Chapter C: A. Tait (2)

"The thought of 'the picturesque' repels me," writes Miss Savory in extenuation of her offence in the kind of sightseeing which less sophisticated tourists, for whom she accuses Nature of "touting," joyfully regard as inevitable. But though from time to time she is careful lest the reader should associate her with the organisations of Cook and Lunn, this superiority to the obvious is not always implicit. Whether the ideal book of travels should satisfy us by our own firesides or should merely stimulate us to go and see things for ourselves is a question that Miss Savory has not helped to decide. Her vision is uneven, but on the whole she provokes and does not satisfy curiosity. The book is a record of an exhaustive (and one would say exhausting) exploration of the Eastern Pyrenees, with Perpignan, Ille-sur-Tet, Estagel, and other places as centres for radiating expeditions, and "we did many wanders at Salses," she says. She climbed high mountains, and admired the views; she visited forgotten villages, and raked up their history; she lingered--none too long--under groined roofs and in panelled _salles_. But in her frank delight in good wine and food there is real vitality and emphatic, if unconscious, art. "We picked bunch after bunch (of grapes) hot in the sun, buried our faces in the warmness of them ... bit not one but mouthfuls, sweet and juicy...." And then she goes on to tell us that at the same moment there would be a "little sad, sour, tight bunch not a quarter grown" on a house in Gower Street, and that nobody was ever quite so dead as Queen Anne.

However, Miss Savory need not fear lest we should fail to recognise her appreciation of the beautiful things she saw, more especially as many of them--carvings, chateaux, plaster-work--are admirably reproduced as illustrations in collotype from the drawings of Miss M. L. MacKenzie: but our recognition would have been quicker if she had been at less pains to impress us with her originality.

JACOPONE DA TODI. By EVELYN UNDERHILL. Dent. 16_s._ net.

In the preface to her life and letters of this remarkable man, Miss Underhill says: "Three types of mind should find pleasure in Jacopone's work and personality. First, those interested in Christian mysticism.... Next, lovers of poetry.... Last, those who care for the Italy of St. Francis and his descendants." The last two aspects of an arresting personality will doubtless make the wider appeal, admirably as his biographer has traced and explained the spiritual development of the man she calls the first great Italian religious poet.

So sympathetically has Miss Underhill treated the religious experiences of Jacopone that in the light of her exposition, extravagance, futility, seeming madness even, seem to take their rightful place in the spiritual history of a man who expresses that history in strangely beautiful poems. Born probably about 1230, soon after the death of St. Francis, Jacopone da Todi followed very closely in the steps of his more famous master. Like St. Francis, he belonged to a noble Umbrian family; like St. Francis, he turned from a gay worldly existence to the worship of Lady Poverty. His conversion, however, compared with that of the founder of the Franciscan rule, was a late one. St. Francis was only twenty-four, Jacopone was nearly forty when he left the world and its ways to begin the quest for perfection.

A legend (not perhaps entirely legendary, since it is in some respects supported by the self-revelations of his _laude_) grew up about his name, and was embodied, years later, in the so-called _Vita_, a manuscript of the fifteenth century.

Here it is related that Ser Jacomo--to give him his worldly title--was passionately devoted to his young wife, who was ascetic at heart, yet to please her husband wore the rich clothes he gave her, and took part in all the gaieties of the town. A tragic ending to Ser Jacomo's happiness was brought about when, on the occasion of a marriage festival, his beautiful Vanna was killed by the fall of a balcony.

"And when" (says the _Vita_) "they took off those garments of vanity which she had upon her in order to make her ready for the grave they found at last, next to her bare flesh, a harsh shirt of hair."

The legend goes on to relate that the shock of his wife's death, together with the discovery of her pious fraud, led first to madness and then to the conversion of Jacopone. Nowhere in his subsequent poems is there to be found a reference to his marriage. But this in itself is no proof of the falsity of the story, for, as with most mediæval penitents, the casting off of his old life meant to him the abjuration of earthly ties and memories. Jacopone the saint remains nevertheless Ser Jacomo the passionate lover. No songs in praise of an adored wife or mistress could be more fervid, more palpitating with emotion than those addressed to his Saviour.

