gish warm flood, when the tide is low. Single lines cannot be quoted, but the gathering blood-curdling horror is altogether indescribable; or, fit to stand among the most powerful descriptions anywhere, the passage where the unhappy Ruth has been told by her father that she must marry the man she hates on Monday morning or never darken his doors again, and she goes out early on Sunday, leaving her baby behind : "She came not home to share our humble meal;

Her father thinking what his child would

feel

None but a master mind could touch our soul to the quick like this-nore but a master of his art say so little and say so much at once.

But when all is said, looking at the mass of his works, comes the involuntary question-Would not Crabbe's merits have found fitter scope in prose than in poetry? Is he not a prose-writer spoilt?-his poetry prose cut up into lengths?

Poor Crabbe! Into what despondency would his spirit have sunk at this verdict of a later generation! The charge is undeniable; but his conduct is also justifiable. For he is a poet in possibility, though his trade in prose took up most of his time; and he is also the best of prose writers marred and maimed by inadequate verse. The fact was, that he looked on poetry as a vehicle for conveying everything worth expression at all-a kind of Parcels Post. His first poem was called "Inebriety," and this is an analysis of some of the subjects of his poems: "Book Clubs-too much of literary character expected from these; Card Club with eagerness resorted to; Freemasons' Club; Griggs and Gregorians; Reflections on these vari

ous Societies." Or, again-" On the Elections-the Unreasonable Expecta tions of Voters; the Censures of the Opposing Party; Plans and Cunning of the Electors. Or, again" The Great Evil of Quackery to Nervous Females-History of an Advertising Empiric.'

So it comes that many of his poems serve to ruin his reputation as a poet, with a cumulative force which their mass makes formidable; while all the time he is only a pamphleteer who has got somebody else's coat by mistake. And indeed the maledictions of this generation ought to rest on the head of Mrs. Crabbe, who caused the rapid destruction of all his novels by suggesting that they would be better in verse. Miss Austen alone has profited by this, for her glories would have shone but dimly by them. But the novels perished in a bonfire in the back garden, a satisfaction to Mrs. Crabbe, a delight to the children, and a cause of lament to us.

It is indeed sadly true that what Crabbe so ably himself calls his "actuality of relation, nudity of description, and poetry without an atmosphere,' have rendered the body of his poetry not poetry at all in the ordinary sense of the word; and what would have been brilliant and famous in prose has sunk into disfavor and obscurity as poems.

Perhaps the point which would be more questioned is the other assertion, that he is a poet in possibility-a poet marred. But a poet should be judged by the best of his work; and from a few isolated passages in Crabbe we cannot but conclude that if his prose had been allowed free course, and his poetical fancy left uncumbered of lower cares, he could have risen to the highest flights. We have such exquisite couplets as

"Oh days remembered well! remembered all! The honey sweet, the bitter and the gall." But they often sadly tail off into didactic lines, or prosy ones; the wings of fancy fail beneath us, and we find ourselves sitting on the ordinary earth, heavylimbed and hopeless, very stationary. Still the lines are no less beautiful for being few; and these jewels are to be found elsewhere by a careful, thorough reader. Take the first stanza in the dying song of the half-mad girl, when

44

No prince nor peasant lad am I,

Nor crown nor crook to me belong;
But I will love thee till I die,

And die before I do thee wrong." There is a wonderfully fresh idyllic feeling about it—a smell as of a country field in England; free at once from Arcadian artificial scents, and the heavy atmosphere of a fashionable courtship.

For a lyrical masterpiece, full of the finest poetic feeling, and with a certain rare tenderness and graciousness, we have the little song in "Sir Eustace Grey;" when he describes his first respite from the horrible demon hunt, his first hope of mercy :

"Pilgrim burthened with thy sin

Come this way to Zion's gate,
There till Mercy let thee in

Knock and weep and watch and wait.

Knock! He knows the sinner's cry;
Weep! He loves the mourner's tears;
Watch for saving grace is nigh;

Wait! till heavenly light appears.

Hark! it is the Bridegroom's voice,
Welcome, pilgrim, to thy rest;
Now within the gate rejoice.

Safe and sealed and bought and blest.

Safe, from all the lines of vice;

Seal'd, by sins the chosen know;
Bought, by love and life the price;
Blest, the mighty debt to owe.

Buried be all that has been done,

Or say that naught was done amiss;
For who the dangerous path can shun
In such bewildering world as this?
But love can every fault forgive,

Or with a tender look reprove,
And now let naught in memory live

But that we meet, and that we love."

Crabbe's compass is a wonderful one; only he talked too exclusively and did not sing enough. Let us then read him for his prose if we will, for his poetry whenever we can, but at all events let us read him; for he is always keen-sighted and truthful, almost always humorous, forcible and tender, at times exquisitely beautiful. If we care to hear of men as they are, let us listen to Crabbe.-Temple Bar.

