terous girl or "freakish maid." Under the charge of these two experienced mariners, Gladys sails off in a convenient ferry-boat to the island. She sees there a number of quaint and pretty things which Miss Ingelow's readers may see with her, and returns home at nightfall in time to see the carriages of the picnic party drive up, and to fall into her ordinary duties without being found out as the Robinson Crusoe of a fairy isle. A note tells us that the woman is "Imagination, brooding over what she brought forth. The two purple peaks of the island represent the domains of Poetry and of History. The girl" (the freakish thing) "is Fancy." The island scenes are drawn with very remarkable grace and clearness of language. But we feel bound to give Miss Ingelow a friendly caution not to deliver herself over too unreservedly to the vagaries of the freakish thing, or she may end by mistaking her for the brooding mother. Again, we do not think that Miss Ingelow improves her fable by a desultory moral which winds up after this fashion : and with a word to the nobler sex As thus we pray you carry not your guns On the half-cock. Why not? If the fairer sex takes vigourously to shooting, we are inclined to pray fervently that their guns may be carried on the half-cock, at any rate as long as they are not walking up to a point. Otherwise the newspapers will be full of tragic accidents till the host of fair shooters have learnt their lesson better than Miss Ingelow. If technical terms must be used in verse, they should be used accurately. The poetical metaphor of "word-painting" has followed many metaphors into the regions of the tritest prose; and it may very well stay there. Miss Ingelow brings it back into lyrical verse under the form of "my paintings labial"—perhaps the very vilest phrase it has ever been our lot to meet in an assortment of genuine poetry. The certainty that Miss Ingelow can mould the clearest and simplest language as she pleases enhances our regret that she should fall, even in a few instances, into slipshod affectation. Here is an example of what she can do in the way of graceful lyric, when she tries; though even here a phrase or two is not fairly above criticism: The racing river leapt, and sang This rained out light from every part, Before the road and river meet, I heard the chanting waters flow, A girl upon the nighest stone, She knew not any need of me, I waded out, her eyes I met, I wished the moments had been hours: Her fellow-maids in copse and lane, But now it is a year ago, But now possession crowns endeavour : The best and most complete poem in the volume is the last - a ballad on the building of the first Eddystone Lighthouse by Winstanley, a mercer of London, who perished with his own edifice in a violent storm in the winter of 1703. We must leave Miss Ingelow to settle with historical authorities whether Winstanley built the tower on his own account, or for the Trinity House. Apart from this question of literal truth, the ballad is well-conceived and thoroughly well worked out; not the less so because Miss Ingelow wrote it (as her note tells us) with a fixed purpose of attaining such simplicity and plainness of narrative as might captivate the minds and memories of an ordinary set of schoolchildren. It is too long for quoting entire, but a few stanzas will indicate the spirit which runs through the whole. Two of Winstanley's homeward-bound ships have been lost on the rock, when he resolves to devote his life to conquering the public danger. On reach ing Plymouth, he is of course dissuaded by the local wiseacres from wasting his labour and money on an impossibility. The Mayor of Plymouth advises him, with plausible reasons, to leave it alone for an easier and more useful task: O beacons sighted in the dark, Hast gold in hand? then light the land, However, Winstanley perseveres, and in spite of all adverse prophecy the tower is completed and the lantern lighted: Winstanley set his foot ashore : "But if it fail as fail it may, Borne down with ruin and rout, Another than I shall rear it high, And brace the girders stout. "A better than I shall rear it high, For now the way is plain; And tho' I were dead," Winstanley said, "The light would shine again. "Yet were I fain still to remain, Watch in my tower to keep, And tend my light in the stormiest night That ever did move the deep; "And if it stood, why then 'twere good, Amid their tremulous stirs, To count each stroke when the mad waves broke, For cheers of mariners. "But if it fell, then this were well, If such was Winstanley's wish, he had it. And if it occurred to him further to wish that his story might sometime be told in good clear honest English verse, he need hardly have wished for a better chronicler than Miss Ingelow. From the Saturday Review. MISTAKES IN CHARACTER. THERE can be no doubt that a great many of the actions which we take to be infallible signs of the character of the person who does them are, in fact, not infallible at all. This is only another way of putting a truth which few people would care to deny, that few characters are entirely consistent and complete in all their parts. Wise people have weak