To no one party, no one man,Nor to his own self tight;For what he voted for at noonHe rail'd against at night.
To no one party, no one man,Nor to his own self tight;For what he voted for at noonHe rail'd against at night.
To no one party, no one man,Nor to his own self tight;For what he voted for at noonHe rail'd against at night.
Horace Walpole called him a political journalist, meaning by that that he was daily in the market-place, and for the highest-bidder. Lord Chesterfield thought that "God made Dodington the coxcomb he is; mere human means could not have brought it about. He is a coxcomb superior to his parts, though his parts are superior to almost anybody's." These are Bubb Dodington's best credentials except those which he supplied for himself. With those, with colossal impudence and four boroughs, he set up in trade, and did pretty well. He miscalculated the odds more than once: first on the accession of George II., when he dropped Sir Robert for Spencer Compton; next when Frederick Prince of Wales enticed him over to Carlton House for the second time, and promptly died. Slips like those kept him out in the cold until near the end of the reign. Just in the nick of time he made friends with Lord Bute, and on the accession of George III., a year before his own death, was made a peer. There is evidence that he died a contented and complacent man.
Mr. Sanders proposes to "explain" Dodington, but fails for lack of matter. There is really nothing to explain. There would have been a good deal to expose had not the creature done it for himself in his egregiousDiary. That to be sure is an unexampled document. Men, before it and since, have written themselves down rogues and peasant slaves of various kinds, some for amusement, some for edification. But few—I think no others—have written themselves down in the act and intention of writing themselves up. Casanova occurs to the mind; but Casanova neither wrote himself up nor down, whereas Dodington's complacency in the act to be a scoundrel is his most remarkable feature.
"I desired Lady Aylesbury to carry you Lord Melcombe'sDiary. It is curious indeed; not so much from the secrets that it blabs, which are rather characteristic than novel, but from the wonderful folly of the author, who was so fond of talking of himself that he tells all he knew of himself, though scarce an event that does not betray his profligacy; and (which is still more surprising that he should disclose) almost every one exposes the contempt in which he was held, and his consequential disappointments and disgraces!"
"I desired Lady Aylesbury to carry you Lord Melcombe'sDiary. It is curious indeed; not so much from the secrets that it blabs, which are rather characteristic than novel, but from the wonderful folly of the author, who was so fond of talking of himself that he tells all he knew of himself, though scarce an event that does not betray his profligacy; and (which is still more surprising that he should disclose) almost every one exposes the contempt in which he was held, and his consequential disappointments and disgraces!"
That is Horace Walpole, writing to Conway in 1784, when theDiarywas out. Lord Hervey, long before it was written, gave him a pungent paragraph. "Mr. Dodington," he says, "whilst some people have theje ne sais quoiin pleasing, possessed theje ne sais quoiin displeasing in the strongest and most universal degree that ever any man was blessed with that gift.... His vanity in company was so overbearing, so insolent, and so insupportable that he seemed to exact that applause as his due which other people solicit, and to think that he had a right to make every auditor his admirer." And so indeed it is, in thisDiaryof his dealings between the Prince of Wales and the Administration, that he solemnly records all his disgustful traffickings of himself and his boroughs, as if they were negotiations between high contracting powers, and in every page declares himself both knave and fool in a way which would afford pleasant reading if it were not so long and so dull. It is enlivened by one delicious, but entirely unconscious, gleam. In April, 1754, he went down to Bridgewater to an election, having done his best to sell the seat to the Duke of Newcastle. He spent £2500 on it, and he lost it. The fourteenth and two following days, he records, "were spent in infamous and disagreeable compliance with the low habits of venal wretches." Those wretches naturally were burgesses whom it was necessary that he should buy in order that he might afterwards sell himself. It is the only good thing in the book, but it is good enough. The next best thing is the naïve excuse of its editor of 1784 for publishing it, that by its means politicians might be advised how not to conduct their and the country's affairs!
Mr. Sanders has done his part of the business with industry and candour. He says the best he can for his subject, and has left nothing of importance out, either for or against him, except the account of the trouncing which he received in the House of Commons for his speech against Sir Robert in 1742. It is told by Horace Walpole, with gusto, as is only natural, but with obvious accuracy. Mr. Sanders should not have let him off the chastisement of an insolence and hypocrisy paralleled only by Disraeli's attack upon another Sir Robert. On the credit side of the account he rightly selects the defence of Admiral Byng as the most disinterested action of Dodington's long career. Add to that that Lady Hervey really liked him, and that he used a steel machine with which to pick up his handkerchief.