AT the present moment the foreign policy of Russia is a matter of vital importance, not less to England than to the rest of Europe. It is only necessary to remember that Russia has always based her policy less on her real strength than on the estimate in which other nations hold that strength, to show how desirable it is that while the directions in which she is strong should be clearly seen, those in which she is weak should not be overlooked.

A sombre picture of the overwhelming right of Russia has lately been painted for the English people, so that it may be worth while urging some considerations which tend to put a brighter face on the outlook as it affects this country. Owing to fundamental differences between Russia and other European nations, such as the want of a middle class, the numbers and homogeneity of the mass of the people, and their peculiar cast of character and temperament, it may be said that the nation is the people in a sense unknown in the rest of Eu rope. Though details of administration may be regulated by the caprices of the sovereign, or the interests of officials, yet in the long run the action of Russia will be that which the people wish. To find out the probable course of Russian action abroad, the heart of the Russian peasant must be examined, for the peasant is the nation. There are of these some sixty millions, all alike, tall, broad-shouldered, with fair long hair, and blue eyes; phlegmatic, child-like in ideas and speech; good-humored and easy-going; all identical in mode of life, in interests, in feelings, and of one creed and one race.

gard to religion and country the whole mass of the people is sensitive to an extraordinary degree. It will thrill like one huge organism at any touch, and the excitement raised by danger to Slav soil or Orthodox Church spreads through the country with incredible rapidity. When the whole is once roused, there will be no sacrifices of property or life too great, as long as there is an invader of Russian homes, or an enemy of the faith, to be resisted.

So it was in 1877 that the tales of Mussulman barbarity on a Christian people, backed by crowds of destitute exiles flying into Russia for protection, first roused popular feeling in favor of action. The refugees, as they were passed from home to home to make room for fresh arrivals, fanned the flame. Their stories, losing nothing in the telling, were repeated from mouth to mouth, reviving the popular hatred of the hereditary enemies of their faith. Before long the whole people was roused to a high degree of excitement; petitions poured in to the Czar from thousands of villages; the movement had assumed the dimensions of a crusade. Urged on by the unanimous voice of the nation, and powerless to check the popular feeling without endangering the dynasty, the Czar, in spite of his own wishes, led his armies against the Turks. Such was the real origin of a war usually attributed to minor co-existing causes, such as the ambition of officers, and the political designs of the government.

In his heart, amid all the unintelligent monotony of his daily life and surroundings, the peasant cherishes two idealsHoly Russia, and the Orthodox Church; and the depth of feeling he is capable of displaying on these two subjects, and its power to arouse him to action and selfsacrifice, can hardly be realized in England.

carrying on the war; defeat will only embitter and deepen the resolution of the nation, by enlarging the area of invasion; one campaign lost will only lead to another more desperate; and in the end the advantages of Russia in numbers, resources, and extent of territory will tell, in spite of any superiority on the part of the invader in mobility and generalship.

The immense size of Russia makes it a country where the hearty co-operation of the people is essential for vigorous war. Movements of concentration depend on the troops being provided locally with supplies, quarters, and conveyance, and, though actual resistance to police orders is not to be expected, a merely sullen or listless compliance will paralyze the action of the clumsy administration, and cause indecision, waste, and uncertainty in prosecuting the campaign. It is not too much to say that Russia is incapable of carrying on a war, not only unless it is one supported by public opinion, but even unless it is demanded by popular enthusiasm. It is not necessary to point out that a war on the part of Austria or Germany against Russia, must take the form of an invasion of the latter country, unless the former Powers throw away the most conspicuous advantage they possess, that of the initiative which their more rapid mobilization confers on them. It is, therefore, difficult to resist the conclusion that such a struggle must, in the long run, turn out in favor of Russia. It is the above train of reasoning which explains the cautious attitude of Germany with regard to Russia, and the hesitation on the part of Austria to thwart that Power's action in the Balkan peninsula, however infurious to non-Russian interests.

In case of a war between Russia and England, however, a very different result seems probable. To begin with, the Russian peasant knows nothing of England or the English. He is incapable of feeling interest in, or even understanding, the points of difference between the two countries; Central Asia is a dim idea to him; India is beyond his ken. No invasion of Russian soil will take place, to fire his patriotism; disasters to settlements in east Siberia will not be heard of in Russian villages; the clash of arms in Afghanistan, or

Asia Minor, will leave undisturbed both Russian homes and the interests of the Orthodox Church. So far, the war will affect the people but little directly; but indirectly they will find that it causes suffering that they can ill bear without the stimulus of patriotic enthusiasm.

