correct; or that th the American boardinghouse keeper, who said she could "eat a hundred boarders, but could only sleep fifty," used the verbs to eat" and "to sleep'' in a "in a sense that (although it may have conveyed the meaning to her uncritical auditory) was a savage assault upon the head of poor Priscian, and that its perpetrator was guilty of a worse Yankee orse than outrage upon correct English. The slang of the streets and the stables, and of the would-be witty and comic young men of the universities and great public schools, is another predisposing cause of the increasing vulgarity of vernacular English. Brevity may be the soul of wit, but there is neither soul nor wit in such fashionable brevities as vet for veterinary surgeon, exams for examinations, pub for publichouse, comp for compositor, Saturday Pops for Saturday popular concerts, the Zoo for the Zoological Gardens, perks for perquisites, thou for thousands, cit for citizen, ad for advertisement, bizz for business, and such Americanisins as he goes out nights and works mornings.

A still more prevalent and more deeplyrooted inelegancy is the use of the possessive case in such phrases as "a friend of Mr. Jones's," "a sister of Mr. Brown's," a whim of Mr. Smith's,' "where the with the apostrophe is clearly unnecessary. The "of" is quite sufficient as a mark of the possessive; and the French in similar cases would say, un ami de M. Jones,"

une e sœur de M. Brown," and "une fantaisie de M. Smith," all of which could be correctly and clearly rendered in English without the s. This colloquialism should be left to the exclusive use of the illiterate, and never suffered to blossom into print.

Five hundred years are but a short time in the history of a nation, but long in the history and life of a language, unless the language becomes fossilized like Greek and Latin, and only exists in the literature of past ages. The language spoken five hundred years ago in England, copious and beautiful as it was, is all but unintelligible to the men of the present day, except to a few scholars; and the English of to-day is likely to be as unintelligible to the Americans and the Australians of the future as that of Beowulf to the School Board children and the shopkeepers of our time.

For this reason and for many ot others, it

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is incumbent upon us, who have inherited the precious literary legacy of bygone ages, to hand it down to posterity as we have received it from our illustrious ancestors, of the seventeenth and eighteenth and (now rapidly expiring) nineteenth centuries. The abortive proposals of Dean Swift are far more opportune in our day than they' ev were i in his, and the correction, improvement, and ascertainment of the English tongue are easier of accomplishment by the quiet authority of a Minister of Education, whom public opinion is ripe to acknowledge, and whose efforts would indubitably be supported by the highest intellects of the time. The ascertainment" of what is really and truly the classical English language, freed from the slang, the vulgar colloquialisms, the silly coinages of new words, and what may be called the "gabble" of the multitude, would not overtask the mental energies of any competent lexicographer whose work would receive the imprimatur of the Minister of Education. Such a man would not need to wander in the bewildering mazes of etymology, where he would be almost as certain to lose his way as his predecessors have done, but might marshal the literary words of the language into a compact army without inquiring into the pedigree of every soldier in the ranks. It is these generals and commanders of the noble army that fights all the battles of civilization with p pens for sword, and thoughts for cannon-balls, and that ought not to be encumbered with the ragged rabble of camp-followers who pollute the wholesome air with their crazy shibboleths and make use of base slang, of no more literary value than the hissing of geese or the lowing of cattle.

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The correction and inprovement of the language are more difficult now than they were in the days of Dean Swift, in consequence of the unparalleled extension of an imperfect education among the laboring classes in this democratic age, but its " certainment" is not impossible of accomplishment. The third of the proposals of the Dean is easy, if the works of the clas sic authors of the present and the last two centuries are to be the bases of the enterprise, and if the universities, the great public schools, and the Government, by the agency of a responsible Minister of Education, will but unite their energies and work in concert.-Nineteenth Century.