There are probably a good many people who know something about Jowett and have read several works of Gilbert Murray's, and yet could not even guess who was the Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford who bridged the gap. It was Bywater. Between two great popular influences the pendulum took a swing towards scholarship in the strictest sense, and from 1893 to 1908 the chair was filled by one of the most learned Hellenists of his day in any land, a man less great indeed than Scaliger and Bentley and the present Professor of Latin at Cambridge, but assuredly of their type. Those three rank even higher, not so much because they are more "brilliant" as because their interest in the classics is primarily the literary one. They apply their criticism and interpretation to the more purely literary authors, and their style has a quality not relevant to scientificscholarship, however welcome there—it has the creative writer'szest. Bywater's learning ranged, certainly, over the whole field of Greek prose and poetry; he had, moreover, a keen interest in literature as such, read the chief contemporary poets and novelists, and had views about them; he was master of an admirable Latin style; but his ruling passion was not literature so much as knowledge, and it was in the philosophic writers that he found his special field. For that reason his most characteristic work may be said to be his edition of Aristotle'sEthics, published in 1890. At the same time, that by which he is deservedly best known is an edition of a work on the borderland between philosophy and literature, Aristotle'sPoetics, to which he supplied, in 1909, an English paraphrase and a fully explanatory commentary, both the best things of their kind for any student of that work; and as these will always be many, the book's future seems assured.
"Bywater," writes a relative, "was always studying"; and again, in words of insight, "but if he were not actually a genius he was far from being merely a learned man." His enlightenment and humanity are brought out in Dr. Jackson's admirable little biography, which, as the story of a scholar who died soon after the European War began, seems worth commending now. Though he disliked what we know as Liberalism, the word is the right one for his educational views; he supported the abolition of University religious tests, and was against compulsory Greek. Further than that it is not applicable; he was a Tariff Reformer. As an undergraduate he belonged to the famous "Old Mortality Club." He was a friend and disciple of Mark Pattison, and, like him, married a lady who was an excellent scholar and at the same time humane and charming. Of Walter Pater he was a friend and no disciple; "his style I do not like: it seems to me affected and pretentious and often sadly wanting in lucidity." In congenial company one of the most sociable of men, he showed much kindness to promising young scholars. Some of themotsascribed to him are rather donnish, but not all: "I often think that modern education is a conspiracy on the part of schoolmasters and dons to keep men babies until they are four-and-twenty" is profounder than it looks; and he realised that "those who care for manuscriptsper seare usually dull dogs."
All through his life he was a great bibliophile, and even in this respect happily mated. Few wives would pack their husbands off to Paris immediately after breakfast to inspect a copy of theeditio princepsof Homer, and when they returned with it the following evening give it to them for a birthday-present. But he possessed something even more remarkable than that (for of Homer there are, after all, other editions); in his copy of Melanchthon'sDe Animawas an autograph of Rabelais.
This book has one serious fault: there is not enough of it. Miss Trotter gives a feast of good things, suggests so many interesting happenings of the period, that she might have expanded almost every page into three, and still we might ask for more. It is, however, confined strictly to showing how the ordinary business of government was carried on during this troubled century. Readers will find good exercise for the imagination in filling in the outlines. Take this for example: "The beadle's chief work was of a punitive nature; he was expected to help the constable in apprehending and punishing rogues; he wore a special dress, and carried a whip or wand in his hand with which he drove the dogs out of church." A footnote says: "In 1887 at Wensley Church the wands were still to be seen. They were six in number, and were attached to the front of the churchwardens' high pews." The vestry book at Pittington, page 104, shows this entry: "Maie 3, 1646, John Lazing was appointed to be bedel for driving doggs out of the church in time of public worship, and other necessary dutys." The office of church-warden was then of great importance, and carried with it the dignity of a special "high pew," a matter of moment when the seating arrangements in church almost created a table of precedence. But why did the dogs of those days show such a church-going disposition? The beadle's office to-day would be a sinecure, for during many years of regular attendance the writer has only twice seen a dog in church.
The next page refers to "Rogue Money," the colloquial term for a contribution not exceeding 6d.or 8d.a week levied on Sunday on the parish for the maintenance of poor prisoners in the county gaol. A further levy of not less than 20s.per annum from the whole North Riding was made for the relief of poor prisoners of the King's Bench and Marshalsea. Even taking into account the greater value of money then, this would not go far among destitute prisoners, but it is somewhat surprising to find that any provision at all was made in those hard days.
