no special explanation. But is not the fight of manufacturing concerns that are protected by high importation duties and organized in corporations-" Hartelle"-to keep up prices, also only a fight for rent, even if the income pursued goes by the name of profit or dividend? The policy of the "Hartelle" to exact high prices from the consumer at home and to undersell on foreign markets is too well known to be again described here. But what is not so well known abroad is, that the consumer thus over-charged is in a very great number of cases a manufacturer himself and that thus tens of thousands of employers of every degree with millions of workers behind them have to struggle seriously in consequence of this policy of the "Hartelle." A great triumphant noise is made if Germany exports a growing quantity of pig iron, wrought iron, and steel bars, but few people hitherto realized how this export may damage the manufacturers of machinery, cutlery, and other hardware at home. And that they often are damaged has been shown again and again by the tariff committee of the Reichstag. Over seven hundred manufacturers and merchants in the cutlery and implements trade of the Bergish district of Rhenania declared in a petition to the Reichstag that they were ready to renounce every protective duty for their commodity if only the duty of the raw material was done away with. Machine manufacturers show that it would be cheaper to import the several parts of their machines from abroad and only put them together in Germany than have the whole manufactured here with the high prices of the raw materials. A similar cry was brought before the Reichstag by the representatives of the weaving trade, by industrial consumers of leather, of paper, etc. The great mass of the manufacturers of finished goods are not in a position to combine and imitate the policy of the syndicate manufacturers of raw materials and half produce. They cannot over-charge the home consumer on whom they principally depend. They must in consequence be satisfied with much smaller profits. "The spinners are swimming in gold," wailed a representative of the weaving masters before the tariff committee, when the duties on yarn were discussed. In fact, the high dividends of protected industries, which are derived from prices higher than is justified by the conditions of the world market, are only so much rent. And in the over-charged trades, workers and manufacturers are alike interested in removing these duties that are the cause of the over-charge.

Not all employees saw this, and not all of those who saw it dared assume the consequences and turn away from the policy of protection. Seeing that the protectionists still had the ears of the powers that be, they preferred to beg some crumbs from the table of protectionism than venture a couragious fight against protection. But a growing number see

that their salvation lies in this way, and again they find the most vigorous fighters for this policy in the social democrats.

At a meeting of the leather trades it was a conservative manufacturer with a high title, who admitted that a member of the social democratic party had advocated more energetically than any one the interests of their trade against their opponents.

Now one of the most important questions the new Reichstag will have to decide is that of the new commercial treaties. It is a matter of course that good treaties will only be obtained by means of concessions, and where these concessions touch agricultural products the agrarians will oppose them with all their might and will up to a certain point find allies among the syndicate manufacturers of raw material and half product. It is impossible for thousands of traders to allow this alliance to decide their fate. Herein is one reason why the always newly dished up proposition of a coöperation of the whole middle classes against social democracy could not be realized.

There are other reasons to prevent this old plan of our reactionists from being carried out. The interests, economic and idealogic, of the different sections of the middle class are too much diversified to be cast in one political mould in a country where remnants of feudalism in many respects hamper the full development of middle class institutions. And whatever people abroad may think of the undoubtedly interesting personality at the head of the German Empire, at home a growing number of people rebel against the increase of personal government.

It is only when the whole society is threatened with a violent revolution or an anarchical state of things, that a general rally under the flag of law and order will meet with success. No doubt the visible progress of social democracy frightens many weak minded persons into the trap set up by the reactionists. And they have in a number of cases been numerous enough to turn the scale of the electoral balance. The "Freisinnige" or radical party has also threatened utter destruction to their opponents; they have at the second ballot in nine out of ten cases thrown in their lot with the reactionists against the socialists and have voted rather for Junker and priest than support a social democrat. Hence the comparatively small number of socialists elected at the second ballot (twenty-five out of one hundred and twenty-two at the second ballot were socialists). But nevertheless the socialists gained much ground at the second ballot. The attitude of the "Freisinnige" has only accentuated the political bankruptcy of the party and at present has led many members of the smaller middle classes to look upon the socialists as the energetic defenders of their rights against the forces of reaction.

The economic evolution of Germany has reached a point where the cost of the maintenance of semi-feudal classes and institutions to which latter, also, German militarism must to a great extent be reckoned, becomes more and more a dead weight on German industry. From this dead weight German industrial and agricultural production must be relieved if the nation, whose geographical position is none too favorable, is to progress. The more obstinately the rulers oppose the redemption of this dead weight and combine with the classes that live by. it, the more will the classes that suffer from it be drawn to that party which fights most consistently for their deliverance. And this party is social democracy.

Thus, besides the growing section of wage-earning voters, the social democratic party can boast of a very significant increase of votes from most of the other sections of the population. It returns in greater numerical strength than ever before to the new Reichstag. This increase cannot fail to make itself felt in many respects inside and outside of parliament. The consciousness that more than three million of voters, one third of the whole voting electorate,-representing the overwhelming majority of the population of all the important towns and industrial centres of the empire are behind them must act as an impetus on socialists for still more vigorous action in parliament. They can and surely will demand a greater hearing for the interests they represent, for the policy on which they are elected. This does, of course, not mean a forcedly violent language. But it does mean forcible demands for industrial reforms and a vigorous opposition against a policy of adventure and a commercial policy of impediments to the progress of free intercourse between the nations.

