From the Spectator. THE NEW YEAR-ITS HOROSCOPE. which leaves everything to individual discretion; | much call for political activity; peace, and therefore so that neither nation hears a word of dispute leisure to look after the shop and the factory-for until there is an explosion; and while natural all who could pay for it; in the letter, laws were justice supports discretion exercised for the best, equal for every degree-who could pay for it; food national dignity forbids concession. Yet it would accessible to all—who could pay for it; clothing be the wickedest folly to let the emulous indiscre- more abundant than purchasers-who could pay tions of Mr. Squier and Mr. Chatfield grow into a for it. The political system ignored the people Punic war. that could not pay; but in itself it was " totus teres atque rotundus," with scarcely anything more to be desired. Unfortunately, the arch-king of commercialism thought that the paying power was omnipotent he tried to outbid his own prinBORN of Revolution and Reaction, the New cipals, the bourgeoisie, by doing business in corYear cannot but have a strange and eventful his- ruption and dotations on his own account; and he tory. Some portion of its destiny is written in made the common mistake of successful specuthe past how large a portion, unwritten, is lators, in forgetting the mode of his own success. awaited with anxious expectancy by the princes He went too far: against the recalcitration of the and peoples of Europe, lying on their arms! how bourgeoisie he enforced the letter of the law; his much larger a portion unawaited will come with-instrument broke in his hands; under high presout forethought or warning! Child of warring sure the boiler-royal burst, the whole train went parents, its own nature will war with itself, and off the line, the third class ran into the first class, find uncertain end: but every child has a third and France was chaos-a broken railway, a shutparent-himself, newly created; and it is left for up shop, a street unpaved, a parish without its his own independent will to conquer a residuary police, prisoners and paupers loose. The natural fate, which makes up the sum of his existence, a laws of mechanics came into play, making havos new bequest, for after generations. We find the in the attraction of cohesion everywhere; the world as we are born to it, we leave it as we help Letter broken, the wild Spirit of human passion and to make it the year we are to begin is the de- fancy jumped upon the counter, ran through a scendant of a long and ancient line through count- series of apocalyptic visions, at once present and less ages; but that which it will be to us we have prophetic, startling to Europe. Other nations partly helped to make it by what we did, or did which had not advanced so far as France in liternot, in the two fruitful years just gone by-have alization, thougn its frost had seized some of them helped to make it for our progeny. Work was ere they had outgrown the despotic stage, caught done in those years to be finished; work undone the wild shout from Paris, and everywhere the to be supplied. Spirit was let loose-vague, dim-sighted after its long prison; strange in the streets of its own towns; uncertain of purpose, ill served, but exulting in the reawakened consciousness of its own existence. Eighteen Hundred and Forty-eight was the year of the new revolt-the revolt of the Spirit against the Letter. The early spring of 1848 witnessed the downfall of the King of the Age, in whom the Letter had been embodied and crowned. Eighteen Hundred and Forty-nine was the year Social materialism had attained its culminating of reaction-the slaves of the Letter taking heart point in western Europe. Commercialism had from the uncouth vagaries of the Spirit, and combeen consummated in England by free trade; in bining to recapture it. They tried to cajole it, France, characteristically, by being endowed with as the fisherman cajoled the genie back into the jar the sword of power in the National Guard and sealed with the kingly signet of Solomon. They crowned in Louis Philippe : trade ruled England set its servants against each other, and so conthrough its "responsible minister of the crown," quered them. They raised up false spirits, simunder the policy bequeathed by the statesman of ulating the true, and so usurped its authority. trade, Sir Robert Peel; trade ruled France They have again got the Spirit under, with some through its civic militia and its umbrella-bearing changes: in place of Louis Philippe Louis Naking. The social philosophy, based on self-inter-poleon bestrides France-the imperial in lieu of est, had bought out the old aristocracy in Eng- the regal cognomen; in place of the Emperor land, the railway king sat beside the peer; Char- Ferdinand, the Emperor Francis Joseph; with tism had proved a bad speculation, and was sneered out: money and place had bought up the statesmanship of France. England and France were allied to keep the peace for the good of trade. Respectability had "made things comfortable," aud had quite forgotten wild primordial human nature or vagabond want. The arrangements of that day were perfect, or bid fair to become so. The classes of respectability had just what they wanted-freedom for their estate, trade; political power for all who could pay for it, without too some minor substitutions: but Frederick William has kept his throne; and, for the third time, England has helped the base Bourbons of the South to cheat Naples and Sicily. The English government, subsisting by favor of the English franchisepurchasing classes, has aided the royal classes and constituted authorities of Europe in putting down the Spirit and reinstating the Letter. That is the work of 1849. Eighteen Hundred and Fifty will see some further change. The