EVEN our spiritual advisers are beginning to harp more, we think, than is wholesome on the gospel of change. Mr. Chapman, the eloquent and earnest Vicar of St. Luke's, Camberwell, who did so. much to teach the world the significance of what Father Damien had done, and to render his last years more fruitful of good among the lepers of the Sandwich Islands, was preaching only the other day to the County Council that amusements are of the very heart of all healthy social life. Whenever a new amusement is promised us, the world is half beside itself, as it is just now in relation to Barnum's big show, and was a month or two ago in relation to the big show in Paris and the Eiffel Tower. Indeed, we are threatened with an Eiffel Tower in London, on purpose that Londoners may have the same novel sensations which the Parisians seem to have enjoyed so much. Even in politics, half the charm of Mr. Gladstone's policy for Ireland is that it promises a big constitutional revolution, and a great many lively discords as well as harmonies in the predicted" Union of Hearts." And the new favor with which strikes are welcomed, and with which the prospect of immense changes in the social structure is viewed, is in great part due to that eagerness for change, that impatience of the old order, which is beginning to show itself in every direction in the public mind. Well, the old order is no doubt full of cracks and flaws. Nobody who notes its aspects closely can doubt that. But the gospel of change for the sake of change is, to say the least, much more dangerous than the gospel of sameness for the sake of sameness. For constancy is the most evident and the most significant of all the attributes of God, in whom there is " no variableness neither shadow of turning ;" and even as regards man, without constancy in every aspect of his life there is no true character. Character" properly means the stamp, the impress, the furrow which is made in man's life by constant repetitions of the same mental and moral actions; and till either a man or a race has got a deeply marked character, that man or race is without in fluence on the world. What made Greece, with all its intellectual brightness, its vivid genius, its nimbleness of mind, so rela

tively slight a factor in human history? Simply that the Greeks were an impatient people, that they had never been thoroughly annealed in the furnace which hardens character, that they spent their time, as we are told that the Athenians did in the time of St. Paul, "in nothing else than to tell or to hear some new thing." The Romans, on the contrary, with hardly a scrap of intellectual genius, almost identified their history with the history of the world; and why, except that they were the most drillable of peoples, that they fell into habits of life which nothing could break through, which seemed as durable as though they were made of a kind of moral iron, and that the Roman legions showed themselves capable of a discipline,

which means, a constancy in adhering to rules and respecting orders,-against which no people in the world had anything comparable to produce? Nimbleness is a most useful and fascinating quality when it is engrafted on a fundamental constancy of nature, because nimbleness involves the power of so changing the superficial attitudes of the mind as to give greater and fuller effect to the deeper and permanent purposes that underlie all the deepest characters. But nimbleness without this fundamental constancy is a contemptible quality, which turns man into a poorer sort of kaleidoscope, a kaleidoscope without even the kaleidoscope's uniformity of apparent structure. Think only how many of the highest qualities in man depend on the power to resist the influence of change in what is now called, by a somewhat detestable abstraction, his "environment." What is a man or a nation without good habits? Well, habits are nothing but constancies of living. What is a man or a nation without fidelity, without faithfulness? But fidelity and faithfulness are nothing but constancies of feeling and action, and the reflection of constancy of feeling in constancy of action. A man who loves to change the objects of his highest feelings is one who is hardly capable of high feelings at all in any true sense. A man who does not continually adapt bis highest actions to his highest feelings, is a man in whom there is not enough sameness of purpose to render him capable of exerting any lasting influence on the world.

The cry against monotony of life is reasonable enough, if monotony only means that semi-comatose kind of life which is inconsistent with true vividness of any kind, which falls into half-mechanical modes of thinking and acting. But without monotony of purpose, without monotony of method, without monotony of habit, with out monotony of emotion, and without monotony of principle, there is no real character capable of a history, or admitting a development; for, after all, development, or evolution," the great word of modern science, has no meaning without involving conformity to a type. The race that takes longest to develop all its quali ties, is the race that lives the longest and effects most for the world, for though development means, of course, gradual change, it means change in the direction of a fuller and higher exercise of the same general and essential characteristics.

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Of all the qualities of character which are not constant for evil, perhaps fickleness is the most dangerous and contemptible. Indeed, in some sense, even constancy for evil is preferable to fickleness, because constancy of any kind, if its spring of action can once be purified, inay turn into constancy for good, while in fickleness there is no hope of anything but change for the sake of change. We must take care in the new and, so far as it has yet gone, perhaps perfectly legitimate desire to give the hard workers of the world glimpse of the refreshments of life, no less than of its toils, that we do not implant in them that impatience of monotony which, if once implanted, is fatal to every great quality both of the heart and of the will. After all, though it is a good thing to unstring the tight-strung bow, it is a very bad thing to be always unstringing it, -to encourage restlessness while it is strung till the time for unstringing it arrives; and that is what the appetite for change, if it is once fostered, very soon comes to. As the lady who married very late in life began almost immediately to complain of her husband on the ground that it was the same dish every day," so people who have been used to little but monotony, if they ever get the appetite for change, are very apt to find even one kind of change insufficient, and to crave for more and more change, and even for change in the manner of their changes. There is somewhere in human nature a tendency to crumble away, which seems to