People do not give the new Reichstag a long life. There is a general feeling abroad that once the Reichstag accepts the new commercial treaties of Count Bülow, that he has in store, he will seize the first opportunity and dissolve the Reichstag and try his luck at a new general election when the furor teutonicus can be played out against socialists and thus decrease the number of their votes. Others speak of bolder intentions, such as a tampering with the electoral laws of the empire, i. e., universal suffrage. All of these events may transpire. So much is sure, we may look forward to lively debates in the new Reichstag, and whatever else may happen the social democratic party of Germany will be prepared to meet its opponents and united in their effort to fight, as the old Cobdenite motto goes, for peace, retrenchment, and reform.

W. P. TRENT

PROFESSOR OF LITERATURE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

TH

HE interest felt by not a few persons at the announcement that Dr. Richard Garnett and Dr. Edmond Gosse would collaborate in an "Illustrated History of English Literature," on a large scale, has not been disappointed by the first instalment of the work. The "Publisher's Introduction" tells us that the book is designed to "stimulate and gratify curiosity concerning the leading authors of our country and the evolution of its literary history," and assumes, correctly enough, that this curiosity "appeals to the eye as well as to the ear,” in other words, that for many persons good and copious illustrations mean almost if not quite as much as an adequate text. We are further informed, with obvious truth, that no previous work has fulfilled these requirements since it has only just now become possible to utilize thoroughly the results of modern research, and, with equal truth, that the general reader is in danger of being furnished by zealous specialists with more information than he requires rather than with less. With these statements before him no one is warranted in being disappointed at not finding himself confronted by a work similar in character to the well known "Histoire de la Langue et de la Littérature Française," edited by Prof. Petit de Julleville or even to the elaborate "History of American Literature," designed but only partly finished by the late Prof. Moses Coit Tyler. Nor is it permissible to cavil at the emphasis laid, especially in Dr. Gosse's volume, upon biographical sketches of significant authors, or, in view of the vast array of British writers, to wonder at the omission of this or that name familiar to scholars but of little moment either to the general reader or in the evolution of English literature.

We have, then, in these portly volumes half of a popular sketch or "record" of the development of English literature combined with a select biographical dictionary of English writers, the whole illustrated with unexampled fulness and artistic excellence. The main elements of the undertaking are, of course, not new. English literature has before been treated popularly in a series of volumes, and although what is per(1) English Literature, an Illustrated Record. In Four Volumes. Volume I. From the Beginnings to the Age of Henry VIII. By Richard Garnett, C. B., LL. D., pp. xvi., 368. Volume III. From Milton to Johnson. By Edmond Gosse, M. A., LL. D., pp. xii., 381. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1903.

Copyright, 1903, Frederick A. Richardson, all rights reserved.

haps the most important series, the one we owe to Mr. Stopford Brooke, Professor Saintsbury, and Dr. Gosse,—is still marred by a gap, it is really built upon a larger scale than the present work, the text of which, however massive the volumes may seem to be, might easily be got into four not very bulky twelve mos. Nor is a biographical record of English literature in the least a new thing as those will recall who have used Chambers' "Cyclopædia," now being revised; and we have long had for American literature the Duyckincks' two volumes, with their sketches of writers, their extracts from books,-paralleled in a rather exiguous fashion in the present work,—and their not altogether entrancing illustrations. A slightly novel feature in this connection is found in the endeavor, by the use of smaller type and by grouping, to set off the biographical sketches from the historical text proper so that the latter may be read separately if the reader chooses. The resolute separation of the impersonal from the personal elements of the text exemplified in M. Brunetière's "Manual" is not attempted, and, in the third volume at least, the sketches are often curiously huddled together and interrupt the main narrative in a rather exasperating fashion. As for the illustrations, it is needless to say that in kind these could not well be novel. Fac-similes of manuscripts, both illuminated and not, of title pages, of signatures, holograph letters and the like, portraits of writers and of literary patrons, pictures of buildings and places associated with authors, famous illustrations of famous books, these are of necessity the chief appeals to the eye that can be made by a history of literature, and such appeals have all been utilized before, especially in books dealing with the various continental literatures. In copiousness, rarity, and artistic excellence, however, the illustrations used in these volumes more than justify the modest claim of Mr. Heineman, the English publisher, that he has availed himself as fully as he could of the best collections of literary treasures and of improved methods of reproduction.

Of the great and unique value of the work from the point of view of iconography there can, then, be no manner of doubt. The price of the set, which is not high considering the cost of the enterprise, will unfortunately exclude it from many a "gentleman's library," but surely no public or college library should be without it, and every teacher of English literature will try in some way or other to have the use of it. Especially is this true of the first volume, dealing as it does with manuscripts and books that are practically inaccessible. Beside the wealth of illustrations here lavished the illustrating of the first volume of Petit de Julleville, good as it is, looks small, and that of the corresponding portion of M. Faguet's useful "Histoire de la Littérature Française," looks