to do with inborn character than actual experience.

Many men whose daily hardships and uncompensated misfortunes and untended sufferings might well have turned their blood to gall, yet seem to have no lasting sense of resentment, and respond to the first show of kindness. Others have received some small injustice, and that little has kindled an inextinguishable fire. Some are born to hate as others are to love; we must not forget how bitterly many men hate those who are merely their official superiors, with no power to affect their private lives or social position. Any dog-in-the-manger spirit is greatly resented among the poor. "My husband would gladly have paid a shilling for an old cask, but they'd rather let it drop to pieces than let you have it," complained a cottager who had no means of storing the rain-water that she so sorely needed.

There is a great lack of confidence between rich and poor. How many domestic servants tell their employers their real wishes? Often the privilege or exemption that they desire intensely could be easily granted, while the employer thinks to content them by granting indulgences which are so inconvenient to himself that he feels sure they must be welcome to his employees. Many and many a poor man and woman privately regret that they have not the self-control to make their grievances known in civil language, and they brood over a wrong until it becomes intolerable.

One reason why we are all too ready to believe in class-hatred is because we think that, as the poor are constantly engaged in a struggle with hard material conditions, they are inevitably maThe Spectator.

terialistic in their views. A hungry man must think more of his dinner than his soul, but it does not in the least follow that he thinks more of a good dinner than of his soul. Starving Esau must have the pottage at any cost, but it was food, not savory meat, that was his intolerable temptation. There is little. realization of the spirituality commonly found among the thoughtful poor, or of the extent to which their religious beliefs impress the duty of forgiveness and dwarf all worldly inequalities. A rich man is but a fellow sinner, and one for whom they may well have pity because of the "greater condemnation" that awaits him.

This belief in the utter materialism of the poor is at the back of the frequent outcry: "If we make workhouses comfortable, we tempt them to idleness; if we make prison life tolerable, we tempt them to crime." There is some foundation for these protests, but less than we are apt to imagine. Most men, and nearly all women, love liberty better than ease and comfort, and a good name infinitely beyond any advantages that prison life could offer.

The industrious poor do not spend their time and strength in hating the rich: they think very little indeed about them. They are occupied not only with cares of meat and drink, but with the great things of life, and they realize the essential similarity of the human lot. An old man who was never known to read books, and who prided himself on his extreme hardness and practicality once showed me an epitaph which he had copied from a newspaper: "I was not, and was conceived; I loved and did a little work; I am not, and grieve not." "That." he said emphatically, "is Life-everyone's life."

M. Loane.

LIVING AGE. VOL. LI. 2684

Rebellion is Spanish America's equivalent for constitutional opposition, and a revolution means no more than a general election in England. There has been no revolution in Mexico for upwards of a generation, so that a change is overdue. But having waited SO long, it is strange that the malcontents did not wait a little longer. After all, President Diaz is over eighty, and the other side's turn was bound to come soon. Perhaps it was Diaz himself who provoked trouble by showing that he feared it. At the last presidential election he threw the Opposition candidate into gaol, and sent the most popular soldier of his army on an empty mission of honor to Europe-a confession of weakness which could not pass unchallenged. Moreover, these violent methods failed of their object. Opinious wavered, and a crop of rumors crystallized into a belief that the President looked to the hated Yankees to see him through. The belief may not have been altogether baseless, though it is only fair to Diaz to remember that in earlier years he was fully alive to the risk of financial tutelage to the States, and spared no pains to attract British capital instead.

Right or wrong, however, the belief became general, and the riots out of which the rebellion has sprung usually began with a demonstration against the Stars and Stripes. To the Mexican the Yankee is a neighbor who must be kept at a distance. There is little purity of blood on either side the international border, but the civilization of Mexico is as distinctly Latin as that of the United States is AngloSaxon, and the two ways of life cannot be blended. The mutual antipathy is backed on the Mexican side by a definite grievance. There is no doubt that of late years concessions have been

granted with too little supervision. The central administration has never thought very much of the needs of the masses provided the development of the country went on apace; and the local officials have too often betrayed their trust for the sake of a share in the pickings. The Indian inhabitants of the country have been disciplined with a very stern hand, and as Aztec blood runs clean through Mexican society their grievances have met with a good deal of sympathy. Until recently, however, Porfirio Diaz was popularly regarded as more or less of a safeguard against Yankee commercial tyranny, and it is largely his real or assumed defection that has driven some of the people to arms.

Why should the Mexican laborer in the end succeed any better than the French vigneron? Apparently because the local administration, which in France has stood firm, in Mexico has turned traitor. This is a serious thing for Diaz, since his organization of the Mexican provinces has been the most important achievement of his rule and the foundation of all his past successes. His work under this head may fairly be called Napoleonic. Like France, Mexico clamored for efficient centralized rule; twice before Diaz established himself an attempt had been made to revive the system of the old Aztec Empire; and like the France of 1795 the Mexico of 1870 had all but sunk into anarchy. There are men still living who, having set out on the journey from Vera Cruz to the capital, arrived stripped of their possessions and clothed only in an improvised costume of newspapers.

Banditti, in fact, were everywhere. The brigand's life was the only life for a gentleman, and there are always plenty of gentlemen in Latin countries.

The brigand chiefs formed, as it were, the aristocracy of Mexico, the one class with any power of handling men. Diaz used them; it was the mark of his greatness that he was able to make them the instruments of his rule; and it is therefore inexpedient to peer too closely into the antecendents of most of his earlier governors of provinces. Being what they were, these men required to be controlled with a strong hand. They could themselves keep order, but a sense of public duty was not among their virtues. When at the end of his first term of office the President allowed the supreme power to pass into less able hands, the local administration at once began to fall to pieces. Corruption made its entry, and even Diaz has never been able quite to get rid of it.