be strongest in those who have the most taste for frequent excitements. Why do the various savage tribes crumble in the presence of the European? Chiefly because they cannot overcome that craving for stimulating drink to which their prox. imity to civilization exposes them. Why did Esau succumb to Jacob? Why did the pastoral tribes soon supplant the bunting tribes? Because their occupation was steadier, less exciting, involving more constant and steady discipline; and it is fur the same reason that agriculture proper, when once it was introduced, proved more binding and more steadying than even pastoral occupations. Almost in the same proportion in which the masses of the people have in any country taken kindly to fixed rules of life and duty, in that proportion has that country prospered and its people spread itself over new areas. Tenacity of purpose, perseverance, earnestness, stability, doggedness, these are the qualities as well of the races that have led the way in civilizing mankind as of those that have led the way in spiritualizing mankind. You see throughout the first half of the Decalogue, how essential it was to the Jews to learn that God, who had revealed himself as "I am that I am,' would not allow of any caprice or changefulness toward himself; and in the second half of the Decalogue, how faithfulness and constancy which were demanded in worship because they were the faint reflections of the divine righteousness itself, were demanded also in the conduct of men toward their fellow-men. All true life is monotonous in its temper, and in the principles of its growth, though there are moments when its uniformity is broken by seasons of rest and of blossom and fruit. Wherever there is little monotony, there is less fruit. As regards human character, change itself loses its usefulness as refreshment unless it have a sort of root in something permanent and enduring. Change which does not itself spring from something like a law in a man's nature, is change which unsettles instead of stimulating growth. Indeed, without constancy of nature, change is revolutionary and dizzying,-subversive of the very essence of personality; but with constancy of na. ture, change is only subordinated to that constancy, and means only the gaining of a new starting-point for another reach of upward movement and progress toward the life divine.-Spectator.

The papers of which this book is the development in a more perfect and elaborate form, were originally given to the public in the Popular Science Monthly, and attracted much at tention in their serial issue. They have been largely rewritten and otherwise thoroughly revised and made logically consecutive. As a book this contribution may be fairly estimated as one of the most valuable and suggestive contributions to the science of economics which has been made for many years. Works treating subjects so grave and difficult are usually technical and obscure so far as the grasp of the ordinary intelligence can compass them, therefore only adapted to the "expert" reader; or they are written in a so-called popular vein, with the very substance and value of the thought so diluted as to be of little value, except for the most superficial and, perhaps, misleading information. Mr. Wells's book is not only a fascinating treatise to the general reader, but it is so full of intellectual meat that the student of economics will welcome it as an important addition to his library. The style is bright and lucid, and the application of economic laws to the important problems of the day so masterly that no one can fail to be interested. The author is one of those who know how to make statistics eloquent, and surely no higher test of a writer's command of his subject could be demanded. Mr. Wells, as is well known, is an advocate of free trade, at least so far as the unloosing the shackles of commerce to such an extent as will barely suffice for the raising of a revenue would permit. But his opinions are not put in a form so dogmatic and arbitrary as to make his facts unwelcome to the "protectionist " reader. They rather show themselves by implication than by direct deduction. Still no intelligent reader can fail to see that the general current of the reasoning favors a repeal of those laws which place a heavy tax on the income of the nation by "protecting" manufacturing interests at the expense of the many.

conditions which give significance to the discussions in his book in the following language: "It would seem, indeed, as if the world during all the days since the inception of civ. ilization has been working upon the line of equipment for industrial effort—inventing and perfecting tools and machinery, building workshops and factories, and devising instrumentalities for the easy intercommunication of persons and thoughts and the cheap exchange of products and services; that this equipment having at last been made ready, the work of using it has for the first time in our day and generation fairly begun ; and also that every community under prior or existing conditions of use and consumption is becoming saturated, as it were, with the results. As an immediate consequence the world has never seen anything comparable to the results of the recent system of transportation by land and water; never experienced in so short a time such an expansion of all that pertains to what is called business; and has never before been able to accomplish so much in the way of production with a given amount of labor in so short a time. Concurrently," Mr. Wells goes on to say, or as the necessary sequence of these changes, has come a series of widespread and complex disturbances, manifesting themselves in great reductions of the cost of production and distribution, and a consequent remarkable decline in the prices of nearly all staple commodities; in a radical change in the relative value of the precious metals; in the absolute destruction of large amounts of capital through new inventions and discoveries, and in the impairments of even greater amounts in extensive reductions in the rates of interest and profits; in the discontent of labor and in an increasing antagonism of nations incident to a greatly intensified industrial and commercial competition. Out of these changes will, probably, come still further disturbances, which to many thoughtful and conservative minds seem full of menace of a mustering of the barbarians from within rather than, as of old, from without, for an attack on the whole present organization of society, and even the permanency of civilization itself."'

