has become so much a matter for experts that the clergy might find difficulty in doing the work of teaching efficiently. In small rural schools, however, it appears to us perfectly appropriate that the clergyman should in ordinary cases give the denominational lesson. It would be by no means too heavy a tax upon his time, for, by the nature of the case, the duty of teaching would only fall on the parson in those places where he is notoriously not overworked. To attempt, then, to represent the proposal as one which the Church must fight to the uttermost seems to us indefensible, and we believe will seem so to most men of moderate opinions. What makes the refusal to yield here the more unfortunate is the fact that if in practice the arrangement could have been shown to work badly, it can hardly be doubted that in the next Parliament it would have proved possible to do away with the exceptional disqualification of the teacher in the small rural schools.

The Duke of Devonshire in his moderate and statesmanlike speech protesting against the rupture of the negotiations declared that he had received a vast number of letters and memorials and representations, of which not more than one per cent. were in the direction of conciliation. Nevertheless, he believed that "after a very short time had elapsed, and when these more or less irresponsible advisers had had greater experience of the results which will follow the loss of the Bill, they would regret that they had not allowed their representatives in the House of Lords a freer hand and a larger discretion." These words, we believe, represent the true facts of the case. As the Duke of Devonshire also pointed out, the objectionable things in the Bill were in almost all cases remediable by future legislation, while the Bill and the amendments declared acceptable by the Government were only irremediable

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in points where it was generally agreed that substantial justice was done.

When those who have refused to accept the Government concessions begin to take stock of the situation, we cannot believe that they will long continue satisfied with their action. In the first place, they can scarcely fail to note the obviously genuine delight expressed by the extremists on the other side. It is not for nothing that Dr. Clifford and Mr. Perks show their pleasure at the loss of the Bill. It means that they and those whom they represent not only consider that too much was given to the Church in the amended Bill, but also that they feel confident that the ultimate result will be a settlement which will be more, not less, favorable to their own special interests. It is difficult to find solid grounds for contradicting this view. No one can suppose that the education controversy will now die away, or that things can be left as they are. It will continue for the next few years with increasing bitterness and increasing injury, not merely to education, but to the position of the Established Church. Not only will the weight of the administrative machine be thrown against the Voluntary schools at headquarters, but in a very great number of cases the local authorities will be spurred on by the militant Nonconformists to demand their pound of flesh from those schools. If these tendencies are supplemented, as we should not be at all surprised to find them supplemented, by large Parliamentary grants for the building of new Provided schools to take the place of Voluntary schools condemned as inefficient, and if by this means the number of Voluntary schools throughout the country is largely reduced, how will it be possible to say that the Church has been benefited by the defeat of Mr. Birrell's Bill? Even if the rejection of the Bill, with the consequent embarrassment to the Government, turns out,

as it very possibly may, to be to the immediate and temporary benefit of the Unionist Party, what guarantee has the Church that she will not be thrown over in the end by the Unionist leaders? The Unionist politicians, after three or four more years of the education controversy, even supposing that they are returned to power with a small majority, might quite conceivably think it good party tactics to end the controversy by introducing a Bill which, though nominally framed in the interests of the Church, might in reality be by no means so favorable as the present Bill. Remember that in such a case the Church would be powerless. She could not threaten to join the other party in the State, for in the case we suppose an understanding would have been come to between the Unionists and that party. Again, the party managers know quite well, and rely upon their knowledge, that the clergy cannot leave the Unionist Party, and that any threats which they may indulge in of doing so are only sham thunder.

Reviewing all the circumstances, we may feel sure that though a better Bill from the point of view of the general educational needs of the country, and from the point of view of public administration and public finance, may be introduced, it is practically impossible that one more favorable to the Church of England will ever be presented to Parliament. At the same time, it is idle for the clergy to imagine that the status quo of the Act of 1902 will be permanently maintained. The bitter ness of the agitation, it is certain, will continue, and in the end the indifferent part of the nation, sickened by years of controversy, will insist that alterations must be made in the Act of 1902 which will satisfy the Nonconformists.

It is necessary before we leave the subject of the destruction of the Bill to say something as to those on whom the responsibility for the failure falls.