Resuming office in the eighties, Diaz showed that he had learnt his lesson. He pushed forward his old policy with new vigor, holding fast to his main aim of restricting the freedom of action of his dangerous lieutenants. So exclusively did they occupy his attention that he overlooked the welfare of the masses. The Church presented a magnificent means of raising the general level of culture, but Diaz neglected it. His business was to build railways and telegraphs, and thus link Mexico City up with the centres of provincial government. Hence his first appeal to foreign capital, an appeal which led to a further development of policy. Diaz saw that a host of concessionary companies would serve as so many pillars for his rule. A governor on the make could get the people behind him, but a vested interest is immovable. Vested interests ask for nothing more than steady government, and every new company meant a check on rebellion.

The process has gone on too long. The old governors have mostly died out, and the new generation feel little loy

alty towards the old man in Mexico City ever ready to limit their authority. The telegraph, again, should have permitted an occasional relaxation of grip. Things cannot now go far wrong before the President has word. But Diaz has used his new weapons to control his subordinates more firmly than ever. And as time went on he has become more terrible because of his isolation. The men who helped him to make modern Mexico are dead, with the one exception of Señor Limantour; and Limantour has never pretended to be anything but Diaz' subordinate. Jealousy, and not ambition, is the last infirmity of noble minds, and Diaz has apparently wished it to appear that he could have no successor. When a man of over eighty works on the assumption that the world will not go on after he has left it and is perpetually keeping young men in their proper place, he is asking for trouble. Civil Service became discontented, and when the people suspected the President of selling himself to the Yankees they found their leaders at the nearest magistracy.

The

Has Diaz outlived his work? It was his task to give Mexico peace, and he succeeded by a justice which set swiftness before mercy. Now many of the Mexicans think the time has come for milder methods. It was his further task to develop the resources of his country. In that, too, he has succeeded, and to such a degree that his critics can now charge him with forgetting that resources are made for men and not men for resources. Diaz is the greatest of a type, peculiar to Spanish America, which possibly has seen its day. Disaster has already overtaken Castro in Venezuela, Reyes in Columbia, and Zelaya in Nicaragua; and though Estrada Cabrera still rules in Guatemala, it is only because of American support.

To Europeans the most interesting

question is, what will the United States do? Will America intervene in Mexico, either on the pretext of demanding reform or protecting her threatened citizens? The wild politicians and the big financiers are already demanding intervention, but that way danger lies. Let the Yankees cross the border, and they will see all Mexican parties unite against them. The country might be reduced in the end, but seeing that America has but a tiny regular army and Mexico could put in the field half a million of trained men, it would take the United States with all their ninety odd millions of inhabitants many years to finish the war. Uncle Sam would not The Saturday Review.

enjoy paying the bill either in money or men. Probably Mr. Taft will leave Mexico alone so far as armed intervention goes. The more so that his meddling might close up all the South American States against him. He will rather try to dominate Mexico by trade and political influence. More and more do American Presidents meddle in South American politics-not to the advantage of any but themselves. This the South American realizes and prefers both commercially and politically to deal with Europeans. But the Yankee is on the spot, and necessarily has a great pull. He wants careful watching.

Punch.

In the very morning of time, when men lived basely, fighting and feeding, there were probably no words. We can believe that all the emotions of which man was then capable were expressed by vague sounds almost unconsciously uttered. It would only be now and then that some primeval poet would, to the wonder of his tribe, achieve complete expression by using a sound at once so appropriate and compelling that it became for ever sacred to one meaning. The sound would be uttered in some moment of overmastering passion, rapt contemplation, or ecstatic reverie. Terror, or worship, or the tenderness of lovers would be suggested by it. There would be something of the lion's nobility in its name, and a wondering awe in the titles of the sun and stars.

The growth of language was thus gradual, word by word, and every new word was literally a poem or a prayer. In those early times words could be only of the simplest and vaguest. Not only would man's intellect be insufficiently developed to appreciate subtle differences and minute distinctions, but both his voice and his ear must have developed gradually. With the growth of knowledge and experience, however, the need for a more subtle and sensitive language would be keenly felt, and as men came by exercise to a greater command of voice and ear their attempts at expression would become more ambitious. Their world was a place of wonderful noises for imitation, and the more quick-witted of the tribe would invent new words, to be laboriously learned and adopted by their slower-minded fellows.

With the invention of the first word all things became suddenly possible. Until then knowledge was held in a perishable vessel-the mind of a single

man-but with the possibility of transmission and the later possibility of record came the certainty of progress. Men die, but Man is immortal; and the knowledge won by individuals through bitter experience was held and inherited by the race. All succeeding generations began the astonishing struggle upon more favorable terms.

Without language, written or spoken, anything like a race-memory is impossible. The whole accumulation of fact and theory, the result since the world began of all man's experience and speculation, is available to us through this one instrument only. In the course of its development a language is naturally moulded into an instrument peculiarly capable of recording and transmitting the ideas which most appeal to the people using it; it becomes possible in time to give exact and brief expression to their subtlest variations. The native language only can fully and easily express the native mind. The alien speech has been evolved by a people dominated by other ideals, responsive to different emotions. This is why the gradual decay and death of a noble language is a pathetic and awful thing; its deliberate suppression a crime against the human race.

Apart from the written sign or the spoken sound, the word exists as the expression of a mind; and having come down to us through so many minds, no dictionary can fully define its meaning. Every new arrangement brings out some new beauty. The sound and rhythm, the very look of the word, subtly affect its significance. Nor are these the only influences that modify the meaning and enlarge the content of words. They come after long use to be influenced by a dozen niceties of position and association. Individual experience gives, too, a local or private