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from the need of showing the grace of tact and the tenderness of respect. Supreme in health and strength, predominant in power, with unworn nerves and unexhausted energies, with hope in the future and possession in the present, it is not unreasonable to ask for this indulgence of reverent courtesy to the old, who have been and now are not. But the young are mostly tyrannous. Even when they are kindly they are no less arbitrary than when they are the reverse. Their attentions humiliate as well as worry; their assumption of authority-for your own good -presupposes a state of quasi-imbecility which renders you incapable of judging what is best for yourself; they prescribe your diet, your clothing, your goings out and comings in, your hours, and the amount of ventilation you shall or shall not have. They interfere with your lifelong habits, and inch by inch occupy the whole territory, till you have not so much as a rood of freedom left you. They oppress you with their unresisting manipulation, and finally roll you flat; and the last days of an old person are ofttimes days of secret grief and pain for the very assiduity of the young, who, under the guise of kindly care, exercise a tyranny that is practically torture.

How often we see this as the last act in the drama of private life! Here, the husband, who was once such an irresponsible tyrant, ruling his family with the heavy hand of power, now broken and nerveless, lies under the heel of his erstwhile subjugated wife and is snubbed and coerced by both her and his daughters. There, the woman, who has been in her household what a kestral is among the small birds in a garden, is now reduced to the state of a broken idol whose influence is destroyed, and whose inherent weakness is disclosed. She has lost all command, and can take refuge only in complaints. No one asks her advice, and no one would take it if she gave it. And no one heeds her wishes. Like the Apostle, now that she is old, others gird her and carry her whither she would not, and she stretches forth her own hands in vain. It is pitiable to see these deposed kings, these discrowned queens. Unlike that ghastly

act of reverent loyalty which crowned the dead Inez queen, and put a sceptre in her fleshless hand to repair her humiliation when alive, they who were once domestic despots are now no better than protected serfs, and the burden of tyranny they laid on others, they in their time have to bear.

Other tyrannies are there in private life, under which we free-born Britons groan. In those country towus where ecclesiastical politics run high and the elaborate ritual will have no dealings with the unmusical service, the tyranny of what is essentially sectarianism rules heavily. You must belong to one or the other section, and you must make your choice which it shall be. You will not be allowed to hold a middle course and to see the good in each, and, seeing that good, to sip now from one and now from the other cup. If you go to St. Luke's, where they wear stoles and albs and the sentiment of sacrifice obtains, you will not be welcome at St. Mark's, where the minister recognizes the Wesleyan as his brother and calls the Roman Catholic a papist and an idolater. The tyranny of sectarianism owns no allegiance to the doctrine of a common humanity, and the facetted quality of truth is a heresy which each side rejects alike. The especial church which you attend, and the ecclesiastical doctrines which that church favors, are of more value in the minds of these tyrants for the sake of dogma, than the Sermon on the Mount or St. Paul's famous homily on Charity.

And what about the tyranny of social conformity ?-the doing at Rome as the Romans do, from the adoption of an indecent fashion to the following in the footsteps of one who brings in an onerous and expensive custom? Take the tyranny of wedding presents alone who says there, he or she will never be a slave? Or the tyranny of Christmas cards and presents-who has the courage of revolt against these? Who shakes off the yoke of the bore, and declines to submit to the tyranny which politeness would fain impose? Who dares oppose a popular sentiment?

call missionaries busybodies who neglect the duties lying to their hands at home, for the sake of the excitement of

adventure and unrestricted action abroad?-speak of certain forms of protection as simple acts of national self-defence while maintaining that our present system of free trade is at once suicidal and immoral? Or, who in an assembly of monometallic bankers would be brave enough to dilate on the tyranny of gold as the sole standard, at the same time urging the adoption of a silver copartnership? It wants a man as brave and steadfast as the mythic Tell to do these things; which, however, are not among the tyrannies of private life, and have no business here. That private life has

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yokes enough and to spare of its own, and the thumbscrews of politics need not be pressed into its service. If we can keep our feet clear of the domestic gyves and our backs free from the burden of home tyrannies, we may be content; for few indeed are able to do this with completeness or satisfaction. the same time, it is as well to remember that one who hugs his chains and dares not make a bold stroke for freedom is fit for nothing but slavery; and that many of the tyrannies to which we submit are caused by cowardice and might be conquered by courage.-National Review.

FOREIGN LITERARY NOTES.

