modern times are undramatic, for artistic genius is creative, and when it exists it will create somewhat in its universal manner."

"Great dramatic ideas are imaginative and emotional conceptions, and the nearest to an exact statement that can be made about them will tell what feeling of life they imbue."

Mr. Hapgood tells us that there is a drama, not large but distinct, which belongs especially to the United States of to-day, and, whether lasting or not, to contemporary observers seems to move on more artistic principles than any native plays of the past.

"Two men stand, as far as we can see, clearly ahead of their predecessors: James A. Herne for intellectual qualities, supported by considerable stagecraft; William Gillette for the playwright's talents, working on ideas of his own. Their plays are equaled by single efforts of other men, but no other American dramatist has done as much of equal merit."

Speaking of American humor, he reminds us that a certain form of humor, not the highest, and yet not unrelated to the larger kind, is found as incessantly in our farces and variety shows as in our presidential campaigns. "Fatalism and buoyancy, love of exaggeration, and a taste for slang are some of the components." But he merely lessens the dignity of his arguments by inserting some very insipid quotations from broad farces and burlesques which, for some reason or other, draw intellectual audiences to a certain metropolitan music hall. Who was it that said human nature in America is somewhat like the articles in a great exhibition, where the largest and loudest things first catch the eye and usurp the attention?

Upwards of forty years ago, George Henry Lewes, speaking of the frivolous character of our plays, said: "Unless a frank recognition of this inevitable tendency cause a decided separation of the drama which aims at art from those theatrical performances which only aim at amusement of a lower kind (just as classic music keeps aloof from all contact and all rivalry with comic songs and sentimental ballads), and unless this separation takes place

in a decisive restriction of one or more theatres

to the special performance of comedy and the poetic drama, the final disappearance of the art is near at hand." This quotation is not inserted for the sake of calling attention to and praising the so-called "palmy days" of the stage, but merely as a preliminary remark in calling attention to the fact that, according to Mr. Hapgood, there is only one high-class theatre in America: the Irving Place Theatre, in New York, where the running of a theatre is looked upon more as an art than as a trade.

But as all productions are here given in German, its clientelage is limited.

It is impossible to do more than point out the general purpose of the book under consideration. The titles of the principal chapters give an idea of the numerous topics treated: "Ibsen," "Recent Shakespeare," "Foreign Tragedy," "Rostand," "Pinero, Shaw, and Jones," "From the French," "Histrionic and Literary Side-shows," etc. We are glad to note that the performances given through the efforts of the Independent Theatre Company, which had its headquarters for two years at the Carnegie Lyceum in New York, have been given the space that they deserve.

Mr. Hapgood is "nothing if not critical"; but whereas that expression, as applied by Iago to himself, denoted a mind especially on the alert to discover weak points in everything, it means something essentially different as applied to the present critic. In fact, the author shows himself to be a kind of Benthamite in art. It is true that there are some statements made which he may some day wish to withdraw. The peculiarity of his critical ability consists in his power of assimilating the thoughts and the work of others-its pliancy is its strength. INGRAM A. PYLE.

RECENT ENGLISH POLITICAL
PHILOSOPHY.*

Our age forsooth is still in the throes of transition. We begin the twentieth century with a number of problems and questions pertaining to their solution which have by no means found even approximately satisfactory answers. New ideas and theories chase each other like clouds on the spiritual horizon. That they are but clouds is due largely to the lack of true philosophical training in those who attempt to advance them. It is sometimes even painful to witness the vagueness of issue compared with the ado with which the answer is sought. The blending of sociological with political and historical ideas, or rather the forcing of the two latter to conform to the still somewhat indefinite and artificial reasoning of

sociology, is more of a confusion than an assistance to a reader. Against the sense of insecurity thus produced, it is an antidote to turn back upon the path, and review with some

* ENGLISH POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY from Hobbes to Maine. By William Graham. New York: Henry Holt & Co. AN INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH POLITICS. By John M. Robertson. New York: New Amsterdam Book Co.

friendly author the work of those serious thinkers of the past whose labor has largely contributed to raise the foundation on which the present edifice of social and political reasoning is erected, and whose efforts have largely proved true. Thus it is possible, by way of contrast, to bring into comparison two recent books whose difference in scope and treatment would scarcely suggest each other. In a way they may serve as fair examples of the philosophical and the unphilosophical attitude of many writers of to-day.