The temptation to go on extracting these vignettes is great, but must be resisted. Surprises of this sort, however, are numerous, and when we remember the lack of hard roads, the absence of any postal facilities, and the difficulties and cost of any sort of communication, it is astounding to find how well acquainted the local justices were with the statutes, and to what an extent they succeeded in administering them. Miss Trotter's investigations have evidently much impressed this upon her, and her preface gives an excellent summary of the conclusions at which she has arrived.
The great majority of the men who took their share in the government of England in the seventeenth century had neither learning nor culture; some probably were not able to write their own names; nevertheless, through being made responsible for the well-being and good order of the little community to which they belonged, they gained a considerable amount of political education. The work of local government, carried on voluntarily from father to son through untold generations, has produced certain characteristics—a moderation of outlook, a reasonableness and sanity of mind, an intensely critical faculty and a political insight—which are typical of our race.... There is a fear lest the masses through ignorance of the work of their forefathers may demand a centralisation of governmental functions, which is alien to the character of the English Constitution.
The great majority of the men who took their share in the government of England in the seventeenth century had neither learning nor culture; some probably were not able to write their own names; nevertheless, through being made responsible for the well-being and good order of the little community to which they belonged, they gained a considerable amount of political education. The work of local government, carried on voluntarily from father to son through untold generations, has produced certain characteristics—a moderation of outlook, a reasonableness and sanity of mind, an intensely critical faculty and a political insight—which are typical of our race.... There is a fear lest the masses through ignorance of the work of their forefathers may demand a centralisation of governmental functions, which is alien to the character of the English Constitution.
The author has earned public thanks for bringing to light these interesting records of an interesting period. It should be compulsory for every education authority to use this and similar works as part of the historical instruction given in all our schools. Such books would clothe the dry bones of history, as ordinarily taught, in a so much more attractive garb that lessons might become a pleasure instead of a penance. The Royal Commission on Public Records received a letter from M. Paul Meyer, of the Ecole des Chartes, in which he says: "En Angleterre tout est en désordre," referring to our widely scattered and unorganised records. This Royal Commission is doing a great service in trying to bring order out of chaos, but it is not its function to do for the general reader what a book like this may do—bring to life in a handy and digested form some of the buried records of our past.
Among all the ignorances of the British public there is none more calamitous than its ignorance of the Balkan peoples and of their importance in European politics. We persist even now in lumping them together as a set of semi-savage tribes, who may be manipulated by the civilised Powers in this way or that, but who ultimately will have to fight it out among themselves like the Kilkenny cats. Any book that is not mere partisanpropaganda, that will throw light on that dark corner of Europe, is to be welcomed. And this little volume, slight though it is, is all to the point. Its authors are experts, and practical experts, in their subject. Mr. Noel Buxton especially has known the Balkans, as few Englishmen have known them, for twenty years, and in the early days of the war he went there as the accredited agent of the British Government to try to attach Bulgaria to our cause. The story of our diplomatic failure is sketched for us in rapid outline. "Allied diplomacy," Messrs. Buxton and Leese say, "exerted no comprehensive activity, but at intervals made isolated efforts to please one State or another by promises, some of which proved only contradictory and embarrassing to action in another direction demanded by circumstances a little later." We were handicapped, they say, by the policy of Russia. We were handicapped also by ill-grounded fears of alienating Serbia and Greece. The final chapters of the book deal with the future prospects in the Balkans. They were written before the conclusion of the Bulgarian Treaty, and most of the things which they deprecate have found a place in that Treaty. Many Englishmen will not regret this; but no reader of Mr. Buxton will believe that his plea for Bulgaria is based on hostility to Serbia or Greece or Rumania, or, indeed, on anything but a single-minded desire for lasting peace in the Balkans.
