perceiving that therein lies the beginning of the end of war, if the processes indicated by that treaty shall be carried forward "from precedent to precedent." Arbitration, based on the precepts of Jesus (Matt. xviii, 15-17) and of the apostles, (1 Cor. vi, 2, 7) took distinct form-though not the first form -in Germany about the middle of the thirteenth century as an Austrag, or court for the settling of differences between knights, cities, and provinces; and from this early institution it has extended itself to pacts, or bonds of agreement of various kinds, among forty of the nations of our time. The teaching of Jesus is molding the spirit of governments, and is being inwrought with the institutions of States. Said a member of the Peace Congress of Chicago:

When one reads the orders of ministers of state for rifled cannon, Krupp guns, dynamite, and simultaneously, from the same hand, orders for couches, pillows, balms, cordials for wounded enemies; when one finds included in the national war expenses a costly equipment and outlay, a service for disabled enemies equally with that for the nation's soldiery, one perceives that among Christian nations the spirit of war has essentially changed.

Anciently war was an honorable trade, a means of support for arms-bearing men, who shared with their fellows at home the profits of their trade. The fighting was hand to hand, beak and talon, tooth and claw-much the same as that of the geologic period when "dragons tore each other in their slime." The rule was no quarter. The mutilations of captives were as horrible as can be conceived. In the present, a resort to arms is for the sustaining of the balance of power, in pursuance of the judgment of the Areopagite court of the European great nations; or, for the preservation of order, the exercise of a sort of international policemanship, as was, on the face of it, our late war with Spain; or, for the maintaining of a collective honor which, in the opinion of the governing parties, cannot be otherwise maintained. Though war is still, in the estimate of the common crowds, an expression of rage and destruction, and entails saddest immediate sequences; though it be actuated apparently by covetousness and perversion of principle, none the less it rests au fond on an element which is constructive and preservative. Hundreds of thoughtful minds, as we

know, deprecate it as an unworthy method for the settlement of differences between the more advanced nations; and espe cially to such minds the Treaty of Geneva is as an arch of triumph erected on the highway of the royal progress. Nor do such forget that each successive anniversary of the peace societies, whose cordon stretches from Philadelphia to Saint Petersburg, reports gains in the number and character of their adherents. Meanwhile, much as we may deplore the brutal assertion of the force of the stronger and wiser over the weaker and untutored, we are led to perceive that He who controls the agencies of evil bears a half revealed relation to all wars. That relation was traceable in the Franco-Prussian and Austro-Prussian wars of this century. It seems to be traceable in the latest clash of arms between a moribund monarchy, that starved its subjects, and a people whose aspiration is for the best that can be got out of life for the lowliest of its number. His spirit is not in the sword, nor in the flash of the cannon. Yet these, like the leopards that were fabled to draw the chariot of an ancient demigod, move in his advance; and the unreason of man against man levels a highway for his progress.

It is a fact of importance and of satisfaction that the direct appliances for the introduction of an era of wide--it is hardly too much to say, of world-wide-peace and happiness are already set in motion. In summary, some of these may be enumerated. The elimination of superstitions and severities which once marred the aspect of society-as the disinvestiture of witchcraft, the abandonment of trial by ordeal and of judicial torture, and the passing of the duel in more Christian countries; the evolution of the concept and practice of liberty; the admittance of woman into the larger realms of mental, moral, and spiritual activity; the establishment of stringent laws of personal purity; the opening of roadways through the mountains and the linking of the nations with swift currents of thought and speech; the multifarious inventions which facilitate the tasks of daily life; the destruction of the germs of disease in the laboratory; the transformation of the deserts by irrigation, the plow, and the spade into a garden, and the consequent increase of the supply of nutrition; the cleansing of

the plague spots of the globe by sanitary knowledge; the mental nurture of children up to their adolescence; the alleviation of pain by anaesthetics; the direction of the moral energy of the century to the home interests, with guarding, purifying power, and the setting of safeguards about the young far into their second decade, when character is finally crystallized-it would seem that such forces must make a way for themselves. The intrenched vices which militate against the happiness of the race are beleaguered by hosts that are resolute for the rebuilding of the human structure, with the rejection of every substance wrought in it for impairment and decay. The ultimate flowering of time, though it still may be "very far off," is taking visible form in gardens of industry and ateliers of beauty. Its glow shines forth between anvils and hammers, and is reflected from numberless appointments of convenience and beauty in happy homes and from works of art in places of public resort. The scattered, varied elements preparing for this efflorescence of beauty and purity, no longer concealed in Egyptian deserts nor walled within monasteries away from the collective life, make themselves manifest in the varied life and activities of the world at large.