last year of the half cen without mischief, with no result but certain profit. We are therefore coming to learn the full use of colonies, just as the bright idea has occurred to certain patriot politicians that it would be well to get rid of our colonies. Mr. They tury, it is one of this special series of three, and will probably bring another stage to its close with the first fifty years. Though bound again, the Spirit is not crushed or dead. On the contrary, its influence remains, and has caught a hold even on some of the unbound classes. Interests This complex idea seems to perplex some who have been fused which before were separate, and have got hold of it, as much as the glove left by no doubt a considerable advance has been made to- the fugitive perplexed the Arctic bear. The phiwards suggesting to the subject peoples of Europe losophers are aware that they have hold of somea reciprocal knowledge of common interests; and thing, but they do not know what, and they do not although the authorities in power have not yet precisely know how to put it on. They don't resolved to make common cause with the common know which way to argue; so they argue both people, an idea that such would be the safer and ways, or neither, according to temperament. cleverer as well as the juster policy, has seized Godley's letter is another puzzle; they can't condivers influential minds in most countries. Roy-tradict it, they confess that it is true, and yet they alty has proved to be not infallible, nor invulner- can't reconcile it to ministerial orthodoxy. able, nor unconvertible. Frederick William's are in the position of the Mussulman sages whom oscillations extend promisingly towards a more the sultan lately required to reconcile medical sci"constitutional" as well as wider grasp of power. ence with the Koran; they cannot ignore plague The King of Holland has kept perfect peace by a nor gainsay sanatory regimen, but yet it is not in wise adoption of the spirit of the day, however the book-is not the truth authoritative. Mr. qualified. The young King of Sardinia promises Godley earnestly calls attention to the double fact, to develop constitutional monarchy in Italy-a that the colonies are in danger of being lost to us, policy irresistible. Although the voice of a me- and that a sound policy might retain them; which diating statesmanship went wild in the disap- nobody can deny; but how reconcile the position pointed and perplexed Stadion, its accents still with official views and conduct? The attempts wail eloquently in the ear of Europe, like the spirit made to that end are curious. One writer admits of suffering that haunts the scene of crime and the precarious state of colonial affairs, but gayly threatens the doom of unjust power. The forci- declares that matters are always unsettled and ble suppression of law in Hungary by armed des- must ever remain so in that regard. Another potism has extended Poland to the borders of friend of official interests avows that the state of Turkey; Murad Pacha bears the traditions of affairs demands revision and reform, but avers that Bem, the countryman of Kosciusko; and Russia Lord Grey and Mr. Hawes are doing all that is is exasperating Turkey to try her restored vigor wanted. in a new war of the Crescent against the Greek Cross, but this time in behalf of national independence and municipal freedom. Such are the elements of future action it is given to 1850 for the Letter and the Spirit to come to some terms; but no doubt provisionally-a -a world of eventful enterprises and pregnant glories being left to the latter half of our century. From the Spectator. THE SUM OF COLONIAL REFORM. These reassurances are equally alarming. Doubly so, since they are perhaps equally true; Mr. Hawes and Lord Grey may be busy with "reforms" of their stamp, and yet the precarious condition of affairs may be radically unalterable in the official view. But if those statesmen are so busy, it is essential to the welfare, if not to the safety of the empire, to know what they are doing. To unravel that formidable mystery, will be one duty of independent members in the approaching session; for it is now quite evident that colonial affairs must occupy a prominent position in the ensuing debates. OVER-ABUNDANCE is the prognostic that begins to All politicians are preparing for such a turn of alarm watchful economists. The bank is gorged public discussion; and it is not an unfavorable with gold, and the Morning Chronicle lifts up a omen that a politician who ever inclines to seize warning voice interpreting that dread sign. It upon that form of any question which can be turned reminds us that those practical financiers, Mr. to most popular account, has come half-way over Jones Loyd and Sir Robert Peel, have described from his recent anti-colonial position. Mr. Cobsuch gluts of money as the sure forerunners of ex- den's Bradford speech is one for colonial reform, cited speculation, over-trading, and crash. Com- but it is not half so strongly imbued with the spirit mercial men are getting familiar with the idea. of colonial abandonment. That semi-conversion is It takes, they say, about seven years to run the a great fact; a month may suffice to effect the round of rising prosperity, affluence, crash, decline, other half. and rebound. They watch the bubble as it formS Were the interests at stake less momentous, it and bursts, but do not offer to go beyond critical would be amusing to note the ado which is made, observation, to correction. The Chronicle, how- first in coming to conclusions, and then in turning ever, calls to mind the proper vents for the super- them to any purpose. In the first instance, there abundance-sound speculation, such as permanent is the coyest dread of the most obvious conclusions. improvements of land, and