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made a specialty of such themes. The chapters devoted to the problems of over-production, the changes of relative value in the precious metals, governmental interference with production and distribution, and labor discontent are specially suggestive and interesting. The latter subject, the most threatening and difficult of all the problems of the age, will be turned to, as represented in our author's discussion, with much curiosity. Of course Mr. Wells, as an advocate of the laisser faire doctrine in social and political life, is a disciple of the law of individualism, or the fullest possible play of the powers and capacities of each person to do for himself, so far as these are consistent with the rights of others. That so far has shown itself to be most favorable to the rapid growth of civilization, as it puts every man on his mettle to do the best possible within his conditions, and fixes a premium on energy, hard work, and intelligence. But again it has intensified competition in an extreme degree, and has made the realization of the rewards of energy and intelligence the more onerous; or, to put it more accurately, it has made it the more difficult for any except those possessing the qualities of success in a high degree to reach any but the most moderate stage of achievement. The faults, blunders, and weaknesses of those striving for a goal are more searchingly tested than ever before in the strain of rivalry, and count the more surely in determining results. The problem is a very serious one, and leads us into all sorts of remote causes inherent in human nature and in the social structure.

Mr. Wells points out the fact that in spite of the increasing cheapness and abundance of the most desirable things, and of the larger proportionate wages of the working classes than ever before, popular discontent, instead of lessening, is continually increasing. This is principally owing to the fact that the increase in intelligence or general information on the part of the masses in all civilized countries has been even greater than their increase in the means to acquire the objects which they wish to possess. Their tastes and appetites have expanded enormously, disproportionably with their ability to earn, even in this day of increased opportunity and cheap comforts, One must have luxuries where formerly he was satisfied with the gratification of substan. tial needs. Pianos and Brussels carpets are not essential to the happiness of a mechanic or of a small farmer, but many of these classes have come to regard them as such. The am

bition to imitate those of greater wealth in expenditure and show has become a sort of dry rot. To this it is probable our universal system of public schools and the methods under which they are conducted, with all their more than overbalancing advantages, have largely contributed by their results of halfeducation, or of education on the surface. They have stimulated the sense of intellectual and social need, without training that keen sense of discrimination which teaches what is essential to the right gratification of such need, or what is sham and illusion and what genuine in the ideals and rewards of life. The truly rich man is the man of few needs, or such as can be answered without great expenditure, and the greatest men have been men of simple tastes. This is the most difficult lesson for the poor man to learn, as he is apt to measure happiness by the power of spending money without regard to cost. It is peculiarly so in America, where money is the touchstone of success in life more largely than in many far more undemocratic countries.

Mr. Wells does not give quite the prominence to this cause of discontent among the laboring classes, and under this title we must include many who work with their brains as well as with their hands. Yet what he does say is very pointed and forcible. He summarizes his views on this subject as follows:

The widening of the sphere of one's surroundings and a larger acquaintance with other men and pursuits have long been recognized as not productive of content. Writing to his nephew more than one hundred years ago, Thomas Jefferson thus concisely expresses the results of his own observations. Travelling,' he says, 'makes men wiser, but less happy. When men of sober age travel they gather knowledge, but they are, after all, subject to recollections mixed with regrets; their affections are weakened by being extended over more objects, and they learn new habits, which cannot be gratified when they return home.' Again, as the former few and simple requirements of the masses have be. come more varied and costly, the individual effort necessary for the satisfaction of the latter is not relatively less, even under the new conditions of production, than before, and in many instances is possibly greater. Hence, notwithstanding the large advance in recent years in the average rates of wages, and the greatly increased purchasing power of wages, there is no less complaint than ever of the cost of living; when (as M. Leroy Beau