Professor Graham's 66 English Political Philosophy from Hobbes to Maine" is one of the serious contributions to the study of political theory which thoughtful people welcome. We recognize that there is nothing especially new and original in the author's presentation of his thoughts about these writers. The book would have been very well named "Introduction to the Study of," etc. It strikes one largely as a course of lectures condensed for convenient purposes into book form, explanatory, discursive, rather scholastic in tone and not very argumentative. The criticism applied to the theories of these authors is drawn from the later discoveries in the world of thought and from the burning problems of to-day which their ideas have not succeeded in solving, and it is no wonder that they crumble before so fierce a light. The treatment is not perfunctory nor shallow but earnest and painstaking, and therefore the book will doubtless become a considerable help and guide to the serious student. And to become such a guide is, as we understand it, the author's special object. By bringing the six foremost English thinkers upon political theory within one frame, and discussing their relation to each other and to other philosophers, a continuity in the development of thought is presented which one otherwise does not easily meet with. Locke is usually studied from the point of view of abstract philosophy, Burke from the point of view of literary merit, and Mill in connection with Political Economy, whose chief light he is. The study of Hobbes we believe is almost obsolete, and Bentham too is usually taken up only incidentally, since the memory of these first explorers in the realm of Political Science is obscured by the fame of their far more successful followers. Professor Graham finds both Hobbes and Bentham (and Burke, too, for all that) lacking in penetration of thought and grasp upon actuality, but in his appreciation of their fundamental value he is both sincere

and just. With Burke it seems difficult for him to distribute the sun and shade of valuation properly. Burke's greatest, and in our opinion his only, fault was his lack of understanding of such a tremendous departure from the slow beaten track of social progress as the French Revolution. Burke was of course wrong in this; yet he was the only statesman in Europe who said anything against it which was neither puerile in tone nor bigoted in idea, which, on the contrary, has been generally productive of good to this day. It is indeed strange that as an Irishman, to rebellion bred, he should so misconstrue everything done on the other side of the Channel; although if it had been for the immediate deliverance of his own race, he might have sanctioned much. If Burke had not been ground so steadily and thoroughly in the English Parliamentary flour mill, he might have looked at matters differently, and he, the English subject, not been outdone in liberal sympathies by the nobleman of hard feudal stock, the Prussian Count Schlabrendorf, who hastened to France in anticipation of the new star of liberty to be born there, and lived through most of the Jacobin sessions of stormy memory. But when will Celt ever understand Celt?

Bentham, as a political theorist, will claim more of the interest of our readers than Burke, largely because America is the country where his doctrine of the greatest happiness for the greatest number has been more generally adhered to and realized. Yet his prophetic words in the defence of security, even if it be at the expense of equality (p. 223), may well resound in the minds of many who watch the gradual change from an individually independent to a semi-feudal relation which the lower social layers are fast undergoing, conditions which have come "for to stay" and will not be discussed away. We quote his words: "When security and equality are in conflict it will not do to hesitate for a moment. Equality must yield. The first is the foundation of life; subsistence, abundance, happiness, everything depends upon it. Equality produces only a certain portion of good. Besides, whatever we may do, it will never be perfect; it may exist a day; but the revolutions of the morrow will overturn it. The establishment of a perfect equality is a chimera; all we can do is to diminish inequality." Still more interesting is Bentham's demand that the laws be codified and made accessible in form and content to everybody. As Professor Graham expresses his wish:

"If now the laws which concern everybody were in one volume, and those which concerned only classes were in small separate volumes, if the general code had become, as with the Hebrews, a part of worship and a manual of education; if a knowledge of it were required as a condition of the franchise, the law would then be truly known, every citizen would become its guardian, its violation would not be a mystery, its explanation would not be a monopoly, and fraud and chicane would no longer be able to elude it" (p. 231). We believe it would have given the venerable philosopher a genuine delight if he could have beheldas perhaps through celestial omniscience he has the late publication of the Civil Code of the German Empire, printed for everybody's use in a small volume which can be held in the hollow of one's hand, yet read with perfect ease and costing but a mark. But we shall have to wait long before such a boon is given to this lawyer and judge ridden community.