colonization. In such A leading journal bestows all its immense skill works for future production, money can be sunk and power in selecting and establishing for itself a England, her prestige, experience, and influence. position like that at the meeting of cross-roads, by | from their white aristocracy-a considerateness which to advance hereafter in any direction, or which might solve every difficulty connected with retreat. And another more strictly ministerial free trade in labor-it is manifest that a fair use paper, which maintains that we have already come of superior faculties and opportunities would mainto all desirable or possible conclusions, wishes the tain white supremacy; and natural sympathy would world to be content with ending in Lord Grey and always secure the safety of the white race, by its Mr. Hawes. Those timid eyes cannot be induced alliance with other sections of its own family in to confront the actual state of things-the estranged Europe and America. In a word, the very way to mind of the colonies, our vitiated relations, and the avert the oft-repeated threat that any British West necessity for setting about some plan of providing Indian colony municipally independent would befor the future. But then, as if in anticipation of come an English San Domingo, is to make it a the inevitable work, it is hinted that the needful | black England, under the controlling sanction of labor to make all right will be impossibly vast and difficult. Now that is not so; what remains to be done is not so very vast; neither is it impracticably difficult. Recent occurrences in every section of the colonial empire make it obvious that the actual, or rather the late relation between England and her dependencies cannot be maintained; but the change which is inevitable is half made, ready to the hand of the official statesman, by the colonies themselves. The future relation, whatever it is called, if any relation is to exist at all, must be one of federal alliance and reciprocal benefit; the colonies wholly independent of the central administration in their local government, but united to the empire by a few broad and simple bonds of mutual interest. Now, towards effecting that sort of independence not much remains to be done. Canada is virtually independent, notwithstanding the large army which this country maintains in that colony for a show of supremacy. The Cape of Good Hope has seized hold of independence in such a manner that the independence must be conceded, or the cape must be conquered from its English colonists; a conquest which no probable administration would undertake. The whole course of legislation as respects Australia tends towards a similar end; Mr. Hawes' oft-retracted draft of a constitution will have to be outdone, by himself or others; and that necessity implies everything. In these respects, with reference to all our colonies proper, we are reverting to the relation which sub-like. They cannot see the colonies or their prosisted between England and those settlements that she established on the best political footing, the earlier colonies of North America. With regard to some dependencies, difficulties may exist, because the proposed municipal independence is there complicated with questions of race; as in Ceylon, with the numerous and not contemptible native races; in the West Indies, with the black Creoles. But Ceylon is an exceptional case, having been treated neither as a colony Lor an Indian dependency; therefore it must still be treated provisionally, either until its administration be assimilated to that of India, or it be effectively colonized by whites; which it might be. And in the West Indies, it is not at all to be assumed that the blacks cannot be admitted to a share in the working of representative institutions. Care would no doubt be required in devising plans for such institutions; but while the possession of political power would secure to the blacks a very proper and socially advantageous consideration In any colonies whatsoever, the custom of appointing officers from England must be given up. Possibly the actual enjoyers of patronage conferred should not be rooted out suddenly, or at least without due consideration; but the system is already doomed-really at an end. On the other hand, released from many liabilities annexed to over-government of colonies and the exercise of patronage, future ministers will not find it difficult to found new colonies without the abuses which beset the old. There is for every shadow a bright side. The reason why the statesmen who are in office, or waiting outside the portal of office, refuse to recognize and act upon these obvious facts, is that they are blinded by routine and certain conventional tenets, about "the integrity of the empire," the duty of "maintaining its territory intact," and the ceedings, for the accumulated heaps of didactio despatches and blue books around themselves. For similar reasons—the fixed contemplation of received ideas, rather than an examination of realitiesthey cannot discern the utility of colonies municipally independent; and as they cannot bring their minds "to give up the colonies," they cannot bring their minds to what seems to them equivalent to giving up. If they would simply leave poring over the records and imaginative compositions of Downing Street, and look at the facts open to the broad light of day, these doubting politicians would soon perceive that colonies might be as useful as ever-more so-although they should be municipally independent. The nation that is not continually growing is stationary and about to decline: but if England continue to grow within the compass of the four seas, she will grow too big for her own space, like the giant in the Castle of Otranto, and will die of glut, like that threatened in the