Christendom publicly and formally acknowledge the authority of Christ; but the ceremonial homage does not carry with it any real submission to His will in legislation or policy. The English House of Commons opens every sitting with prayer, but before business begins the Chaplain and the Prayer-book are. respectfully bowed out: the "bowing out" is the most significant part of the ceremony.

What serious Christian men ought to desire is the practical recognition of the spirit and laws of Christian ethics in the actual business of the State: this is what makes a State Christian. I was told that fewer men enter political life from religious motives in Australia than in England. It is, of course, impossible for me to judge whether the statement is accurate. But it was made to me by a sagacious man, who knows a great deal about the public life both of Australia and of England, and whose judgment on a question of this kind is not likely to be ungenerous. The comparison between the two countries, whether it can be sustained or not, suggests, as I venture to think, the true line which should be taken by those of my friends who are unhappy because the Australian State is secular. States cease to be secular when the people and their rulers seriously believe that the State is a divine institution-as divine as the Church, though belonging to a wholly different order and instituted for wholly different ends. My Australian friends-if I may presume to say it-should endeavour with new energy and earnestness to induce Christian men to become politicians "from religious motives." And by that I do not mean that men should go into politics with the hope of being able now and then to do their Church a good turn, or to introduce religious teaching into State schools, or to secure, on public and formal occasions, a public and formal religious service. Political life remains secular while men think that such exceptional political acts as these are necessary to consecrate it. There is a divine ideal of the State of which a Christian statesman will dream, and which he will long to realize. There is a doing of God's will on earth-in the natural order as well as a doing of God's will in heaven; and it is in the earthly region that politicians are to get the will of God done.

But I have drifted into exhortations which lie outside the true purpose of these papers. When I was in Australia I felt that to offer advice to the Australian people about either their ecclesiastical or their political business would be presumptuous. A mere visitor cannot have the knowledge which is necessary to make his advice of any value; and I, therefore, resolutely limited all my speeches and sermons to the discussion of those eternal truths and laws which, like the stars, have no parallax, and which are the same for men of all lands. If in this series of articles I have occasionally violated my self-imposed rule, it has been rather with the hope of serving Englishmen at home than with the intention of preaching from

a safe platform, twelve thousand miles away, to Englishmen in the colonies.

I close, as I began, with expressing my grateful sense-to which, however, no words can give adequate expression-of the boundless kindness shown to me and mine by my Australian friends, while we had the happiness of being their guests.

Birmingham.

R. W. DALE. I

NOTE.-CADET CORPS. Volunteer Cadet Corps have been established both in New South Wales and in Victoria. I did not happen to have the opportunity of learning much about their success in New South Wales; but I believe that when I was in Sydney some important changes were being effected in their organization. In Melbourne I was the fortunate guest of Colonel Sargood, who was Minister of Defences in 1883-4, when the whole military system of Victoria was re-organized, and who has shown great energy and zeal and liberality in promoting the Cadet movement; from him and Captain Henry, who for fifteen or sixteen years was a State school teacher, and who now holds the position of Staff Officer of the Cadet Corps, I received a great deal of interesting information.

The total strength of the force when I was in Melbourne, in October 1888, was 3529, including 3408 cadets, commanding officer and staff officers, and 119 officers. Boys ordinarily join the corps between the ages of twelve and fourteen: but boys are enrolled who are under twelve if they are exceptionally tall. Companies may be formed in any school in detachments of not less than 20. The boys can remain in the Cadet Corps after leaving school till they are old enough to join the Militia.

