overstated his case would not occur to the contemporary mind, though it may present itself to the reader of his adventures. The Chief Justice considered it only due to his truthfulness to grant what he adduced such excellent reasons for deserving; so the pair were handed over to the Sheriff and dealt with as they desired; the "two dozen odd" sentences, previously passed, being remitted by his lordship with a view, we may suppose, to the good day's work which had already been done without them.

This ending is not only natural in itself, but an almost necessary fulfilment of the dramatic conditions of the story. The atmosphere is pregnant from the first with something at once horrible and grotesque; and when Ned Bratts and his Tabby have rolled on to the scene and off it for the last time, we feel that that something has assumed its most appropriate form, and no other conclusion would have been legitimate. Yet it finds us only half prepared. The enthusiasm of the convert is so closely identified with the vapours of heat and beer, that it is impossible to judge beforehand how far it will carry him; the more so, that the possibility of a collapse is constantly present to himself. Half his urgency to be hung "out of hand" lies in the knowledge that he may change his mind if he is not. Such qualms have come to him before, but they have not outlived the night. Even now the glories of the chariot which will lift him above the clouds wavers in the prospective brightness of to-morrow's bear-baiting, and the brawl on Turner's Patch by which it will be crowned; and even now the Iron Cage stares him in the face, and the lost man inside, and that last worst state of him who warred against the light; and though such an image might well turn the scale, we receive a decided mental shock in discovering that it was intended to do so, and that the apparent farce is in fact a tragedy.

We need scarcely say that the self-satire of this conversion implies no denial on Mr. Browning's part of the relative seriousness it might possess. So much is guaranteed to it by the majestic figure of John Bunyan, and by the historic character of the religious challenge which resounded in that year 1672, from the precincts of Bedford jail. Tab Bratts has visited the tinker there; and his spoken words have effected. in her a less equivocal reformation than the fiery symbolism of the "Pilgrim's Progress" could produce in her husband. with no friendly intent. The blind daughter who from house to house has lately avoided hers. tionally strong and invaluable for the unlawful purposes of their trade; . and neither she nor Master Bratts is inclined to dispense with them because the profligacy of their manners is likely to offend the bearer. She enters John Bunyan's cell with all the insolence she can command; but the strength which meets her is not of her world, and the attitude. of defiance is soon exchanged for one of supplication

She goes to him carries his laces These laces are excep

Down on my marrow-bones! Then all at once rose he:
His brown hair burst a-spread, his eyes were suns to see:

Up went his hands; "Through flesh, I reach, I read thy soul!

So may some stricken tree look blasted, bough and bole,
Champed by the fire-tooth, charred without, and yet, thrice-bound
With dreriment about, within may life be found,

A prisoned power to branch and blossom as before,
Could but the gardener cleave the cloister, reach the core,
Loosen the vital sap: yet where shall help be found?
Who says 'How save it ?'-nor 'Why cumbers it the ground?
Woman, that tree art thou! All sloughed about with scurf,
Thy stag-horns fright the sky, thy snake-roots sting the turf!
Drunkenness, wantonness, theft, murder gnash and gnarl
Thine outward, case thy soul with coating like the marle
Satan stamps flat upon each head beneath his hoof!
And how deliver such? The strong men keep aloof,
Lover and friend stand far, the mocking ones pass by,
Tophet gapes wide for prey: lost soul, despair and die!
What then? 'Look unto me and be ye saved!' saith God:
'I strike the rock, outstreats the life-streams at my rod!
Be your sins scarlet, wool shall they seem like,—although
As crimson red, yet turn white as the driven snow!'

She remembers no more but that it was by means of the blind girl's guiding hand that she regained her home; and that the same hand bestowed the book as "father's boon" upon her.

"Tray" is an anecdote of canine devotion, for the publishing of which no motive was needed but its possibility; though it raises, and in a manner disposes of, a question of considerable importance. A dog plunges into the river to rescue a drowning child; then dives for a second time, and after a lengthened disappearance, the water being deep and the current strong, emerges again with her doll. The facts are described with all the force of contrast in the comments of supposed bystanders, who welcome the familiar mystery of " animal instinct" in a deed to all appearance as intelligent as it is heroic; and allow the good dog" to risk its life in their stead with a quite undisturbed sense of human superiority. The absurdness of this attitude loses nothing in the sarcastic spirit in which it is conceived, and we must protest in the name of "vivisectionism" against the concluding lines, humorous as they are

66

And so, amid the laughter gay,
Trotted my hero off,-old Tray,-
Till somebody, prerogatived

With reason, reasoned: "Why he dived,

His brain would show us, I should say,

"John, go and catch-or, if needs be,
Purchase that animal for me!

By vivisection, at expense

Of half-an-hour and eighteen pence,

How brain secretes dog's soul, we'll see!"

We are not aware that any one since La Mettrie has thus proposed to catch "thinking in the act." But Mr. Browning's readers will not

resent some acerbity of zeal in his defence of the weaker but "loving fellow-creature" which Nature and poetry have so deeply consecrated to their tenderness; and Tray's virtues will find abundant sympathy even among those who hold exploded theories concerning them.

