in his breast. Then Beowulf knew that he drew nigh the end of this poor life; and whilst Wigláf cooled his wounds with water, he said, 'Fifty years have I shepherded my people, and though so strong no king dared greet me with his warriors, I have only fought to hold my own. Neither have I made war on any man for lust of gain or conquest, nor oppressed the weak, nor sworn unjustly. Wherefore I fear not that the Ruler of Men will reproach me with the doings of my life. But now, dear Wiglaf, go quickly to the cavern and bring me of the gold and many-coloured gems that I may look thereon before I die; that so, feasting my eyes with the treasure I have purchased for my people, I may more gently yield up my life.'

So Wiglaf hastened and came to the firedrake's treasure-house; and lo! his eyes were dazzled with the glittering gold, the dishes, cups, and bracelets that were heaped within the cave and lightened it. Then he laded himself with gem-bright treasure, one trinket of each kind, and a lofty golden ensign, the greatest wonder made with hands, and a war-bill jewelled, shod with brass and iron-edged; and came again to his master. Fast ebbed the chieftain's life upon the sward. Senseless he lay, and very near his end. Wiglaf cooled his fiery veins with sprinkled water, and the lord of the Geats opened his eyes and gazed upon the golden cups and variegated gems. He said, Now give I thanks to the Lord of All, the King of Glory, for the precious riches which mine eyes behold; nor do I grudge to have spent my life to purchase such a treasure for my people. Bid them not to weep my death, but rather glory in my life. Let them make a funeral fire wherein to give my body to the hot war-waves; and let them build for my memorial a lofty mound to sea-wards on the windy promontory of Hronesnaes, that the sea-sailors as they journey on the deep may see it from afar and "That is Beowulf's cairn."

say,

Then from his neck he lifted his golden chain, and took his helmet and his byrnie and his ring and gave them to Wiglaf, saying, 'Dear friend, thou art the last of all our kin, the last of the Wægmundings. Fate hath long swept my sons away to death. I must go and seek them!' So parted his soul from his breast.

Presently came the nobles which before had fled, and found Wiglaf washing the body of

their prince with water and sorrowfully calling him by name. Bitterly spake Wiglaf to them. 'Brave warriors! Now that the war is over, have you in truth summoned courage up to come and share the treasure? You, who forsook the treasure-earner in his need; forsook in his extremity the high prince who gave you the very war-trappings wherein you stand? I tell you nay. You shall see the treasure with your eyes and hold it in your hands, but it shall not profit you. The Swedes beyond the sea who came against Hygelác and slew him, the same that Beowulf overcame and drave out, when they learn that our strong warrior has passed into his rest, will come again and snatch the land from your weak holding and carry you away into bondage, and seize the treasure. Let it be his who won it! Safer will he guard it in his sleep than you with feeble war-blades and weak javelins. Let the lord of the Geats slumber with it in the cairn which we shal build for him; so shall men fear to touch the treasure as they would to snatch a sleeping lion's prey.'

So with one accord they bare the hoary warrior to Hronesnaes, and from the cavern drew out the twisted gold in countless waggon-loads.

Then for Beowulf did the people of the Geats prepare a funeral pile, strong, hung round with helmets, with war-boards and bright byrnies; and weeping they laid their lord upon the wood. Eight chosen warriors walked with Wight round the pile with torches to kindle the balefire. The wood-smoke rose aloft, the noise of mourning of a people sorry of mood mingled with the crackling of the blaze, and the wind blew on the war-bier till the flames consume the bone-house of the mighty-handed chief.

Then the Geats wrought a great cairn beside the sea. It was high and broad, and easy t behold by the sailors over the waves. Ter days they wrought thereat, and built up the beacon vast and tall, and laid the ashes of thei: lord therein. Then they brought the rings and gems and ornaments and put them in the mound. No earl ever wore the twisted goldfer a memorial, no maiden was made glad with the golden rings upon her neck, but the treasurt sleeps in the earth with him who won Twelve nobles rode about the mound calling t mind their king in speech and song; praising his valour; even as it is fit that a man shola

