Municipal Council. They were all busy men who might well have refused to burden themselves with the exacting duties of the management of a great and growing town. The people of Johannesburg have not failed to recognise the enormous advantage that it has been to them in having men of such eminence and business capacity to look after their interests, and have proved their confidence by re-electing, at the first municipal election held last December, all but one of Lord Milner's nominees. It is curious to remark that the single candidate who failed to obtain re-election was Mr. Whiteside, who with Mr. Quinn signed the minority report of the Labour Commission. Those who are responsible for the management of the mines have the interests of a large body of shareholders all over the world to consider, but they also feel it their duty to look after the welfare of the country in which they live.

The mines developed and undeveloped are the only real asset in the Colony. Upon their successful working depends the whole future of the country. This fact should be carefully borne in mind because it is the key of the present situation. Commerce, agriculture, railway development, are all at a standstill in the Transvaal for the simple reason that the mines cannot be worked to their full capacity on account of the insufficient supply of labour. In the future it is recognised on all sides in the Transvaal that as the native population increases—as it will very rapidly now that tribal wars have ceased to exist-there should be an ample supply of labour for the mines and all the other industries in the Colony. But at the present time an adequate supply of native labour cannot be obtained. "The real danger of the situation," as Mr. Birchenough stated in his report, "lies in the prolongation of the present financial strain. It is really a race against time, and that is why experiments, however well-meaning, which take years to show their results, are impracticable. The trouble of the problem is the difficulty of obtaining labour." The proposed importation of Chinese coolies is therefore an unpleasant necessity. It is a temporary expedient intended to meet a pressing evil for which no other remedy has been found to exist. It is also calculated, I think, to stimulate the Kaffirs to seek more actively for employment, for they are already alive to the fact that the importation of Asiatic labour will seriously assail their present monopoly in the labour market.

Since my return to England many people, who are quite alive to the necessity for the introduction of Asiatic labourers into the Rand, have asked me why it has been decided to import

Chinese and not Indian coolies? To those who know anything about South Africa the answer is perfectly clear. I have already alluded to the dread which the commercial classes have of Indian rivalry. They are afraid that in the event of a large Indian immigration into the Transvaal the experience of Natal may become the experience of the whole of South Africa. The indentured Chinese labourer will go to the Transvaal on a definite understanding that he is to work in the mines for a stated period and then to return to his own country. The Indian, on the contrary, whatever contract he might enter into, is a British subject, and it might in consequence be difficult to compel him to leave a British colony against his will. It would also be extremely difficult to keep distinct the specially imported Indian coolies from those already living in the country. The Chinaman, on the other hand, is always a marked man, whose identity is unmistakable.

I firmly believe that the experiment of Chinese labour, if carried out with due care, will prove as successful in the Transvaal as it did in British Columbia, that in no other way is it possible fully to develop the enormous resources of the mines, to make it possible to obtain Kaffir labourers for the railways and the farms, or to open up our new Colony as a profitable field for British emigration.

H. ERNEST CRAWLEY.

THE POET'S DIARY

EDITED BY LAMIA

IV

Rome, 190-.-"If I only could," said Lamia, "just for once, see Rome, the Forum, the Colosseum, the Baths of Caracalla, as you saw them when you came here first!"

"I wish you could," I said; "for, to the imagination, they are not improved by the change. Much exploration, much erudition, historical and archæological, much controversy, have been lavished on them, and with what result? Are we any surer now than we were before which is verily the Sacred Way, where stood the Nova Taburne, which are the precise pavement and pathway that led to the Hill of Triumph, where passed Tullia's chariot-wheels, splashed with the blood of her murdered sire, or where were buried alive the Vestals who had violated their vow? And, if we were, what should we have gained ? 'The Tree of Knowledge hath been plucked; all's known,' says Manfred mournfully, leading to the conclusion that the Tree of Knowledge is not that of Life."

"Just so," said Lamia; "or, as your gifted friend, Owen Meredith, put it, The Unknown is life to Love, Religion, Poetry. For my part, I would gladly give all these labels and doubtful disquisitions for a yet more vivid impression of the transitoriness of things. Withal, I must not complain. You lend me your recollection; I lend you my ears; and, thus aided, I almost think I can see it all as it was. Moreover, it is only material vesture of which this Forum "—for we were standing in it all—" has been stripped; and I must not forget that you cannot kill the Gods.'"

