which it shall deal, because these concessions cost him little. But about the full recognition of Irish nationality he is immovable. Whatever pressure may be put upon him, he remains faithful to Mr. Parnell. And when he talks of the retention of the Irish Members at Westminster as being a British rather than an Irish question, what he virtually seems to mean is this: "My fixed intention throughout has been firmly to establish the principle of Irish nationality, and perpetuate its existence as a separate entity. With that view my purpose is to give the Irish nation a Legislature and Executive with a free hand to manage their own affairs, and I certainly thought that when you, the British people, had granted the Irish this boon, you would not wish to keep their Members in your own House of Commons. But as you now insist on their full and continuous representation at Westminster, as you apparently wish for a continuance there of all the ills which Irish obstruction and Irish intrigue have produced in recent years, I will not stand between you and the fruition of your strange desire. It is your affair, and you shall have your way, provided always that I am allowed to give my Irish allies all that they want."

Deeper than all questions of retention or exclusion of Irish Members, of co-ordinate or subordinate Legislatures, of powers delegated or surrendered, lies this principle of recognizing Irish nationality. Not of its recognition, as we most properly recognize the Scotch nationality by systematic deference to Scotch opinion and sentiment in all legislation and administration affecting Scotland, but recognition (to use Mr. Gladstone's phrase) by a disintegration of the capital institutions of the United Kingdom. Even a small measure of autonomy based on this principle would be more disruptive than a large one based on the principle of local selfgovernment. In the concession of autonomy to the great Colonies there has been no recognition of nationality as such. But it is the principle of nationality, rather than the principle of local self-government, which Mr. Gladstone has more and more pushed to the front in vindication of his Irish proposals. He has stated that, in his view, it was not allowable to deal with Ireland upon any principle, the benefit of which could not be allowed to Scotland in circumstances of equal and equally clear desire. And having done his best to fan any lingering embers there may be of Scotch jealousy of England, he is thus committed (so far as he has the power) to set up a separate Parliament and Executive in" dear old Scotland," if he can only tempt her to agitate for such a change of Government. But that is not all. He has been most effusive in his flattery of the Welsh nationality. He has endeavoured to make the Welshmen feel as though they were a

subject, neglected race, by sly allusions to Welsh castles, and by complaint of the inattention of Parliament to their special wants. If, therefore, the million and a quarter or half of a million of people living in Wales can be induced to raise a cry for a separate Parliament and Executive on the ground of their nationality, we could hardly expect Mr. Gladstone to offer resistance to such a demand. In truth the fundamental postulate of his Irish policy opens a vista of disintegration leading to the Heptarchy, and perhaps to subdivision beyond that. It cannot therefore be too stoutly contested in limine by every Unionist.

Discontented and insurgent communities have always had a fascination for Mr. Gladstone; and seemingly. he has had no rigid standard of what constitutes a nationality Tribes of Arab slavehunters in the Soudan, fighting as much for unlimited license to capture and sell their neighbours into bondage as for anything else, have received his benediction as champions in a righteous struggle for freedom. Settlements of Boers rendered hostile to English rule by its interference with their propensity to ill-use natives have been the subject of his rhetorical eulogies. And a community of slave-owners engaged in civil war with men of precisely the same race and lineage as themselves were pronounced by him to have made a nation, for no other reason than the apparent success of their arms in battle. One would have thought, therefore, that with all this avidity to recognize nations and nationalities, Mr. Gladstone would have been willing to acknowledge the existence of two nations or nationalities in Ireland. But be that as it may, the path in which he now invites us to walk is a retrograde path. He asks us to put back the hand on the face of the clock, to undo the long work of great kings and statesmen, to abandon a high ideal, and despair of fusing the various races of the United Kingdom into one national aggregate, enriched by the several excellencies of its component elements. The illustrious founder of Italian unity,-the statesman whose genius welded many States, each with a history and traditions of its own, into a single unified kingdom under one Legislature and Executive-was assuredly not insensible to the aspirations of nationalities; but by him, after a careful study of the question, the Repeal of the Union was judged to be " a hateful and criminal enterprise." It may be said that Count Cavour wrote of the movement led by Mr. O'Connell, and that there is a difference between Mr. O'Connell and Mr. Parnell. That is quite true, and the difference between them was elaborately described by Mr. Gladstone in a speech at Leeds in October 1881. The British Home Ruler must draw what comfort he can from that precise analysis of the distinguishing characteristics of the two Irish leaders.