There are twelve battalions, each of which consists of the companies connected with the State schools and colleges-or, as we should call them, the Public Elementary Schools and the Grammar Schools-in the district. The officers, in nearly all cases, are masters in the schools; those in command of battalions receive a commission, with the rank of captain; the other officers hold commissions as lieutenants. Some of the scholars, youths of seventeen, in the grammar schools hold lieutenants' commissions. About 250 of the seniors are armed with the Martini-Henry cadet rifle; about 2100 of the juniors with the Francotti rifle; the rest—when I made my inquiries-had to be contented with carbines or dummy rifles. Arms and ammunition, which are kept in the schools, are supplied by the Government. The only accident which had happened was a very slight one: a boy fired a blank cartridge at another boy and singed his leg. Each corps has two weekly drills of three-quarters of an hour each; but where the officers are enthusiastic a corps is sometimes drilled for two, three, and even six hours weekly. The battalions parade monthly, but school holidays and bad weather reduce the annual number of parades to eight. The battalions are inspected by the commanding officer and a staff officer every half year. In addition to the time which is given to drill the boys generally spend a part of their time on Saturdays and on other school holidays in rifle shooting, under the direction of their officers. A handsome shield has been presented by Colonel Sargood for competition at the rifle targets. Every year the cadets go into camp for four or five days. The tents were being pitched for an encampment at Elsternwick the day I left Melbourne; more than 1800 officers and cadets answered to the roll call.

The direct object of the corps is to colony capable of bearing arms, and so to the raising of a large military force.

increase the number of men in the provide for any sudden call requiring Captain Henry told me that the

Cadet Corps is a splendid training ground for military life; that young men who have been in a Cadet Corps do not fear to join the Militia, on account of the recruit drill-they know their work; that in the country districts the Mounted Rifles in the future will be strongly recruited from the cadets, who will have little to learn to become efficient members. He pointed out that if every school had its corps, the system would turn out 2000 youths annually fit to enter the ranks, familiar with arms, many of them good shots, and with the greater part of their drill already mastered.

I was interested in the relations of the Corps to the defence of the colony, but still more interested in its moral effects on the community. There is, I believe, a very general testimony on the part of the teachers that a cadet company greatly aids the ordinary discipline of the school; and I was assured that since the corps were established, there has been a marked improvement in the behaviour of the youth of the colony. If the Corps came to include the whole of the boys in Victoria, "Larrickinism," to use the emphatic words of Captain Henry, "would receive its death-blow."

The trouble is that the Government are not sufficiently generous. The parents of boys who outgrow their clothes within twelve months hesitate to spend 278. 6d. on their uniform; and the teachers who hold commissions are subjected to heavy expenses, which they think-and, as far as I can judge, rightly think ought to be borne by the State. One suggestion has been made which seems reasonable: no grant should be paid for military drill to a State school that has not a cadet detachment.

If I had known anything of this movement before the Royal Commission on Education had ceased to receive evidence, I should have asked my colleagues to call one or two witnesses who were familiar with it. It has long been my conviction that unless there is a great expansion of our Volunteer Forces, and unless the defects which are alleged by military critics to exist in their organization are remedied, we shall be compelled sooner or later to resort to conscription. Cadet Corps might add immensely to the popularity, and perhaps to the efficiency, of the Volunteer movement. But it is on the educational advantages which would arise from their establishment that I have a better right to speak. One of the most serious questions considered by the Commission was the harm which comes to boys during the three or four years after they leave the public elementary schools; and the Commission recommended the establishment of evening continuation schools. I believe that the creation of cadet companies in connection with these schools, with a week in camp every year, would add immensely to their attractiveness, and that the habits of discipline which the drill would encourage would be of great value. Nor should the physical improvement which the boys would receive from drill be overlooked.

There are already, in this country, a few Cadet Corps, consisting of boys over twelve, belonging to some of our great public schools, and attached to ordinary Volunteer regiments; but what is needed is the encouragement of the "Cadet Battalions," which may be formed under independent command, and a modification of the present regulations for battalions. At present a boy cannot belong to a battalion till he is fourteen; it is difficult to understand why the age for a battalion should be higher than for a corps. The battalions are furnished with "unserviceable arms," and these are not to be fired: these conditions almost destroy the charm and attraction of the force. The officers receive only "honorary appointments;" they ought to receive substantive commissions. And the encouragement given by the War Office is extremely grudging and inadequate.

At present, I believe that there are only two battalions in this country; one in Birmingham, with a strength of 300, and one in Manchester, with a strength of 600.

SHAKESPEARE'S TRAVELS: SOMERSET AND ELSEWHERE.

