in the literal meaning of the term, he subjects him to its equivalent in an industrial bondage which saps out existence by hopeless despair. Whatever may be the military requisites of Europe, on which a justification of Protection is partially based, there is no reason why the tariff should be maintained in America, save the impossibility of reducing it without creating dissatisfaction, and, in some respects, disaster among the manufacturing classes. The evil, however, is working to the point when the heroic remedy must of necessity be soon applied or not at all. Nor, in expressing this, are we without an historical parallel, as may be seen in the secular history of the Jews just prior to the commencement of the Christian era. The nation at the epoch was as full of intelligence as the America of to-day, and the people were, according to Dr. Geikie, looking forward to a future " as gross as Mahomet's paradise." They were thirsting in the same way as nations still are, for all the blessings of material gain, to obtain which the fulfilment of the law was the ideal aim. This spiritual protection, which isolated them from the rest of mankind by drawing round Palestine a barrier as effectual as a modern tariff, was a base corruption of the Mosaic institutions, and created a spirit of hate that "embittered even private life." Not only did they hate and injure one another, but "all alike hated whole classes of their own nation and the whole heathen races. "" Ancient exclusivism, adopted for the sake of worldly dominion and prosperity, became the means of annihilating a race, and, whatever way we may look at it, the most important race of antiquity. Under the new conditions of modern progress the very same state of affairs is thus working up again, without, however, an atom of spirituality as a redeeming feature, and called by the name of patriotism. America, the nineteenth century "land of promise,' ," has consequently before her eyes the warning of the past; but where, in the recurrence of the world to heathen ideals, and worse, in its denial of Godfor at least the belief in the gods was the making of Greece and Rome-will arise the Spirit that rescued mankind from the chaos of their own formning, and inaugurated a bond of union known by the name of "love"?

It is by no means, therefore, with a

selfish view that the British people advocate the extension of free exchange. It is the only thing that can reconcile the interests of humanity all over the world, by distributing the inhabitants at the places most suitable for their support, and thus deciding the position of each individual in life on the basis of an unfettered competition. In the chaining up of competition by Protection lies the secret of half the industrial troubles, as over-production in the modern sense could not otherwise take place, but would be limited by the natural operation of the laws of Free Trade, when the interests of the farmer and the artisan would remain identical.

With the destruction of Protection, therefore, in America, the condition of that country will be radically changed; and there cannot be a doubt that when it occurs, a genuine impulse must be given. not only to the well-being of the people, but to the well-being of all peoples. The reason of the success so far of democracy lies in the fact that it promotes the greatest good of the greatest number; but this cardinal principle is being forgotten in America, and outside of the British Isles or in portions of the empire has only a semi-existence. The foolishness of stimulating production in the United States and excluding the competition of the world, is seen in the inability to lighten taxation by reducing the annual surplus, which curtails the operations of business by causing a constant flow of currency to the Treasury. The surplus is thus a rock of offence" to every one engaged in agriculture and commerce, and cannot be maintained to benefit the manufacturer. Already the farmers' alliances are multiplying in every direction, all breathing bitter sectarianism and full of economical fads for the begetting of a money millennium. There are, accordingly, some hard times before democracy in the United States; but the strangest thing connected with it is the deliberate manner Americans have worked up trouble for themselves in the very spirit of that Navigation Act they once so fiercely denounced. If, in the land of its early development, democracy can make no advance on the victory of the rights of man, its day is done there, great and splendid as its service has been. The people of the United Kingdom have improved upon it by the

addition to its triumph, so far as they are concerned, of free exchange, and the hopes of the working men of all nations must henceforth rest exclusively on the unfolding of British genius. It may be that, owing to forgetfulness of her duty toward humanity, American is at the length of her tether for the present, that the impetus derived from the founders can carry her no further. She has walked She has walked on the path marked out by her early history, gathering wealth at every step, trusting to a rapidly developing continent,

and glorying in the selfishness of the moment, but without the guidance of the wise men when the way was uncertain; and as a consequence, if no halt is made, if the route is not retraced, all the magnificent possibilities before the New World may be closed indefinitely by the reaction of that very self-confidence which opened them up. This would be a great disappointment for the Americans themselves, and a sad ending to their own expectations.-Blackwood's Magazine.

-Public Opinion.

RECENT FICTION.

AN OLD MAID'S LOVE. By Maarten Maartens. New York: Harper & Brothers.