In the first place, we believe it falls upon Mr. Balfour. Partly owing to his unwillingness to recognize any faults in the measure of 1902, but still more, we fear, owing to his desire to snatch a party advantage, Mr. Balfour has throughout been opposed to a compromise. He has desired that the Bill should not be amended, but rejected; and he is doubtless prepared to declare that by securing its rejection he has dealt a powerful blow for his party. We shall not attempt to reargue this point, but will merely state once more our belief that, even if the Unionist Party gains temporarily through the embarrassment of its opponents, it will in reality lose infinitely more owing to the injury done to the causes which it is the business of that party to champion and protect. We wish that we could find it possible to assert that the Archbishop of Canterbury does not to a great extent share the responsibility for wrecking the Bill which falls on Mr. Balfour. We believe that at heart the Archbishop has always been for compromise, and we feel sure that if he had been given a free hand and had felt himself free to consult his own views and wishes rather than those of his followers, he would have come to an understanding on the Bill. Unfortunately, however, he has not shown the strength of purpose required, and instead of leading has allowed himself to be driven. Instead of reminding his followers sternly that it was their duty to follow him, he has reluctantly acquiesced in their shrill commands that he should move in a particular direction. That this acquiescence was most unwilling cannot, we fear, serve to acquit him at the bar of public opinion.

The only man who, in our opinion, has come out of the controversy, either on the Unionist or on the Government side, with a perfectly untarnished record is the Duke of Devonshire.

He

has maintained a wise and statesmanlike attitude throughout. Had the Peers been willing to trust him instead of Lord Lansdowne or the Archbishop of Canterbury, they would not only have done the best for the interests of education and for the Church, but they would, we believe, have immensely strengthened their position with the country. We have no hesitation in saying that the Duke of Devonshire's attitude towards the Bill represents the attitude of the vast majority of the best Englishmen. For one reason and another, they do not think the Bill by any means a perfect Bill, nor are they enamored of all the attempts to improve it by various amendments. At the same time, they regard its loss The Spectator.

with annoyance and disgust, and look, as he does, with the utmost dissatisfaction on the prospect of a further continuance of the education controversy. The fact that the Duke of Devonshire not only spoke for, but actually voted with, the Government on Wednesday night is a proof of how deeply he feels upon the matter. Had he been asked to take part in the final Conferences which decided the fate of the Bill, we can hardly doubt that the decision would have been a different one. The fact that he does not appear to have been asked by the Unionist leaders to be present at those Conferences would seem to indicate that the spirit in which they entered upon the work was not one of conciliation in the true sense.

The death of M. Ferdinand Brunetière, who succumbed to a long, painful, and incurable illness in Paris on Sunday last, is an irreparable loss to French literature indeed, to literary criticism. For a quarter of a century he has been one of the greatest forces in French literary circles, and, since Taine's death in 1893, perhaps the foremost critic, vigorous, alert, learned, and in many respects uncompromising.

Apart from his sincere patriotism, the two great passions of Brunetière's literary life were the rescue of Bossuet from obscurity and the denunciation of the naturalistic school of novelistsZola, Hector Malot, and the rest. A good lover and a still better hater, he more often than he perhaps realized arrived at ill-considered judgments. He began the war against "realism" in 1875 with an attack on Zola's "La Faute de l'Abbé Mouret," and, oddly enough, this purely imaginative book was declared to be "full of revolting pictures," and stigmatized as gross

caricature. He held up Chateaubriand's "René" and Goethe's "Werther" to the view of the novelists of "realism," and contended that these two authors gave us realistic narratives without ever offending good taste.

Unlike many men who have achieved greatness, Brunetière gave in youth no promise of brilliancy. He was born at Toulon on July 19th, 1849, and began his studies at Marseilles; he went to Paris, "sans fortune et sans protection," to finish his education by preparing for examination at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, but in 1869 he failed. The war of 1870 broke out, and when peace was restored his struggles to obtain a livelihood were very keen. For nearly five years his means of existence must have been of a most uncertain character. At last he turned to literature, and his first important article appeared in the Revue Politique et Littéraire (Revue Bleue) in 1875; it was a notice of H. Wallon's book on "Saint Louis et son Siècle," and this brilliant

criticism attracted so much attention that he was invited to contribute articles to Le Parlement. Here he published a series of critical essays which enhanced the promise held out by his first paper. In April, 1875, he became a contributor to the Revue des Deux Mondes, of which he was appointed sub-editor (secrétaire de la rédaction), and, in 1894, director. In 1893 he suc.ceeded Lemoinne at the Académie Française.

Although M. Brunetière exalted the seventeenth century (of which he had a profound knowledge) above all other periods, his criticism was confined to no one century or phase of literature. His range, indeed, was marvellous, and was not even confined to literature. In 1880 he began to republish his critical articles in book-form with "Etudes critiques sur l'Histoire de la Littérature française," which was "crowned" by the Académie. This was followed by "Nouvelles Etudes" in 1882, and by a third series in 1887. Another set of studies, with the general title of "Histoire et Littérature," appeared in three annual volumes from 1884 to 1886, and many of these volumes have gone into several editions.

