more appealing sense of community as shadows streaming through the brightness of this lovely world from dark to dark. The man of genius, the man of strong endeavour, has his own grounds of sadness in the mocking insufficiency of the time of ripening or of strength ; but that accounts for comparatively little. These are but a small number of the men and women who come under the melancholy of the later generations, and their repinings are not the same thing as the sadness of these others. For that we should rather look to a deepening extending sense of the beauty of the world we live in, of closer communion with it, of a fuller part in it or of it in us; and therewith a keener apprehension of what will one day be lost to us and go on without us, whatever may be the yet unknown and inconceivable gain somewhere beyond. One great gain may come out of it even in this world, and may be thought perceptible already; I mean the extension of fellow-feeling, of common kindness. Time was, and that only the other day, when we were much more apt than now we are to discover the ridiculous in infirmity, and to smile at the grotesqueries of 'change and decay.' This is an amelioration to be observed not only amongst persons of refinement, but amongst the ruder sort; and that clean down to the lowest. There, perhaps, the weaknesses of my old buck would meet with little tenderness; but in Whitechapel itself they do not laugh as readily as they used to do at a man with two wooden legs, or find as much entertainment in the cry of an animal in pain. To be sure, in Whitechapel there is very little of the sort of sentiment that elsewhere assists to extinguish mirth of a scarcely nobler sort. But other things are at work to widen the embrace of common kindness, and perhaps in the course of our wool-gatherings we may light upon some of them. FREDERICK GREENWOOD. NOTICEABLE BOOKS. 1. THE CRITICAL PERIOD OF AMERICAN HISTORY.1 IT would be a curious test of what is called culture to find out how many members of the two Houses of Parliament, or how many Masters of Arts of the two old Universities, could have given a clear account of the events a hundred years ago which were commemorated in New York last April. Everybody knows in a general way that 1789 was the opening of the French Revolution; few people know in what sense the same year marks the close of the Revolution in North America. The American colonists declared their independence of the mother-country in 1776. The declaration became a diplomatic reality, and a definitive treaty of peace between America and Great Britain was executed in 1783. The times that tried men's souls,' said Tom Paine in that year, are now over.' The author of the present short volume, however, starts from the proposition that the most trying time of all was just beginning. It is not too much to say that the period of five years following the peace of 1783 was the most critical moment in all the history of the American people. The dangers from which we were saved in 1788 were even greater than the dangers from which we were saved in 1865.' This proposition Mr. Fiske makes abundantly good, and he has turned it into a text for one of the most interesting chapters of history that has been written for many a day. We have all been reading that masterly account of the American Commonwealth with which our literature has just been enriched; but Mr. Bryce's task was to describe the constitution of the United States as it is, and he showed good judgment in not encumbering his book with the history and origins of the fabric before him. The events of the five years of crisis which ended in the foundation of the constitution are best understood when taken by themselves, apart from the War of Independence which went before, and apart from the long and steady march to prosperity which came after. Mr. Fiske is a most competent guide. His two short The Critical Period of American History. By John Fiske. London: Macmillan & Co. volumes, published some time ago, on American Political Ideas and the Beginnings of New England are full of interesting suggestion. He is a trained thinker in more fields than one: he knows how to tell a story in a free, clear, and lively style; and he has not the terrible defect of insisting on telling us everything, or telling us more than we want to know. No instructed reader needs to be warned that the famous constitution of the United States was, like our own, an instance of evolution from precedents. It was not like the French constitutions of the Year III., or the Year VIII., or any of the other highly artificial fabrics with which we have become so familiar on the European continent. The fundamental materials from which the great federal system of the United States was built up were undeniably of British origin, and closely and immediately so. It is quite true to say with Sir Henry Maine that the constitution of the United States is a modified version of the British constitution, and that only such modifications were introduced as the new circumstances of the American colonies suggested. On the other hand, it is equally true, and no exaggeration, to say, with Mr. Gladstone, that 'just as the British constitution is the most subtle organism that has proceeded from progressive history, so the American constitution is the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man.' Given a certain number of existing and cherished institutions, and a certain stock of fixed political doctrines, theories, notions, and invincible prepossessions, the problem was from these to forge a political instrument that should extricate the newly emancipated colonists from difficulties and dangers that were no longer tolerable. It was a work of practical adjustment, undertaken not in the least to carry out abstract theories, but to surmount grave practical emergencies. Hitherto in this country, so far as publicists have treated the subject at all, they have been more interested either in the literary sources, or the actual working, of the American constitution than in the story of its birth. Yet the story itself is certainly one of the most wonderful