amusement, like wine also, if taken in excess, becomes as stupid as any other form of vulgar debauchery. When we read of some noble lord, with two of his friends, shooting two thousand pheasants in a week, or that another has shot four hundred brace of partridges to his own gun in a day, we perceive that these illustrious personages have been useful to the London poulterers; but it is scarcely the work for which they are intended by the theory of their existence. The annual tournament of doves between the Lords and Commons at Hurlingham leads to odd conclusions about us on the Continent. Every institution -even the institution of a landed aristocracy—is amenable to general opinion; and it may have worse enemies than an Irish Land Act.

Fashionable follies are like soap-bubbles; the larger they are the nearer they are to bursting, Pheasant battues and pigeon shooting will come to an end, as bullbaiting and cock-fighting came to an end. Meanwhile, the world is wide, and the British have secured handsome slices of it beyond our own island. Who in his senses— even if it were possible-would be the peasant proprietor of half a dozen acres in England when, for the sum for which he could sell them, he could buy a thousand in countries where he would be still under his own flag, among his own kindred; with an unexhausted soil, and a climate anything that he prefers, from the Arctic circle to the tropics?

You who are impatient with what you call a dependent position at home, go to Australia, go to Canada, go to New Zealand, or South Africa. There work for yourselves. There gather wealth as all but fools or sluggards are able to gather it. Come back if you will as rich men at the end of twenty years. Then buy an estate for yourselves; and when you belong to the landed gentry in your own

person, you will find your eyes opened as to their value to the community.

Will you have an example of what may be done by an ordinary man with no special talents or opportunity? A Yorkshireman, an agricultural labourer, that I knew, went to Natal twelve years ago. I suppose at first he had to work for wages; and I will tell you what the wages are in that country. I stayed myself with a settler on the borders there. He had two labourers with him, an Irishman and an Englishman. They lived in his house; they fed at his own table. To the Irishman, who knew something of farming, he was paying fourteen pounds a month; to the Englishman he was paying ten; and every penny of this they were able to save.

With such wages as these, a year or two of work will bring money enough to buy a handsome property. My Yorkshireman purchased two hundred and fifty acres of wild land outside Maritzburg. He enclosed it; he carried water over it. He planted his fences with the fast-growing eucalyptus, the Australian gum-tree. In that soil and in that climate, everything will flourish, from pineapples to strawberries, from the coffee-plant and the olive to wheat and Indian corn, from oranges and bananas to figs, apples, peaches, and apricots. Now at the end of ten years the mere gum-trees which I saw on that man's land could be sold for two thousand pounds, and he is making a rapid fortune by supplying fruit and vegetables to the market at Maritzburg.

Here, as it seems to me, is the true solution of the British land question. What a Yorkshireman can do I suppose a Scotchman can do. There is already a new Scotland, so called, in South Africa; a land of mountains and valleys and rocky streams and rolling pastures. And there is gold there, and coal, and iron, and all the elements

of wealth. People that country, people any part of

our own colonies, from the younger sons who complain that there is no room for them at home. Match the New England across the Atlantic with a New Scotland in South Africa; only tie it tighter to the old country. Spread out there and everywhere. Take possession of the boundless inheritance which is waiting for you, and leave the old Island to preserve its ancient memories under such conditions as the times permit.

PARTY POLITICS.'

A plague of both your houses!

THE surprise with which the elections of February were received in the political world has passed away. The new Cabinet has settled quietly into the place of its predecessors, and the country pursues its way as if nothing had happened of serious consequence. The Minister who six years ago was brought into power and endowed, in an effervescence of apparent enthusiasm, with overwhelming strength, has been dismissed with an emphasis of disapproval as distinct as the applause with which he was installed; yet no satisfactory explanation has been offered of the change of sentiment. No great questions were at issue on which opinion was divided. The victors have been modest in their success, and the vanquished have borne their defeat meekly; and after the first shock of disappointment have made no angry demonstrations of intending to renew the conflict. The general feeling, so far as can be observed, is mere indifference, as if in our hearts we were weary of politics, as if we desired for the present to hear no more of them, and turned instinctively to the party who were more disposed to leave us in peace.

And yet the phenomenon is remarkable: the more remarkable the closer it is examined. The reaction (or

This Essay was written after the last general election, and the accession of Mr. Disraeli's Government.

whatever it is to be called) is essentially English. Scotland and Ireland continue true to the Radical colours. England has not only become Conservative, but is so overwhelmingly Conservative as to overbear with the most peremptory decisiveness the combined majorities of the sister kingdoms. The Press has offered its various explanations. A Cabinet which comes into office with unusually brilliant promises is like a four-in-hand brought round in the morning from the stable-yard, the horses fresh and in high spirits, the harness glittering from the hands of the grooms, the carriage spotless in its paint and varnish. The weather is uncertain, the roads are in bad repair, littered with stones, or deep in mud which conceals treacherous holes and pitfalls. The splendid equipage of the morning reaches the end of a few stages bespattered from wheel to roof, the horses jaded and languid, perhaps lamed, traces broken and ill mended, the glory gone, the show and sparkle soiled with the accidents of common vulgar work. Changed appearance is in great degree inevitable, and is not necessarily discreditable. The favourite of the moment raises expectations which he is compelled to disappoint. He passes measures which are to inaugurate a millennium. The millennium is no nearer than before. Factions have combined to raise him to power. Each has its special object, demands attention to it, and resents neglect. Sudden exigencies of State have to be provided for or encountered. They may not admit of being dealt with satisfactorily; yet the Minister in power is made responsible for what goes wrong. By the mere necessary acts of administration-if Government is not to be reduced to a farce-the weeds which are for ever growing in the social state must be rooted out, and powerful interests are alienated in the process. Every step is scrutinised by jealous