countries concerned; and by the feeling, to be
cultivated everywhere, that such a confederation would present to the
world the greatest, strongest, wealthiest, most highly cultivated
confederacy of nations that ever existed. It would be permanent,
because here would be no war of aggression in tariffs, or of personal
quarrel; no territorial ambitions; no conflict of kings.

Naturally, I was not called upon to speak at the Harvard dinner. Had I
spoken, I should like to have said: 'Men of Harvard, grandsons of that
benignant mother--still young--who sits crowned with laurels, ever
fresh, on the sedgy bank of Granta, think of the country from which
your fathers have sprung. Go out into the world--your world of
youthful endeavour and success; do your best to bring the hearts of
the people whom you will have to lead back to their kin across the
seas to east and west--over the Atlantic and over the Pacific. Do your
best to bring about the Indestructible fraternity of the whole
English-speaking races. Do this in the sacred name of that freedom of
which you have this day heard so much, and of that Christianity to
which by the very stamp and seal of your college you are the avowed
and sworn servants. Rah!'

[1893.]

ART AND THE PEOPLE. [Paper read at the Birmingham Meeting of the
Social Science Congress.]

There is a passage in one of the letters of Edward Denison which
exactly interprets the dejection and oppression certain to fall upon
one who seriously considers and personally investigates, however
superficially, the condition of the poor in great cities. He writes
from Philpott Street, Commercial Road, East London, and he says: 'My
wits are getting blunted by the monotony and ugliness of the place. I
can almost imagine the awful effect upon a human mind of never seeing
anything but the meanest and vilest of men and man's work, and of
complete exclusion from the sight of God's works.' The very
exaggeration of these words shows the profound dejection of the
writer, at a moment when his resolution to continue living in a place
where there was neither nature nor art, nor beauty anywhere, weighed
upon him like a penal sentence, so that the vileness of the
surroundings entered into his soul and made him feel as if the men and
women in the place, as well as their works, were all alike, mean,
vile, and sordid. Edward Denison wrote these words seventeen years
ago. The place in which he lived is still ugly and monotono