Such a back-wave, it appears to me, has been at work during the last few decades, and the accompanying phenomena, in public life, in religion, in literature, have been extraordinary enough to fill even a fairly philosophical mind with something like despair. Closer contemplation and profounder meditation, however, may prove that in all possibility the retrogression is less real than superficial, that the advance forward of our civilization has only been hampered, not absolutely and finally hindered, and that in due time we may become stronger and wiser through the very lessons hardly learned during the painful period of delay.

It would be quite beyond the scope of the present article to point out in detail the divers ways in which modern society. in England particularly, has drifted little by little, and day by day, away from those humanitarian traditions which appeared to open up to men, in the time of my own boyhood, the prospect of a new heaven and a new earth. At that time, the influence of the great leaders of modern thought was still felt, both in politics and in literature; the gospel of humanity, as expressed in the language of poets like Wordsworth and Shelley, and in the deeds of men like Wilberforce and Mazzini, had purified the very air men breathed; and down lower, in the humbler spheres of duty and human endeavor, humanists like Dickens were translating the results of religious aspiration into such simple and happy speech as even the lowli-¡ est of students could understand. It was a time of immense activity in all departments, but its chief characteristic, perhaps, was the almost universal dominance, among educated men, of the sentiment of philanthropy, of belief in the inherent perfectibility of human nature, as well as of faith in ideals which bore at least the semblance of a celestial origin. Not quite in vain, it seemed, had Owen and Fourier labored, and

Hood sung, and John Leech wielded the pencil, and Dickens and Thackeray' used the pen. The name of Arnold was still

a living force in our English schools, and the name of Mazzini was being whispered in every English home. The first noticeable change came, perhaps, with the criminal crusade of the Crimean war; and from that hour to this, owing in no little degree to the rough-and-ready generalizations of popular science, and the consequent discrediting of all religious sanctions, the enthusiasm of humanity among the masses has gradually, but surely, died away. Sentiment has at last become thoroughly out of fashion, and humanitarianism is left to the care of eccentric and unauthoritative teachers. Thus, while a few despairing thinkers and dreamers have been trying vainly to substitute a new Ethos for the old religious sanctions, the world at large, repudiating the enthusiasm of humanity altogether, and exchanging it for the worship of physical force and commercial success in any and every form, has turned rapturously towards activities which need no sanction whatever, or which, at any rate, can be easily sanctified by the wanton will of the majority. Men no longer, in the great civic centres at least, ask themselves whether a particular course of conduct is right or wrong, but whether it is expedient, profitable, and certain of clamorous approval. Thanks to the newspaper press,-that "mighty engine," as Mr. Morley calls it, for "keeping the public intelligence on a low level,'"-they are fed from day to day with hasty news and gossip, and with bogus views of affairs, concocted in the interests of the wealthy classes. Ephemeral and empirical books of all sorts take the place of serious literature; so that, while a great work like Mr. Spencer's

1 Curiously enough, the optimistic taste of the day regarded Thackeray, an essential sentimentalist, as an almost brutal cynic!

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"Justice" falls still-born from the press, a sophistical defence of the status quo like Mr. Balfour's "Foundations of Belief is read by thousands. The aristocracy, impoverished by its own idleness and luxury, rushes wildly to join the middle-class in speculations which necessitate new conquests of territory and constant acts of aggression. The mob,

promised a merry time by the governing classes, just as the old Roman mob was deluded by bread and pageants,—panem et circenses,-dances merrily to patriotic war-tunes, while that modern monstrosity and anachronism, the conservative working man, exchanges his birthright of freedom and free. thought for a pat on the head from any little rump-fed lord that steps his way and spouts the platitudes of cockney patriotism. The established church, deprived of the conscience which accompanied honest belief, supports nearly every infamy of the moment in the name of the Christianity which it has long ago shifted quietly overboard.' There is an universal scramble for plunder, for excitement, for amusement, for speculation, and, above it all, the flag of a Hooligan Imperialism is raised, with the proclamation that it is the sole mission of Anglo-Saxon England, forgetful of the task of keep

1 It is sad to read in this connection the poem contributed to the "Times," at the outbreak of the South African struggle, by no less a person than the Ven. Dr. Alexander, archbishop of Armagh and primate of all Ireland :

They say that "War is Hell," the "
The sin impossible to be forgiven-
Yet I can look upon it at its worst,
And still find blue in heaven!

great accursed,"

And, as I note how nobly natures form
Under the war's red rain, I deem it true

That He who made the earthquake and the storm

Perchance made battles too!

God help the church, indeed, if this is the sort of oracle she delivers to those who rested their faith in God on the message of the Beatitudes.

ing its own drains in order, to expand and extend its boundaries indefinitely, and, again in the name of the Christianity it has practically abandoned, to conquer and inherit the earth. It may be replied that this is an exaggerated picture, and I will admit at once that there is justice in the reply, if it is granted at the same time that the picture is true so far as London itself and an enormous majority of Englishmen are concerned. Only if this is granted, can the present relapse back to barbarism of our public life, our society, our literature, be explained. Now that Mr. Gladstone has departed, we possess no politician, with the single exception of Mr. Morley (whose sanity and honesty are unquestionable, though he lacks, unfortunately, the dæmonic influence), who demands for the discussion of public affairs any conscientious and unselfish sanction whatever; we possess, instead, a thousand pertinacious counsellors, cynics like Lord Salisbury or trimmers like Lord Rosebery, for whom no one in his heart of hearts feels the slightest respect. Our fashionable society is admittedly so rotten, root and branch, that not even the queen's commanding influence can impart to it the faintest suggestion of purity, or even decency. As for our popular literature, it has been in many of its manifestations long past praying for; it has run to seed in fiction of the baser sort, seldom or never, with all its cleverness, touching the quick of human conscience; but its most extraordinary feature at this moment is the exaltation to a position of almost unexampled popularity of a writer who in his single person adumbrates, I think, all that is most deplorable, all that is most retrograde and savage, in the restless and uninstructed Hooliganism of the time.

The English public's first knowledge of Mr. Rudyard Kipling was gathered from certain brief anecdotal stories and

occasional verses which began to be quoted about a decade ago in England, and which were speedily followed by cheap reprints of the originals, sold on every bookstall. They possessed one not inconsiderable attraction, in so far as they dealt with a naturally romantic country, looming very far off to English readers, and doubly interesting as one of our own great national possessions. We had had many works about India-works of description and works of fiction; and a passionate interest in them, and in all that pertained to things Anglo-Indian, had been awakened by the Mutiny; but few writers had dealt with the ignobler details of military and civilian life, with the gossip of the mess-room and the scandal of the governmental departments. Mr. Kipling's little kodak-glimpses, therefore, seemed unusually fresh and new; nor would it be just to deny them the merits of great liveliness, intimate personal knowledge, and a certain unmistakable, though obviously cockney, humor. Although they dealt almost entirely with the baser aspects of our civilization, being chiefly devoted to the affairs of idle military men, savage soldiers, frisky wives and widows, and flippant civilians, they were indubitably bright and clever, and in the background of them we perceived, faintly but distinctly, the shadow of the great and wonderful national life of India. At any rate, whatever their merits were, and I hold their merits to be indisputable,-they became rapidly popular, especially with the newspaper press, which hailed the writer as a new and quite amazing force in literature. So far as the lazy public was concerned, they had the one delightful merit of extreme brevity; he that ran might read them, just as he read 66 'Tit-bits and the society newspapers, and then treat them like the rose in Browning's poem: