with coal brought up from Chili or round from West Virginia. What has happened in this case will happen in other cases if British coal is further advanced by causes which do not apply to foreign coal. In the Transatlantic trade it is now common enough, when Welsh coals are high, for the steamers to coal on the other side, not only to bring them across here, but also to take them back again, doing the whole run both ways on American coal. This is not generally known; but a permanent increase in the cost of the production of British coal may make a general practice of what is now only occasional or incidental. And so with the coaling at depôts on the eastern routes.

The Home Secretary thinks differently, and he has fathered a Bill for the purpose of limiting the hours of work below ground during the period beginning at the commencement of this Act and ending on the thirteenth day of June 1909 to nine hours, and thereafter to eight hours.' The bank to bank period is defined as 'the period between the times at which the first workman in the shift leaves the surface and the first workman in the shift returns to the surface, and the period between the times at which the last workman in the shift leaves the surface and the last workman in the shift returns to the surface-a very defective definition without any allowance for the capacity of the winding machinery. Coal-owners, colliery managers, and miners are to be fined whenever the statutory time below ground is exceeded. The obligation applies to all classes of workmen, not to hewers only (except officials, furnacemen, onsetters, horsekeepers, and pumpmen, whose functions cannot be regulated by the clock). And the only exemptions are for the purpose of rendering assistance in the event of accident, or of meeting any danger, or for dealing with any emergency. The management, however, are to have the option of extending the hours of work in cases of necessity, but not more than by one hour in any one day, or for more than sixty days in any one calendar year-a saving grace of sixty hours per annum.

We do not propose to discuss here the details of Mr Gladstone's Bill, as it is the economic effect of its general principle that we are concerned with. But it is worth while to summarise the terms of the French law, of which

so much has been made by advocates of an eight-hour day.

On July 2, 1905, the 'Loi relative à la Durée du Travail dans les Mines' was promulgated in the 'Journal Officiel.' It marks for the first time that the principle of an eight hours' day has been recognised officially in that country. Article 1 prescribes that, six months after the promulgation of the law, the day's work of miners employed in coalhewing shall not exceed nine hours, calculated from the entry into the pit of the last batch of men to the arrival above ground of the first batch. In mines where the entrance is by galleries, the duration is calculated from the arrival at the end of the gallery of access to the return at the same point. At the end of two years from the date above mentioned, the day's work shall be reduced to eight hours and a half, and at the end of a further period of two years to eight hours. These rules do not affect exploitations where, either by custom or by special agreements, the normal day's work is less than that fixed in the preceding paragraphs. By Article 2, in cases where a period of rest, whether underground or above ground, forms part of the local regulations, the time stipulated in the preceding article will be increased by the duration of that rest. Under Article 3 exemptions from Article 1 may be authorised by the Minister of Public Works, after taking the opinion of the Conseil Général des Mines, in mines where the application of these prescriptions might be of a nature to compromise, for technical or economical reasons, the continuance of their exploitation. The withdrawal of those exemptions will take place in the same form. By Article 4 temporary exemptions, not to exceed two months, but renewable, may be accorded by the chief engineer of the mineralogical arrondissement, whether on account of accidents or from motives of security, or for occasional necessities, or finally, when there is an agreement between the managers and the men with regard to the observance of local customs. The delegates appointed to watch over the safety of working miners will be consulted when exemptions for accidents or motives of security are demanded. The manager may, on his own responsibility, in case of imminent danger, prolong the day's work whilst awaiting the authorisation of the chief engineer, and

he is bound to ask for that authorisation immediately. Under Article 5 the engineers and controllers will draw up procès-verbaux against all infractions of the present law, of which three copies will be made. One will be sent to the Prefect of the Department, one to the police authority, and one to the offender. By Article 6 managers and overseers making inadequate provision for the men to leave the mine in the time prescribed by the present law will be prosecuted before the police tribunal and fined from 5 to 15 francs. The fine will be inflicted as many times as there are persons employed contrary to the conditions of the present law, without, however, the total sum of fines exceeding 500 francs. By Article 7 second offenders will be summoned before the Correctional Tribunal and fined from 16 to 100 francs for every person employed contrary to the law, the total fines, however, not to exceed 2000 francs. In the discussion on the Bill the Minister of Public Works, referring to the objection that the reform extended to hewers only, said that it must be understood that the Government intended that the day's work of all those employed in the coalfields should diminish in the same ratio.