IN THE HEART OF THE STORM. By Maxwell Gray, author of "The Silence of Dean Maitland,' "The Reproach of Annesley." (Appleton's Town and Country Library.) New York: D. Appleton & Co.

THE MAID OF HONOR. By the Hon. Lewis
Wingfield, Author of " Lady Grizel,"
""The
Lords of Strogue," " "Abigel Rowe," etc.
(Town and Country Library.) New York:
D. Appleton & Co.
CONSEQUENCES. A Novel. By Egerton Castle.
New York: D. Appleton & Co.

FROM SHADOW TO SUNLIGHT. By the Marquis of Lorne. New York: D. Appleton & Co.

Mr. Maartens has been made known favorably to English and American readers in the past. His "Joost Avelingh," published in this country about two years ago, was a strong and original piece of work. The book before us has much of the same quality which distinguished the earlier novel-humor, pathos, fidelity to nature, dramatic vigor, and severe artistic taste. The story is based on the fidelity of devotion shown by a narrow-minded woman to a brilliant and delightful young scapegrace, her adopted nephew, Arnout Oostrum. Seduced from his affection for his early sweetheart by the graces of a brilliant

Frenchwoman, with whom he has an intrigue, he almost breaks the heart of Susanna Vaselkamp, the old Puritan, who, however, resolves that her nephew shall expiate his sin by marry. ing the adventuress. It is discovered, unfortunately for this scheme, that the lady has a husband living. Nothing daunted, thinking only of the sin and nothing of the possible evil of the connection, when legalized, to Oostrum, the old maid, who is cast in an iron mould, spends her money lavishly in seeking to secure a divorce, so that the guilty ones may marry. She is well summed up in the verdict of Parson Jacob, another character, who tells her, "You are one of God's fanatics, but you do the devil's work." The character is drawn with remarkable strength, and is the central figure of the book. Oostrum is a joyous, devil-may-care fellow, who sins easily and repents quickly, but is full of good and attractive qualities in spite of his sins, which are those of a bright and vivacious young fel. low, who has seen but little of the world, One does not care much for the French viscountess in spite of her Parisian fascinations, and is disposed to wonder how so sturdy a fellow at bottom as Oostrum should be beguiled from his sweet little adorer Dorothy by the foreign enchantress. A great charm of the book is found in the racy pictures of the minor personages, who are so natural and hearty as to take strong hold on the reader's affections. It is a story in the best vein of realism, though we suspect that the author would resent being classified with many of the best-known writers of this so-called modern school of fiction. Mr. Maartens has effectively followed up the impression made by "Joost Avelingh," which, we believe, was published by the Appletons in their "Town and Country Library."

Maxwell Gray has given American readers another strong story in the new novel, "In the Heart of the Storm." "The Silence of Dean Maitland" was one of the great English books of its year, and though the first and best the author has written, she has not failed to show the same artistic touch and vigorous grasp of her material in her succeeding books. Much of the present story is connected with the great Indian mutiny, and one is tempted to comment on the fact that this remarkable episode has never lost its fascination, in spite of the fact that it has been made the theme of innumerable stories by English writers. Its

The ad

interest seems inexhaustible, like that of the French Revolution or of our own great Civil War. Philip Randal, the English officer in India, who, brought up as an adopted son of an old miller, does not know his true lineage, is scarcely less unhappy in his passion for a beautiful and highly born girl than is his adopted sister (also his betrothed), Jessie Meade, in her romantic and tragic attachment to Claude Medway, who tries in vain to make her consent to an illicit connection. The interest of the book is equally divided between these two, and both are portrayed with strength and nobility of treatment. ventures of Philip amid the terrible surroundings of the mutiny, specially that episode wherein he saves Ada Maynard and restores her to her friends after the massacre of Cawnpore, are related with great verve. The gallant young soldier's sweetheart is one of the finest types of the high-bred English gentlewoman, strong, gentle, self-sustained, a blend. ing of courage and womanly sweetness quite delightful. But we suspect the reader will be still more in love with Jessie Meade, who fights a battle at home in her spiritual stress, quite as severe a test of strength as any fought with sword and musket in India. The brave and sorely tried girl, persecuted by the pas sion of the man she loves, misconstrued in her own circle by the harsh judgments of her friends, flies to the stony heart of London to hide herself amid its millions, and perchance to earn her bread by her cleverness as an artist. There is no tragedy so pathetic and terrible as that of a young and beautiful woman alone in a great city, without money or friends, helpless except so far as she can help herself, exposed to insult, face to face with starvation, oftentimes with no relief except a leap in the river, if she would remain true to herself and self-respect. The chivalry of man in such cases proves a reed no less rotten than the forbearance of the savage. Jessie Meade does not leap from London Bridge, however, and is rescued for a brief period of happiness. We do not propose to show the outcome of the touching story, which is managed by the author with a keen sense of all the possibilities of the interest of the situation. Nor is it needful to tell our readers how Philip Randal found his birthright and what he did with it. Those who read the book will admire the delicacy and skill with which the fine touch and true feeling of the writer have evolved the tangled web of her

