there is something left still which we can only confess, in the modern manner, we are not wise enough completely to understand. There is a change of mental climate as puzzling as any recorded by meteorologists, and accompanied, unless our eyes are growing dim, by a positive change of expression of which the portrait-painters, and above all the caricaturists, are thoroughly well aware. That, however, is too big a subject, and one open to too much dispute, to enter on to-day.-Spectator.

-Saturday Review.

ALLAN QUARTERMAIN.

Being an Account of his Further Adventures and Discoveries in company with Sir Henry Curtis, Bart., Commander John Good, R.N., and one Umslopogaas. By H. RIDER HAGGARD, Author of "King Solomon's Mines," "She," "Jess," "The Witch's Head," etc. Illustrated. Authorized Edition. New York: Harper & Brothers.

Mr. Haggard's last novel is, perhaps, on the whole, the best piece of fiction he has yet given us in the peculiar line he has marked out for himself—that of romantic adventure. In this genre of imaginative writing the writer seems to consider himself for the most part untram melled by the sober restraints which lie on the consciences of the ordinary novelist, and feels free to give his imagination the wildest possible play. No adventure is too improbable

and remarkable to find a place in the con geries of exploits and experiences through which his little band of heroes, white and black, pass in "Allan Quartermain ;" and the Homeric slaughtering to which he treats his readers is only rivalled by the most sanguinary pages of the "Iliad" or the "Nibelungenlied." Mr. Haggard does not quite rise to the epic grandeur of these stories, it is true, but he rivals them in the amount of human gore which he so recklessly sheds with his pen. Yet in spite of this blood-thirsty disposition (perhaps we might almost say, because of it, in the case of the boys for whom this book is supposed to be written), the author is so gifted with the talent of vivid narration that he rarely if ever fails to interest. We cannot attempt to give any epitome of this wonderful African romance. Suffice it to say it deals with the