This book is the third of Mr. and Mrs. Hammond's important studies of that period of English history which fell between 1760 and 1832. Together withThe Village LabourerandThe Town Labourerit makes a remarkable trilogy. It is marked by the same scholarly research, the same vividness of presentation, the same polished style as its predecessors. Some readers may perhaps find it of slightly less general interest: if it is so, it is simply because its scope is rather more limited. InThe Village Labourerthe authors gave an account of the enclosures of common lands and of the agricultural labourers' rising of 1830; inThe Town Labourerthey drew a very striking picture of the civilisation of the time, of the governing classes as well as of the poor, of the new social and economic conditions. The present volume gives us the history of certain selected bodies of workers during the same period. It is, in fact, a detailed account of the Northumberland and Durham miners, the cotton and woollen and worsted operatives, the Spitalfields silk-weavers, and the framework knitters, together with a very full description of the Luddite risings in the Midlands and in Lancashire and Yorkshire. Mr. and Mrs. Hammond have made very large use of the Home Office Papers, and they have been able to throw a great deal of new light on their subject. Their tale is, of course, a gloomy one—a tale of desperate struggles against grinding poverty and serfdom, of wages, often family wages, of 10s. a week or less in times of dear living, of a working day of anything from twelve to eighteen hours, of tiny children in the mines and the mills, of passionate strikes and brutal repressions. The chapters on the Luddite riots are of especial importance: they are the best, if not the only, connected account of that little-known episode in the annals of industry. They will remove the wrong impression, which, as Mr. and Mrs. Hammond say, is widely prevalent, that these troubles originated in Nottingham over the introduction of new and improved stocking-frames. In fact, the cause was not new machines at all, but the adaptation of old machines to the manufacture of a new and inferior kind of article. And the workmen had the sympathy and support of many of the employers in their campaign against the degradation of the industry. Not the least remarkable feature of the story of Luddism is the part played by spies andagents provocateurs. The military, the local magistrates, and the Government all had their spies, and the wide extent of the mischief done by those vile creatures is very thoroughly exposed by Mr. and Mrs. Hammond. One of them, by name Oliver,aliasRichards,aliasHollis, has a chapter all to himself. He was "a person of genteel appearance and good address, nearly six feet high, of erect figure, light hair, red and rather large whiskers, and a full face, a little pitted with the small-pox. His usual dress was a light fashionable-coloured brown coat, black waistcoat, dark-blue mixture pantaloons, and Wellington boots." He was a special pet of Lord Sidmouth, and in 1817 he performed the inestimable services of fomenting sedition in the Midlands and the North and of getting quite a number of poor and ignorant men hanged, transported, or imprisoned.
Altogether,The Skilled Laboureris a book which puts every student of history very deeply in the debt of Mr. and Mrs. Hammond.
Captain Wedgwood Benn's experiences in the side shows may well fill with envy those whose lot was cast in the main theatre of the war. We confess that we took up his book rather doubtfully—for who was not long ago surfeited with stories from the front? But we found it, after all, full of diverting adventures in many lands, as well as in the water and the air. It is written straightforwardly, without that straining after effect which marred so many of its kind. Captain Benn began his military career in 1914 in the Middlesex Yeomanry. He was bored, like every one else, at Ismailia: he fought and was bored again at Gallipoli. Then he was fortunate enough to get into the Naval Air Service. He flew in the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. He bombed the Turks near Aden, passed the time of day over the telephone to the King of the Hedjâz at Mecca, made a brief "Cook's Tour" to the Sudan and was presently "observing" in Palestine, blowing up portions of the Bagdad Railway, and commanding an astounding mixed force of British soldiers and French sailors in Castelorizo, near Adalin. After this he comes home on leave, gets his "wings," and is off to Taranto to join the Adriatic Barrage, the aerial force whose task was to keep the Austrian submarines out of the Mediterranean. Finally, after Caporetto, he is on the Piave fronts attached to General Plumer's force. He apparently managed from there to do a good deal of sight-seeing up and down Italy, and he has some amusing tales of the people and places he visited. He also took part in the melodramatic adventure of Alessandro Tandura, the Italian spy who was dropped from an aeroplane in the Austrian lines. This is the best adventure in the book, and must be read to be properly appreciated.
Now and then Captain Benn interrupts his narrative to discuss an idea or a problem. The most notable of these interludes is his criticism of our military system. He can find little to say in praise of it. The much-vaunted discipline seems to him to mean only mechanical obedience. The "system" puts a premium on waste of time, on the "spit and polish" spirit; it discourages ideas, imagination, initiative. And most of the higher officers are monuments of stupidity and ignorance. In all this there is no doubt much truth. But a good many of his readers will suspect that Captain Benn was exceptionally unfortunate in the senior officers he met.
