Wallenstein is lower æsthetically than Tell; artistically King Alfred is less valuable than Richard III. The closing scene of the life of the Emperor Maurice when his children were butchered before his face, and he gave up the last rather than allow the nurse to sacrifice her own, combines almost every element of ethical and æsthetical nobility. At first it seems dramatic, but what could dramatic art add to it? Stage effect perhaps, so far as it is due to the actor; all that a poet could hope to do on his own account would be to prepare a character to culminate in such a sacrifice. The value of this last is very doubtful. The æsthetical value of Joan of Arc's life lies in the historic moments which it would be impossible to adorn and a profanation to falsify. It is hardly worth while for literature to do what remains, and supplement pictures of concrete heroism with the most delicate analysis of her feelings when the French army was beginning to find her a troublesome visionary, or when she was being brow-beaten into recantation in an English dungeon. It might be done fifty ways; but Etty's picture of her at the stake would always be worth them all. In the same way Delaroche's "Christian Martyr" is a greater addition to the "Golden Legend" than Massinger's "Tragedy on Dorothea," and we need never expect to meet with a poem on Elijah which shall light up the history in the way Mendelssohn's music does. Or to come down to a level where the aesthetic value of morality is not on the heroic scale, who would not give all the graceful books that can be written on Eugénie de Guérin for a portrait of one whose life within its narrow limits was so beautiful? Or to come lower yet, such æsthetical value as the pathos of common life possesses is better represented by Frère than by Dickens, because Frère avowedly represents its momentary aspects, whereas Dickens would have been compelled, if he had not been inclined, to represent the picturesque and pathetic side of poverty as something normal and habitual. The fact is, literature comes too near to life to rise above life at its highest, or to keep above life at its lowest; it is confined to a middle region where it can embellish without falsifying.

And if literature has to turn away from what

is best in life, other forms of art by their greater detachment carry us away from life into fairyland, so that here too it is impossible to formulate an ideal relation between average art and average morality, so that practical enthusiasts can always maintain that what is given to art is taken from morality. Yet there is an ideal reason for their co-existence. Life has been compared to a tapestry which is worked on the wrong side; and after all it is this side which we see in morality; in art we see not the right side, for this is covered up as fast as it is finished, but perhaps some reflection of the pattern too much distorted to be valuable when the tapestry is finished and fixed; till then it has its use those must work very earnestly who work the faster for looking upon the wrong side alone. Of course it is unsatisfactory to have to think of art and life co-existing in this state of jealous co-operation that can hardly be distinguished from subdued antagonism; but after all this is one of the minor discomforts of an unsettled period in which nothing is satisfactory, though to healthy tempers much is hopeful. To such a temper it would be one hopeful sign that we are beginning to recognize that, as it is ruin and madness to sacrifice morality to artistic eccentricities, so it is folly and loss to sacrifice the normal development of art to moral conventionalities. Though art must always contain something which is a snare to morality and morality must always cultivate much which is simply an encumbrance to art, we may rest upon the thought that absolute art and absolute morality, though perfectly distinct, are always harmonious. All are bound to practise morality, though the majority can never carry it to its ideal stage; it is the same with the majority of those who are called to cultivate art; but by keeping their eyes on the unattainable, morality will catch some grace, art will be preserved from revolt and excess. By patience and work we may hope to lift a happier generation to a level when the question between morality and art disappears: at all events we shall be lifted ourselves to a world where that question and many others are easily answered and need not be asked.

G. A. SIMCOX.

This work is the result of a suggestion made by Sir Arthur Helps to Mr. Thomas Brassey, that he should write a paper on the subject of wages, taking his illustrations from the facts brought out in writing the Life of the late Mr. Brassey, the great railway

contractor, which was reviewed in these pages last month. But, as usually happens when industrious men, full of their subject, are beguiled to take pen

in hand, the paper expanded into a volume, and the facts introduced into it took a so much wider scope than at first was contemplated, that a second book has had to be published, instead of a mere appendix

to the Life.

A thoughtful work on labour, as connected with

the price of it, is ever valuable. For, like another

old, old story, this, too, interests at some time or

other every one of us. We are all work-people, toiling for hire, and yet, in a sense, all masters, paying for service. Now, especially, that the world is being revolutionized, that the aspect of every de

partment of labour is changing or changed, should we

be glad to receive a contribution which, by carefully collating figures bearing on the subject, points out the direction in which the changes are being, or have been, made.

This, Mr. Thomas Brassey's work certainly does, and does well. It is statistical, and, therefore, to many people, dry. It deals with an important branch of Political Economy, and so is in danger of being neglected, as abstruse. Some books of this kind, if left upon the shelves by the general public, can, at least, be introduced to them by condensations and reviews. But this work is itself a condensation, cleverly written; it is itself a summary, well summarized, and, therefore, a crux to a precis writer or reviewer. It must be read and re-read, entire, to be appreciated; and we trust that our recommendation of it will not be neglected in this Dominion of Canada.