places, and foolish people have often acuteness enough to feign one or two of the superficial airs and attributes of wisdom. De Retz instantly marked Chigi as having a small mind, from the moment that he told him that he had written with the same pen for three years, and that it was a capital pen still. This proved a sagacious judgment. When Chigi became Pope, it was truly said of him that he was maximus in minimis and minimus in maximis, just the kind of person who would have a conceit about his pen. Still the mere fact on which De Retz founded a judgment which circumstances afterwards justified was not in itself a perfectly adequate basis for such a judg ment. A man might amuse himself by taking excessive care of his pen, and might find sincere satisfaction in the thought that the pen had lasted for three years, and still was a good pen, without necessarily being a trifler and an ass. We continually find that men of subtle and vigorous intellects, constantly exercised in important affairs, delight in being able to think or talk about small things, and have an interest in what to prigs and pedants appear disgustingly frivolous concerns. It is not always very pleasant to meet a great man in one of these leisure moments. We expect some outward and visible sign of his greatness, that he will talk well, and say fine things, and disclose to us all that lies next his heart. We forget that he has been thinking or writing fine things all day, and that he has had quite enough of what lies next his heart to be only too happy to forget it for a while. The poet is only too glad to escape from the ideas which have mastered him for hours and days and weeks. philosopher who has been the slave of his books and his trains of thought is charmed to mix with people who don't read, and don't know exactly what a train of thought means. The statesman who has been busied in affairs and despatches and squabbles among his colleagues, and so forth, thinks himself in Paradise when he can expatiate upon horses or crops or the opera. The Per that a very humane and sympathizing person may have pets, just for the same reason which makes a studious person more ready, to chat about his pen than its products. One requires reliefs and contrasts. If a lady has spent the afternoon in visiting paupers and squalid wretches, she needs to have another sort of picture in the evening ; and if the contemplation of a dog curled up on the hearthrug supplies this solace, why should she be thought the worse of on that account? Yet people are so hasty in think One sons who do not know what it is to have an urgent and serious interest in their minds are extremely vexed and disappointed when they find a prominent man unwilling to exhaust himself by "tumbling" for their pleasure and behoof. They are very often ready to vow that his prominence is altogether unmerited, and that, in spite of every thing to the contrary, he is at bottom a thoroughly poor creature. It is certainly true that a man may attain prominence by virtue of charlatanry, and therefore these exacting persons may now and then being ill of a neighbour's character, that the right in their disparagement of people with a reputation. But it is a violent mistake to assume that a man is beneath his reputation just because he declines to show off or talk up to it, whenever anybody chooses to try to wind him up, as though he were some cunningly-constructed machine. Talleyrand was as judicious as usual when he replied to the impertinent visitor who wanted to involve him in a conversation upon af fairs of State, "Pardon me, sir; I never talk about what I understand." Wise men often follow his example. It is to be deplored that it does not become more general. Society would be ever so much more enjoyable if people would not insist upon airing their specialities; and, as a rule, a man with sincere respect for his own speciality, and honest knowledge of it, is the last person in the world to thrust it upon those who are not competent to understand or to measure it. He is much more willing to discourse upon his pen, like Cardinal Chigi, or his ink-pot, or the kind of paper which he uses, than upon the ideas which these are the humble instruments of fixing and conveying to the public. Anybody can understand and appreciate the qualities of a pen which has proved a good and serviceable pen for three whole years. Provided the owner of such an implement does not carry his demand for our enthusiasm on the subject too far, he could not choose a better kind of subject for light conversation after a day's work. It is rank ingratitude to mark such a man out as having a small mind. By very solemn people it is thought an extremely unworthy thing to have favourite animals. A man or a woman who cares for a dog or a cat, and who does not disguise the attachment, passes in certain sorts of circles for a wofully light-minded person. How can anybody, they ask, who sees the overwhelming seriousness of life endure to devote a single grave thought to a mere brute, or to find an atom of pleasure in the creature? But here again it is possible than sight of the comfortable dog fills them with A frequent source of misjudgment