story, in obedience to the impulses of character and temperament which from start to finish govern the actions of her personages. While in no distinctive way a novel of character, character dominates incident and gives it a rich, warm flavor of humanity.

Mr. Wingfield's "Maid of Honor" is notable for its striking portrait of a French Mephistopheles, the Abbé Pharamond. It is characteristically French in this, that to the passion for evil for its own sake is added the lust of the flesh, the lubricous temperament which the Gallic mind inevitably drags into situation and character when it contemplates human wickedness, a tendency which the English imitator seems bound to respect in his study of French social conditions. The slime of the serpent must always go with his bite. His sister-in-law, the Marchioness de Gange, is practically left under his charge at a country château, and the abbé proceeds at once to envelop her with his subtle nets of solicitation. Fortunately a passionless and coldly virtuous woman, she has but little trouble in resisting the tempter, though her conjugal arts are not sufficient to retain the affections of her husband, who is a devotee of Mesmer, and who, if not quite a boneless and flabby fool, is altogether a contemptible personage. One could almost excuse a wife for unfaithfulness to such an emasculated partner. Failing the power to seduce, Abbé Pharamond enters into a plot to destroy the heroine and secure her patrimony, a plot into which the marquis is a halfunwilling accomplice through the control held over his mind by his more intellectual brother. The endangered heroine is finally rescued by the help of a Jacobin leader (the story is laid in the period of the French Revolution, though we get only side glimpses of its main movements), and the wicked brethren become the victims of the enraged populace during an emeute. So the deus ex machina is found in a revolutionary mob. One does not find much fascination in the nexus of the story, though it is very well told. The marchioness is a decidedly uninteresting person, in whose fate we take little interest, except as she affords material for the audacious deviltries of Abbé Pharamond. In this character the author works con amore to model a unique image of wickedness, and with some measure of success, He is the redeeming feature of the story, if it be proper to use a qualifying word in this case, so suggestive on the ethical as

well as the literary side. It is proper to say that the title of the book is derived from the far-fetched reason that the heroine had been maid of honor to the queen.

A much more interesting Mephistopheles than the super-subtile abbé, and not without a suggestion of the soutane, however, comes to light in Mr. Egerton Castle's "Consequences." We are not familiar with this writer's work, but if he is a novice he has made a decidedly clever beginning, fresh in its initial conception and quite original in its methods. The notion of a hero expurging himself and becoming a legal nobody by a craftily devised pretence of suicide, that he may reappear as a somebody else in after years amid the surroundings of his early life, is not altogether new in fiction, but it has not been worn threadbare. It may be readily seen that the motif is capable of very effective treatment. Captain George Kerr, an English officer, who disappears from the world that knows him because he is disappointed in his Spanish wife Carmen, again makes his entry on the stage as Colonel David Fargus, an exConfederate cavalry leader from America, whose sword had made him famous. We find the cause of the remarkable step of selfeffacement altogether insufficient, but it will serve as well as another in introducing the action of the comedy. Colonel Fargus discovers that he had been a fool, and that his beautiful Carmen had left a boy, who had grown up and become an English soldier. The unknown father attaches himself to the son, and among the earliest of his paternal offices he seconds him in a sabre duel with a German university student, who is promptly dissected in a style that makes the colonel believe his offspring a true chip of the old block. We do not reach the thick of the plot till the elder brother of the pseudo-Fargus dies intestate and without children, leaving a handsome rent-roll. Who is next of kin? George Kerr is dead, and Colonel Fargus, for more than one reason, cannot bring him to life again, Lewis Kerr, his son, is supposed to be the heir. Now enter Mephistopheles, not in red or through a trap-door, but in the sedate garb of a learned college don, an Oxford fellow, a man of distinguished parts, and outwardly the pink of snug propriety. The demon is hidden under the very English exterior of Mr. Charles Hillyard, the son of a sister of George Kerr, and whose very brill

