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the law of England. Now this renewed life of legal literature in England is almost wholly the work of professorial men. But they will be the first to acknowledge that their work is far from complete, and that the ideas which underlie their efforts were first taught by Blackstone. He will remain for ever the eminent lawyer, the perfect professor, the consummate man of letters whose genius claimed and vindicated for English law its high and rightful place in the noble literature of England.

A. V. DICEY.

The substance of this article was delivered as a Public Lecture on Blackstone's Commentaries on Saturday, June 12, at All Soul's College, Oxford.

NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

AN AMERICAN HINT IN PATRIOTIC EXPRESSION

On a hot summer's evening on the Fourth of July a little group of friends sat in a sloping meadow, watching the sky darken and the stars come out above the picturesque and far-flung peaks of the Presidential Range. Since sunset the day before, the sleepy old New England county town had been the scene of wild and noisy excitement. All day long, on the 3rd, the one store had been besieged by the entire male youth of the country-side, purchasing anything and everything that could be made to go off with a flash and a bang, whilst the girls laid in stocks of horns with which to contribute their share to the annual celebration. There had been a continuous hot spell of several weeks. The shingled roofs of the wooden houses were so sun-dried they hardly seemed to need the stick of a rocket or a chance spark from a Roman candle to set them ablaze. Older residents expressed some alarm as to possibilities of fire, and looked to the ancient painted buckets of the original volunteer fire brigade, dating from the first quarter of the last century, and still capable of rendering useful service at a crisis, before the modern fire-engine could struggle up from the railway town in the valley below. A visiting minister, taking his summer holiday in the mountains, had even taken upon himself to appeal to the storekeeper to hold back his combustible goods for cooler weather, to the intense indignation of all the youthful inhabitants. The only result of the protest had been that the officious stranger had been serenaded the whole night long by concerts of horns interspersed with interludes of fireworks. Nervous housewives had sat up all night, in the hope of detecting the first faint odour of burning wood, and giving the alarm in time. The select-men had gathered round the step of the store-the State

was "prohibition," and there was no more convivial meetingplace to discuss the general situation, and be ready to deal with any features of it that seemed to call for interference. The sheriff got out his dark-lantern and patrolled the boarded sidewalks, outwardly, a terror to youthful mischief-makers, inwardly, a prey to wild apprehensions as to what "the boys" might perpetrate if they caught him in a lonely block.

In the end, however, it had all gone off peacefully enough. The bell of the old academy-no longer the centre of higher education since the high school was built in the town on the main line-had rung out as cheerily as when it called the boys and girls of two generations ago to their studies. The horns had made night hideous, and the squibs and torpedoes had scared the bats and the night-birds without doing any more damage.

In the morning the village green had been the scene of a fiercely contested game of baseball-"Married v. Single." The play was vigorous rather than scientific, but no spectators could have been more enthusiastic than the wives and sweethearts who gathered under a shady maple on the grass-grown platform round the only stone building in the village. Its tiny, heavily barred windows and great iron door survived to recall its original use as county gaol, when in the old days the wide coaching-road had run through the county town on its way along the broad upland ridge. To-day all the traffic moves down in the valley where the long trains of cars go rambling north to Montreal and south to Boston. Prisoners are no longer kept in the old county town. Gay vines drape the uncompromising squareness of the stone walls, the shingled roof has been gaily painted, a gilded dome gives it an air of jaunty distinction, and the interior has been turned into a public library. It had made a charming background for the groups of women in their light summer dresses, and the solid walls were a good sounding-board for the alternate outbursts of "toots " from matrons and maidens, as they hailed the triumphs of their respective champions. As the day grew warmer and warmer, interest in the game had seemed to flag, and by twos and threes the spectators had sauntered home for "noon."

By four o'clock the green was once more filling up. Waggons were driving in from the neighbouring farms and being hitched to surrounding trees and palings. The audience, for the most

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THE NATIONAL REVIEW

part displaying a flag or the colours, took their seats on the benches which had been set under the maples in front of the old church. The four slender wooden pillars of the portico, the graceful lines of the pediment and the airy belfry, are said to have been designed by one of Wren's pupils. At the corner of the opposite block was one of the earliest mansions of the settlement, and beside it the low shanty which had been the office of its first lawyer. To the side of the church, another old house faced the green, and its display of American and Spanish flags betokened the residence of the local hero-one who had fought his country's battles and was well qualified to take a prominent part in the day's proceedings.

The band had driven up in a hay-waggon, decorated with boughs of birch and fir, and, using it as their band-stand, played patriotic selections between the addresses which were delivered by the editor of the local paper, the Baptist minister, the local hero-an admiral-the Universalist minister, and that Episcopal visitor who had incurred the resentment of "the boys" by butting in" to interfere with their fireworks.

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The proceedings were opened with the solemn reading of the Declaration of Independence-a document it would do the British no harm to listen to now and again. It is enlightening to hear the epithets used to describe the conduct and character of “our Most Gracious Sovereign Lord, King George III.,” and to realise how the English of the eighteenth century-men, too, who prided themselves on being sons and upholders of freedom and lovers of justice-struck their contemporaries on the Atlantic seaboard. One has a lurking suspicion that the British character, as drawn in the vigorous language of the famous Declaration, read as it is in every American community on every recurring Independence Day, underlies the American view of Great Britain even to this day.

After this historic opening the audience had settled down to consider more modern aspects of the national life. The Admiral, smart and dapper in his white uniform, gave a bright little sketch of the progress of the Navy in his own times. When he had joined, the crews had been almost entirely recruited from foreign-born men. It was so rare to find a really Englishspeaking sailor, that a bo'sun, who was a bit of a wag, had once

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nailed on the mainmast the notice, "No English spoken aft of this." This was all changed now; the Navy had grown, and was taking a more prominent part in the public eye; the Glo'ster fishermen were coming in to the Service, and the American people were beginning to realise that even for a Continental Power the future lay, to some extent at least, on the great waters. He had ended with a capital description of "the Fourth" on board a war-ship, the discipline and executive control of which seemed to grate on the nerves of the Universalist minister, whose really fierce oration had been a masterly exposition of the text, "It is better for a man to misrule himself than to be well governed by any one else." The speeches on the Fourth of July are a valuable opportunity for airing political views, which the near approach of a Presidential Election does not render any the less a cute. The speakers vied with one another, not only in singing the virtues and glories of their native land, but in expressing that horror of "Socialism"-i.e., central control of corporations-that dread of the overweening influence of any one individual-President Roosevelt has been publicly alluded to as "Theodore Rex"-that anxiety lest more centralisation should mean the encroachment upon jealously guarded Staterights which seem to constitute the most cherished convictions of the good Democrat.

After the whole assembly had joined in singing "The StarSpangled Banner," it adjourned to the side of the church, where public-spirited ladies had provided lemonade to refresh patriotic throats. As the horses were hitched to and the children packed into the waggons, some kindly spirits sought out the one Britisher present, evidently fearing she might be feeling a bit badly. "I was just tickled to death," the Admiral's wife had remarked, "to see you sitting there listening to the old Declaration. You just mustn't take it to heart, you know. We like the British all right now, I guess." "You mustn't think we bear you any ill-will," another friend added. "What that Declaration really means is that our two countries are at peace now and they're going to remain so."

The afternoon had closed with one last, more intimate act of celebration. In the old home of the family that had given its name to the town, hangs, amongst other old-time relics, a musket

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