arose from the ancient right. The modern custom of primogeniture is a device for keeping a landed property together, or, as the phrase is, tying it up, by means of settlements, the operation of which is by law restricted to the lives of existing persons and a period of twenty-one years after their decease. Now there are two practical questions which arise. Should there be legislative interference either with the custom or with the right of primogeniture? Let us consider them a little.

First, then, as to the custom. Should a man be allowed to tie up his land, as at present, in order to keep the property together? Let us look at the matter from the point of view of ethics, to which law ought to conform. There are those who tell us that a man has a moral right to do what he will with his land; that he should be free to dispose of it as he likes. I take leave to call this absurd on the face of it. A man has no moral right to do what he will with what he terms his own, which, after all, is his own in a very limited sense. A right is a moral power residing in a person-that is, in an ethical being—a truth expressed with equal brevity and force in Trendelenburg's dictum, 'Alles Recht, so fern es Recht und nicht Unrecht ist, fliesst aus dem Trieb ein sittliches Dasein zu erhalten.' Now the right of private property, like all rights, rests upon personality. Its true rationale is that it is necessary for the development and explication of personality in this workaday world. It implies and demands the performance of correlative and commensurate duties. And it is subject to the just claims of the community in which it is exercised, and from whose sanction and recognition it obtains validity and coercive power. It is not absolute. Only from creation can spring absolute ownership. It is relative, as all human rights are, to moral ends. True is this of all property. It is especially true of land. For land differs from other property in that its quantity cannot be multiplied. The deep distinction between realty and personalty, so emphatically recognised by the law of England, is founded in the nature of things. The underlying idea of the feudal system is that the land of the country is the common heritage of the country-that a man can have only an estate in it. The feudal system has passed away; but its fundamental principle that the ownership of land-this is true, in a measure, of all property-is fiduciary, that it is weighted with duties to the social organism, that it must be made a common good, is not of an age, but for all time. And this is the doctrine of Aquinas. Private ownership in land he regards as just, according to the jus naturale, not in se and absolutely considered, but relatively to the results which flow from it.

The question, then, whether any particular form of ownership in land is justifiable, must be determined in the long run by the common good. In Mr. Cecil's last chapter the reader will find what seems to me a very fair and candid discussion as to the respective advantages

of the system of large landed properties existing in these islands and the system of small landed properties prevailing in certain parts of the continent of Europe. Mr. Cecil's conclusion is that in the present state of civilisation in this country the system of large landed properties is more for the common good; and in the fact that such properties cannot be kept together without the custom of primogeniture he finds a sufficient defence of the custom. I must leave my readers to consult his arguments in his own pages. It must suffice here to say that, so far as I am concerned, I entirely agree in his conclusion. I do not, however, agree with him in his view as to the right of primogeniture, which comes into force when a landowner dies intestate. Mr. Cecil does not appear to deny-I do not see how any reasonable man can deny that this right, which arises, generally, in the case of very small properties, for the large ones are almost always settled, is usually, in practice, a wrong, resulting in great hardship and injustice. He would, apparently, substitute for it the German system of Anerbenrecht, whereby all the children are allowed adequate shares of the inheritance, while one son, usually the eldest, receives the landed property undivided, in a share amounting to a somewhat larger aggregate than the others. My own view is that the argument for abolishing the right of primogeniture generally is overwhelming. I think that when a landowner dies intestate his land should devolve as personal property devolves, except in the case of estates belonging to lunatics or to minors, where the custom of primogeniture has been followed for at least three generations immediately preceding. In these special cases alone the right of primogeniture should subsist. In all other cases it should be abolished. That this reform would be for the common good, that it would render the defence of the custom of primogeniture easier, that it would be in the truest sense Conservative, seems to me as clear as daylight. And it fills me with unspeakable reflections to see so-called Conservatives resisting it. But mit der Dummheit!

W. S. LILLY.

4

ILLUMINATION 1

THE moral deterioration of the Reverend Theron Ware, a young American Methodist minister in charge of a number of unpleasant souls who wanted' straight-out, flat-footed hell' in their sermons, at

1 Illumination, by Harold Frederic (London: Heinemann).

Octavius, U.S.A., is a singularly powerful study. It is interesting even in its weaker places, and notable for many of those pages of brilliant description which Mr. Frederic sometimes flashes before his readers. just when they are beginning to discover they are bored. But in 'Illumination' there are few opportunities for boredom, even though the local politics of a narrow and ignorant Methodist community, somewhere in the heart of New England, are not in themselves alluring, while the terrible Yankee jargon does, for all that may be said about its raciness, too often grate on English nerves. Theron Ware's history contains little enough of plot or action. He is treated badly by many people, and entirely demoralised by a pretentiously intelligent and unscrupulous woman, but his sufferings and wrongdoings are all of a subjective order. The interest of the book lies in the masterly drawing of this man's character, in the experiences which develop its latent mean qualities to the gradual subversion of his better nature, and of his happiness with his wife while dominated by an influence which he took to be a superior one.

It is the tale of the bull-frog over again, a poor little bull-frog who might have been good and happy if only a female vivisectionist had not encouraged him to attempt impossible feats of expansion and then abandoned him when the results were troublesome and uninteresting.