It is by means of these religious poems--_laude_, as they were called--that the successive stages in the progress of the mystic may be traced. But leaving the mystic aside, we may feel grateful to Miss Underhill for having placed the poet before us. Many of his _laude_, in the English translation of Mrs. Theodore Beck, are given at length in this book, and very beautiful they are. To forget their theme and to consider only their form and imagery is to be reminded of secular Italy of the thirteenth century--its troubadours, its Court poets, its Courts of Love. For nearly forty years after all Jacopone had lived in the world, enjoying its laughter, its gaiety, its sunshine, and the poems of the saint, indicate that he had not forgotten all he learnt as a sinner--that is as an ordinary man of the class to which he originally belonged. "_O Queen of all Courtesy_," he begins in an address to the Blessed Virgin--and we are immediately transported in thought to a fair garden and a lover with his lute.

HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY

THE RIDDLE OF THE RUTHVENS AND OTHER STUDIES. By WILLIAM ROUGHEAD. With thirteen Illustrations. William Green & Son Ltd., Edinburgh. 25_s._ net.

Whether we may consider the reading of criminal annals a profitable occupation or otherwise, it is an unquestionable fact that they often possess a human interest, for the imaginative person at all events, far in excess of the records of the intrigues and policies of kings, statesmen, generals, and priests. And there is a well-nigh unique and special interest attaching to Scottish _causes célèbres_ which places them in importance far above the general run of the great trials of all the other nations of Europe. This is accounted for by the strangely complex psychology of the average and typical Scotsman. He is a being in whom the emotions are strictly subordinated to the government of his reason. He is deeply metaphysical, and there is a powerful forensic strain in his composition. It is seldom indeed that a Scotsman pleads guilty to any charge, even when he has been caught red-handed. To do so would simply spoil for him all the pleasure of the trial, and there is probably no one in court who follows the evidence and pleadings more carefully or with greater zest than the prisoner himself. Were it possible for him to be closeted with the jury, it is quite conceivable that he should be found arguing the pros and cons of the case as forcibly and with as great detachment as any "good man and true" among them. But there is a fatal flaw in the character of the Scot which detracts to a large extent from the interest that one feels in his other traits, namely, the theological tendency which in persons of evil life at last degenerates into pure cant. The condemned prisoner on the scaffold exhorting the multitude "to avoid the heinous crime of disobedience to parents, inattention to Holy Scriptures, of being idle and disorderly, and especially of Sabbath-breaking," is by no means an edifying spectacle. The existence and prevalence of this trait is all the more curious when one considers that the Scot generally is not lacking in a keen sense of humour.

The special value of this collection of historic criminal trials and other juridical studies by Mr. Roughead, however, lies in the fresh light he has been able to throw upon the respective characters of King James the Sixth of Scotland (First of England), the most despicable poltroon that ever disgraced a British throne; and of Lord Braxfield, the prototype of Robert Louis Stevenson's _Weir of Hermiston_. An old Edinburgh University Professor of Constitutional Law and History used to say that Charles II. was the most iniquitous ruler that England ever had, but James II. was still worse. It was badly expressed, but there was something in it. Its special application was Constitutional, however, although it might easily be extended to apply universally if we allow the addition of the proviso that James I. was the worst of all. He was a liar, a coward, and a hypocrite, full of pedantry and cant. This is conclusively demonstrated in _The Riddle Of the Ruthvens_, and in other sketches that deal with the witchcraft prosecutions that were conducted with such a degree of vindictiveness and fury throughout the whole of his reign. But perhaps the greatest service of all that Mr. Roughead has done in the cause of truth and justice is his vindication of the respective characters of the much-maligned Lord Braxfield and Robert Fergusson the poet from so many of the absurd eccentricities which have been attributed to them by incompetent biographers and unscrupulous scandalmongers, and have in course of time, by constant repetition, become traditional. It is a far cry from the Gowrie Conspiracy to "Antique" Smith, the forger of the autograph letters of great literary and historical personages, who is still well remembered in Edinburgh, but these are Mr. Roughead's limits, and between them there is such a mass of history and criminal psychology as the student of either will delight in, while the curious, or merely general, reader will find it very good entertainment.

GEORGE BUBB DODINGTON: PATRON AND PLACE-HUNTER. By LLOYD SANDERS. John Lane. 1919. 16_s._ net.

Here is a case of book-making of a somewhat explicit kind, since there is little to say, and nothing to print, of Dodington which he has not said of himself. There is, of course, no more harm in making books than there is in making bricks; but if the one wants straw, as Moses says it did, the other wants humanity. God made Bubb Dodington, and therefore let him pass for a man. In his own day he passed for a coxcomb; in ours, which is more censorious, he would certainly have passed for a rascal. In either aspect, if he is to be treated at all, he requires a more philosophical study than Mr. Sanders has been able to supply.