Many Englishmen are now sick of the "Irish Question"; many are ashamed of it. Some have argued an inconsistency between our attitude to Poland or Czecho-Slovakia or Jugo-Slavia and our attitude to Ireland. Others have come to feel that damage is done to our reputation abroad, both among friends and enemies, by our Irish policy. Mr. Lynd knows how to gauge public opinion here as well as in Ireland, and he seizes the opportunity to press home the point that the Irish problem is an internationalproblem. His argument, which is as closely reasoned as it is eloquent, is that England can save herself and save the world only by saving Ireland. What does saving Ireland mean? "It means," says Mr. Lynd, "the immediate surrender of Ireland into the hands of the Irish people, to rule it either as a republic or a dominion, according as the people themselves decide."
Many, of course, made up their minds on the matter long ago; but Mr. Lynd is by no means satisfied with all who profess themselves friends of Ireland. He has some pungent remarks on what he calls "the hesitating sort of Liberal" who wants to give Ireland a carefully-conditioned measure of self-government which will prevent her from abusing her liberty or inconveniencing England. But there are others who are still baffled by Ulster. It is not that they think of the Irish as "a mob of Celts" instead of as a nation. The trouble is that we are apparently confronted by two nations—two irreconcilable nations. What has Mr. Lynd to say to that? He says firstly, bluntly, that Ulstermen are Irishmen, and that "the Ulster question" is an invention of British Statesmen. "Cabinet Ministers have no moral objection whatever to coercing Ireland. If they have any objection to coercing Ulster, it is not on moral grounds, but because Ulster provides them with a plausible palliation for their guilt in denying freedom to a race of white men." He cannot, of course, disregard the Ulstermen's fear of Home Rule. He can only argue that it is an utterly unreasonable fear; for "Ulster is much more likely to dominate an Irish Parliament than to be dominated by it."
Mr. Lynd does not confine himself to the mere politician. He has much that is of profound interest to say on the Irish soldier, on Ireland's record in the war, on Irish literature, and Irish poetry. His book is one which ought to be read by everyone who cares for Ireland—and still more by those who do not.
This little volume of unassuming proportions marks a period in the evolution of housing the people of this country. Perhaps the wordrevolutionis more apt in this connection, for it indicates either a reversal of the wheel of time, taking us back to ancient methods, or a completion of the circle, bringing us round again to the use of building materials which Nature has provided to the hand of the builder. The author addresses himself particularly "to those who have in the past built only with stone, brick, concrete, timber, and plaster, etc.," but there are many people to-day thinking of building who never thought of it before; for the scarcity of houses (not merely of the five-roomed cottage but of the ten or twelve-roomed middle-class house), with the consequent inevitable increase in rent, to say nothing of the contumely of house-agents and their kind, are giving rise to a wonder if there is no alternative to tenancy. To all such this book will be of value, for not only will it widen the field of possibility, but it is packed with definite facts, which have involved much labour in their compilation. To build with either of the materials named in its title will appear to the uninitiated, i.e., to all those who only think of brick and stone houses, as being worthy of the man who "built his house upon the sand"; but plenty of instances are given to show that if proper though simple methods of construction are followed, such houses will last for many generations. We well remember our surprise when, some twenty years ago, we first saw in Leicestershire and Warwickshire a number of what were locally termed "mud" cottages, and found on enquiry that many of them were from two to three hundred years old.
Building by-laws effectually put a stop to the use of any such materials as thoseunder consideration, wherever by-laws were in operation. They were looked upon by the officials of many local authorities and by other well-meaning but short-sighted people as a gleam of sunshine on a dark world: they were to check jerry-building and prevent bad housing. Though this ray of light first shed its beams upon a startled world so long ago as 1858, through the Local Government Act of that year, we are now discovering that jerry-building is as rampant as ever, housing conditions are, in very many places, execrable, and that by-laws sometimes only act as a deterrent to men who want to build. Parliament in its wisdom has passed quite a number of Acts since the year named dealing with the subject, which might have been admirable if they could have been administered by supermen. As, however, this duty fell to the lot of ordinary mortals, by-laws have actually prevented the use of improved methods and materials, which happened to be unknown at the time the old ones were drawn up. These have been somewhat relaxed in recent years, but even to-day it is to be feared that a serious proposal to build with Pisé, or Cob, might cause the sudden death of many respected representatives of Bumbledom. The Ministry of Health have expressed the view that further relaxation in the direction of allowing such materials might be permitted, but many local authorities would, we suppose, require more than that to induce them to adopt the suggestion.
