his paraphernalia, his butt of sack which enabled him to entertain Feste and other choice spirits if it seemed well to him within the precincts of the Court-of course within hours not proscribed by the presiding Major domo. For a poet to be a professional in those days patronage of some sort was indispensable, and that of the Court took this somewhat indefinite form. Nothing was probably fixed definitely and inalterably in regard to the appointment, except that the payment was in a chronic state of arrears. But the regular production of the scheduled odes postulated a certain amount of exhilaration which was duly provided for, while the public were adequately protected by the music and pageant in which the actual utterance of all this periodical poetry must have invariably been smothered. Queen Victoria, who reverted in her ideals to the Stuarts, revived a personal and sentimental attachment to her Court poet. In the case of other Sovereigns of her Dynasty we may perhaps take it for granted that the relationship was for the most part purely nominal. It is well known that the late King was no very devoted student of poetry. At a banquet upon a semi-literary, semi-State, occasion when the names of the guests had to be submitted for the King's personal inspection, that of an extremely wellknown poet was objected to on account, it is said, of its unfamiliar and plebeian sound. Explanation led to frank admission of the king's unfamiliarity with some of the chief poetic reputations of the day. Yet the poet in question was one of the daintiest and most accomplished writers of vers d'occasion that the country has produced.

One of the implications of this not very happily chosen synonym for vers de société or vers de circonstance is that such verse is cheap on the market and

that all verse written to order comes short of being poetry. But this is manifestly not the case with poets of very different degrees of power. Tennyson and Longfellow, for instance, both wrote some of their best poetry at the behest of public opinion. One feature ordinarily attending the production of such peotry is that the audience for it is artificially enlarged, and that the immediate judgment is apt to be very erratic-as in the case of Tennyson's noble Ode on the Death of Wellington, which was adjudged by many egregious critics to be on a level with notorious effusions by Rowe and Whitehead! It is noteworthy, perhaps, that two of the best known poems of our time-one of the best and one of the worst-have been produced under somewhat similar conditions of popular commission and popular acclamation by an unofficial laureate of the moment.

The wisdom or unwisdom of doing away with the time-honored conventions of the laureateship at the present juncture is a question on which we do not feel ourselves called upon to pronounce judgment. It must be admitted that the excessive purism of some of the critics of the ancient office and the sensitiveness of others on behalf of the sacred flame of poesy is not a little paradoxical at a time when the example of Tennyson in declining to regard the acceptance of an honorific title from the State as any degradation to the fair fame of "Poetry and Polite Letters" is being so eagerly followed on every hand. Still more wasteful and paradoxical in our opinion would be the waste of skill and connoisseurship in the matter of making a choice among a most opulent field. The perplexity and utter bewilderment as to the canons which should rightly govern their choice might, in the case of such Premiers as Palmerston and Salisbury, be very well ac

counted a valid reason for suspending any appointment. But in the case of our present Prime Minister, as is well known, the situation is entirely reversed. Mr. Asquith, since the days when he rehearsed beneath the stars of midsummer in their nocturnal pomp

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in the garden quad at Balliol, has been a regular devotee of the double-flute. He not only knows the young poets of the day, but he actually quotes their immortal works. Never, surely, since the institution of the office have the auguries been so favorable.

One does not look for much brains in dancing boys or dancing girls, any more than in dancing dolls. There is nothing surprising in their accepting the negroid importations from America with enthusiasm. It is a new toy: a "fine lark," as precisely the same quality of mind at the opposite end of Society would say. To ask them to be critical of the new hops and trots as æsthetic art is irrelevant. In the hands, or the feet, of a professional dancing no doubt is a fine art; but the amateur--well one does not look for art from Philistines. They want excitement, and the new dances offering new and more lively sensations, they greedily take to them. Just what a child left to itself always does. Of the origin of these dances or where they come from most dancers are no doubt gloriously unconscious. Some may be too respectable to know, more are too ignorant; others prefer not to ask. But it is rather the chaperons who prefer not to ask. The various "trots" are drawing the men well. It would be a pity to spoil sport. But one cannot help being impatient at the silly hypocrisy which pretends to be in doubt about the meaning of these nigger movements. (We are quite willing on Sir Sydney Olivier's authority to "concede" the "Boston" as not negroid. We be not dancing masters.) They are all sex dances, as everybody knows who will know. Obviously