of character is an intolerance of paradox. We declare a man to be a fool if he says things which sound absurd or perverse, without taking the trouble to think whether he means himself to be taken to the very letter of what he says. In England, where we are a sober and rather stolid race in many things, this injustice is too prevalent. And it does us a good deal of harm. In a certain quantity paradox is an invaluable element in intellectual life. It places a truth or a false- It is so profoundly distasteful to the weak hood before the mind in a dress which viv- people—that is, to most people to be idly attracts our attention. If a man be- brought into contact with a strong person lieves his own paradoxes, he may be either who knows what he is aiming at, and keeps a person of extraordinary genius and in- a cool eye upon the means by which he is sight, or a shallow fool. Probably he is the to reach it, that no experience to the conlatter, because, without reason shown to the trary will convince them that a man may be contrary, we are justified in assuming of firm, resolute, punctual, indefatigably inanybody that he or she belongs to the ma- dustrious, a shade exacting, and yet overjority. As a rule, however, he who has the flowing with the milk of human kindness, wit to propound a paradox has also wit and always ready to bestow generously with enough to keep him from believing that it his left hand all that he has sedulously reaped contains all that need be said on the matter by the toil of his right. It is not certain to which it relates. Those who are habitu- that the base emotion of envy does not enally paradoxical are bores, because immod- ter largely into this confusion of a collection erate addiction to this mode of stating of most useful virtues with a very odious things is almost always affectation, and not vice. If you find that a man is making irthe expression of a genuine, if temporary, resistible way by his steadfastness, it is some mode of looking at things. The main comfort to a meaner nature to believe, or object in the world is to keep people's minds pretend to believe, that this steadfastness is alive and awake, and to effect this nothing the product of a horrid congelation of all is more potent than to offer them a state- the finer and wider sympathies. Of course, ment which frets their common sense. where envy comes in, the confusion between Thus to irritate and stir up common sense is singleness of purpose and hardness of heart the characteristic of a paradox. It stimu- is something much more malignant than a lates people at first to vehement antago- mere blunder of observation. But, apart nism, but unless they are over a hundred, from this vile intruder, men are too willing and past all possibility of movement, it pre- to believe that a cool head usually implies vents them from falling contentedly and con- a cold heart. It is a superstition. There fidently back into their old attitude. It is is no à priori reason why we could expect an obvious error, therefore, to discourage the one to accompany the other, and all obthis peculiar turn of mind by identifying it servation goes to show that the one does not with mere brainless perversity and wrong- as a matter of fact always accompany the headedness. The man whom you deem other. Still the prejudice remains. The perverse and crotchety very likely thinks purposeless are apt to quake in the face of much as you think, only his thoughts pre- the man who has a purpose, who knows sent themselves to him in a more quaint clearly what it is, and steadily does his best form, with a variety of side lights upon them, to carry it out to the end. This quaking which in your own mind either nature or makes them willing to think that there must training has blocked up. It does not follow be something sinister in the person who is that because a man is thus able to change the occasion of it. If such a conviction does his point of view, and to shed light upon his any thing to console them for their alarms, subject from many angles, therefore he sees perhaps the cool-headed ones will not everything crooked and distorted. Just the grudge it them. Still, all false measurereverse, in fact. The more points of view ments of this sort are worth avoiding. It he can command the better, and the more is not of very much importance to a stoic useful he is to persons whose vision is nar- whether people judge him rightly or wrongrower than his own happens to be. ly. But, as we live in a world with others, it is of importance to a man not to carry his stoicism too far. If he does, he is pretty sure to end by enjoying the mistakes which his neighbours make about him, and encouraging them. And this is a form of affectation which is sure to engender a very hurtful amount of self-consciousness - the mental condition which is about the most hurtful to good work that is possible to the human One of the most grievous confusions of thought in our estimates of character is to mistake exactness for hardness. Anybody who insists on precision, punctuality, order, and upon the rigid recognition of facts, is inevitably set down by nine out of ten acquaintances as of a