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to be driven from the tunnels to the surface, and, if at all possible, the electric light will be introduced.

The Act of Concession for the new line was granted by the Swiss Federal Assembly on December 21st, 1894. It stipulated that within eighteen months from that date complete plans of the scheme would have to be deposited, and that within six months dating from the acceptance of the plans earthworks must be commenced. The line, which is to be completed in five years, will be constructed and opened for traffic section by section. Already waterworks are proceeding at Lauterbrunnen, and the building of the first portion of the railway, that from the Scheidegg station to the tunnel entrance, has begun. This section, the promoter assures us, will be opened for traffic on August 1st next.

Apart from the railway itself, the terms upon which permission for its construction has been given, are worthy of note. The concession is granted for eighty years, and the Swiss government, ever careful about national rights, has taken care to see that the scheme is made to serve other purposes than that of merely earning a dividend for the shareholders. In the first place the company is bound at all times to permit persons making the ascent on foot to have access to all parts of the mountain, free of charge, and without restrictions of any kind. Then, again, articles of scientific interest brought to light in the course of the excavations, such as fossils, coins, and medals, become the public property of the canton in whose territory they are found. But most important of all is a clause under which the company is required, upon the completion of a part or of the whole of the line to spend a sum of at least one hundred thousand francs in erecting and equipping a permanent observatory, to be specially designed for the purpose of assisting meteorological, tellural, and other forms of physical research. Beyond this, the company undertake to contribute a monthly subscription of one thousand francs towards the expenses of the undertak

ing. This arrangement, supplemented as it will be by the erection of a series of meteorological stations at different altitudes along the line, promises to furnish Switzerland with a physical observatory of the very first rank, and ought to lead to substantial and interesting results.

It was inevitable that an undertaking of the kind I have shortly described should meet with opposition upon both practical and æsthetic grounds. The promoters have frankly recognized the objections and done their best to an swer them. The first, and perhaps the most alarming, since it relates to the study of hygienics, is that embodied in the two following questions: "Will the health of a person of sound constitution be injuriously affected by his conveyance, within the space of two hours, from a level of 2,000 m. to one of 4,166 m., and by the consequent rapid abatement of atmospheric pressure?" Secondly, "Will such an ascent be attended by evil consequences to a person suffering from organic disease?" Upon these points and upon the general question of what "mountain-sickness" really is, a great volume of expert evidence is produced. Briefly stated, it leads up to the conclusion that, except in special cases, mere rarity of air does not produce the symptoms of asphyxia known as "mountain-sickness," except when acting in conjunction with the effects of bodily exertion and fatigue. For example, the committee of the Swiss Alpine Club declare themselves to be "perfectly convinced that, given a means of being conveyed to the summit without any kind of muscular exertion, persons in good health and of sound constitution have no evil consequences whatever to fear from a short sojourn at the top of the Jungfrau." In the case of the more delicate class of persons another answer is furnished. It is pointed out, quite appositely, that a sea trip, an ordinary railway journey, and, most of all, a stiff climb, would all be more or less dangerous to those in feeble health. Yet persons of this class indulge in these things, and no one suggests that they should be prohibited

from doing so. But if the objection in the present case should be pressed to the extreme point of prohibition, the final answer takes the form of an offer to post a medical man at the Scheidegg Station for consultation in doubtful

cases.

What is called the "esthetic objection" is embodied in the question, "Will the mountain scenery be disfigured by the building of the Jungfrau railway?" The promoter at once responds with an emphatic "No," based upon the fact that the line, except for the first section, will run in tunnels all the way, and will thus remain invisible. On the more general and much debated point whether the mountain railway, as an institution, is a blessing or a curse, little is said, and in Switzerland, at any rate, little needs to be said, for the construction and profitable maintenance of about forty mountain lines, beginning with the Rigi and ending with the Wengern Alp, furnishes conclusive proof that with the Swiss and with the people who visit their country utilitarianism is a stronger force than æsthetics.

