abolishing the slave trade and the earlier efforts for financial and Parliamentary reform. They rose to great importance during the Peterloo period. They dominated the Government at the time of the first Reform Bill, and for the last fifty years they have almost formed a fourth or fifth estate of the realm. They had their justification in the assumption, then only too well founded, that the voice of the people was not heard in the House of Commons. The reasoning ran, If you will not let us speak inside the House, we will take care to make ourselves heard outside. The public meeting was an appeal from the represented minority to the unrepresented majority of the nation, the bulk of the people, decreed to be voiceless by the Constitution, falling back upon common law right, and making themselves audible, sometimes in peals of thunder. But the barrier which kept the people outside the pale of the Constitution fell with the Hyde Park railings, and now they are all inside. There is no longer an unrepresented majority to whom an appeal can be carried. They are all represented in the House of Commons by their "procuratorial attorneys." At present the political function of the public meeting is chiefly of use in remedying the evils of the Septennial Act. While Parliaments last for seven years it is possible for a great change to pass over popular opinion between the day of election and the day of dissolution, and the public meeting is a useful means of apprising Parliament of the fact. But the effect of the Septennial Act is largely counterbalanced by the equalization of the constituencies and the closer relations established between the constituents and their representatives. The principle of delegation is disavowed, but it is practically in operation. It is not necessary to summon the whole of the electors in order to make the member acquainted with their views. A resolution passed by the executive committee of the local organization will suffice.

On a first impression it might seem that the giving of power to the whole people would have a unifying and consolidating effect. It is so where interests and ideas are substantially the same, but we are finding out that in some respects this large extension of political privileges has a tendency to disintegrate and dissolve. We are learning this especially in Ireland. Whether the Act of Union would have received the assent of the people of Ireland if all had been armed with votes and been able to use them honestly, is more than open to doubt. At any rate they had not the power of refusal; they never gave their assent. Now they have the power, and the first use they make of it is to raise a protest on behalf of three-fourths of the people against the compact executed in their name. On the same question as regards Scotland, there can be no doubt whatever. been household suffrage in Scotland in 1707, the Act of Union would have been rejected by two-thirds of the nation. It tries the nerves a

If there had

little to speak of Wales; but how stand the facts? Wales was conquered by English arms. The ruined castles to which Mr. Gladstone has pointed are the memorials of subjugation, and antiquarian charms are not strong enough to overpower the sense of patriotism. Wales has been annexed, but not absorbed. We have been content to leave it to itself as an outlying Principality. It has a national language, a national literature, and a body of national traditions which have lived on undisturbed from century to century, fostering a sense of ancient rights that have been violated but not lost, though the power to assert them has been wanting. Now the power is given, and we have to see how it will be exercised. The phenomena all round are the same. Historical facts are thrown into the crucible of household suffrage, and it is not certain how they will stand the test. National sentiment lives longest in the homes of a peasantry secluded from the rush and turmoil of the world. Nobles easily become courtiers, the gentry and the middle classes, either by interest or by imitation, sooner or later fall in with the established order of affairs. But in the hut on the mountain-side the past still lives in legends and wondrous tales, which each successive generation has amplified according to its fancy, and handed down from father to son. Hence the sudden resurgence of nationality. The sentiment takes a different form in great towns, where the crush of life is not favourable to romance. But it is just there that jealousy is most easily aroused. Tell three thousand people that they have lost a right or a distinction which their forefathers possessed, and their cry will at once be "To arms," especially when fighting only means putting the right vote into the ballot-box.

Looking at the practical results of the two revolutions which have been working themselves out side by side, the balance to be struck is not unfavourable to ourselves. The French sprang forward with a mighty bound, laying hold of all the forces and prerogatives of the Government, proclaiming the sovereignty of the people, and conferring the suffrage upon every citizen. They distanced us enormously, but we are not behind them now. Our methods have been different, and that not by choice, but as the result of pre-existing institutions. They had everything against them and everything to learn; we had on our side the old and settled principles of English freedom, and we travelled along a well-trodden road. Dazzled by a too sudden excess of light, they missed the path, fell into the hands of false guides, and soon lay weltering in a morass of conquest and glory. They lost everything they had won; they partly recovered it only to lose it all, or nearly all, again. Once more they are on dry land, perhaps on solid ground, with their political baggage safe. What is the net gain? They have achieved social equality, not merely as a fact, but as a sentiment which pervades the whole nation. We cannot boast of this achievement, something very different, be it