HERBERT SPENCER, who was one of the three men, outside of Germany, who were recently appointed by Emperor William knights of the Ordre pour le Mérite, has declined the honor on the ground that his opinions, repeatedly expressed in his writings, debar him from accepting it.

PROFESSOR MOMMSEN intends to visit Rome about the end of October, and to stay there for three months at the least. He has informed a friend living in Rome that he wishes to put a finishing touch to certain works which he hopes shortly to publish, and that some important researches in the library and archives of the Vatican are necessary to their completion.

THE Saturday Review has nicknamed Sir Lewis Morris as 66 Tennyson's Tame Parrot." He also declares "Sir Lewis Morris has no claim to his knighthood that we know of, save that he has a lackey's love of titles."

A FACSIMILE reproduction of Governor William Bradford's Ms. 66 History of the Voyage of the Mayflower and the Formation of Plimoth Plantation by the Pilgrim Fathers' will be published in November by Messrs. Ward & Downey. Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., of Boston, are the agents in America.

THE most curious religious book ever written is Père Berruger's "Improvements on the Bible." He rewrote the Scriptures in the style of a fashionable novel, stating, in his preface, that Moses and the other writers are too barren in their descriptions.

MESSRS. J. SHIELLS & Co., of Bury Street, announce the publication of a new edition of the works of Edgar Allan Poe, in eight vol. umes, the first two of which will be issued early in October, and the whole by the begin. ning of December. Each volume will be illustrated with three photogravures, the greater number of them from original drawings by Mr. F. C. Tilney, the remainder being reproductions of portraits or of scenes connected with Poe's life.

JOHN MORLEY, being out of politics, is at work on a history of the union of England and Ireland, using the secret papers in the Gov. ernment archives for the years from 1795-1805.

DICKENS'S "Cricket on the Hearth'' (Heimchen am Herd) has given the name to a new illustrated German weekly, the first number of which has been issued this month.

THE articles on rare books, first editions, pottery, pictures, and postage stamps which Mr. W. Roberts contributed to the Nineteenth

Century and Fortnightly Review, have been carefully revised, and will appear in volume form very shortly under the auspices of Mr. George Redway.

THE patriotic admonitions and exhortations which Bismarck has addressed to his countrymen from 1848 to the present year will be issued in book form by Dr. Hans Blum, who has before this shown himself a great admirer of the ex-Chancellor. Dr. Blum is the son of Robert Blum, the celebrated politician and member of the Frankfort Parliament, who was

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shot at Vienna in 1848 by a court-martial for his participation in the October Revolution. It is said that Prince Bismarck told Dr. Hans Blum that he would also have shot his father if he had been in command of Vienna at the time.

MRS. HEMANS.-Mr. Mackenzie Bell has addressed the following letter to the Liverpool Mercury: "To day (September 25th) is the one hundred and second anniversary of the birth of Mrs. Hemans. Her faults as a poet are obvious, but the fact is indisputable that, despite these faults, her name remains familiar to all English-speaking people throughout the world, and her work continues to sell in cheap editions. Surely when so much can be affirmed truly of any poet after the lapse of more than a century, that poet may almost be said to be a classic in some sense, and yet Liverpool (her native city, and where she lived when she wrote some of her most noteworthy poems) has not placed even a memorial tablet on the house in Duke Street, still standing, I believe, in which she was born."

MR. GEORGE REDWAY will publish imme. diately a little book entitled "How to Write Fiction, especially the Art of Short-Story Writing a Study in Technique." The method is that of a text book, and the models used are Guy de Maupassant's short stories. In an appendix the author illustrates his method by rewriting an ill-constructed story, the rewritten draft following the original.

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THE author of " Degeneration" writes as follows, in reply to the reference of the Jewish Chronicle to " the so-called Max Nordau :" "You go on saying' Max Nordau's real name is Simon Sudfeld.' This is a falsehood which you might have avoided with the slightest measure of care. My petty names (or ought I to say my Christian names'?) are Max Simon, After having assumed, at my father's behest, for reasons that have no interest for strangers, and at the age of fifteen, the name of Nordau, I had this name officially and legally conferred upon me by decree of Karl von Zeyk, then Royal Hungarian Minister of the Interior,

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under No. 13,138, and the date of April 11th, 1873. Since then Nordau is my 'real' name, and I have no legal right to bear and use another."