golden congestion of the bank: colonization affords scope for growth, field for the action of in measure the respect and regret, and he does it virtually in the length of your bill; the "properties" of the dismal drama being only pretexts to justify the bill. The spirit of reform should search into the matter, with the view of eliminating those parts of the ceremony which are merely expensive, and of restoring the rest to a more natural relation with the laws of grief. But if these suggestions were carried out, their creasing energies. To multiply English settle- spirit would no doubt be carried much further. ments, is to multiply English markets for English | None would object to the expense were the outlay produce. But there are considerations higher even a real sacrifice to the dead, either for his welfare than commercialism: it is the duty of us all, na- or the honor of his memory; but by our usage tions as well as individuals, to do all the good we of delegating the conduct of the funeral entirely can, and not to let good be wasted for want of our to a tradesman, the sacrifice is not to the dead, exertion it will be the better for the world, if one but only to the undertaker. : He undertakes to of the most civilized of nations be extended, rather than one less civilized. Accidental circumstances have conspired to set a lower tone of intellectual, political, and national morality in the great separated colonies of England; and it would be for the benefit of the world if England were able to extend herself, rather than to acquiesce in extension of the United States by absorption of English colonies. It would be better for England to possess allies bound by every tie of blood and undivided interest, rather than rivals prone to contest. Statesmanship worthy of the name deals with realities, and aims at substantial good: true colonial statesmanship, just now, should consist in confronting the facts and striving after attainable good, not in ignoring the facts and striving to retain obsolete privileges. From the Spectator. THE COMMON SENSE OF FUNERALS. In that sense, we find that the need of reform exists far less among the outward parts of the pageant, the visitors and their carriages, than in the more essential parts, the greater as you approach the sacred person of Death. Were grief a mere pretence, there might be some show of reason in bringing a dismal aspect over the actor in the pageant, by the detestable arrangements of black stuffs about the mourning coach-in itself an ugly and unwieldy vehicleand the faces of the mourners. A sad-colored costume, and even black, might be used to typify the inward sombreness; but not that midnight sootiness which is so repulsive. Again, why should a tribe of mercenaries walk by the side of the procession? They mean nothing. If the departed was so beloved by friends and adherents, let them walk with him on his last journey; but The rank and station of the dead are not a measwhy those idle traders in funereal woe? Cui bono? ure of the worldly means of those he leaves be- Especially, what is the use of that board of hind. But in cases where a large circle of friends black feathers carried before the hearse? Does desire to show an outward mark of respect to it solace the soul of the departed, or the grief of genius, to public services, or to worth, why is a the living, or in any way reconcile death to life? heavy burthen to be cast upon the living? In such No; it simply reconciles the undertaker's bill to cases carriages are offered with their attendants. THE undertaker's business will not be permitted to rest in peace, unreformed. One who is "Not a Mute" writes to the Times, making two suggestions for the curtailment of idle expense Why are the coachman and footman to be decorated his conscience, or rather to the usages of his trade. in silk scarfs, at an expense, I am told, of two For the undertaker's object is the perfectly fair guineas for each carriage? Surely carriages might one of getting an income out of his trade, and follow without this mockery of woe, which is worn he is quite willing to do suit and service for that for the moment, then sold for its value to the under- estate according to what is expected of him. taker again, perhaps for another occasion of equally One thing that multiplies the attendants is the idle pageantry; or, why should not such friends send their carriages, if such display is called for at weight of the coffin, and that is caused by the all, with all these outward marks of mourning, at endeavor to render it impervious. Now that enthe expense of those who really desire to show a deavor was suggested by the old barbarous notion mark of respect thus publicly? Perhaps fewer that the body could literally be retained in its carriages would attend. On the other hand, many actual form for future resurrection; a conservative would be anxious to do so, if only custom sanc- process carried to the most efficient shape of which tioned it, with or without idle ostentation. Then it is capable in the process of embalming. But the carriage would be a real mark of respect. we now know that decay cannot be arrested; partial Again, I am confident many friends would attend funerals if they were allowed to do so without in-success only makes the ignorant attempt the more convenience to the living. Why, then, should not hideous; and Queen Adelaide has set an example, this numerous class attend in simple mourning at even in the royal class, of waiving the process. the grave-meet at the cemetery-join in the last It was only another graceful tribute of that lady rites-pay a tribute to private or public worth or to the laws of simplicity and nature; for she it eminence, without enhancing the undertaker's bill? is who bears the repute of abolishing the custom, I feel very sure, were