Speaking of Bentham's impossible Love of Humanity, Professor Graham says with a touch of some pertness:

"As far as the 'love of humanity' is concerned, it is not here necessary to inquire how far it is possible to have any definite feeling for a vast entity like humanity, the best and noblest part of which is dead and passed away, while some part is not yet born, and much of what is alive and concrete may affect us in a manner that arouses anything but love. To form the conception of such is difficult, to have any real feeling for the composite object of it, is difficult. But it is perhaps psychologically possible to have a kind of love for the vast Being (much of which is not in being) through its best representatives, who are chiefly and necessarily the mighty dead, whose character and works are beyond dispute" (p. 199).

How will that do in America where Shakespeares and Michel Angelos of to-day, if we trust the local reporter, are neither few nor far between, and admirable characters, according to Bostonian terminology, are not rare, but in fact crowding the public theatre so that there is hardly standing room? We warn the pessimists of Professor Graham's type off the planks, for they will surely be hooted at! And after all, is love of humanity as a distinct part of one's make-up such an impossibility? It is all very well, as Professor Graham suggests, to do the best we can for ourselves and those who depend upon us, and let the matter rest there, but there is such a thing as generous sympathy with outsiders just because it is a beautiful thing to be friendly and "God loveth a glad giver." This feeling of genuine warmth and good will toward all till they themselves repel us a feeling which makes one beloved by his fellow beings, and lifts the meeting of strangers into a charming experience, — we look upon as not at all an impossibility. True,

in spite of our philanthropy and altruism, this precious feeling as a gift, a disposition, seems to have faded out of our too practical lives and is now preserved in the original force only by a few simpletons. This feeling, it appears, is the real love of humanity; which evidently Bentham did not invent, but which he had pigeonholed properly in his theoretical mind and was going to advocate as worth striving for. If, in fact, the genuine article were distributed more widely, and were less spoiled by the influence of some "cause or other urging the individual to act in a stereotyped way, it would bring the gentle tact that prevents friction, and the losses and crosses of life would be not left to specialists, as Professor Graham suggests (p. 198), but be borne by everybody; and we boldly state that if love of humanity becomes a cumbrance rather than a help, that is because true goodness is largely lacking.

But we will leave this difficult subject, and make our only general criticism of Professor Graham's mode of discussion. He is sometimes so given over to common sense that he becomes rather trite. But this and the frequent repetitions are faults easily committed in books of this kind where clearness and simplicity are necessary characteristics.

Mr. John M. Robertson's book, "An Introduction to English Politics," will presumably cause a good deal of controversy between the adherents of the old and the new school of historical writing. Mr. Robertson is rather a rabid modernist; the historical writers of many nations pass in review before him, are all weighed, and found wanting. What is it, then, that Mr. Robertson himself must supply, since it is nowhere else to be found? Briefly stated, it appears to be the presentation of some allimportant phases of a nation's life explained primarily by sociological causes, with the purpose not only of furthering a new doctrine, but also with the noble intention of thus teaching the nations of to-day, particularly those of English speech, to avoid mistakes already committed and occasionally repeated. No one can feel anything but sympathy with such an attempt. The question is whether Mr. Robertson is successful in proving his point, and whether the method employed speaks in his favor as an independent and at the same time profound thinker. But Mr. Robertson himself disclaims any thoroughness, which of course is for him the saving clause.