The volume opens with a chapter on Strikes and Trades-unions, to which Mr. Thomas Brassey, in the interest of the working-men, is alike opposed; and his opposition, while strongly declared and well supported by facts and arguments, taken, in most part,

movements, is most effective, because it deals with the subject broadly. Thus, he does not confine his facts and reasons within the limits of his own country, but takes us to Mr. Krupp's famous engineering establishment at Essen, with its army of between 8,000 and 10,000 men, and shews that wages there to day-workmen are only from 30 to 40 cents a day, and

to smiths, puddlers, carpenters, and masons, $11 to $32 per month. He admits that provisions in some in England, but he brings prominently forward the districts of the Continent are somewhat cheaper than

he says, 1,500 of the workmen live together in a bargreater frugality of the German artizan. At Essen, rack, with one eating room in common, at which food and lodging can be had for 20 cents a day. He shews that whereas no great manufacture of heavy goods could, in olden times, be established except on the seaboard, so that England's position was, as to these, the most central in Europe. Railways have now changed this, and Russia can be supplied from the interior of France, Germany, or her own great Empire, with what she could formerly, with

most convenience, bring from England. He dwells upon funds, tariffs, and customs regulations possessed by the greater knowledge of neighbouring markets, French and German manufacturers, when compared with the English, who are, moreover, less familiar with Continental languages. He quotes authorities and proves that, after all compensating conditions have been allowed for, wages are at least 15 per cent. cheaper on the Continent than in England, while, without making such deductions, the differ ence is fully 30 per cent. He, therefore, cautions the English workmen to be careful, lest they, by unreasonable demands, throw in the way of English capital still greater difficulties than exist; and by stating that even now Profits are less in England than on the Continent, seeks to convince that wages, as compared with other elements of cost, have reached their limit, and urges that, as trades-unions cannot have other than a temporary influence on the rate of wages, it would be better that their organisations should be utilized for keeping a watchful eye on all that is taking place abroad, for educating in foreign languages delegates, who should prepare for publication frequent reports on the activity of labour and the fluctuations in the rewards for labour in all countries

with which England has relations.

Mr. Brassey hints-his political position, perhaps, hardly allows him to do more-that the suppression of intemperance would be equivalent to a considerable advance in wages He states that there was, on the Great Northern Railway, a celebrated gang of navvies, who did more work in a day than any other gang on the line, and always left off work an hour earlier. Every navvy in this powerful gang was a teetotaller. He contrasts with the draughts of the British workman the favourite cup of coffee of the German. And we are surprised that, among the Canadian notes in which his father's manuscripts are rich, he did not find reference made to the habits of the Canadian lumbermen, the hardiest, hardest working, and, per haps, most powerful set of white men on this Continent, who seldom drink anything but tea as an accompaniment to their salt pork and beans.

In his second chapter, Mr. Brassey swings off, with an easy transition, to the question of supply and demand. He shews us the "fitter," with a weekly wage of 30s. a week in England, receiving £200 a year in the Argentine Republic; where, also, the farm labourer receives from 6s. 8d. to 8s. 3d. a day. He glances at the Moldavian labourer of 1865, receiving 61⁄2d. a day in money, and an equivalent of 32d. a day in food. He shews us English navvies sent out to work at the Callao docks at 8s. 3d. a day, seduced to go into the service of an American railway contractor in Peru at 22s. 6d. per day. He gives tables which shew the Bombay carpenter to have been receiving 30s 4d. a month in 1830, and 58s. in 1863. He glances at the crowds of labourers swarming up from the Abruzzi to work on the Maremma Railway in winter, and from the interior of India, to be employed on the great railways there. He draws attention for a moment to the poor peasantry of the north of Sweden, who receive no wages in money, but merely a limited supply of cast-off clothing, and a scanty quantity of meal, from the agents who visit them in summer, to purchase with such wares the tar they have managed to make during the short days of their long winter-a condition not much better than that of the Newfoundland fishermen, who are always in debt to the storekeeper, who supplies their outfit, at his own price, and who must be repaid in fish at his own price, too --and concludes an interesting chapter, replete with information, by a reflection, not unfavourable to the British workman, who does not live where "employers are too poor to be generous, so that the desire to make the most of their small capital has altogether extinguished the virtue of charity and the spirit of justice."

But the cost of labour, Mr. Brassey goes on to prove in chapter iii., cannot be determined by the

rate of wages. This will be to many the most interesting part of the whole work. The idea is not new, bnt Mr. Brassey brings more varied illustrations to bear upon his thesis, and gives, better than any other author we have yet read, the various compen sations which counterbalance the cost of labour.

He states that the wages of labourers on the North Devon Railway were at first 2s. a day, but were gradually increased to 3s., while the work was executed more cheaply at the latter rate. The brickwork of the Metropolitan Drainage Commission was done more cheaply per yard, when wages were IOS., than when they were 6s. per day. Wages in Russia are nominally cheaper than in any other European country, but it costs as much to manufacture iron there as in England, where they are the highest. Neither in France nor Belgium is the cost of extracting coal reduced by the low price of labour. The cost of producing pig iron, per ton, is greater in France than in Cleveland, Ohio, although the actual labour is 20 per cent. cheaper. French shipwrights seem to receive only half as much as English, but the ships built for the Mediterranean trade are built on the Thames rather than in France. Wages in Ger man cotton spinning factories are 50 per cent. lower than in England, but the number of hands in proportion to machinery is larger, and the work turned off between 5-30 a.m. and 8 p.m. (the working day there), no more than in England from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Two Middlesex mowers will mow in a day as much as six Russian serfs; and, in spite of the dearness of provisions in England, the mowing of a quantity of hay, which would cost the English farmer a shilling, would cost the Russian six or eight. The English manufacturers, who pay a higher rate of wages than these foreign competitors, still compete with the rest of the world successfully in point of cheapness. The causes which redress the balance are cleverly enquired into by Mr. Brassey, and, in many cases, clearly traced. For these we refer the reader to his pages.

The only other chapter we have room to refer to at any length, though they are all interesting, is the tenth, on the influence of American wages on the English labour market. He handles this with much ability. He wishes to impress upon all, that men who have failed to earn a livelihood in the United Kingdom, would be equally certain to fail in 2 wider country, in which industry and energy are still more essential. The same class who would fail in London, would, from the same cause, fail in the United States, he truly says, for, "if the reward of labour is more liberal, more energy of character is required than in the more settled communities of the old world." He cautions the over sanguine, and frankly states that the difference in wages on the Atlantic seaboard of America,