The mountain railway, it is true, is not free from objections, but neither are the other contrivances by which our mountain tops are brought within reach of those who have not the physical strength to scale them. Horses may be hired at moderate fees, but many are too weak or too nervous to take the saddle. Then there is the chaise-à-porteurs, much patronized by ladies. This is considered a rather jolly way of getting up the hill-for the passenger; but the sight of three hapless guides struggling up steep mountain slopes under the weight of a portly lady is alike distressing whether viewed from the humane or the artistic standpoint. One would prefer, of course, to be without the company of steam whistles and electric trams, but since they have become inevitable, there is no reason why they should spoil the music of the cow-bells, or dwarf the giant forms amid which they move, or make the falling avalanches less impressive than when Byron listened to them and pelted his

friend Hobhouse with snow. Those who think otherwise might do well to remember that there are few things in this world absolutely good or utterly bad. As Emerson would say, "For everything you lose you gain something; a certain compensation balances every gift and every defect." And if the mountain railway has somewhat dashed the ideals of the few, it has certainly given to the many a new vision of mountain glories.

F. E. HAMER.

From The Spectator.

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THE BARNATO SUICIDE. It is not difficult to understand great interest taken in the suicide of Mr. Barnato. Apart from his connection with some thirty companies, all of which will feel more or less the impact of his death, his career had been watched with an interest which both in its degree and its cause has been a little unusual. He was the commonest of the new millionaires, and at one time it seemed possible that he might become the biggest. A great number of average Englishmen would like to become fabulously rich if they could become so by pure volition, and it really seemed as if Mr. Barnato had realized that ideal. He was a "plain man,” if ever there was one, a little Jew from Petticoat Lane with no particular ed ucation, and except unusual financial courage, rising some times to Napoleonic audacity, no qualities such as are common to the thousands whom he left behind him in the squalor of the Ghetto, and he rose to the top of the shadier financial world. He had been an adventurer in South Africa without a penny, odd man in a Kim-. berley circus, a pedlar in diamonds, a small jobber in shares; yet before he. was forty he was reputed to be worth seventeen millions, and probably, if bis shares in his own companies had maintained their value, would really have. possessed seven. He entertained with profusion, he built a palace for himself,

beyond

kind of prospectus, the promoter trusting entirely to the magic of his nameand we shall not therefore moralize about his career; but we wish we could form a definite opinion whether the rise of the new millionaires is economically beneficial or not. That most of them are socially nuisances, because they promote the worship of wealth, and degrade the ideal of ambition, is undeniable; but are they also nuisances from the economic point of view? A great many keen-sighted people say they are, that mammoth fortunes are only made by taking enormous risks, that such risks turn both commerce and associated enterprise into gambling contrivances, and that the effect of millionaires' transactions is to take away from steady industry much of the profit which alone makes it attractive to the majority. Why keep cows if somebody else is to have most of the milk and all the cream? Banks would do as reservoirs of capital just as well as millionaires, and would not have the same interest in crushing out small men, or the same means of establishing monopolies, which latter must be, by the very law of their being, deductions from the temptations to industry and the opportunities for it. If one man owns all the paper-mills, paper-making ceases to be one of the industries on which the average man can embark. A sort of hopelessness is spread through

not yet finished, in Park Lane, and he was understood to be of all the speculators there the one who had most influence with the governing group at Pretoria. That seems to the lower English middle-class man immense success, and it was achieved by one who, to external seeming, was like a pros perous little tradesman, and who, whatever his capacities, had none of those which we associate with greatness. Anybody might be a "Barney Barnato," and as he got so far ahead of the ruck, everybody felt interested to see what would become of him. He might die a peer or in a ditch, and the news that he did die a suicide, that the pressure of immense and risky transactions had broken down even his nerve, and worn out even his hopefulness, came on the man in the street, to whom the Stock Exchange is something of a mystery, with a recognizable shock. That kind of career, then, was not So pleasant after all, but had drawbacks which even the hunter after wealth would not, if he fully recognized them, be quite willing to face, anxieties more keen and more imperative than those which beset the well-trodden ways. It is hardly worth while to make millions and die so, that was the reflection, spoken or unspoken, of thousands who, while the great speculator was alive, had regarded his career with a feeling which, if it was not envy, was something exceedingly like that dirty pas- the industrial world by such competision.