For the moment cost is of even more importance than longevity, and if the usual materials are to be insisted upon the building of cottages and small houses on economic lines is impossible. Transport is one of the large items in the cost of construction; but if the heaviest and bulkiest materials are on the spot, this item can be almost entirely eliminated. It is, therefore, not unreasonable to hope that local authorities will give every facility, nay, encouragement, to use any suitable material, rather than insist upon the letter of their by-laws. The author's view is as follows, but it must be borne in mind that the builder is not always a free agent:
Formerly he who carried bricks into Merioneth or the Cotswolds, or slates into Kent, or ragstone-rubble into Middlesex, was guilty of no more than foolishness and an æsthetic solecism. Under present conditions such action should render him liable to prosecution and conviction on some such count as "wasting the shrunken resources of his country in a time of great scarcity."
Mr. St. Loe Strachey contributes an instructive and amusing preface, the humour of it giving point to his own experiences. No one has done more than he in trying to find the cheapest suitable material for cottages; in Pisé he has rediscovered the very thing he wanted. As one who served under his chairmanship on the Committee of the First Cheap Cottage Exhibition at Letchworth Garden City in 1905, the present reviewer is glad to offer a tribute to his persistence and success. The illustrations in this book are both interesting and instructive.
Any map of the Pacific will show a minute dot standing by itself far to the eastward of any other island south of the line, yet some 2000 miles away from the American coast. This is Easter Island, long famous as a land of archæological wonders. Apart from these it is an unattractive place, consisting of a triangular patch of volcanic rock, grass-covered, bare of trees, waterless but for the rain that collects in the craters of its extinct volcanoes, and, of course, wind-swept and harbourless. At present it serves as a cattle-ranch managed in the interests of a Chilian company, the natives, no more than 250 in all, being huddled into a single village on the west coast in order to keep them out of mischief. Formerly, however, there were enough of them to form ten clans, whokept things merry with their local feuds. The navigators of the eighteenth century, Roggeveen, who discovered the island, Gonzalez, Cook, and La Pérouse, estimate their number at anything from 700 up to 2000 souls.
How, then, in such a solitary spot, inhabited by a handful of savages, does it happen that hundreds of giant statues of stone are to be found, not to speak of smaller statues of wood, curious rock-carvings, and finally a script? A few passers-by had pleasantly trifled with the problem, but a serious attempt to solve it had not been made until Mr. and Mrs. Scoresby Routledge gallantly resolved to take the matter in hand. The task before them was no light one; for in order to study Easter Island one must first get there. So a yacht, theMana, was built for the purpose. The Polynesian word means "luck," and luck certainly attended the little vessel on its long run of 100,000 miles. Quite apart from the account given of Easter Island itself, the log of the voyage provides the matter for a fascinating book, proving as it does that there are many odd corners of the much-betravelled earth which still await exploration. This becomes apparent as soon as Magellan Strait is traversed, and the ship hazardously works her way north through the intricate uncharted channels that run up the western coast of Patagonia. It was hereabouts, by the way, that theDresden, after the Falkland fight, played hide-and-seek with our gunboats for several months. Helped by many striking illustrations, we are enabled to picture to ourselves the deep gorges overlooked by snowy peaks, and the gaunt half-naked Indians that these waters precariously support. Afterwards Selkirk's Island, Juan Fernandez, was visited, and when the Easter Island investigations were complete, the expedition went on to Pitcairn, the home of the descendants of theBountymutineers, an incidental consequence being that King George in due course received at Buckingham Palace two loyal representatives of this, the smallest of British Colonies. But space would fail if we dwelt further on the nautical side of the adventure, complicated as it was by the fact that during the greater part of the three years and four months during which it lasted there were German foes above and below water to be circumvented. Even Easter Island, it must be added, proved no haven of refuge, for first von Spee's squadron and subsequently the armed cruiserPrinz Eitel Friedrichpaid a call there, though luckily Mana was away on both occasions.