Of mean origin, some ability and unbounded impudence, Dodington inherited both money and land. With the land there accrued to him Parliamentary interest--to wit, in some four seats in Dorset and Somerset, which he spent the rest of his life in hawking from faction to faction with a flagrancy and success which even his own age found shocking. From first to last--and he lived a long time--there were no illusions about him. Pope scoffed at him until he found metal more attractive, and changed "Bubo" for "Bufo"; Walpole remarked to Lord Hervey upon "the second time that worthy has proposed to rise by treading on my neck"; Hervey himself, who seldom had a good word for anybody, never had a worse than for him. Hanbury Williams, who was never malevolent, wrote of him that he was

To no one party, no one man,
Nor to his own self tight;
For what he voted for at noon
He 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 egregious _Diary_. 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's _Diary_. 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 the _Diary_ was out. Lord Hervey, long before it was written, gave him a pungent paragraph. "Mr. Dodington," he says, "whilst some people have the _je ne sais quoi_ in pleasing, possessed the _je ne sais quoi_ in 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 this _Diary_ of 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.

AN OXFORD SCHOLAR: INGRAM BYWATER, 1840-1914. By W. W. JACKSON, D.D. Clarendon Press. 1917. 7_s._ 6_d._ net.

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 scientific scholarship, however welcome there--it has the creative writer's _zest_. 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's _Ethics_, 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's _Poetics_, 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 the _mots_ ascribed 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 manuscripts _per se_ are 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 the _editio princeps_ of 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's _De Anima_ was an autograph of Rabelais.

SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY LIFE IN THE COUNTRY PARISH. By ELEANOR TROTTER, M.A. Cambridge University Press. 10_s._ net.

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 6_d._ or 8_d._ 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 20_s._ 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 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.

POLITICS AND ECONOMICS

BALKAN PROBLEMS AND EUROPEAN PEACE. By N. BUXTON and C. L. LEESE. Allen & Unwin. 4_s._ 6_d._ net.

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 partisan propaganda, 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.

THE SKILLED LABOURER, 1760-1832. By J. L. HAMMOND and BARBARA HAMMOND. Longmans. 12_s._ 6_d._ net.

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 with _The Village Labourer_ and _The Town Labourer_ it 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. In _The Village Labourer_ the authors gave an account of the enclosures of common lands and of the agricultural labourers' rising of 1830; in _The Town Labourer_ they 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 and _agents 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, _alias_ Richards, _alias_ Hollis, 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 Labourer_ is a book which puts every student of history very deeply in the debt of Mr. and Mrs. Hammond.

IN THE SIDE SHOWS: OBSERVATIONS BY A FLIER ON FIVE FRONTS. By CAPTAIN WEDGWOOD BENN, M.P., D.S.O., D.F.C. Hodder & Stoughton. 12_s._ net.

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.

IRELAND A NATION. By ROBERT LYND. Grant Richards. 7_s._ 6_d._ net.

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 international problem. 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.

AGRICULTURE AND RURAL LIFE

COTTAGE BUILDING IN COB, PISÉ, CHALK, AND CLAY: A Renaissance. By
CLOUGH WILLIAMS-ELLIS, with an Introduction by Mr. ST. LOE STRACHEY.
Published by _Country Life_, London. 6_s._ net.

This little volume of unassuming proportions marks a period in the evolution of housing the people of this country. Perhaps the word _revolution_ is 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 those under 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.

ANTHROPOLOGY

THE MYSTERY OF EASTER ISLAND: THE STORY OF AN EXPEDITION. By MRS.
SCORESBY ROUTLEDGE. Sifton, Praed, & Co. 31_s._ 6_d._ net.

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, who kept 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, the _Mana_, 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 the _Dresden_, 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 the _Bounty_ mutineers, 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 cruiser _Prinz Eitel Friedrich_ paid 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 was possible 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.

SCIENCE

SOME WONDERS OF MATTER. By the RIGHT REVEREND J. E. MERCER. Society
for Promoting Christian Knowledge. 5_s._ net.

CHEMISTRY AND ITS MYSTERIES. By CHARLES R. GIBSON. Seely, Service &
Co. 5_s._ net.

THE REALITIES OF MODERN SCIENCE. By JOHN MILLS. The Macmillan
Company. 10_s._ 6_d._ net.

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 reader the 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.