prominence of General Butler caused a "bolt" in Massachusetts. The cynical indifference of the Republican party to its promise of civil service reform led to the revolt of 1882, which sent Theodore Lyman, among others, to Congress, and changed entirely the political complexion of the House of Representatives. When finally the corrupt forces of the party triumphed in the nomination of Mr. Blaine, the conscience of the country was startled, and a large and important part of the Republican party voted against its candidate. One by one the men whose names are associated with the best days of that party have, with a few exceptions, been driven from its ranks, and the result is apparent. When Mr. Blaine first sought the presidency in 1876, he was beaten so badly that he had little influence with the next administration. In 1880 he was beaten, indeed, but came out of the conflict at the right hand of President Garfield. Four years later he won the nomination against a fierce opposition, but his nomination divided the party. Now he seems to be the party's idol, the typical Republican of to-day. Look where we will, the same tendency is evident throughout the Republican party. In New York Mr. White yields to Mr. Fassett. In Ohio Mr. Sherman struggles for reelection against Governor Foraker. In Pennsylvania Mr. Quay and his associates are supreme. Mr. Clarkson leads the national organization, while, as he complains, the great newspapers and magazines of the country, which for merly supported the Republican party, are now contending against it. The education and intelligence of the country are naturally repelled by the Republicanism of to-day.

On the other hand, the Democrats have, until recently, offered little which could attract the men whom the Republicans have alienated. Tammany and its methods do not suggest reform, and among those who are named as possible

Democratic candidates for the presidency there is only one who could command their support. Governor Hill inspires no more confidence than Mr. Blaine, nor is Mr. Gorman clearly better than Mr. Quay.

The result is that there is a large body of citizens who believe earnestly in civil service reform, tariff reform, honest money, fair elections, and economical administration, who find no political party which really seeks to accomplish these political objects. These are the real practical demands of the day, and the record of both parties shows that neither can be trusted to labor for them all. These men are equally opposed to the corrupt methods of both parties, and to men who are prominent in both. They adopt an eclectic course, voting at each election for those who, under the circumstances, misrepresent them the least. To a great extent, by voting on opposite sides, they neutralize each other's action. They are numerous and intelligent, and they should be influential. While they stand apart from existing political organizations they exert no direct influence upon either. Candidates are selected, policies adopted, methods approved, without consulting them, and thus their attitude deprives them of their legitimate weight in determining the political course of the country.

Is there no way out of this situation? Cannot citizens who think alike forget names which have lost their meaning, and unite in the endeavor to adjust the parties "to living issues, and to make them effective agencies of political progress and reform "?

No man counts for less politically than he whose party allegiance is assured, who votes for his party's candidate under all circumstances, who cannot be disgusted or persuaded into revolt. Why should any party leader abandon evil methods for fear of alienating, or adopt sound principles and nominate good men for the sake of attracting, such voters?

They belong to the "boss," and he may well ask, "Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own?" Does not the recent election in Pennsylvania show that it is lawful? How can this fetich worship of party be broken up?

The difficulties of the problem are great. Political parties are not lightly created nor easily destroyed. The life of the Democratic party, in spite of its almost absolute annihilation during the civil war, is a proof of this wonderful vitality. Parties are born when the time is ripe. A handful of reformers cannot will a new party into existence, though when public opinion is ready they can raise the standard and fire the beacon. A political party in a country like ours is a complicated organization, and depends for its success on the active efforts of many men. The legitimate expenses of a campaign are great, and men who are busy in their respective employments shrink from the sacrifice of time and money which is necessary to create a national organization and to conduct a national campaign, until there comes one of those moments in a country's history when some great cause stirs men deeply, and they forget to be lazy and prudent.

While in the factional quarrels which divide both parties in many States there is evidence that existing organizations will not long continue as at present constituted, while the men who now hold prominent office, with few exceptions, are not such as can long control the destinies of a great nation, there is no reason to think that the country is ripe for a new party. The demand for free silver seems to have spent its force, and, like the movements for the payment of the bonds in " 'greenbacks and for the inflation of the currency by fresh issues of paper money, proves to be only a temporary craze. Such ebullitions of imaginative finance have been periodical during our history, but from their inherent folly they are mere pass

ing delusions. They frighten the timid leaders in both parties, but no more afford a foundation for a new organization than would an attack on the law of gravitation.

Nor can a new party be formed now on the issue of civil service reform. Its friends are strong enough to compel the respect of both parties, who on public occasions are never tired of denouncing the failures of their opponents to act upon its principles, and of expressing their own unqualified support of the reform; but it is difficult to create a new party for the purpose of doing what two existing parties strongly pretend to favor, especially when, as in this case, the cause does not inspire any burning enthusiasm in large sections of the country, but at best commands only passive support.