The book consists of five parts, the first treating of political evolution, particularly

among the Romans and Greeks; the second concerned with economic forces among these and also among the Byzantines. Part Three Part Three discusses the culture-progress in antiquity; Part Four the Italian Republics. Part Five deals with the fortune of the lesser European states. In fact, the book covers a vast field, and presents matters in themselves exceedingly difficult to handle. Nor are they rendered easier by the fact that the author depends evidently, if not confessedly, on second hand investigation. His views are those acquired mainly by the reading of other authors, and his book is largely a discussion of their views. Although the author says both good and true things, his pages contain less of what is individually the result of his labors than a constant polemic against the faulty opinions of other writers. It is sometimes amusing, sometimes exasperating, to find this incessant warfare. Mr. Robertson's own points often have very little weight; he applies his theory loosely or substitutes merely new words for other words, a new theory for an old, for, e. g., the seven points in Paragraph Four of Chapter II., Part I., which give very little help to anybody in finding a new solution for the old question why Rome was thus and not otherwise. Besides, by virtue of the uncertainty of the remote past, any statement, however vague and inadequate, can summon imaginary proof and assume the aspect of truth; but to establish this truth beyond dispute is the difficult thing, and therein most writers fall short, Mr. Robertson, be it said, not less than any other.*

Part Two of the book (to which we can devote but scant attention) is by all means the best. Here as elsewhere the author employs the racy disjointed style of a notebook rather than the dull logical reasoning of a thesis. The common use of the words "faculty" and "innate genius" may indeed be unscientific, but Mr. Robertson's ridicule of them and insistence only on outside causes quite overlooks the fact that there is also something in the mind of a nation that moulds its fate. If perchance faculty means nothing more than the capacity to take advantage of opportunities, there is no denying that some nations, taken as a whole, possess this faculty very much as some individuals do. If, therefore, in Part One Mr. Robertson explains the constitutionalism of

One may be permitted to think of Professor Theodor Mommsen's amused smile, if his eye should meet Mr. Robertson's verdict upon his "strenuous superficiality." We may question whether-all things considered — the superficiality of our esteemed writer is even strenuous.

Rome by general indifferent causes in which conscious striving had no share, it is not possible to see that he has come nearer to solving the problem why constitutional life had so much more of a chance in Rome than elsewhere. In Rome political life had less interference from outside, if that is what he means; but even so the faculty for constitutionalism remains. Mr. Robertson says (Part One) justly enough that Rome was in for plunder and went on plundering, the mythical wolf which nourished her infant kings remaining, as it were, her symbol. This thought is further carried out in Part Two, where it is stated that military expansion was an economic need and that the perpetual despoilment of the provinces was the chief doctrine of Roman economic law. But did Rome give the provinces nothing in return? What had they possessed before, and what did they possess after, the incorporation in her vast body politic? A nation conquering so vast a territory and organizing it on a military scale, it is trueteaches the world at least one of the chief principles of civilization, i. e., subordination, discipline. That Rome abused her power was a result of the limitations of that same system, lacking as it did any outlet in individual effort. But that Rome developed a system of law, a monument of its conception of subordination, speaks for its having an ideal of life which we now are unable properly to criticize and from whose faults we can after all profit very little, because the basis of our existence lies elsewhere. Certain phases which can serve as illustrations of his theory Mr. Robertson treats, others which demand more acute questioning, he lets lie.

Mr. Robertson is justly incensed against slavery, too, and sees the source of the economic decline of the Roman empire in this "underbuying" the labor of the free worker. No doubt; but where lies the remedy for such sporadically returning change of social status? Under certain conditions slavery appears as a lamentable necessity. If the signs far and near do not entirely mislead us, we are on the verge of such an age ourselves, when human life is too cheap to be maintained except by the severest drudgery. Life is after all nothing but a perpetual experiment with contingencies of which no generation can foresee the result; one age tries one remedy, another tries a different; the outcome can never be permanent, and the rotation of layers in the course of time brings one at the top, while another sinks far below.

In spite of certain defects, for which we can

prescribe no particular remedy, since they are inherent in the writer's view, Mr. Robertson's book will very likely create interest as a controversial contribution to the understanding of history. One thing is certain, the author is very much in earnest. His book is no doubt a well-meant effort and a most energetic one toward establishing new standards of practical value, especially toward awakening interest in the study of history as a source of political wisdom, of which many, both nations and individuals, may be sadly in need.