Compromise is congenial to the English temperament, and often holds out to weary combatants the promise of at least a transient cessation of strife; but upon the issue of Home Rule for Ireland, under Mr. Gladstone's conditions, there is no safe ground for compromise. We are a long way yet from the end of the struggle, and there is a glorious uncertainty about the decisions of the British electorate, which baffles prediction of what the end will be. In a certain sense, time is on the side of the Unionists, if they choose to avail themselves of it; that is to say, they can, if they like, prolong the life of this Unionist Parliament, resisting Home Rule, for another four or five years. Will they do so? Probably not. The restless ambition and selfish aims of individual politicians will hardly allow it. Besides, the "old Parliamentary hand" has forgot none of its cunning. We have therefore to contemplate the possibility of another General Election on the Home Rule question, perhaps at no very distant date, with Mr. Gladstone again leading the British wing of the Home Rule party. Next time he may, or may not, get a majority. If he gets one, he will, of course demonstrate with infinite fertility of argument and declaration, that the verdict of the nation (being on his side) is clear, final, and irrevocable, and that it would be rank blasphemy to talk of ever reopening the question again to the end of time. Equally of course, that solemn, imposing dummy which he always carries about with him-" the opinion of the whole civilized world "-will be nodding assent to anything and everything that it may suit his purpose to say or do. But the duty of Unionists in such circumstances would be plain; they would have to take a leaf out of Mr. Gladstone's own book. He has shown them how to rally after a reverse. To compass his own end, he destroyed the life of a Parliament when only six months old, and called upon the country to decide upon an issue which he described as the "simplest" submitted to it for half a century. If ever a General Election in England partook of the character of a plébiscite, it was the Election of last year. But simple as was the issue of the late Prime Minister's own choosing and definition, decisive too as was the result of the contest, did he accept and acquiesce in the verdict? Not for a moment. He forthwith set himself to explain it away, and deny its validity, with all his accustomed ingenuity. What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. What Mr. Gladstone has done to others can be done to him, and ought to be done, if the need should arise. His elasticity of spirit, his buoyancy of hope, his tenacity of purpose are beyond all praise as fighting qualities; and his Unionist opponents would do well to emulate them. If, however, the ultimate outcome of the controversy should be a resolve on

the part of the British democracy to disintegrate their own Constitution to please Irish Nationality, the measure of Home Rule conceded to Ireland can hardly be too large. Nothing could be worse than some intermediate arrangement which, while failing to satisfy the Irish Nationalists, would arm them with new instruments of leverage to extort further concessions. The renewal of extortion would commence on the morrow of the passing of the Act that established the new system. To put Ireland on the footing, pure and simple, of a self-governed colony, retaining only Imperial military and naval stations at the best strategic points, would probably prove the least objectionable settlement of the question. It would cause fewer constitutional derangements than other modes of investing the Irish Nationality with plenary powers, and, by reducing the points of friction between the two countries to a minimum it would offer the best chance of concord. But, anyhow, let Ireland set up as an independent Republic, or let Mr. Parnell be crowned King (if he likes) of Ireland, rather than let the unity of Great Britain and her nationality slide into the morass of Federalism, and there be suffocated.

E. R. WODEHOUSE.

KEATS' PLACE IN ENGLISH POETRY.

MR. COLVIN'S Life of Keats, like Mr. Dowden's Life of Shelley, is a welcome contrast to the delirious gush that so often now-a-days pretends to the name of criticism. As an appreciative estimate of Keats' genius, it leaves, indeed, little to be desired. Mr. Colvin sees clearly what is admirable in the work of his author; he puts his perception into apt and expressive words; he never offends the taste of the reader by making the beauties of the poet an opportunity for the display of his own rhetoric. He admires enthusiastically, and yet with a discretion that keeps his enthusiasm from running into the excesses of a servile hero-worship.

Those who understand what the temptations of biographers are, and who are acquainted with the methods of modern biographyand especially the biographies of modern poets-will be aware that a book of which so much can be said is deserving of careful study, as an exposition of Keats' poetical merits. Mr. Colvin, however, has aimed at something more than this. He claims to have settled Keats' "historic place in English literature." Here we come upon different ground. I suspect that Keats' relative position in the history of our poetry will scarcely be determined in our time. He is too near to ourselves, and touches too many of the temporary passions and prejudices that help to make up our life and taste, to allow his poetry to be judged with what ought to be the impartial mind of the historian. Nevertheless, the historical standard is the one which the critic of English poetry should keep before him; but, in that case, he should treat his subject historically. We cannot determine the historic place of Keats in English literature without considering the stage which the English language had reached when he began to write; yet, with the exception of an account, in my opinion scarcely exhaustive, of the methods of versification in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Mr. Colvin makes no attempt to consider the artistic aims of Keats in their bearing on the gradual development of our tongue. We cannot estimate the relation of Keats to his predecessors and successors without also estimating the state of manners, knowledge, religion, and politics in his age. Of this Mr. Colvin says hardly anything. On the other hand he "classifies" his author in a manner which seems to show that he has formed his judgments by a somewhat esoteric standard. He says, for instance, that Keats