cold, hard, selfish nature. Unless a man is a little weak and a little blind, men will not have it that his character has a single pliant or tender fibre in it. mind. From the Spectator. | than Mr. Wheaton's to dwell specially on matters of American interest. He added WHEATON'S INTERNATIONAL LAW. nothing on that branch of the subject which Wheaton had, as we have already mentionSo many important questions of interna-ed, treated imperfectly, and he loaded the tional law have arisen in England within book with many voluminous notes on points the last few years, that we turn with considerable interest to a new edition of what editor, Mr. R. H. Dana, has discarded the of very slight importance. The present is usually considered the standard work on whole of his predecessor's additions to the the subject. Mr. Wheaton's book has been original text, but has added many notes of recognized as an authority for nearly thirty his own. Some of these are substituted for years; and in spite of its defects, and the Mr. Lawrence's, and are usually a great rivalry of later writers, it still is fairly enimprovement on them; but many of course titled to the first place. The author, as an American and a diplomatist, had singular have come into notice since Mr. Lawrence are on entirely new topics, mainly such as advantages for performing his task. As an American he stood aloof from all sympathy Wheaton's text which Mr. Lawrence did wrote, though a few supply defects in with old European controversies, and he not attempt to remedy. There is also a further represented the views and principles new and improved index, and a separate of a young commercial nation, starting on its career with no fetters of tradition. As the editor's notes. That the present editable of the principal subjects discussed in a diplomatist he had great practical knowl- tion is considerably superior to the previous edge of the working of treaties and the conduct of negotiation, and he learned fully to take the trouble to compare them together; ones will be admitted by every one who will appreciate the fundamental axiom of all international law, that it has no positive sanction but the superiority is in point of execution, independent of treaty. His two chief defects not in comprehension of the true principles on which a treatise of international law spring from the same causes. He is very naturally prone to attach peculiar impor- of both editors contain long disquisitions on ought to be written. The additional notes tance to all questions specially affecting his own country, an error which might unques- has arisen during the last twenty years, almost every international dispute which tionably be avoided, but which is probably certainly on every point affecting American less injurious than if it had been made by interests. The arguments are given at conthe citizen of any other country. He is siderable length, and too often the writer also somewhat meagre in his treatment of indulges in a little argument on his own the international aspect of private rights, a subject of which a trained lawyer would be more apt to feel the importance. His grasp of the general principles of jurisprudence is firm, and his treatment of them generally clear and sound; nor has any better method of dividing and discussing the subject ever been adopted. Mr. Wheaton, however, has been dead for eighteen years, and the changes in international law which have taken place during the interval render it a matter of great importance how his orginal the burning of Washington; but Wheaton's text is edited and supplemented. In this editors exaggerate the fault of their masrespect the new edition has a marked advantage over the others which have been ter, and all we can say in Mr. Dana's favissued since the author's death. The for- our is that his notes are better written, mer ones were edited and augmented with more systematic, and more complete, than a considerable mass of notes by Mr. W. B. Lawrence, who neither by his calling nor by his own abilities was well fitted to supplement Wheaton's defects, and to make the additions required by the course of his-tered, or at least to mark clearly which are his original words, and which the additions tory. He also was a diplomatist, prolix in his style, and with a tendency far stronger method be in itself a good one or not, it Whether this of the subsequent editor. may easily be carried too far. To leave unaltered in the text such statements as that Wheaton's International Law. Eighth Edition. By R. H. Dana, LL.D. 1866. LIVING AGE. VOL. VI. 188. account. States may have been right in every inIt is possible that the United stance, and it is perfectly natural that an American should defend the view taken by his own country; but the right place to do this is in an avowedly controversial work, not in one professing to lay down judicially the principles of international law. English writers may have offended in a similar manner; Wheaton himself is not innocent, as witness his totally irrelevant tirade about Mr. Lawrence's. editions of law books that have attained a It is the established practice, with new reputation, to leave the author's text unal |