have not the
vulgarity and ugliness that we see in them. To Alfred a steamboat would
be a new and sensational sea-dragon, and the penny postage a miracle
achieved by the despotism of a demi-god.

But when we have realised all this there is something more to be said in
connection with Lord Rosebery's vision. What would King Alfred have said
if he had been asked to expend the money which he devoted to the health
and education of his people upon a struggle with some race of Visigoths
or Parthians inhabiting a small section of a distant continent? What
would he have said if he had known that that science of letters which he
taught to England would eventually be used not to spread truth, but to
drug the people with political assurances as imbecile in themselves as
the assurance that fire does not burn and water does not drown? What
would he have said if the same people who, in obedience to that ideal of
service and sanity of which he was the example, had borne every
privation in order to defeat Napoleon, should come at last to find no
better compliment to one of their heroes than to call him the Napoleon
of South Africa? What would he have said if that nation for which he had
inaugurated a long line of incomparable men of principle should forget
all its traditions and coquette with the immoral mysticism of the man of
destiny?

Let us follow these things by all means if we find them good, and can
see nothing better. But to pretend that Alfred would have admired them
is like pretending that St. Dominic would have seen eye to eye with Mr.
Bradlaugh, or that Fra Angelico would have revelled in the posters of
Mr. Aubrey Beardsley. Let us follow them if we will, but let us take
honestly all the disadvantages of our change; in the wildest moment of
triumph let us feel the shadow upon our glories of the shame of the
great king.

MAETERLINCK

The selection of "Thoughts from Maeterlinck" is a very creditable and
also a very useful compilation. Many modern critics object to the
hacking and hewing of a consistent writer which is necessary for this
kind of work, but upon more serious consideration, the view is not
altogether adequate. Maeterlinck is a very great man; and in the long
run this process of mutilation has happened to all great men. It was the
mark of a great patriot to be drawn and quartered and his head set on
one spike in one city and his left leg on another spike in another city.
It was the mark of a saint th