The dominating issue is tariff reform, and in its support are enlisted a large majority of the active men who alone can be relied on to join any new movement. The Democratic party is fully committed to this cause, and the prospect of success is brilliant. In the battle now going on these reformers find abundant opportunity for their zeal, and they cannot easily be persuaded to abandon a powerful party, which seems on the eve of victory, for the purpose of forming a new and comparatively weak organization, and thus dividing the force which, united, is not too strong to overcome the party of privilege. If the Democratic party should select as its candidate a leader whose character and strength are well known, who is sound on financial questions, and who has shown himself willing to extend the principles of civil service reform and to lead his party forward on this question, it would be folly to attempt the formation of a new party. The active support of such a candidate is practically the best service a voter can render to the causes of tariff reform, civil service reform, and honest money. But if such a

candidate is not named; if each of the two great parties nominates a man who does not command confidence, but is merely a political gambler, playing for power, are we bound then to trust the great interests of this country, its character and its honor, to a man who has neither character nor honor of his own? The answer to this inquiry should not be doubtful.

The practical question is not whether a new party shall be formed, but whether men who desire only to have their country well governed cannot, by united action, do something to secure the nomination of good men by both parties, something to make them both "effective agencies of political progress and reform" rather than armies engaged in a battle to determine which shall have the right to despoil their common country.

We are too apt to think that everything depends on the presidential election. It is a dangerous delusion. We have more to hope and fear from Congress than from the President. Be he as good as we would have him, he cannot legislate, and even in matters which lie exclusively within his jurisdiction the constant pressure of office-broking Congressmen or the loyal support of able and disinterested representatives may mar or make his administration. We cannot afford to choose a good President and not give him a good Congress. Each congressional district is a field for independent action, and in many a few active men will control an election. Why is it not practicable to form a national organization of those who, without regard to party, will pledge themselves to

act together in support of tariff reform, civil service reform, electoral reform, and honest money, and against corrupt men and corrupt methods in politics wherever found? Why should not such an organization formulate the demands of good citizens, and thus help to educate public opinion and loosen party ties? Why should there not be a branch in each district and in every town, to form a nucleus around which citizens who favor reform can rally? The politicians would soon see in such a body a power to be dreaded and conciliated, and it would be strong enough, in many cases, to dictate good nominations or defeat bad ones. Such an organization would be prepared for any emergency; and if the time should ever come when neither political party offered a cause and candidates worthy of support, a new party would be ready.

No one can do more than indicate what is possible. We all recognize a steady decadence in our politics. The men in public life to-day are, with few exceptions, intellectually and morally inferior to the great statesmen of the war and the years which preceded it. Political preferment is less and less tempting to good men. The conditions of public life are more and more repellent. The tendency is dangerous, and it is our duty to arrest it. Is there not in all this reason for action; should we not at least recognize the situation, and seek to find a remedy? It would seem that the first step would be a conference of those who think alike, in order that, through a comparison of views, some course of action might be devised. Delays are dangerous.

Two books on Italy which belong to two epochs bear on their title-pages the date 1891: the first1 a treasured fragment from the pen of the great resuscitator of the past, a journal of Michelet written in 1830; the second 2 the fruit of a recent journey to the land of the vine and the olive, made by the psychologist and analyzer of the present day, M. Paul Bourget. Let us turn first to the Italy of 1830, and note the point of view of the older writer, who was young at that date. It is easy, in reading these vivid sentences of Michelet's which have the piercing virile force that belongs to his style, and in feeling the unity of the impression conveyed, the summing up of Rome in a personality, to forget that his Rome is not really a book, but a few notes of his itinerary and impressions during a journey which seems to have been a brief one, though we have no dates by which to measure it, and was undertaken for his health when nearly given over by the physicians. Some outline sketches of Roman emperors, intended by him for use in teaching, and a rambling but interesting preface by Madame Michelet help to make up the volume. It gives us one thing well worth having: Michelet's first eager glance at Italy, his first impressions face to face with the actual Rome, the scene of his reading and his dreams. What an animated, animating glance it is! Michelet's vision of the past is never merely meditative; it is energetic, as if scanning ' a vast active future. To make that past alive again for the quickening of the imagination and the life of to-day is a task that absorbs and satisfies him. He gives few generalizations on the contrasts or affinities between that life and this, having thrown his heart into the past with

1 Rome. Par J. MICHELET. Paris: Librairie Marpon et Flammarion. 1891.

an ardor which leaves little room for that self-contemplation which is apt to be, perhaps is inevitably, the startingpoint for our analysis of the life immediately about us. The modern Italian was interesting to Michelet as the present occupant of the estate of the ancient Roman, and he notes his characteristics in a quick classification, comparing him with his predecessor, almost equally present to his mind. He is affamé d'érudition, turns from ruins and pictures to burrow in libraries and translate seeing at once into knowledge, and then gazes again, meeting at every turn in Rome its ancient populations. The monuments of the Forum look to him "as if they would fain rise by an effort of their own from the depths of the soil."