the custom once sanctioned, the funeral would be simple and inexpensive; and long disused on the continent, of disguising the a more genuine expression of sorrow would take change of time by wearing false hair. You can the place of the empty and heartless ostentation not resist the laws of nature without the penalty of defeat: false hair converts the time-worn coun now too common. tenance, not into a young one, but into a harsher or the privilege of the "table d'hôte;" only it is caricature of age. Embalming converts the much more hazardous to public order. The price divine form of humanity into a mummy. The at which the toper was to be allowed to consume leaden shell and oaken coffin are but rude substitutes for embalming-contrivances for resisting or delaying the process which restores flesh to earth; but it is in the prolonged transition that the process is shown in its most shocking form. Living flesh and good fertile mould-the mould of a garden or a corn-field, of the grassy meadow or the forest-are both pleasing to our sense; and the process which converts the one into the other is consecrated by all that we know of the beneficent laws under which it is operated. But when it is delayed! his wine without measure, must have formed the subject of some nice calculations. Few Dandos are produced in an age, and hence the accuracy with which men's eating may be averaged; but the capabilities of liquid consumption are not so easily measured-at least in this country. The cabaretiers, however, are pushing the business at six sous (3d.) per hour; and as the retail price over the counter, or "in your own jug," is a penny the litre, (one quart,) the quantity which will be allowed without grudging may be put down at three quarts each hour that the toper avails himself of the contract. The Angevin farmer mentions that a gardener of his, “" rather thirsty,” and endowed with a day's pay of 40 sous, (20d.) is enabled to drink by the hour for three days." In this there must be a mistake; for the 40 sous are hardly equal to seven hours' drinking; unless, indeed, the drinking day is short and the charge is made to diminish in an immense ratio as the hours advance. Perhaps the scale is so adjusted as to take into account the probability that at a certain stage drinking may be suspended in quarrelling; or, even where this does not take place, sleep may interpose and cut off the power of consumption. 66 What we desire in a funeral is that it shall typify our sorrow, and restore the fleshly body of our friend, which he has ceased to need, to the earth from which it was borrowed, in the manner most seemly, the most harmonious with our memory of his living condition and with the welfare of the living. For to make him a loathsome pest-bed for the living, is to desecrate his memory. In that view, our plan should be, to keep aloof as much as possible the train of mercenary strangers; to effect the restoration by the most direct and comely means. The coffin should not be impervious, but pervious; and a ground might be prepared to facilitate the process, and thus consecrated to receive the ashes of the dead by a practical furtherance of those laws which close his mortal career, as they originated and sustained it. In the same sense, the mere transit from the abode of life to the cemetery should not be made a gaz-lished upon this point. They could tell that there ing-stock for the public: it is the last depositing is a beverage called "small beer," brewed from that the eye of love will gladly watch, precisely malt and hops, which sells, where quantities are in the same spirit that carries you to the railway station and detains you to gaze towards the parting train long after you have no trace of your friend but the cloud of steam or the glare of the red lamps. But reduce the ceremony of the restoration to its essentials, and it is a very simple process; absolutely needing little beyond the services of the friends, the sexton, and the priest who sustains the trial of death with the knowledge of life, and calls change to its immortal duty of ministering to the eternal. From the Spectator. CAROUSING BY WHOLESALE. DRINKING makes head in some of the rustic parts of France. An Angevin farmer writes in alarm to the Corsaire, complaining that a Parisian practice of " drinking by the hour" has been introduced in the commune village, and that one effect has been a great augmentation of the business of the gendarmerie in the way of quelling wine-shop disturbances. A sergeant of that gallant corps actually refused to dine with the farmer on a recent Sunday because of his largely increased duties in keeping the peace. This "drinking by the hour" must be placed in the same category with "dining off the joint," Probably the sole country where such copious supplies of liquor could be furnished at the rate of 3d. an hour is Scotland. Kirk Sessions might add a curious chapter to the report recently pub taken, at a penny the quart bottle; that it is not From the Spectator. NEEDLEWOMEN'S RESCUE-MINISTERIAL HOPES. "DIGGING holes in sand" was the process to which we said Mr. Sidney Herbert's scheme for carrying off the superabundant needlewomensuperabundant and therefore starving-might be likened; and this objection has been hammered out by writers who would not dislike to balk his scheme. We explained how it failed not only to remove the causes which create that unhappy class of workers, but also adequately to counteract the effect of those causes. As the causes are larger than the remedy, the relief can only be partial and temporary. The causes are, that low state of the industrious classes generally, especially in the rural districts, which makes women cheap; the tendency of trading competition, pushed beyond its productive stimulus in a mutually privative and destructive |