MAX NORDAU has always refused to allow himself to be "nailed to a specialty." He told Mr. R. H. Sherard, recently, the reason why he wrote " Degeneration" was that he was sick of always hearing himself spoken of as the author of "The Conventional I.ies of our Civilization." Now that he is being spoken of universally as the author of "Degeneration," he is writing a novel-his third-and will not write the philosophical work which he has in his head until he has disassociated himself from the specialty of philosophical writing. Mr. Sherard says that Dr. Nordau "lives a very quiet, simple life with his mother and sister, whom he has entirely supported since he was sixteen years old. He takes pleasure in nothing but work, and neither drinks, smokes, nor goes out into society. He speaks English, French, Italian, German, and Hungarian with equal fluency, and can converse in Russian, Spanish, and the Scandina. vian languages. He is, moreover, an urbane and most amiable man.' "" His hours for literary work are from 8.30 P.M. till midnight.

MISCELLANY.

THE SISTERHOOD OF WOMAN. -Although the universal brotherhood of man lies avowedly in the background of the socialistic dream, no zealous Utopian has ever yet ventured to

The bond of fellowship which exists between man and man simply by virtue of a common sex is entirely absent between woman and woman. It is, in fact, replaced by a fundamental antagonism, a vague enmity which renders the general attitude of a feminine creature toward her kind essentially different from that of the male creature in identical relations. In individual cases this feeling is counteracted by affection or by sympathy, but apart from personal sentiment it remains, severing every living woman from the rest of her sex. great extent this arises from woman's incapac ity for impersonal feeling or abstract emotion. In life's fray she fights either for her own hand, or, more often, for some one man or woman whom she loves, but rarely for the welfare of her sex at large. Were it not for

apply the same idea to the opposite sex.

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this strange lack of humanity in her nature, the emancipation of woman would not have been so grieviously retarded. If the few women who suffered aforetime under the restrictions which hedged in their liberty had been able to count on the sympathy and cooperation of all women, the time of their subjugation would have been enormously abbre. viated. As it was, the first seekers after freedom met with more opposition from their own sex than they did from the other; nor, indeed, do they fare better to-day. It was not the great mass of womanhood who worked to obtain the Married Women's Property Act, nor the restitution of their municipal rights, nor the vindication of their personal rights by the Jackson case verdict. These enormous changes in their social status were effected by an inconsiderable minority of women brave enough and logical enough to impress the male powers that be with the justice of their demands. But for their courage they received no sympathy, and for their success not one word of thanks-nothing, in fact, but execration from the huge inert feminine mass in whose service their strength was spent.

It is in fact this essential disunion, this lack of cohesive power, which makes the economic position of woman what it is. The work which she is now doing with her might she owes more to the self-interest of the employer than to her own energy. In many fields of labor women are ousting men from employment, because their work is as well done as men can do it, and done at about half the price. The emancipation of the womanworker simply means that the capitalist has found the road to the cheapest labor, and makes the best bargain he can. When it is struck the woman wails that she is underpaid, apparently unconscious that the remedy lies in her own hands. If each woman who works were to adopt the tactics of man and combine for the common benefit, instead of standing alone and making her own terms, the value of her labor would soon be equal to his. But this is just what she cannot do. She cannot form an alliance with her own sex, either offensive or defensive, and respect its covenant. That is why trade unionism among women is still almost a farce and its operation ineffectual, and why the associations formed by women for their betterment and governed by them are so apt to become disabled through internal strife. Whatever strength there is in woman, it is not the strength of unity: far less are equality and

fraternity sequels to the liberty she claims. At the moment her most pretentious claim is for parliamentary enfranchisement. I am not here concerned with the justice-or injustice of the claim, but with the contention that its success or failure depends almost entirely upon herself. If all womanhood were to demand the vote as with one voice, the days of her exclusion from political activity would be numbered. For the present obsta cle to her obtaining it comes not so much from man's disinclination to grant it as from the passive antagonism of those women who do not want it.