Still, even in the noontide glare,

The Gods, recumbent, take their ease;
Look rightly, you will find them there,
Slumbering behind some fallen frieze,

What though their Temples strew the ground,
And to the ruin owls repair?

Their home, their haunt, is all around;
They drive the cloud, they ride the air.

Build as man may, Time gnaws and peers
Through marble fissures, granite rents;
Only Imagination rears

Imperishable monuments.

Let Gaul and Goth pollute the shrine,

Level the altar, fire the fane :
There is no razing the Divine;

The Gods return, the Gods remain.

"You have cited enough, dear," I interrupted; " and I was wanting to add that none of time's changes irk me more than the barriers a financially embarrassed Government and a venal municipality have placed round the Forum, in order that they may extort a lira from those who formerly were free to wander here at their untaxed will. The Popes were artists enough for that; and they were gentlemen, not chapmen. They felt that Love, Art, Genius should not be articles of commerce. Modern Italian Materialism would tax your very soul, if it could. I can remember, when I first visited Florence and used to breakfast for sixty centesimi at a modest caffè that has now become a costly ristorante, a flower-girl, whose name Margherita, used to give one every morning a little bunch of flowers, the prevailing fragrance of which was due to a spray of sweet-scented verbena; since which time the perfume of its leaves instantaneously transports me to the Arno as it was then, with its circle of medieval wall and its winding stone-staircased track, sentinelled by Stations of the Cross, up to San Miniato. Margherita wished one good morning, but lingered not to be paid; and not till you were leaving Florence did you ask her to accept some trifle in return. If she thought you così gentile, she would ask at what hour you were going away, and from where; and, when the hour came, she was on the spot, with a lovely posy for you, and for it she would accept nothing in exchange, save Grazie tante! A rivederci !' Was not that better than haggling over so many beggarly

centesimi ?"

"Oh! don't! don't!" Lamia exclaimed. "I would rather have those customs back than even buffaloes in the Forum. Alas! I was born too late."

"Nay," I replied, "English girls of to-day cannot say that. When I recall the conventional trammels that, a generation ago, debarred them from doing themselves justice by the full

cultivation and free exercise of their gifts, and compare that vanished state of society with the freedom they now enjoy and the pleasure they confer by it, it is I, and others like me, who would be justified in exclaiming, 'I was born too early.' Or I should be justified," I added, "in such an exclamation had not gracious Heaven vouchsafed me a Lamia."

[How I replied to that tender observation need not be set down here; for it is not my Diary, but the Poet's, that I am editing. What is more to the purpose is that, as we were all contemplating an excursion to the Castelli Romani, to Frascati, Albano, Tivoli, Subiaco, and Palestrina, I obtained from him a record he had kept of a visit to all these places in the month of March during his first "winter in Rome." After reading it, you will understand, I think, how it still further whetted my appetite for the journey on which we had decided.-Lamia.]

Rome, 1862.-One fair afternoon in March, as free from all suspicion of east wind as the road was from motor-cars and lamp-posts, I passed through the Porta San Giovanni on horseback, with one male companion, proceeding at first at a foot's pace along the Via Asinaria.

There were wine-carts coming into the city, with a shaggy Pomeranian dog on the topmost cask. There was a Cardinal's carriage solemnly driving outward to take his Eminence a piccola passeggiata, and to give him that opportunity of stretching his legs which ecclesiastical etiquette then forbade him to do in the City, save on the Pincio. There was a white osteria on the left with a Bacchanalian bush hung outside, advertising, despite the proverb, the excellence of the wine within. Outside its threshold was a team of sleek draught oxen, waiting patiently, as they would wait till the crack of doom, for their convivial driver, who was refreshing himself out of sight. There were tall cannæ on each side of the road in which buffaloes might hide, as they hide further afield, in the Pontine Marshes. There was a straight, dusty road, a bit of broken aqueduct visible ahead, and a dome of blue above us. My companion. had a fine appreciation of golden silence, and neither of us had any thought in the world beyond that of surrendering ourselves to the delight of such surroundings. I think we must have got beyond the Porta Furba, where the Marcian and Claudian Aqueducts meet, and close to the tumulus known as the Monte del Grano, to which certain authorities unauthentically point as the tomb of Alexander Severus, but to which we are certainly indebted for the famous Portland Vase, before either of us made an observation. At