understood, from an equalization of social conditions, but we have some compensation for it in our racial pride. Peasant proprietorship, the most striking fact in the economic organization of France, was not the gift of the Revolution. What the Revolution did was to sweep away the innumerable exactions, ecclesiastical and manorial, which weighed down the owner of the soil. On the other hand, as the price of wars brought on by Imperial adventurers, themselves the offspring of the Revolution, the country is saddled with a national debt not very far from twice the amount of ours. The great and priceless gain which France has won is political freedom, the exchange of despotism for self-government, represented by universal suffrage. We have reached substantially the same goal, and have paid nothing for the victory beyond that incessant striving which repays itself by the discipline it affords. The French for the third time have abolished the throne, but they have three pretenders. Practically they have an established Church, and two or three other Churches are subsidized by the State. They have not a House of Lords, but they have a Senate which gives them sufficient trouble, and which they are on the eve of "ending or mending." We could wish that their future were less uncertain, that a great and generous nation were proof against the intrigues of paltry adventurers; but we may learn from their example how hard it is to rebuild when the old foundations have been utterly destroyed. Institutions cannot become stable in a day. For the present we are content, as we probably long shall be, with the essentials of a Republic, persisting in our indifference to forms so long as they do not cramp the spirit of freedom. We no longer have any quarrel with the Crown. The sternest of theoretical Republicans might well hesitate to meddle with an institution which sums up the history of the nation for a thousand years, which is an object of interest to millions who never read a Parliamentary debate, which saves us from what would be the fiercest struggles of party strife, aggravated by the risks of personal ambition, while all those powers and prerogatives which were once used for the aggrandisement of the royal authority, are now vested in a committee nominated by the House of Commons, and renewable in all its members whenever the people see fit. The future doubtless has its secrets and surprises. We have difficult tasks to accomplish and some new problems to solve. But we may draw courage from the ingrained sanity and sobriety of the race. Only let us continue to subordinate the rude idea of will to a sense of duty and our path will not fail to be strewn with light.

HENRY DUNCKLEY.

A WINTER IN SYRIA.

III.

BY

Y noon on the 9th March we had passed Athlît, following precisely the same route as that which was traversed by Richard I. on his famous march from the Kishon to Jaffa. In those days, however, the ground appears to have been a good deal encumbered with thickets. Now it is under cultivation, save here and there, where patches of rugged waste have proved too intractable.

As soon as Athlît was left behind (no Athlît, by the way, existed when Richard was in these regions), we entered upon a long and beautiful allée, formed by low sand-hills on the right, and the same equally low limestone range upon the left, through which El Dustrey, mentioned in my last paper, was cut. On the edge of this allée the scarlet anemones grew in vast abundance, and the horses' feet trod on the large Adonis palestina, the still more brilliant Asiatic ranunculus, and the Tulipa præcox.

It has been often remarked that scarlet and red are most important colours in the flora of Palestine, and I never saw the truth of the remark better borne out than on this particular ride. Soon we saw on the left two small villages, which the Templars, on the amiable principle, populus vult decipi et decipiatur, had named Sarepta and Capernaum; but these had nothing to detain us, and we pushed on, until, having got beyond some very weird-looking palm-trees which had long been cutting for us the southern horizon, we reached the much shattered ruins of Dor, once the southern limit of Phoenicia, and mentioned in the epitaph of Ashmanezer, now in the Louvre.

Thence we struck inland, and, climbing a tolerably high chain of hills, more or less connected with the Carmel range, but not part of it, pitched our tents at the village of Zimmarin. That place is a Jewish colony, founded by one of the Rothschilds, and inhabited by

persons who give, or are supposed to give, themselves to agricultural pursuits in the land once possessed by their forefathers.

Whether the experiment is ever likely to succeed I know not; but it looks just as unpromising as that of the Germans at Haïfa looks the reverse, and, if all the assistance from Paris were to be stopped, I, for one, would not be inclined to bet heavily upon its success.

The village commands a noble view, and its site is so healthy that we chose it as a camping ground, rather than pass the night upon the plain, even at this relatively safe season of the year. All night it blew half a gale from the east, and, as our tents were in an exposed spot, we had a lively time of it. We were in the saddle, however, at a tolerably early hour, and picked our way down the rugged track which leads from Zimmarin to the banks of the Crocodile River, a slow, deep, Campagna-like stream, which we crossed by a bridge of a single arch. I had occasion, a little before, to investigate the question whether this river was really still inhabited by crocodiles, and came to the conclusion that there was no doubt about it. These pleasant creatures make themselves very comfortable in the large marshes which adjoin its lower course.

After crossing the Crocodile River, we came on the plain of Sharon, properly so called, and oddly enough the very first flower I gathered upon it was a rose-Rosa phanicea-the only one I chanced to see on this whole journey. Whatever the rose of Sharon was, nevertheless, the learned tell us that it was assuredly not a rose, for the Hebrew name implies, it would appear, some bulbous plant.

Ere long we came to a belt of sand-hills, but interspersed with them were many lovely stretches of turf, dotted, amongst other things, with a French-grey lupin and a very lovely violet species of Echium, a genus which plays a most important part in the spring colouring of Palestine. Soon the sand-hills became covered with a thick growth of Pistacia lentiscus, so well known to travellers in Provence, and this extended nearly to Cæsarea, for which we were making.

There are

The objects of chief interest at Cæsarea are soon seen. the remains, very scant remains, of a circus, in the midst of which lie one or two columns and piers of granite, brought, I suppose, at immense cost, from the quarries of the Upper Nile, and now doing no good to anything in heaven or earth save to some bushes of the rather pretty leguminous shrub, Anagyris fætida, which they defend from the violence of the wind.

Then there is just a fragment of the breakwater which Herod raised to defend his harbour on the south, and a miserable sort of jetty has been constructed, some little way from this, in a sufficiently grotesque manner, by laying a large number of the Herodian columns alongside each other. The harbour must always have been nothing better than a tiny artificial creek. Josephus had not the power of