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The Rome in which Michelet beheld

a suggestion of the fortified Paris of the time of Philip Augustus," the Rome with cows at graze in its Forum, has passed away like the ancient city, and seems to us, as we read, to lie already beneath a layer of soil. The monuments have been freed since then, and are all in view, as are also the improvements of modern progress. The black wooden cross which then stood in the arena of the Coliseum, and which Michelet salutes as the symbol of its greatest memories, is gone. But the glories of the Easter Sunday display in Rome, which drove Michelet to seek the shelter of the smallest and most obscure church to be found, have not all passed away, and his reflection, summing up his impressions of religious Rome, that "he who has lost his faith cannot hope to find it here," is not less true since the days of infallibility than it was before. The Roman churches are not those to which the imagination clings; their polished mar

2 Sensations d'Italie. Par PAUL BOURGET. Paris: Alphonse Lemerre. 1891.

bles do not rouse the religious feeling; the concentration in Rome of the pomp of the Church has banished from it the sweetness of religion.

M. Bourget's Sensations d'Italie may almost be taken as the record of a quest for a faith; in fact, demands to be read as a spiritual confession of some sort, though it comes to hand as a piece of light literature, informal, polished, and artistic. M. Bourget has not sought his faith in Rome. Among the byways of Tuscany and Umbria, with their crumbling frescoes in neglected monasteries and their precious pictures enshrined in the quiet of lonely churches, and along the coasts where relics and suggestions of Greece are to be found, he has made his way in a tour which report describes as a wedding journey, but which his volume, the only document with which a reviewer has to deal, sets down as a pilgrimage of a solemn order. M. Bourget is a civilisé; he is a product of the most refined civilization of this latter day, and when he speaks of this civilization as "barbarous" compared with that of the ancient Greeks, it is with the tone of one so thoroughly initiated into an art as to be able to judge intimately, if not condescendingly, of a performance superior to his own. The Roman faculty for government seems to have descended in a measure to the English of modern times, while a smaller portion of the mantle of Greek civilization has fallen upon French soil; if it be not the authentic garment, there are at least no rival relics to dispute its claim. This claim is not invalidated by the highest single examples of culture among other nations. The individuals of highest culture in modern times have not always been the outcome of such refinement of an entire society; Goethe was not, nor Turgeneff, and both gained in fineness by nearness to simpler conditions. In Goethe, the modern type of culture in its largest and most personal sense, all the faculties were in pro

portion and tending towards one end; it was active, not arrested development. In the civilisé, whether an individual or a world, a large number of faculties develop in exquisite perfection, but remain unrelated, or even tend to prey upon one another, as microbes devour microbes. The melancholy of a generation “venu trop tard dans un monde trop vieux" has not spared M. Bourget, but there are other elements in his sadness, which is more austere, altruistic, and invigorating than the usual plaint of French literature. No reader can take up Sensations d'Italie and wander through its Italian autumn landscape, so true in atmosphere and full of subtle touches of color, nor linger upon its faithful reproduction of the spirit of old pictures, nor enjoy its intellectual comment upon things or its evidences of reading and information, now and then a little ostentatiously displayed, without being aware at every moment of an interpenetrative moral feeling so intense and personal as to tinge the whole book. It is something as distinctive and haunting as the melancholy of Obermann or René; as representative, too, of an epoch and exponent of other minds than that of its author. It will hardly prove as infectious, for M. Bourget is not a great creative artist; and though he appeals to an intimate public, he is more likely to find it waiting for him than to stamp the impress of his special Weltschmerz upon his own or succeeding generations, as the great sentimental and introspective travelers of a bygone day have done.

The ancient Greek was not troubled by the social problem, that being solved for him, as M. Bourget remarks in this book, by slavery. Neither did it affect Alfred de Musset in his despair over the miseries of an overripe age and of individual destiny. But the human intellect of the present day has undertaken the double problem of adjusting the subtle conditions and faculties of refine