iant brains are entirely undiluted by any principle except that of self-love. Lewis, on the point of entering into possession of the property, receives a letter from a London law firm indicating the possession of letters on the part of Hillyard which circumstantially prove that the former was the son not of George Kerr's wife, but of his mistress, and therefore not competent to be his uncle's heir. Fargus now realizes the logic of consequences, "' in the fact that his idolized son risks disinheritance on the score of illegitimacy from his own past folly, and that he, the only one who could explain the true meaning of the dangerous documents, is legally dead. All the resources of his craft and cour

age are, however, stimulated to the utmost by paternal love to fight a losing battle to a victory. Hillyard to his amazement, for he can discover no motive, soon learns that his true opponent in the duel is not his cousin, but his cousin's mentor. It is scarcely needful to dull the edge of the reader's curiosity by retailing the thrust and parry of two daring and well-matched fencers. Each learns to respect the other's prowess in this battle of wits, and if Colonel Fargus finally disarms his opponent without revealing his identity to the world, it is only by the accident which always justifies, in novels at least, Milton's dictum, "Thrice is he armed that hath his quarrel just." The somewhat vulgar and un-Miltonic accident in this case comes through the agency of a pretty barmaid, who had loved the sly college don "not wisely but too well."

The conception of Hillyard, the Oxford scholar, who carries parallel with his keen love of science and letters and a genuine intellectual pre-eminence the tastes of the voluptuary and the arts of the scoundrel, is a strong piece of character work, well worked out in detail and studied with notable literary art. The cynical indifference of one so well established in his own superiority that he despises the opinions of those who have learned that he is a hypocrite is warmed, too, with a touch of humanity in keeping with the cynicism. The beaten gamester at the last discovers that his plebeian mistress, she who had been the principal agent in his defeat, has a genuine hold on his corrupt heart; and he makes her an honest woman, in utter defiance of his own interests and worldly convention, because it so pleased him. An interesting minor complication of fresh fancy is that the woman beloved by Lewis Kerr had already fallen desperately in love with the

gallant ex-Confederate hero, Colonel Fargus, still a youngish man in the prime of life. But there we have said enough. Let the reader take a taste of the pudding and find out the rest of the plums for himself.

us.

The Marquis of Lorne possesses the merits of having husbanded an English princess, of having made a respectable Governor-General of Canada, and of being the heir of a dukedom and the future head of the Campbells. His ambition, however, leads him to crave laurels which are not accidental; and he has sought to struggle up the cliffs of Parnassus and seek fellowship with the muses with the sincere self-confidence which sometimes makes mediocrity respectable. Our noble author is fortunate in this, that he has no reputation to risk by writing poor fiction. Candor forces us to hint that, had his prefix been a plebeian title, he would have found it difficult to have found any shrewd practitioner in literary obstetrics to have presided at the birth of the infant in the case of the alleged novel before The book is without point, and the only feature at all interesting (something, by the way, which has only casual connection with the story) is a description of a remarkable cave on the seaboard of Northern Scotland, which is rather good. How the fair American heroine meets, loves, and espouses a youthful Scot whom she meets in California constitutes the whole of the story, which is unillumined by any scintilla of romance or by any penetrating insight into matters which the world cares for. Why this prosaic narrative should have commended itself to the fancy of the author one seeks in vain to guess. "From Shadow to Sunlight" has at least the minor merit of being short. It was an ancient boast of the Clan Campbell, It is a far cry to Sochow." We may say, too, that it is a long stretch from the well-marked talent of the Duke of Argyle, who has made himself honored as a scholar and thinker, to the mediocrity of his eldest son, who seeks to disport himself in the more airy and elegant fields of letters. It is, however, an infinitely better and manlier way of dispelling ennui than imposing heavy "baccarat" on his friends, as the price to be paid for the honor of his society. The public at least are not compelled to buy and read any particular book.

ON THE STAGE AND OFF. The Brief Career of a Would-be Actor. By Jerome K. Jerome. New York: Henry Holt & Co.

Among the recent English writers who have