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they can be so danced as to refine away the essence of the dance; when it becomes pointless as well as ugly. So far as we can make out, the defence of these Yankee novelties is that youth will be youth; boys and girls must have more boisterous amusement than they have been able to get from the waltz. Obviously then if you refine away this romp element, there is nothing left that is worth having. It is precisely the indignity of the dance that appeals to the young blood. Sometimes, too, it appeals to old blood, to judge from a letter in the "Times" signed "Senex." frolicsome elder finds himself rejuvenated as he watches his daughters, whom he is showing in the ballrooms, trotting round with the boys, who remind him of his golden youth. It is a pity he does not entertain the assembly by turkey-trotting himself. He would be a truly delightful spectacle. Well, if an old man can be fool enough to like these things, one cannot be surprised if young fools do the same. One must give up asking for dignity and grace: that has gone with the House of Lords. When there was a House of Lords and there was an aristocracy, we had grand manners, whatbeen may have our morals. Whether morals are better or worse is difficult to say, but our manners are undoubtedly worse, so far as we have any manners now.

ever

But we do complain of our golden youth that, if they must have more sensation in their dancing, they go to the dark places of America for it. The dancing mind is not inventive, we can well believe, but almost at their gates they can find better models. A single visit to the Zoo will show them many more excellent ways. Consider the apes. Why not an Ape's Antic instead of a turkey-trot? Let the boys and girls practise the movements of the orang, the chimpanzee, or, best of all, the agile gibbon, and they would provide plenty of sensation for the onlookers and more exercise than they want for themselves. Boy facing girl, each on all fours on the floor; each turns back on the other and scales the wall opposite; then they approach depending on all fours from the ceiling, and face each other just as they started from the floor. The figure could be multiplied indefinitely. Half-a-dozen boys and half-a-dozen girls on all fours on the ground, heads convergent in the centre of the circle, could go through the same evolution, meeting on the ceiling. Only a little scaffolding would be needed for them to hang from. Hostesses would be delighted to provide that for such a show.

Or a Monkey Tug. Why not a monkey tug? Everybody must have watched with delight one monkey seize the tail of another, and the third seize his, and a fourth his, and so on until you have a long chain of monkeys, every one hauling at the tail of the one in front. Another variety of the tug is when several monkeys toThe Saturday Review.

gether hold on to the tail of the first and pull. There is generally much yelling. The tails of the men's evening coats would serve as the monkeys' tails perfectly well, and the effect would be wondrously similar. The spectacle would be most diverting. There would be vast amusement and much noise; just what is wanted now.

And there might be a Midges' Maze. Midges obviously dance, the salient movement being a vertical leap, the midge going up and coming down apparently in an absolutely perpendicular line. A squad of boys and girls doing this would have an extremely inane ridiculous effect, and it would be very vigorous exercise. Also it would make a considerable row. The flapping of the garments would add to the absurdity of the effect. There are some birds, we believe, which indulge (the cock-birds at any rate) in a very similar antic in the breeding season, flapping their wings (in their finest nuptial plumage) as they jump. This could be imitated very successfully by dancing youths; the girls playing the part of the admiring hens.

And why not a Fleas' Frolic? Nothing can exceed the agility of a flea. A musical arrangement of leaps could easily be devised. One dancer could leap into the arms of another or on another's back. And if it were wanted to be realistic, one could give the other a little bite, scarcely harder than a kiss. It would be a most popular dance.

If only our devotees of the negroid dances would condescend to learn from the "bugs" and apes! They should not find it difficult.

Over two hundred years ago a French diplomatist, M. Louis Rousseau de Chamoy, wrote a treatise on his profession which he entitled "L'Idee

du Parfait Ambassadeur"; and it is interesting to be reminded by this brochure, which has only just come to light, how little the problems of conduct and hospitality and bearing which beset Ambassadors to-day have altered since the seventeenth century, and how static are the qualities which go to make a successful diplomatist. M. de Chamoy discusses the advantages and drawbacks of a lavish expenditure and an imposing presence, and the pros and cons, of having "une ambassadrice" by one's side, much as an Ambassador of to-day might be conceived as resolving such questions; and the main conclusion he comes to is that, after all, it is brains and personality that count. It would be, perhaps, a little cruel to apply that test to the service at large, and there may even be posts where it would not apply at all, and where decorous stupidity would be as useful as any other qualification. But in at least two officesthe British Embassy at Washington and the American Embassy in London -brains and personality are not only desirable but absolutely essential; and it is a suggestive coincidence that both these appointments should have fallen vacant almost simultaneously, and that each should have been filled by the obviously right man. Two happier selections could hardly be conceived than those which last month sent Sir Cecil Spring-Rice to Washington and a few days ago brought Mr. Walter H. Page to London.