Thus does Jesus reign, by these and many other tokens equally visible and potent. Every year concludes a stadium of his imperial progress. This progress is a balm for grief, an antidote for discouragement, an incitement to duty and to hope. So manifest, so convincing is it in its transcendence that an atheistic poet is constrained to declare, after the manner of the Mesopotamian seer of old, "Christ leads the generations on "-generations that, to our forecasting vision, shall have surmounted our sorrows and have passed beyond our perplexities:

For all we thought and loved and did
And hoped and suffered, is but seed
Of what in them is flower and fruit.

Mary

S. Robinson.

ART. VII.-THE PROLEGOMENA OF CRITICISM-I. It seems undoubted that we are not far from a scientific a posteriori criticism. The literary signs of the times are unequivocal and gratifying. But we shall not have an a posteriori and confident criticism until we are better persuaded upon some fundamental matters. For example, many people believe that there is one direct, plain way to say things, whether in prose or poetry; and that there is an indirect, and perhaps an ornate way, but that these are not legitimate or strong. Again, there is apparently a common belief that there is no determinate difference between poetry and verse. It is the purpose of this paper to bring to light, if possible, the rhetorical and psychological principles that govern choice in the author and compel the judgments of the approving reader.

There are two ways of saying common things. One is the matter-of-fact way, in which they are told in all literalness, and without reference to results or reasons; the other is the philosophic or sympathetic way, in which the plain fact is often obscured, or implied, or even omitted altogether. If we were to watch the unconsidered conversation going on around us, we should better realize the significance of this truth. There is a rumor abroad, let us suppose, that some townsman has made a business failure. Certain acquaintances of his, walking down town together, the morning after, as they pass in front of his closed warehouse, exchange comments. "What does this mean?" asks one. "He made an assignment last night," is the answer. That is surely as straightforward and prosaic as one could wish. But, a moment later, the chief speaker of another lot of advancing talkers, being asked the same question, and aiming to make the same response, remarks, "A man cannot make bricks without clay or straw." Here the real significance of the ambitious tradesman's attempt to do business on insufficient capital is set forth as including potentially the fact of his present distress. In other words, the ultimate principle that has brought about the result in question is made to do duty for the result itself. The next man whose words we overhear will be prob

ably facetious. He puts it that the sheriff has gone into partnership with the house-in fact, has become business manager-and so forth. This statement, of course, carries not so much as one syllable of literalness, yet is acceptable and pleasing enough, not because it is an evasion, but because, like the myth of Santa Claus, it is truth allegorized. And, though the inquirer is answered in this case, not by a fact, but an enigma, he will catch the sense which is intended by the speaker as effectually and almost as immediately as if, like the first man, he has been replied to, with all soberness and literalness, in the matter-of-fact way.

We recognize thus two generic modes of saying common things. We may assert them in literal and individual utterances, or merge them in the respective principles which they illustrate or evince. It has been customary to consider the longer and more indirect locutions as mere variants, and as indulged in to avoid triteness. We shall pretty soon discover that this is not all true or all the truth. There are forces in the mind that cannot be kept in exercise by facts, but must often, if not prevailingly, recognize the principles that make the facts significant. We see some friend fail of success because of inconstancy, and remark upon the case. One of the persons present affirms that the man has never stayed by anything long enough to allow himself a chance. Another of us, feeling that the vital meaning has been left unsaid, ventures a trial of his own. "We must stick to a thing," he says, "until we can control the conditions of success." "That is the theory," he adds, after a moment of further thought, "of what we call specialization." A third member of the group extends the discussion by quoting the aphorism, “A rolling stone gathers no moss." The interpretation of the ultimate meaning implied in our friend's unsuccess is now completely evolved. The first speaker treated the case as an individual happening, and recognized the cause as operating in it alone. The second contributor brought to view a wider application of the principle. The last man universalized the law, and covered it with a formula long since approved by the general spiritual sense of mankind and similarly applied to myriads of instances throughout the English-speaking world.