In "Halbert and Hob" a fierce son is engaged in a quarrel with a father generally as fierce as himself. He is about to fling him out of the house, and has already dragged him to a certain turn in the stairs, when the old man, who has become passive at the first grip of his hand, tells him that they are repeating step by step a scene in which years ago he and his own father were the actors, and bids him listen to the warning voice by which he was then turned from the completion of his parricidal deed. The words take their effect. It is Christmas night. They pass it silently together. Dawn finds the father dead in his chair, and the son terrified into a premature and harmless senility. This episode, which we need hardly say is related in all the rugged impressiveness of which it is capable, strikes us simply as a study of hereditary character, heightened by coincidences of time and circumstance, which seem the more dramatic in proportion as we admit them to be natural. But Mr. Browning appears to see in it something more. He presents it as an instance of supernatural interference in the lives and in the hearts of men; and its last lines contain an assertion, for the answer to which we must appeal from him to himself. He says,

"Is there any reason in nature for these hard hearts?" O Lear,
That a reason out of nature must turn them soft, seems clear !

But the collective labours of his literary life have negatived the words.
They all tend to show what infinitely varied products may emerge from
the chemistry of the human mind, and how little we can say of any
action or reaction of human feeling that it is not natural. To externa-
lize the mystery of Nature in some intangible manner lies in the very
language of poetry, even of the poetry which recognises no personal
God;
and a genius at once so reverent and so critical as Mr. Brown-
ing's is always in danger of building up with one hand a theory which
he will knock down with the other. Still, we would rather believe that
in the present case he expresses himself dramatically, and that not even
the relative meaning of his utterance is to be charged upon him. There
are at least not wanting in this very volume lines in which the idea of
continued divine intervention is merged in a larger view of the capabili-
ties of human existence; to the study of which it remains, whatever its
philosophic outcome, his not least valuable contribution.

A. ORR.

ENGLISH AGRICULTURE.

IT

is generally admitted that, at the present time, all branches of industry and trade are suffering from a depression which has had no parallel since the gloomy period which preceded Sir Robert Peel's administration. The cry of distress comes from nearly every quarter. Profits have fallen, till we are told that manufacturers and traders are living on their capital. Wages have fallen, and the organization of trade unions has not only been powerless to arrest the decline, but has even facilitated the process of reduction. Traders tell us that they never had so much difficulty in stimulating a ready-money trade, or in getting in Christmas bills where credit is given. Nobody seems to prosper but lawyers and accountants, the latter a monstrous growth of our monstrous bankruptcy law. At the same time heresies on economical subjects, long since dead, as we fondly imagined, are reviving, not merely in the talk of political adventurers, but in the resolutions of Chambers of Commerce, and in the utterances of railway chairmen. The West-end tradesmen of London are more bitter against the "Co-operative" shops than ever, no doubt because retail business is becoming increasingly unprofitable; for it is not easy to see how the aggregate of all the sales effected at all these shops can represent more than an infinitesimal fraction of all the business done, in ordinary times, by the retail traders of the metropolis. The depression of trade is most noticeable in the takings of such dealers in articles of consumption as invite purchase in crowded thoroughfares. I heard a short time since from a tobacconist in the Strand that his receipts from sales had fallen lately at the rate of a hundred pounds a month. The excise has not fallen, but grief is said to be thirsty. The income-tax on trade returns has not been perceptibly diminished, but it must be remembered that trade profits are interpreted by those who return them on averages, and

the trader naturally attempts to treat an income tax as a charge on his calling, to be recouped in extra prices to the consumer. Nor is there any sign that the mischief is diminishing. On the contrary, the most experienced interpreters of trade in the future look gloomily on the prospects. There are some who say that we have only entered into the valley of humiliation, and counsel us to be ready for worse times and sharper privations. Moncy is likely to be cheap, for there is no enterprise for which savings can be borrowed. There is plenty of capital, but industry is crippled. We know that the South African War will be prodigiously costly, and that it cannot be put on the finances of India, or the exchequer of the Cape colonists. But the prospect of great indebtedness in the future, added to great indebtedness incurred on behalf of peace and honour at present, produces no appreciable effect on the price of Consols. If trade were brisk, the present state of the finances would induce very different phenomena in the money market.

There is one palliation to this universal calamity. Food-i.e., the necessary food of the people—is cheap beyond parallel. But it is not supplied from our own agriculture. The difference between the reputed value of exports and imports is enormous, and to some men's minds is alarming and portentous. It is supposed that England is being depleted of her wealth. Of course, little reliance can be placed on the estimated values of imports, and still less on those of exports. It is certain, too, that whatever may be the values, the exports pay for the imports. But many persons are unaware of the enormous indebtedness of the British colonies, India, and foreign countries to English bondholders, and of the fact that much of what figures as imports is in reality interest on colonial and foreign securities held in the United Kingdom. That we are not exporting these securities in order to pay for food and other commodities is pretty certain, for in such a case we should see a decline in the value of English securities. That we may be, owing to the necessity of procuring these supplies, pressing sales of goods abroad is probable, though it may be concluded that the agency which exchanges goods for food would have its operations crippled if the exchange were not effected. That we do not sell as much as we could, if foreign tariffs were modified, is incontestable; but it is certain that we should sell much less if we followed the example of our neighbours.

The depression in the price of agricultural produce is, we are told, ruining the farmers. That English agriculturists are passing through a stage of depression and positive loss is unfortunately too true, and it is equally true that, owing to the habit which farmers long have had of grumbling even in the best of times, less attention has been paid to their complaints than the public good demands. But there is evidence as to the present state of things which is irresistible. Farms are being thrown up on all sides. Sometimes we are told that this is due to excessive game-preserving, as it very well may be. But, at the present