Apart from his literary contributions, Brunetière lectured with conspicuous ability and success. It is curious to note that in 1886 he was appointed maître de conférences of French language and literature at the Ecole Normale, where in 1869 he had failed to take a degree-an innovation almost without precedent in the history of the school. He delivered a series of lectures on "Les Epoques du Théâtre français, 1636-1850," at the Odéon in 1891-3, which attracted many; but his lectures on Bossuet at the Sorbonne in 1894 were even more popular. "DurThe Athenæum.

ing the three winter months of 1894," says the author of "French Literature of To-day"-a delightful volume, which is, by the way, dedicated to the great critic as "a token of gratitude and admiration"

the most fashionable public of Paris was seen to forfeit its hour in the Bois, and crowd into the corridors at the Sorbonne, at the risk of life (the crush was such that it was nothing less), as in 1891, 1892, and 1893, that same public had rushed to the Odéon. . . . Such sights formed big grievances in the envious mind against their hero. . . . The writer had engendered the orator, I might even say the preacher, for his method as a lecturer was destined to introduce considerable innovations into this art.

M. Brunetière contributed a rather severe notice of French literature of the year to our own columns in 1898, which shows his essential zeal for ideas in a book as well as form and style.

In "L'Evolution des Genres dans l'Histoire de la Littérature," of which the first of a projected series of four volumes appeared in 1890 (the other three have apparently not been issued), Brunetière embodied his theories of the application of scientific methods to criticism, for which he became famous. This work is a "vaste essai d'application des doctrines et de la méthode darwiniennes aux genres et espèces, parmi les ouvrages littéraires." Into this highly polemical question it is not necessary to enter here. But whatever view may be taken of Brunetière's theories of literary criticism, there can be no doubt that his strongly marked individuality, his vigorous and independent criticism, have left a profound impression on the intellectual life of the France of to-day.

W. R.

To look at Germany just now one might think that chaos had come again on earth. The Government has broken with the Clerical Centre, without whose support the Reichstag for many years past would have been unworkable, and is freely and tardily unfurling the Protestant flag. The Clerical Centre, after upholding every manifestation of the personal régime, after allying itself with the reactionary Junkers and voting for a spirited foreign and colonial policy abroad and for the Agrarian brand of protection at home, has made a sudden stand for the parliamentary control of the purse, has rejected the West African estimates, and has forced a Constitutional crisis of the first moment. In the decisive act of revolt it was assisted by the Social Democrats, whom it abhors, and by its more familiar allies among the non-Prussian nationalities. These developments, even if they stood alone, would be of immense significance. The Kaiser hitherto has cultivated the friendship of the Pope only less assiduously than that of the Sultan; and the pledge of his intimacy with the Vatican has been the political favors exchanged between himself and the Clerical Centre. Has that intimacy served its turn? With the rupture between France and the Vatican, with the Polish school question passing into a phase of real acuteness, with Italy insensibly edging away to the circumference of the Triple Alliance, and with Russia temporarily disabled, does the Kaiser think that Papal good-will has lost something of its old international value and may now be safely dispensed with? It is not impossible. And with the Clericals centrifugal forces of a different nature, but of equal or greater cogency, may have

been operating simultaneously. They draw their electoral strength from the South, where Imperialism is not popular, and from the Catholic industrial classes of the South, whose instincts are democratic; and the growing pressure within their ranks was bound sooner or later to call a halt in the policy of acquiescence in the programme of absolutism. It is probable, therefore, that neither the Government nor the Clericals were over-anxious to avoid a collision which will restore to each the naturalness and freedom essential to healthy political action, the Government becoming more Protestant in its affiliations and the Clericals more democratic.

But Ultramontanism is no more than a secondary side-issue in the contest that has now opened. It has not sufficed to form even a temporary cement for a coalition among the opponents of the Centre. The various sections of Liberalism have not been able to unite among themselves, and still less to establish an agreement with the Agrarians and anti-Semites. The Radicals will have nothing to do with the reactionaries and the high tariff men, who, for their part, regard Dr. Barth and his friends as little better than Social Democrats, and are content to hope that in the new Reichstag, as in the old, the Centre may still prove accommodating. The prospect that the national Liberals may step into the shoes of the Clericals is not one to tempt their colleagues of a sterner faith. National Liberalism has long ceased to be indistinguishable from Conservatism, and a union of Junkers, Liberals and Radicals would merely dance to the official tune. If such a coalition is evolved and is able to maintain itself through the elections it will