I

I. SOMERSET.

KNOW well the kind of criticism which I must look for when I attempt to trace the footsteps of the greatest of English poets in regions where hitherto their presence has not even been suspected. "All men,"" it will be said, "have the 'defects of their qualities,' and the special weakness of the Dean of Wells is to bring the great men of whom he may chance to write within at least measurable distance of his own cathedral city. Not content with taking Dante to England, as Boccaccio did, or to London and Oxford, as the Bishop of Fermo did when he translated the Commedia into Latin at the request of Bishop Bubwith-Bishop of Bath and Wells-he leads him on to Glastonbury, and therefore, probably, to Wells. Not content with claiming Roger Bacon as one of the worthies of Somerset because he was born at Ilchester, he pictures him as gazing in his youth on the gorgeous sculptures, bright with gold and blue and crimson, of the west front of Bishop Jocelyn's cathedral, and as having learnt there the power of music to soothe and elevate and purify. And now he invites us to examine the theory that Shakespeare also came within the same charmed circle, and, on the strength of circumstantial evidence and undesigned coincidences, to accept a conclusion which has never been dreamt of by the thousand and one experts who have spent long years of labour in the Shakespeare 'diggings,' in the hope, too often the vain hope, of being able to add, here and there, a solitary nugget of the gold of fact to the meagre and disappointing records of the poet's life. Others have followed the supreme poet to Italy, to Germany, to the Low Countries, to Scotland, perhaps even to the sea-coast of Bohemia.' We are now invited to track his wanderings in the county and the diocese which have given the Dean a home. Shall we treat such a theory as worth examining, or relegate

it at once to the limbo of the Great Cryptogram,' the 'Rosicrucian' mystery, and other Shakespeare vanities?"

Well; I foresee all this, and yet I venture to appear in the character of a discoverer, who has found what he was not seeking for; of the gleaner of grapes, who, in a neglected corner of the vineyard, has seen a few clusters on the topmost bough, which had escaped the notice of those who had gone before him. And so I enter in

medias res.

1. I start from the last two (153, 154) of Shakespeare's Sonnets.

"Cupid laid by his brand, and fell asleep:
A maid of Dian's this advantage found,
And his love-kindling fire did quickly steep
In a cold valley-fountain of that ground;
Which borrow'd from this holy fire of Love
A dateless lively heat, still to endure,
And grew a seething bath, which yet men prove
Against strange maladies a sovereign cure.
But at my mistress' eye Love's brand new-fired,
The boy for trial needs would touch my breast;
I, sick withal, the help of bath desir'd,

And thither hied, a sad distemper'd guest,

But found no cure: the bath for my help lies
Where Cupid got new fire,-my mistress' eyes.

"The little Love-God, lying once asleep,

Laid by his side his heart-inflaming brand,

Whilst many nymphs that vow'd chaste life to keep,

Came tripping by; but in her maiden hand

The fairest votary took up that fire

Which many legions of true hearts had warm'd;
And so the general of hot desire

Was, sleeping, by a virgin hand disarm'd.
This brand she quenched in a cool well by,
Which from Love's fire took heat perpetual,
Growing a bath and healthful remedy

For men diseas'd; but I, my mistress' thrall,

Came there for cure, and this by that I prove,
Love's fire heats water, water cools not love."

As I read these lines they seem to me, though doubtless allegorical, to be an allegory resting on a fact. There is a " fountain” in a “valley ” which, from time immemorial, has had "a dateless lively heat still to endure." Its fame is spread far and wide, is rising rather than falling. It is

"A seething bath which yet men prove
Against strange maladies a sovereign cure,
A healthful remedy for men diseased."

To such a bath, in some definite locality, the poet had, as I infer, actually been ordered in what seemed a critical period for his health.* But it did not and could not cure him. It could not "minister to a

Bodenstedt, in the notes to his translation of the Sonnets, asserts his belief that they were written as a jeu d'esprit at some watering-place (the two being alternative attempts at expressing the same thought), but his knowledge of England in the Elizabethan age did not enable him to identify it. For reasons which will appear