Passing to the archæology, we must begin by gratefully recording the fact that at length an adequate description is available of the monuments as they exist to-day. Thanks to the maps, plans, and pictures, every detail is brought home to the reader; while he cannot complain that Mrs. Routledge's commentary, precise though it be, is ever dull. She is indeed to be congratulated on having composed a popular account that is likewise as far as it goes scientifically sound; though it is to be hoped that the whole collection of evidence, of which but a digest is presented here, will hereafter be published. The expedition was evidently at great pains to survey, catalogue, measure, photograph, and, so far as was necessary, actually disinter, the entire mass of remains, despite their great number and the considerable extent of country over which they are distributed. And fortunately the stonework is still there to be studied, since it cannot be easily removed or destroyed, as has mostly been the fate of the woodwork, namely, the carved human figures, twenty to thirty inches high, with their characteristic goatee beards and prominent ribs, and the tablets on which the script was carved. Yet, if not altogether demolished, the statues are in large part dethroned. Those at least that decorated the burial platforms of Cyclopean architecture that border the coast are all overthrown; how and why we can but guess. On the other hand, there is a certain volcanic hill with many huge figures still standing, both within the crater and along its outer skirts. It was here that all the images were quarried; and many exist in a half-finished condition, while some, including the largest of all, sixty-six feet in length, were perhaps never meant to be completely detached from the parent rock. Excavation at these quarries revealed the whole process of manufacture, and proved that with stone tools it waspossible to hew the soft rock into shape, though the precise manner of the transportation and erection of the unwieldy monsters, while plainly creditable to human muscle, remains by no means easy to discern.
Who were the makers? What did they mean to represent? At this point we pass from description to explanation, from the ascertained to the purely conjectural. Certain it is that the present natives have no use for the statues, and are not only ignorant but likewise incurious about their origin. Even by Cook's time, namely, in 1774, though still standing, they were apparently ceasing to be respected; whereas Roggeveen, in 1722, rightly or wrongly, saw in them objects of an existing worship. Thus we seem to get at least a downward limit for the epoch during which they were part of the living culture, and this view is borne out by the relatively unweathered condition of some statues. It would look, then, as if the direct and not very remote ancestors of the present islanders were the image-makers, and not some mysterious extinct race, such as has often been postulated. Further, the pendant ear-lobes of the statues recall a practice hardly yet obsolete among the population of to-day.
The best argument of all, however, amongst those making for a connection with the indigenous culture is derived from the study of a remarkable bird-cult which it is a chief triumph of the expedition to have rescued from oblivion. Not only can it be thus shown to the point of demonstration that the rock-carvings occurring in a deserted village of stone houses on the south-western headland of the island represent the annual "bird-man" who got the first egg of a sacred bird, and so became himself highly sacred; but it can also be made a probable corollary that the statues of the image-mountain are memorials of bird-men, since it was close by that the bird-man must abide in strict seclusion for the five months in which his sacredness was at its height. Indeed, many are the clues which are afforded by a close examination of this curious custom. Thus it seems certain that the present cult which centres round the Sooty Tern is derived from the worship of the Frigate Bird as practised in far-off Melanesia. The Frigate Bird, too, seems to have suggested various symbols belonging to the script. The inference is that there is a Melanesian stratum in the population; though, as a Polynesian immigration must also be assumed in order to account for the language, responsibility for the culture as a whole must somehow be divided between the two parties. All these difficult questions, we fear, cannot be thrashed out within the limits of a brief review. Yet perhaps enough has been said to induce every student of the wider history of man not to miss a golden opportunity of learning that anthropology and romance are sisters.
England has a high tradition in books on popular science. Men like Faraday and Tyndall did not consider it beneath them to write for children and laymen, and their books on the elementary facts of science are models of their kind. Strangely enough—or naturally enough—the best expositors of the elements of a science are, in general, those who have themselves contributed to the advances of that science, while those who are professedly popularisers present the subject not only less correctly and logically but also less simply and pleasantly. The books before us confirm this opinion.
Mr. Gibson is a practised hand at writing books for children, the volume before us being the sixth of a series. He has the merit that he attempts to bring before the readerthe experimental basis of the science of chemistry and some of its historical aspects, and does not make a series of dogmatic statements without reference to the researches on which they rest, as does Bishop Mercer. He describes many experiments, and gives diagrams to illustrate them. The book covers a wide field of interesting and, for the most part, elementary chemical phenomena. The chief fault which we have to find is with the style in which it is written. We find the imaginary questions put to the writer by boys and girls distinguished as big, little, facially peculiar, and so on, irritating, and we very much doubt if his patronising manner will find favour with most boys, who, we believe, prefer to be treated as friends who happen not to know. We do not pretend to Mr. Gibson's knowledge of children, but base our criticism on the fact that Faraday and most of his successors at the Royal Institution have managed to interest and instruct their juvenile audiences without this painfully evident condescension.
