reader of poetry reads it for the matter, not for the manner; and Carducci will cease in time to give that reader what he seeks, the reflection and interpretation of his own feelings. In pure literature what makes for lasting popularity is individual human interest. Maud' is read for the hero's love story, not for the author's opinions on the Crimean war and the Manchester school in economics; the emotional crises in the life of Jean Valjean make us bear with the political disquisitions in 'Les Misérables.' Now this human interest, present in Tennyson and Victor Hugo, is absent from Carducci. He never attempted the creation of character; and his own feelings expressed in verse are seldom of lyric intensity or such that all mankind can share them. His own reference in his 'Intermezzo' to 'Questo cuor, che amor mai non richiese, Se non forse a le idee,' 6 is rather too suggestive of Goethe's saying about Platen, that he had every other gift but wanted love. To enjoy what is best in the Odi Barbare' requires historic imagination and the knowledge that alone gives that imagination scope. In the marmoreal ode Sul' Adda,' for instance, there is an impressive reverie over departed conquerors not unworthy of Omar Khayyam; there is no throb of human passion as in Browning's 'Love among the Ruins.' Carducci's fame will endure, but with the few, not with the many. His appeal in the future will be to those endowed with historic imagination and the still rarer literary perception needed to appreciate his mastery of poetic form. For readers so gifted, nowhere very numerous, the Odi Barbare' will become a classic in the truest sense, and Carducci will continue to be what Signor d'Annunzio has called him, in the Greeting to the Master' that closes the Laus Vitæ,' 'the mediator between two worlds,' that of ancient Rome and that of modern Italy. J. SLINGSBY ROBERTS. This heart which no love ever claimed, save perhaps for ideas. Art. II.-LOCAL GOVERNMENT. 1. The Justice of the Peace and Parish Officer. By Richard Burn, LL.D., Chancellor of the Diocese of Carlisle, 1755. 2. The Local Government Act, 1888. 3. Local Government in England. By Josef Redlich and Francis W. Hirst. Two vols. London, Macmillan, 1903. 4. Local and Central Government, a Comparative Study of England, France, Russia, and the United States. By Percy Ashley. London, Murray, 1906. 5. English Local Government from the Revolution to the Municipal Corporations Act. The Parish and the County. By Sidney and Beatrice Webb. London: Longmans, 1906. WHEN the political history of the last quarter of the nineteenth century comes to be written, it is certain that few things will occupy a larger space in it than the development of local government. That development has been immense. Whether it has been an unmixed advantage is a subject on which opinions may differ, but for good or for ill the extension of municipal government to the counties has brought about a change little short of a revolution. It may be that we live too near the time for any adequate account of the movement to be yet written. So far, in this country, there has been none. The best attempt is that of Herr Redlich, which Mr Hirst has translated and brought up to the English standpoint. The book, however, has one great fault, the usual fault of most of our writers on local government, it is written from the outside. For instance, whatever may be the theoretical view, no one who has sat at petty or quarter sessions would have stated that the struggles in regard to the settlement of paupers form an important part of the jurisdiction of Justices of the Peace.' In twenty-five years' experience of those courts we have never known a case occur at petty sessions, and only two at quarter sessions. In theory the law of settlement is most important, in practice few barristers' libraries contain the great authority on the subject, 'Burrows' Settlement Cases.' Possibly the fact that the lawyer who writes books has little practical experience in the actual working of his subject may be the reason why there is no really good modern work on the office and duties of the justice of the peace. There are plenty of books on the practice before justices. The well-known treatises by Oke and Stone have sufficed to point out to the justices the way in which they should go, and they have required nothing more. A really good, modern, trustworthy, history of the office and duties of the great unpaid is still a want in our literature. What Lambard and Dalton did for their generations we want some one to do for ours. The best available substitute is The Justice of the Peace and Parish Officer,' by Richard Burn, the work, not of a lawyer, but of an active clerical justice, whose experience of the Westmorland Quarter Sessions made him a practical authority, securing for his book such a reputation that it has passed through upwards of thirty editions, and, although published over a century and a half ago, is still an accepted text-book. In some degree Mr Webb's work supplies this want, but it stops at the Reform era, and does not profess to give the developments of the last sixty years. Still, for the period it covers, it gives one of the best accounts we have of the way in which the magistrates, before the Reform Act of 1832, discharged their duties. Among the changes then brought about probably the most far-reaching was the reform of the municipal corporations. The system then introduced into the towns has, by the Acts of 1888 and 1894, been extended to counties and country districts. Powers have been taken away from the justices and new powers heaped upon the new bodies. The tendency to give the county councils larger and larger powers is shown in the legislation of each year. Soon they will become, if they are not so already, the most powerful local bodies that have ever been in existence in England or in Europe. They have already gone beyond their predecessors the municipal corporations. The fact that these powers are expressly granted to the new councils by Parliament and are not a survival of any old jurisdiction does not seem to be fully appreciated. Messrs Redlich and Hirst define local government as the carrying out by inhabitants of localities, or their elected representatives, of the duties and powers with which they 4. Local and Central Government WHEN the political histr has been none which Mr H English star fault, the governmer whatever has sat: and practical exp the of plenty of knows Lightly .ugland. the new order the corporations ystem in the counties. Municipal Corporation Act aley, in the hands of an Confusion and corruption were corporate funds and municipal used for the individual benefit of wn councils or other freemen.' Aet changed. It gave franchise to all ratepayers, made the councils alshed life membership, put an end to trading and privileges, provided for a better system of that 'th to salaried offices, secured publicity for all pro pauper Justic the new authorities, and withdrew all judicial from the aldermen as such.' ‡ In the counties of th as was the reform of the towns. pettis reform was the poor law. This had been based thee statute of the 43 Elizabeth, which had made each responsible for its own poor, under the conditions fe "led in 1603, and the changes in land t two hundred years had protable as a practical system come to be regarded source of grants n of relief was Intrained in was no LOCAL GOVERNA, S ractical experience in ay be the reson wầy photo de ma med gw on the office and der os on the jawatan jag pho re plenty of lÂN 1 l-known tree by int out to the ring M and they have pred mrking odern, trustwAn Aman w grent unpaid bard and one to do for PHIS stice of the cork, not of a experience of thu butation that ed. with changes in the power of to highways, the body that had ened of all, the county justices, ,n the storm of reform. the reformer' (says Mr Webb) 'were con on reorganising the local government of the s, but on stripping the rulers of the county of ers, and either throwing away the control and Jon which these powers afforded, or else entrusting to a department of the central government.'† o the efforts failed. With licensing Bills in the air, it is interesting to note the great effort of licensing of the reformed Parliament, the Beer-house Act of 1830, which enabled beer-shops to be set up without the assent of the justices. This power was at once largely exercised, and in six months no less than 26,000 new drinking dens were established. We who blame the justices for the number of licensed houses should remember that the increase was not their doing. The Highway Act of 1835 limited the justices' jurisdiction |