tinental watering-places. Indeed, it would not be surprising if greater simplicity of manners, and less exclusive notions of their own dignity, should come to prevail among our landed gentry, leading to a revival of that free and kindly social intercourse which made rural neighbourhoods what they were in olden times. The peculiar agricultural system of England would remain intact, with its three-fold division of labour between the landlord charged with the public duties attaching to property, the farmer contributing most of the capital and all the skill, and the labourer relieved by the assurance of continuous wages from all risks except that of illness. But the landlords would be a larger body, containing fewer grandees and more practical agriculturists, living at their country homes all the year round, and putting their savings into land, instead of wasting them in the social competition of the metropolis. The majority of them would still be eldest sons, many of whom, however, would have learned to work hard till middle life for the support of their families; and besides these there would be not a few younger sons who had retired to pass the evening of their days on little properties near the place of their birth, either left them by will or bought out of their own acquisitions. With these would be mingled | other elements in far larger measure and greater variety than at present--wealthy capitalists eager to enter the ranks of the landed gentry, merchants, traders and professional men content with a country villa and a hundred freehold acres round it; yeomenfarmers and even labourers of rare intelligence, who had seized favourable chances of investing in land. Under such conditions it is not too much to expect that some links, now missing, between rich and poor, gentle and simple, might be supplied in country districts, and that plain living and high thinking' might again find a home in some of our ancient manor houses; that with less of dependence and subordination to a dominant will there would be more of true neighbourly feeling and even of clanship; and that posterity, reaping the beneficent fruits of greater social equality, would marvel, and not without cause, how the main obstacle to greater social equalitythe law and custom of primogeniture-escaped revision for more than two centuries after the final abolition of feudal tenures." This may seem to be a rather sanguine view; but there is nothing in it chimerical, much less is there anything savouring of communism or even of social revolution. Mr. Brodrick's essay has won great, and we think well-deserved, praise, even from opponents, by its ability and by the spirit in which it is written.

The essay of Mr. Rogers on the Colonial question is marked by his usual force and vigour. It is written from the "Manchester" point of view, of course, but no Colonist will be offended in it by anything anti-colonial, if by that term is meant a want of right and kindly feeling towards the Colonies. It is absurd to suppose that we can close a discussion which has been going on among the greatest and most revered masters of economical science for a century, merely by imputing to people sordid motives, and calling them hard names. Every man is a patriot who, whether on the right road or not, is sincerely seeking the good of his country. In this very volume M. De Laveleye protests strongly against the policy of retaining Algeria, that possession which France cherishes so passionately, and on which she has wasted so much money and so much

blood without even a shadow of return, for even as a military training-place, it has proved the mere destroyer of her strategy. "I would suggest," says M. De Laveleye, "that France had a means of making Prussia pay dearly for the conquest of Alsatia; it was to give up at the same time Algeria, as a cause of weakness and ruin. Oh! Frenchmen, borrow compulsory education from the Germans, and give them Algiers in exchange, and you will be avenged." A total severance of the Colonies from the old country, Mr. Rogers holds, would be a misfortune. "The invitation to secede, so freely tendered to the colonists is, in my opinion, inexpedient as well as uncivil. It would be much wiser to tell them that we do wish to keep them not only in amity bet in alliance, but that in treating on the terms of the alliance, we and they must act with equal inde pendence." The least agreeable part of Mr. Rogers' essay, to many colonists, will be the discouraging terms in which he speaks of proposals for extensive emigration.

We believe we may say that all the essays in this volume, without exception, will be found instruc tive to the economist and politician, whether be agrees with them or not. Perhaps some day a Derby club may be instituted for the propagation of the principles of Lord Derby, and we may then have volumes of philosophic essays on the other side.

The presence of no less than four foreigners (though one of them is of English birth) among the nine essayists, is significant not only of the cosmopolitan character of political and economical science, but of the growth of European sympathies, and of the more European character which is being gradually assumed by political and economical as well as by religious and intellectual movements.

A SURVEY OF POLITICAL ECONOMY.-By John Macdonell, M. A. Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas.

This work is based on a series of articles contrilted to the Scotsman newspaper. We have read t with interest and profit. It is a comprehensive. sensible and well written account of the chief toys and problems of Political Economy, and is marked throughout by openness of mind and a desire to justice to the different writers and schools wh theories are passed in review. Mr. Macdore candour is particularly shown in his treatment of the land question, which in England is one of such ex ceeding bitterness, not only on economical but on political grounds. While he repudiates, as m have been expected, Mr. Mills' extreme plans of exceptional dealing with rents, and vindicates private property in land; he combats with equal fairness the extravagances of the opposite school, enforces the special duties and restrictions which attach to g ownership of land, and condemns primogeniture ani entails. He even goes so far as to look forwar. a time "when the landlord shall be regarded as 1 public functionary or trustee entrusted with the care of certain portions of the soil of the State, an bound to use it to the common advantage, and whe the last and greatest of sinecures shall be reforme! We confess that he does not make it clear to our why in this, which is the commercial, not the fea 2 era, investments in land should be treated so die"