Celia Madden, the papist, began by playing Theron's soul away with her music and by the use of grosser arts in strange assortment with an assumption of personal distinction and refinement. She subsequently brought him 'illumination' in various disastrous forms, but on the whole she is a less convincing, more indefinite piece of character drawing than are the other women, the poor simple wife, who rings so true, and Sister Soulsby, that delightful mountebank who proves the Wares' good angel. It is not easy to realise her creator's intentions with regard to Celia, but most readers will accept her old friend Dr. Ledsmar's description of her in a moment of petulance, as more seriously accurate than he intended—‘A mere bundle of egotism, ignorance, and red-headed immodesty . . . with a small brain addled by notions that she is like Hypatia, and a large impudence rendered intolerable by the fact that she has money.'

The interest of the reader is carried on from one striking scene or brilliant piece of description to another, with but little drooping over intermediate passages of lesser merit and more uncertain delineation. Amongst the most powerful must be named (with regret that space forbids quotation) the death of the workman, where Theron first meets Celia and sees the impressive last rites of the Roman Church; the revivalist meeting where, already half disillusioned, he watches with consternation his wife going through the process of conversion supported by Lawyer Gorringe, and last but not least the weird and semi-grotesque effects of the camp meeting in the forest. Whether

the end be altogether unhappy the reader must decide for himself. Things might certainly have been many degrees worse both for Theron and his wife.

THE SCRIPTURE READER OF ST. MARK'S 1

OF slum 'novels' the ordinary reader who does not love to take his pleasure too sadly has had almost enough. Vivid pictures of sordid want and sheer brutality unredeemed by the compensating human emotions only serve to remind him of unpleasant things which he cannot help and to make him sick and sorry. It is probably this absence of all ordinary feeling, rather than its setting, which makes the modern realistic slum study so painful a diversion; for here is a tragic romance, the scene of which is laid in the darkest desert of the East End, with a poverty-stricken Scripture reader for its hero, and a cockney working girl for its heroine, and yet it is delightful reading. The Scripture Reader of St. Mark's' is not a story of adventure or of stirring incident, neither is it a mere study of sordid life. It is the drama of a strong and austere man's sudden passion for a beautiful and fascinating woman belonging to the devastating tribe of human cats who have done so much mischief since the world began. It sets forth his struggle to overcome the temptation which chance and duty so abruptly flung in his way, his yielding to Alexandra's determination not to go through the form of marriage at the outset of their life together, and the consequent mental agonies suffered by this innocent St. Anthony. After the struggle comes a period of domestic peace and exquisite happiness in fatherhood, described in scenes full of humour and tenderness. But even here a warning note is sounded more than once. Alexandra combined the fresh beauty of a girl with the intuition and knowledge of a woman, a child's unrestricted zest in life and the serpent's art in making black look white. But she was, in fact, more a kaleidoscopic train of awfully unexpected phases than she was girl, woman, child, or serpent.' She revealed a portion of her past to Lee when he saved her from suicide, but, as usual, she reserved something-in this case it was her actual marriage to the other man, and another detail equally important. Alexandra's past of course assumed the present tense again in time and became the almost unwilling instrument of avenging fate, which the reader feels to be as resistless and inexorable here as in a Greek tragedy. The climax is finely wrought out, and the honest workman's horror at having to inflict the blow on the man he has learnt to respect is an effective feature of it. The Scripture Reader of St. Mark's, by K. Douglas King (London: Hutchinson & Co.)

6

Alexandra's moral deficiency almost paralyses him at the last; after their flight with the child is arranged, he cannot understand how she can spend another twenty-four hours under Lee's roof on the old terms, without revealing her purpose. Well, God Almighty!' he cried with almost vindictive blasphemy, when he was once more in the street, You made this woman-this wife of mine, and I guess You aren't astonished at anything she does! But she's knocked me off my feet this time.'

In a story so powerfully written, slight defects call for small notice. A certain want of proportion and balance between the first half and the last, a tendency to isolate scenes from one another, alone betray the inexperienced novelist. The writer's style is admirable ; she has drawn a strong man with an emotional nature as few people can do nowadays. It is to be hoped the Scripture reader may soon have a successor worthy of him.

'NOT I,' said she.

A LADY OF QUALITY1

'There thou mayst trust me. I would not be found out.' Such are the characteristic words of Clorinda Wildairs, the strong woman' of this year's novel show, and certainly the most remarkable of her creator's heroines. As an embodiment of sheer robustness in female shape, indeed, this young lady of quality' stands alone in recent romance. She is a tour de force or an extravaganza, according to the view of the individual reader, but she is as impressive a piece of work as any the year 1896 has brought forth.

Mistress Clorinda was wise enough to be born as long ago as 1690. The rich decoration of the time suited her, and the stout nerves of a generation which was not reared on tea, philanthropy, and small scruples gave her a clear field for performances before which the aspirations of the most hysterical New Woman seem pale and attenuated. The daughter of a coarse, hard-drinking country squire, she was brought up chiefly in the stables, rode to hounds like 'an infant jockey,' rapped out round oaths, and was the scandal of the county by the day she was fifteen.' Suddenly this state of affairs changed. Clorinda discovered that she had a woman's heart and more than an ordinary woman's beauty. She changed her garments and her manners with the deliberate purpose of becoming a great lady, and of course succeeded, but not before she had shown that she was, after all, vulnerable. The remembrance of Sir John Oxon, an unscrupulous rake whom she met as a young girl in the old rose garden, would have burdened any ordinary woman with 'a past' sufficient to weigh down her future. Not so Clorinda; she tossed

A Lady of Quality, by Frances Hodgson Burnett (London: F. Warne & Co.)