Bishop Mercer's method of striving to excite the wonder of his young readers is based upon a liberal use of notes of exclamation (seldom less than three on a page, and sometimes three together, for extra effect) and of the words "wonder" and "wonderful," together with the constant citation of very large numbers, which fill him with awe—"A million is bad enough with its six cyphers. But eighteen of them—that is awful—it is a million million million!" The machinery of nature, as revealed by modern science, does not impress him as do these rows of cyphers. If there were any serious attempt to show how they have been arrived at we should think more highly of the educational value of the book. As it is, the information is often incorrect on quite simple matters—water doesnotoccupy "exactly" (or approximately) "the same space as before" after sugar has been added to it; hydrogen is not often regarded, in these days when it has been solidified, as a metal. Often the book is most misleading, as in the description of how the author saw a man's ribs by X-rays when the "machine" was put the other side of the man in question. No mention is made of any phosphorescent screen, and the inexperienced reader is led to infer by the analogy given that he actually saw through the man. The style is vague and slipshod in the extreme, a typical sentence being, "The elasticity of the atoms is so perfect that they always bang about just the same." We will not criticise the Bishop's theology, or his philosophy, which insists that "what you really see is not the matter of the tree, but the ether-quiverings which that matter throws off." We will, however, take it upon ourselves to suggest that, if he should decide to write another book on elementary science, he should model himself rather upon Faraday's "Lectures Upon the Physical Forces" than upon an American temperance lecture.
Mr. Mills' book onThe Realities of Modern Scienceis in a different class from the two already noticed, and is intended for adult readers. It gives a sketch of modern conceptions of the composition of matter, the electron theory, and the recent experimental work on the magnitude of molecules and electrons. The early chapters of the book are devoted to a very brief but excellent treatment of certain aspects of the history of physical science. A great merit of the book is that it devotes particular attention to the recent important advances in molecular physics, which are neither yet included in the text-books nor easily available in popular form. We may mention especially the work of Millikan on the electronic charge, that of the Braggs and Moseley on X-ray spectra, and the photographs taken by C. T. R. Wilson (whose name is not, however, mentioned) of the paths of α {a} and β {b} particles and of X-rays. The style is simple and sober, and the author, who hails from the research laboratories of the Western Electric Company, wisely leaves the results which he describes to produce their own impression. The book is, of course, written for more advanced readers than the others here noticed, but, all the same, an intelligent schoolboy with a smattering of scientific knowledge would, in all probability, prefer it to the books written expressly for his benefit. The adult reader is not likely to find a better presentation of the more striking aspects of modern physics.
By J. H. MASON
LASTmonth, in laying down the chief matters to be considered in producing a satisfactory book, I began with type. And as if the subject were in the air, as it were in solution, I find it precipitated in the form of an important article in the pages of theSaturday Review. An illustrated article, too, with specimens of the chief types referred to. This is all to the good; if this example is followed by other literary journals we shall soon form a right opinion in the lay public on what is a good type. The appearance of our books will be improved, the offensive advertisement—I am speaking typographically—will lose its vulgarity, and public lettering in posters, shop names, and street signs will reflect the improvement.
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It is interesting to note that my view on the importance of the work of the private presses is also confirmed by the article referred to, and that their work is beginning to influence the typefounders, however tardily.
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It is quite frequently said that it costs no more to print from good type than from bad. We might go further in the case of certain bad types and say that their use sends up the cost of printing. For when "modern" type of the extreme form is used, as De Vinne pointed out, their hair-lines are soon battered by any inequality in the paper and print imperfectly, or involve a loss of time in changing the damaged letters. The attempt to emulate the hair-line of the engraver of plate lettering is altogether misplaced in relief or letterpress printing.
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The Victorian greyness of page led some printers and publishers to resort to the use of heavier type to give their pages a richer black. But almost all the heavier types at their disposal had been designed for display lines in advertisements, and went too far in the thickening of the line. Even Morris's "Golden" type, excellent as it is in his use of it, is too heavy to be adopted as the staple type-face of our printing.
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Not till quite recently have type-faces of the right weight for bookwork been designed and placed on the general market. The work of the American Goudy, the type cut by Mr. Prince (who cut the punches for the Kelmscott, the Doves, and other celebrated founts) for Messrs. Shanks and christened "Dolphin," and some of the modern versions of Venetian founts are pretty satisfactory and generally available.
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With the exception of the Monotype Company, who designed an excellent modified "old style" type for the "Imprint," the composing machines that produce our newspapers, journals, and a large proportion of our books have repeated the stock designs originally made for movable or hand-set type. It is very desirable that they should not limit themselves to these, and the instance mentioned above is a most encouraging one to follow up.