It is to be recalled that Mr W. E. Gladstone, father of the author of the Bill now before Parliament, during his famous Midlothian campaign, suggested the application of local option to the eight hours' question. The miners generally did not 'catch on' to this suggestion-perhaps for trade union reasons; but it is nevertheless still worth consideration. In fact it might be made a valuable provision in Mr H. Gladstone's Bill, which also should be made to apply to the winding day,' not to the vague limits of the time between the moment at which the first workman in a shift leaves the surface to the moment when the last workman in the shift returns to the surface. To the general principle of an eight hours' day for miners there is no objection even on the part of coal-owners. But the economic consequences of the compulsory limitation of-not eight hours' labour, but eight hours underground, which may mean only six hours' labour, or even less-are too serious to be ignored at the mere demand of the labourists.

Art. VIII.-THE POETRY OF MR ALFRED AUSTIN. The Season: a Satire; third edition, 1869. The Golden Age: a Satire, 1871. The Tower of Babel: a Celestial Love-Drama, 1890. Savonarola: a Tragedy, 1891. Alfred the Great; fifth edition, 1901. Fortunatus the Pessimist; second edition, 1892. Prince Lucifer; third edition, 1891. The Human Tragedy; fourth edition, 1891. English Lyrics (edited by William Watson); fourth edition, 1905. The Door of Humility, 1906.

And other works.

THE traditional division of poetry into lyric, dramatic, epic or narrative, and satiric, is superficially descriptive rather than analytic and philosophical, except for the distinction drawn by it between lyrical poetry and poetry of all other kinds. Here is a distinction which really goes to the root of things, and it is one which may be expressed in terms equally familiar, by saying that all poetry is either objective or subjective. Poetry is the representation of life as apprehended or experienced through the medium of intensified and sustained emotion, and the poet's art, as Tolstoy has truly said of all art, is the means of arousing in others emotion similar to that which has been experienced by the poet himself. But this emotion may be either direct and simple, the poet himself being the hero of it, in which case it will have reference to his own private life, and be tinged with his own idiosyncrasies, or else it may be emotion aroused by the human lot generally, or by special aspects of it, which the poet apprehends through the medium of his intellect and his sympathies, but which are not identified with, and still less are bounded by, his own personal adventures or the peculiarities of his own temperament.

Now the gift of expression being presupposed, the difference between the qualities requisite for the production of these two kinds of poetry is this, that in subjective or lyrical poetry the primary requisite is a peculiar personal sensitiveness or passion which connects the poet directly with other things or persons; but for poetry of the objective kind the primary equipment of the poet must include much more than this. It must include a wide outlook on life, an instinctive insight into the

motives of other men and women and the varieties of human circumstance, together with some formal or at all events some virtual philosophy, by means of which the facts of life are bound together or focalised, and, being thus referred to the origin or the ultimate potentialities of humanity, are made the subjects of emotions indefinitely wider than, but comparable to, those which are excited by the passions of the individual human being. In subjective poetry, such as that of a Sappho or a Keats, philosophy and a general knowledge of men and women go for nothing. In objective poetry, such as that of a Dante, a Shakespeare, and a Goethe, they are not indeed everything, but they are the first thing. They are not the fire on the altar, but they are the offering to which the fire is applied. In other words, when we are dealing with any objective poet-and the greatest poets of the world have belonged to the objective order-the ultimate standard by which his rank and his significance are to be measured is what he means as a thinker, as an observer, and as an impassioned critic of life, not the manner in which he produces his notes as a singer. The importance of the latter is vital, but it is subsidiary to the importance of the former.

We have been led to make these observations by the volumes now before us. Without prejudging the question of Mr Austin's true place on Parnassus, we may say that his poetry, considered comprehensively, belongs to the objective order, and requires, in common with that of the greatest poets of the world, to be judged by the kind of standard to which we have just alluded. Whatever its merits otherwise, it is more than a series of 'effusions' which can be dismissed as good or bad in accordance with their individual prettiness. It must be taken as the work of a man who has, for a long series of years, endeavoured with a consistency which can only now be appreciated, to deliver a message to the world (if so hackneyed a phrase may be forgiven to us), the content of which, from his earliest expressions of it to his latest, has known little other change than that of continuous development. What Mr Austin's message to his contemporaries is becomes much more apparent when we glance at his works collectively than it is if we confine ourselves to a perusal, however careful, of any one of them. We will do our