Yet there never was a time when women were so interested in their own sex as they are now, though whether this interest is due to an impulse of morbid curiosity or to a genuine human sympathy is open to question. It is certain that an increasing number of women who are morally stainless give evidence of an extraordinary absorption in the character and condition of those whose lives are notoriously and avowedly vicious. For. merly, the barrier which separated the virtuous among women from the fallen was abso. lutely definite and impassable. On the prin ciple that to touch pitch is to be inevitably defiled, those within the fold held no communication with the outcast, whose very existence they were expected to ignore. Of late, however, the pharisaical passing by on the other side has been replaced by an abnormal attraction toward the gutter, and virtue's crown of virtue is won by devising schemes for the redemption of the fallen and the puri. fication of the sinner, through intercourse with the saint. There are those who profess to perceive in this association the germ of a brave humanitarianism, the inauguration of a new and fervent charity that presages an era of feminine fellowship and amity. To my mind it has no such significance, but is simply a form of hysteria based upon a morbid appetite for coquetting with sin, so characteristic of the modern woman, The kind of sin which she has neither the opportunity nor the desire to commit has a fascination for her perverse, fainéant soul. She is like the little betrothed bride in one of Marcel Prévost's stories; and with charity's patchwork quilt for a cloak, she satisfies her curiosity by coming in contact with those who have drunk the cup of knowledge to the dregs. Yet her inveterate habit of throwing dust in her own eyes no doubt obscures the underlying motive of her devotion to what is called

66 rescue work." A vague pity for the Paula Tanquerays of this world she is conscious of, a pity which can easily be made to sound like that inexhaustible human sympathy which hopeth all things, believeth all things, and endureth all things.

Take, again, the friendship of one woman for another when both stand upon the same moral and social level. It is in nine cases out of ten devoid of the obligations of loyalty and honor which are inherent in the friend. ship between one man and another. There is less reserve in it and also less sincerity, for a woman will reveal her heart of hearts to a friend and quarrel with her the next day because she has pirated her bonnet or alienated an admirer. Such relations never become stable or sacred between women, for they are apt to begin by chance, proceed with passion, and die at a breath. Even at fever heat a woman never gives as much to another as she gives to her lightest lover, and at any moment she is ready to sacrifice her friend at the behest of any man in whom she is momentarily interested. For his entertainment she will betray any confidence without a scruple or a regret, even if she refrains from denouncing her feminine friend to the first comer as soon as a shadow of misunderstanding has arisen between them. In the lives of most men there are only one or two friendship-bonds riveted by years of intercourse, which noth. ing but undreamed of treachery can sever. Women, on the other hand, make and discard friends with equal facility. If they are seldom true to men, their fidelity to their own sex is rarer far, for there are no Davids and Jonathans among women, no friendships founded on mutual faith and held in honor. Until woman learns to conduct her relations with her own sex on the same principle as that on which men act, the sisterhood of woman will never come within measurable distance of the possible. She has learnt so much from man in this decade that it is not unreasonable to hope she may yet learn the true character of friendship as well as the policy of combination. When woman stands shoulder to shoulder with her sister in public and in private life, she will stand at the very gates of her kingdom, abreast of that "brave vibration, each way free."-Saturday Review.

THE VALUE OF "B.A.' TO WOMEN.-As a mere man, who has taken an Oxford degree, and has never found it of the slightest possible use, perhaps I may be permitted to say

that the anxiety of ladies to be allowed to present a university with £7 10s., in exchange for a couple of letters, has frequently occasioned me some surprise. The plain fact about the B.A. degree is that it means very little. Indeed, it is a very misleading thing, because it is equally open to the mere passman' and to the most brilliant scholar of his year, and puts them both on the same level. If you want to know what a man has done at Oxford, you think nothing of the B.A. degree and everything of the class he has taken, which would be the same whether he took his degree or not. It is the fashion to take one's degree; and the fashion is so strong that schoolmasters are practically obliged to do so; but for ten men out of every dozen who pay the extra fees to the university, the degree is quite useless in after-life, and in England we never think of putting it after our names, except occasionally on the title-page of a book, if we write one. However, there is another side to this question. If going to the 'Varsity" ever became as common an incident in the lives of well-to-do young women as it is in those of young men-if, say, as many lady students as men went into residence annually at Oxford or Cambridge-this aspect of the degree-its uselessness--might prevent its being sought by a large proportion of the ladies. On the other hand, the university might then begin to regret, from a financial point of view, that it had ever done anything to check such an important source of rev. enue; and the authorities even now do not seem to have considered how much the university chests would benefit by the additional fees which women are ready to pay. But as things are, and as they certainly will continue to be for many years to come, it is practically only the women who intend to make use of the degree, or of its equivalent, who are energetic enough to take the examinations; and this denial of the ordinary label to them is really a hardship.

Not merely among English people ignorant of the conditions of university life, but out. side England, and in the colonies more particularly, it is difficult for a woman who has done even brilliantly in the Oxford or Cambridge examinations to obtain posts, educational or otherwise, which the degree, though it means absolutely nothing but a payment of fees, would at once have secured her. In this way our two ancient universities have actually done harm to several women who have used the facilities there for taking the exami

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