A. M. WERGELAND.

THE WAR IN SOUTH AFRICA.*

It should hardly be necessary to point out that the prevailing fashion of historical fiction differs very little from its kindred fashion of contemporaneous history in either intention or effect. In both the writer makes a study of the time and the occurrences within it, selecting the material which is most available for his purpose, straining it through his prepossessions and prejudices, and producing reading matter which is intended to be interesting and may be accurate. If by any or may not chance it comes out fair, impartial, and inclusive, the gods are to be thanked for unusual mercies; if not, it will still compare quite favorably with all the other books in the world which make historical pretensions, from Herodotus, "the Father of Lies," to Sir Walter Raleigh, who could obtain no corroborative evidence for what he saw in a chance-medley beneath his window in the Tower.

Mr. John F. Bass has recently borne testimony

that the facts as he learned them at first hand in the Philippine Archipelago have not been disclosed with either accuracy or completeness; yet it seems certain that there are fewer prejudices involved in that struggle than in the analogous battling in South Africa. The United States has not been operating, so to speak, in the face of the world, and the constant travel between Manila and San Francisco has been on the other side of the world, and from the forum of Christendom. Great Britaway ain has been conducting her plans for the extinction of two Republics in a manner which has earned her the hatred of continental Europe, arousing the bitterest feelings of partisanship and (so-called)

*THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR IN SOUTH AFRICA, 1899-1900. Vol. I. Edited by L. S. Amery. New York: Imported by Charles Scribner's Sons.

CAMPAIGN PICTURES OF THE WAR IN SOUTH AFRICA (1899-1900). Letters from the Front. By A. G. Hales. New York: Cassell & Co., Ltd.

AN AMERICAN WITH LORD ROBERTS. By Julian Ralph. New York: Frederick A. Stokes Co.

THE SICK AND WOUNDED IN SOUTH AFRICA: What I Saw and Said of Them and of the Army Medical System. By William Lehman Ashmead Bartlett-Burdett-Coutts. New York: Cassell & Co., Ltd.

patriotism on both sides of the Channel, and leaving the critics and criticized equally impassioned and equally prone to special pleading. It would seem that some American, bound to England by the ties of a common language, common laws, and common aspirations, and bound to the doughty burghers by love for self-government, for independence, and for liberty of national action, should make the best and fairest historian of the war which is still waging on the South African veldt. When such a book comes, it will certainly be welcomed. But it is not before us yet.

All these considerations become effective when such a work as the "London Times" has undertaken comes into the critic's hands. In the first of its five large octavo volumes, edited by Mr. L. S. Amery, a fellow of All Souls College, there would seem to be room for the dispassionate presentation of both sides of the controversy within the 392 pages which carry the reader from the year 1815, when the Congress of Vienna confirmed the British title to the Cape, to the beginning of actual hostilities, on October 12, 1900. True, the "London Times" has been notoriously the organ of the extreme imperial faction of the Conservative party, and any editor it might select must represent its editorial policy; yet the "Times has borne a great reputation for accuracy and candor in days gone by, and it has published communications, if not despatches, in its columns which did not leave the Republics without some advocacy.

The work clearly shows an endeavor to give everything which can elucidate the matters in dispute. It contains an extraordinary number of portraits in photogravure, and in these Briton and Boer are certainly represented with all impartiality. There is a map; and there are appendices containing a chronological table of events in South African history and many excerpts from official documents. But the place of honor, the frontispiece, is given the Rt. Hon. Joseph Chamberlain; the map assumes the incorporation of the two Republics into the British Empire as a fact accomplished; and the conventions which are contained in the appendices are not complete, and one, at least, of the omissions is injurious to the presentation of the burgher In like manner the Editor's Introductory follows his Preface in a confession of the failure of impartiality, and in acting along the lines of a policy announced in the following words:

cause.

"The present volume has been written frankly from the point of view of one who is convinced that the essential right and justice of the controversy have been with his own country, and that the policy which has been pursued by the British Government has been, both politically and morally, justifiable. There is, no doubt, a Boer side to the controversy, a point of view based on the memory of old grievances, on peculiar social and political ideals, on a far-reaching national ambition. But it is a side which it is not easy for the ordinary reader to sympathize with, unless he can both appreciate and share the sentiments which have animated the burghers of the Republics in their hostility to the Imperial Government. To that side the present account,