ently from other investments; but this does not impair the service rendered by the discussion in an impartial spirit of a rancorous and dangerous party question. The same spirit is shown in dealing with Protectionism, though in this case we should desire more completeness, the disquisition closing with a string of secondary arguments, of a miscellaneous character, on the side of Protection, each of which, we believe, may be conclusively answered, but with regard to which Mr. Macdonell only says generally, that, in his opinion, all European countries and the United States have outgrown the necessities of Protectionism. It was also unnecessary to limit the history of Protectionism to the period subsequent to the rise of the mercantile theory, if such a theory ever really existed, which Mr. Macdonell doubts. Protectionism has existed whenever and wherever political power has been used in the commercial interest of a class. The mediaval baron who forced the people to grind their corn at the baronial mill, use the baronial ferry, and resort to the baronial fairground, was as much entitled to the high-sounding name of Protectionist as the monopolist of New England or Pennsylvania, though he did not frame moral and patriotic theories or construct imposing diagrams, like those of Mr. Henry Carey, in defence of his very natural proceedings.

The point on which, as at present advised, we differ most widely from Mr. Macdonell, is female labour. He imagines that by availing ourselves of this discovery, as he calls it, we should all but double the productive power of the human race without necessitating any increase in the amount devoted to subsistence. Such an expectation appears chimerical. Women cannot do any work requiring muscular strength or physical endurance; they cannot even print a newspaper, because it involves night work. They could not, as a general rule, engage in any calling requiring permanent devotion, or the skill which can only be gained by experience, because the immense majority of them marry, and hardly any of them renounce marriage. All that they can do therefore, ordinarily speaking, is to take the place of the feebler and more delicate portion of the male sex in certain indoor callings of a light and easy kind. It may be a good thing that they should do so, but this is a limited source from which to anticipate the doubling of human wealth. This question, like many others, economical and of all kinds, appears to be ridden by a fallacious term. All useful occupations are labour in the only rational sense of the word. A woman is labouring to the very best purpose, and rendering to humanity the full equivalent of any male labour, when she bears children, rears them, and manages her household. Young women, if they look forward to being wives and mothers, are best occupied in the very needful preparation for that state, and even mothers-in-law and grandmothers on whom, at any rate, the female labour theorists think themselves entitled to lay their hands, may generally find more profitable employment in the domestic circle than they would find in the general labour market. The gain which would accrue to humanity from training the female sex to labour, would be pretty much the same as would accrue from training our feet to discharge the functions of a second pair of hands, and leaving us without anything to discharge the functions of the feet.

A great service will be rendered and a great fame

will be won by the first writer who treats history economically or political economy historically. In this work political economy is to a certain extent treated historically, and the value and interest of the work are thereby greatly enhanced, but the amount of history is limited by the general brevity of treatment. Mr. Macdonell seems to have accumulated materials which would enable him to expand this element of his work or to write another book on an enlarged scale, and we should be very glad if he would use them for that purpose.

The shadow of the terrible "International" is supposed by some to have fallen even on Canadian industry, and to have been visible in the recent strikes. Mr. Onslow Yorke's little volume may therefore have for us not only a general, but a practical, interSo far as it goes it confirms us in the belief which we had before entertained, that the shadow of the International, as is the case with the shadows of other objects, is much larger than the substance.

est.

The name, which now sounds like a menace to all nations of industrial revolt and political communism, originally at all events had no such signification.Two French artisans, Tolain and Fribourg, we are told, having come over to England at the time of the International Exhibition of 1862, carried back to France a seductive account of the English Trade Unions. The French artisans wished to found an organization on the same model, but found themselves precluded by the law forbidding associations of workingmen in France. A sharp lawyer hinted to them that they might evade the law by affiliating themselves to a foreign society. A society was accordingly formed in London, with Odger, Cremer and a German domiciled in England named Eccarius, at its head, to which the Frenchmen were affiliated, and which was called the International. This society ramified, became European, and held a Congress at Geneva, at which the English delegates advocated practical measures for raising wages and reducing the hours of work, while the French delegates advocated aerial schemes for the regeneration of the industrial world. If Mr. Yorke may be trusted the French Empire coquetted to a considerable extent with the leaders of this industrial movement. The policy of the French Cæsars, like that of their Roman prototypes, was a mixture of despotism and demagogism; and while they "saved society" with their bayonets, they carried on intrigues in the lower strata of society with the view of gaining allies against the liberal middle classes, and beneath a surface of military order charged the mine which exploded in the insurrection of the Commune. The French artisans, as might have been expected, soon grew jealous of English ascendency, and a dispute, in which the French were victorious, ended in the practical transfer of the headquarters of the Society to Paris.

At the Geneva Congress the Polish question had been introduced, and the red flag had been displayed on an excursionsteamboat. But during the earlier period of its history the society was essentially industrial. Gradually however, by a natural affinity, there mingled with it a political movement, at the