Friendship between Great Britain and the United States may be taken as the settled policy of both countries, and it would probably be beyond the

power of even the most maladroit British representative in Washington, and certainly impossible for any American Ambassador in London, to deflect the general current of AngloAmerican relations. But the accredited emissaries of both countries may do something to retard, and may also do a great deal to strengthen and forward, that mutual recognition by the two peoples of all that they have in common, which is the surest basis of political sympathy. This is particularly true of the British Ambassador to the United States. His opportunities for going wrong and creating friction and bringing about one of those "personal incidents" on which the American press delights to batten, are almost endless. So, too, are his opportunities for acting as interpreter of the best that there is in Great Britain to the intelligence of America. It is quite a mistake to imagine that Sir Cecil Spring-Rice has entered upon either an easy or an uninfluential office. The conditions impose on him an unusual degree of wariness. For one thing, he has to carry on his work in a glare of publicity that in Europe is not only unknown but unimaginable. For another, there is always a party in the United States anxious to score a point against Great Britain, and there are always votes to be wonthough not many, happily, in these days-by an anti-British campaign. Our Ambassador, therefore, has need of all his tact, level-headedness, and discrimination. He must be ever ready to make allowances; he must constantly remember that America is the exception; he must know what to discount; above all, he must have the instinct for taking Americans in the right way.

"A wife may be of the greatest as

She has

sistance to an Ambassador," is one of M. de Chamoy's somewhat indefinite contributions to the problem of diplomacy. In Washington, certainly, it is all but impossible to dissociate the British Ambassador's wife from her husband's failure or success. The prestige of the British Embassy may often, indeed, depend more on her social flexibility than on his official merits. There are probably very few Englishwomen who are really happy or popular in the United States, or can help being jarred—and, what is worse, showing that they are jarred by the thousand and one little differences between English and American social standards and ways of doing things. The wife of a British Ambassador has to accommodate herself to a social environment that is all the more difficult to gauge because of its similarity in general outline to what she is used to at home or in the capitals of Europe, and its dissimilarity in detail. to master the art of accepting persons and things as they come without comment or surprise, and of recognizing that what might be counted easygoingness or curiosity in London may in Washington be merely a novel token of friendliness and interest. She has to bear in mind that in matters of social usage the English and Americans, while aiming at the saine mark and meaning essentially the same thing, often behave and express themselves in opposite senses. Not every British Ambassador at Washington has had a wife who possessed these qualities of perception; and more than one hostess at the Embassy on Connecticut Avenue has passed her time, like Lady Barberina in Mr. Henry James's incomparable tale, in a state of hopeless alienation from, and misunderstanding of, her new surroundings. When this is the case, the result is apt to be disastrous, because Washington resembles nothing so much as a whispering

gallery, its society is small, exceedingly intimate, and enjoys a highly specialized code of etiquette that is all its own, and a mistake, especially a mistake on the part of the British Ambassador's wife, becomes public property at once.

It ought to be written up over every mantelpiece in the Foreign Office that the type of man to represent Great Britain in the United States is the type of man who for a generation or more has represented the United States in Great Britain. Washington is the last city in the world where an Ambassador of the reserved and angular species, all stiffness and conventions, can make any headway. So far indisputably the best representative that this or any other country has sent to America was Mr. Bryce. He possessed, of course, many advantages that none of his successors is ever likely to command. But at bottom, the real reason why he achieved so remarkable a triumph was that in his instincts and his interests he was as far removed as could be from the ordinary professional diplomatist, and approximated very closely to the sort of man that the United States has been accustomed to send to London. From Adams down to Mr. Walter Page, whose advent it is a pleasure to welcome, all the American Ambassadors have been men of distinction, cultivation, literary aptitude, and wide democratic sympathies. They have done as Mr. Page will doubtless do: they have gone everywhere and met everyone; they have delivered addresses at meetings and universities and before philosophical and literary societies; they have made themselves an intimate part of the public life of the country to which they were accredited; they have been as emphatically Ambassadors to the people as to the Court or Whitehall or the West End. A great and unique