It is clear that the first action of England would be to blockade the coasts, and stop the sea-borne trade of Russia. Now seventy per cent. of the total exports are carried by sea. These consist almost entirely of bulky articles :-grain for the most part, and also flax, wood, hemp, wool, tallow. To attempt to divert this trade to any great extent into land channels will be hopeless, as the cost of transit will be prohibitive. Thus the market for these products will be greatly reduced, and those who produce them, that is to say the agricultural population of Russia, or nine tenths of the people, will be greatly impoverished. At the same time the burden of taxation will necessarily be increased, even for the ordinary expenses of government; putting on one side entirely the extraordinary expenses of the war. To see this, the sources of Russian revenue must be examined. In 1886, seventythree per cent. of the total revenue was raised by taxation, of which nearly one third was levied directly, and the remainder indirectly chiefly by means of customs, stamps and excise. The depression of trade will cause diminished revenue from customs and stamps, which it will be difficult to avoid supplementing by increased direct taxation. At present nine tenths of the direct taxation is levied on the peasants, who will, therefore, be subject to increased taxation, at the very time when their diminished prosperity is rendering even the existing burdens hard to bear.

Uncompensated by enthusiasm for the war, the reasons for which must seem vague and mysterious to the peasant mind, this pressure can only have one effect, namely to cause murmurings, questionings as to the necessity of the war, and eventually a strong feeling in favor of peace. This feeling will bring, by a thousand channels, pressure to bear on the Government, which no Russian executive will long be able to resist. Though in name an autocracy, Russia is in reality the most democratic country

in Europe, in the real sense of the word, namely that the people have the power of controlling the action of the Government. In spite of any isolated successes in distant lands, a war with England cannot fail to be an unpopular war in Russia, and will be brought to a close at the earliest chance of peace, even on terms unfavorable to the policy of that country.

It seems likely, then, that Russia is in little danger of interference from her German neighbors, who justly shrink from the prospect of a death struggle with that Power, secure in the tenacity and patriotism of her population; but it is probable that she is aware that she

can by no means afford to risk a war with this country, in which she will certainly suffer materially, and most likely be compelled before long to make peace at the sacrifice of the immediate object of her policy.

It is for statesmen to apply this conclusion to the foreign policy of England; for Englishmen it is a more hopeful one than that generally arrived at as to the influence of England in the Eastern Question, and therefore in Europe. It would seem that we may watch the course of events with a composure that the Emperor Franz-Joseph, and even the great Chancellor himself, may well be supposed to envy.-National Review.

WHEN, on her day of Jubilee, the Queen's procession was passing through the streets of London, it must surely have struck hundreds of those who were excited and stimulated to delight by the scene," What is in truth the chief charm that works from all this splendor and magnificence?" It was evidently something more than the mere grandeur of the dresses and uniforms, or the brightness of the streets, gay with flags and masts, something more than the mere carnival of color, or than the infectious joyousness of a great city in holiday mood. These are all-powerful enough to exhilarate, but there was something in the pageant that did more than cause pleasure and wonder,-something that was more strongly impressive, and not merely impressive in reflection, such as the thought of the greatness and solemnity of the occasion, but something impressive to the senses. Surely the most potent of the many elements that combined to render the public celebration of the Jubilee one of the most striking pageants ever witnessed was its pomp. To have said this, however, is in no way to explain what is the charm of pomp, or why pomp should impress us as it does. As far as mere beauty of color and of light and shadow, or of those thousand accidents of sensation pleasurable to the eye which make up what we call picturesqueness, are concerned, the illuminations were far more memorable than the procession; and yet

no one, we feel certain, was impressed by them as they were by the procession. They necessarily lacked the pomp without which that feeling, half of rhythmic delight and half of awe, which is one of the most overpowering sensations of which men are capable, cannot exist. When there is no pomp, we may enjoy a great spectacle, and may have our sense of what is beautiful keenly touched; but we are left still unsubdued in mind. To believe that this is so for the majority of mankind, one has only to see what sort of pageant is the most popular with the crowd. Without doubt it is one in which the military element enters most largely. Nothing delights the crowd like the even tread and bristling bayonets of marching soldiers, or the undulation of the line of troopers as they ride with drawn sabres or glittering lances. But above all others, military displays are made up of pomp. How often, indeed, has such " pomp and circumstance'' been made to support a tottering throne, or to persuade an enslaved people to forget, or not desire to break, their chains. The hunger of crowds for this, the most obvious and most effective form of pomp, is curiously illustrated by the records of great American public fétes. There are no regular soldiers available for reviews or processions in America. The people, however, will not go without their military pageant, and what is supplied by soldiers in Europe, is in America made up by firemen