in the history of political construction-wonderful for the intricate difficulties that were to be overcome; for the practical ingenuity and skill, the tact, the wisdom, and the civil virtue that were brought to the work; and for the decisive success with which an end that seemed so distant and unattainable was promptly and finally reached. No political assembly ever did so remarkable a piece of work as the Federal Convention which met at Philadelphia in 1788. The secret of their success is not very hard to find. They had, to begin with, a thoroughly clear apprehension of the various mischiefs which it was their object in framing a new constitution to avert. Secondly, they were fortunate in having in Washington a leader who gave to their proceedings from the outset a tone of courage, firmness, and sincerity which is the salt of political deliberations, and the want of which has brought more than one free government to a state not far from putrescence. It was suggested that palliatives and half measures would be far more likely to find favour with the people than any thoroughgoing reform, when Washington suddenly interposed with a brief but immortal speech, which ought to be blazoned in letters of gold, and posted on the wall of every American assembly that shall meet to nominate a candidate, or declare a policy, or pass a law. Rising from the president's chair, his tall figure drawn up to its full height, he exclaimed in tones unwontedly solemn with suppressed emotion, 'It is too probable that no plan we propose will be adopted. Perhaps another dreadful conflict is to be sustained. If, to please the people, we offer what we ourselves disapprove, how can we afterwards defend our work? Let us raise a standard to which the wise and the honest can repair: the event is in the hand of God.' Thirdly, among the fifty-five delegates at the Convention were not only shrewd and practical men like Franklin (then in his eighty-first year), and men of high character like Washington, but men like Madison and Hamilton, fertile in intellectual resource, ingenious in adaptation, and with a profound insight into the political principles applicable to their purpose. They sat for five months, from May to September. The doors were locked; an injunction of secrecy was laid upon every member; and it was not till half a century had elapsed that the world came to read what passed in their sage conclave. The fact that the public did not know what was going on until the draft constitution was complete, was one of the conditions of success. Piecemeal criticism from time to time from outside the mischievous result of the omnivorous publicity of to-day-would have unravelled every evening as much of the web as the day had seen woven. Almost as much skill and tact were required to procure the acceptance of the new constitution by the various States. Mr. Pitt and some of his friends were one day discussing the quality most essential to a successful minister. Knowledge, said one; Industry, said another; Eloquence, cried a third. No, Mr. Pitt said; Patience. No more striking tale can be told than the tale of the American crisis of 1788, as a display of the political virtue of patience, in union with energy and good sense, and befriended by that incalculable element of good fortune and favouring chance which sometimes gives to history the air of a series of vast accidents. A durable literary monument of the feat of 1788 is to be found in the pages of the Federalist, the famous series of papers written to persuade the reluctant State of New York to accept the draft constitution.2 Mr. Fiske's volume is an excellent introduction to the Federalist, besides being a most readable piece of work on its own account. No history, after all, is really very interesting to the common bulk 2 A very convenient reprint of the Federalist, edited by H. C. Lodge, was published in England a few months ago in a single volume (T. Fisher Unwin, Paternoster Square). of readers unless it has some bearing, actual or potential, on current events. The story of 1788 satisfies this condition also. For in the United Kingdom here constitutional issues are being opened in more than one direction, and they can hardly be closed in the fulness of time without a considerable process of gradual readjustment. We have little that is useful to learn from the American transactions so far as devices, expedients, and machinery go; but we have everything to learn from the temper in which a serious piece of political business was done; practical and politic, yet firm to principles; deliberate, yet energetic; supple, though tenacious; elastic, versatile, and abounding in ingenious resource. JOHN MORLEY. 2. LADY BLENNERHASSETT'S FRAU VON STAËL.1 THERE can be no question that Lady Blennerhassett's Frau von Staël is one of the most notable books recently given to the world. Every competent critic, in every European country, has acknowledged that it fills a gap in modern literature; that it reveals, for the first time, with singular wealth of detail, both the literary and political significance of Necker's gifted daughter. In Germany, the reception of the work has been enthusiastic. Herr Kraus, writing in the Deutsche Rundschau, declares that it has raised Lady Blennerhassett to the first rank among the authoresses of her native country. This is true. But it has done more than that. It really has effected something considerable to break down the wall of partition in literature reared by Teutonic prejudice between the sexes. Domi mansit, lanam fecit, was the old Roman conception of feminine excellence. The German conception has been somewhat similar. There has been a strong inclination to look with disfavour upon feminine efforts in the sphere of literature, and in the spheres of science and of art too. Men of discerning Have thought that, in learning, Lady Blennerhassett has fairly triumphed over her birth's invidious bar,' and has vindicated for her countrywomen an open career 1 Frau von Staël, ihre Freunde und ihre Bedeutung in Politik und Literatur. Von Lady Blennerhassett geb. Gräfin Leyden. Berlin: Verlag von Gebrüder Paetel. |