We do not believe the assertion that rapid commercial fortunes are always obtained by fraud, and though we dislike monopolies, think a monopoly of diamonds, which was the original foundation of Mr. Rhodes's, Mr. Beit's, and Mr. Barnato's wealth, the least injurious to mankind of all the trusts by which the world is nowadays pillaged for the benefit of a few. We have no means of knowing whether Mr. Barnato ever stepped over the line which divides sharp trading from deception on investors-we fancy he had a conscience somewhere if it is true that his biggest feat of "promoting" was accomplished without the issue of any

tion, and because one Rockefeller "goes in" for oil-dealing ten thousand families are shunted out of a profitable and beneficial method of earning a quiet living. There is and can be no answer to those arguments, but they do not quite cover the whole area of discussion. Big trees keep the sun from the corn, but big trees have their uses too. Experience seems to show that small men, whether acting singly or in combination, shrink from great risks, and that the courage without which no man becomes a millionaire is a very useful economic quality. No one, for instance, would deny that the work of building railways is highly useful to mankind, and while the railways of Europe were

being built it was discovered by actual end. They tend, like despots, to go

experiment that the millionaire contractors were the best to employ, that even if they charged extravagantly, their railways actually did get done, while the little people were pausing or failing before unexpected obstacles. Suppose a bank has four millions, its directors cannot expend three in filling up Chat Moss, for they may be robbing their shareholders, who trust to their judgment and discretion. But the contractor with four millions can pitch three into the swamp, first, because they are his own, and secondly, because if his judgment prove faulty, he has still enough left for luxury or for beginning again. "If I lose a quarter of a million," said a considerable contractor, "over that infernal bridge, I'm ruined; but if Brassey loses it he'll just build it again. That's the use of Brassey;"-and we do not see where the answer to that rough apology for the new millionaire is to be found. There are big, risky things to be done which are also useful things, and he is, occasionally at all events, wanted to do them. If only one could give millionaires consciences there would be a true place for them in the social fabric, even if they never gave away a penny, and were only intent on becoming billionaires. The trouble is that their consciences die, as those of most conquerors do, in the very magnitude of their transactions, which tempt them to act as if they were powers of nature, and sweep on to their ends regardless alike of human misery and of right and wrong.

The great danger from millionaires, we suspect, is one which many of our readers, will pronounce fanciful, the danger indicated in Mr. Barnato's sad

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mad. The proportion of them in America who suffer from "nervous disease,' or a habit of drinking contracted by efforts to keep down nervous ailment, is extraordinary, is, in fact, described by good medical authority as amounting to fifty per cent. That is always accounted for in newspapers as the result of nervous strain, of fierce anxiety, of overwork; but we are by no means sure that as unlimited power is known of itself to overtax the brain, so an unlimited command of wealth does not weaken the controlling will. The desire to do something bigger still masters them, they do not get the help despots do from counsellors, and by and by their power of action, rapid and irresponsible action, gets too much for their mental strength. We do not care, it would not, indeed, be right, to give instances; but we are greatly mistaken if many of the new millionaires are not showing a tendency to the special form of mental weakness which is called megalomania, or "les grandeurs," a desire to make their houses, their yachts, their pleasaunces, even their activities, bigger than for their own objects it is necessary they should be made. They become too conscious of their own magnificence, are too completely their own pivots, think too largely and constantly of their own relation to the world around them. Madness lies in that direction, and we should not be at all surprised some day to see a mammoth millionaire loose in the world, and doing mischief on a scale which would compel more than one country to question whether the right to spend one's own money had not limits which the owner must be prevented by force from passing.

fatigue in reading, and the best means of avoiding it, should be of service. From their experiments the authors conclude that the size of type is the all-important condition of visual fatigue. No type less than 1.5 mm. in height should be used, the fatigue increasing rapidly even before the size becomes as small as this.

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II. NOVELS OF THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE, Edinburgh Review,

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By Alphonse de Calonne,

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