suppressed, and that travellers arriving in London on Saturday night were not allowed admission to an inn unless they would engage not to go out into the streets except to attend divine worship, till Monday morning. Who shall say to what extent the reaction against Puritanism was fostered, not by Puritan legislation, but by the actual enforcement of degrees which hitherto had seldom reached the stage of practice?

But, it may be asked, was not government by Major-Generals a purely military rule, having nothing to do with constitutional ideas? The fact is that the memory of that generation fixed on the military side and forgot the constitutional. Just as every one talkedas they talk now-of the Protector and said nothing about his council, so they talked of Major-Generals, and said nothing about the commissioners associated with them. The Major-General no doubt was, so to speak, the nounsubstantive; and the commissioners the noun-adjective. Yet the one was incomplete without the other. The system transferred to the counties was almost identical with the one accepted in the centre of the national government. It was a Cromwellian oligarchy stiffened by its dependence on an energetic soldier, accustomed to the management of men, and having ideas of government which his colleagues had been selected to assist him in carrying out. The main difficulty lay not with the counties, but with the corporations. How Cromwell proposed to deal with corporations by the erection of a Cromwellian oligarchy has been shown by Mr. Round in The Nineteenth Century for December last. His paper, interesting and important in itself, is much more interesting and important if read in the light of surrounding events.

Major-Generals and commissioners, however, failed to secure acceptance, The Contemporary Review.

and passed into the limbo of Cromwell's failures. For there was substituted the new constitution accepted by Parliament in 1657. Here, at last, it may be said we are on firm constitutional ground. Parliament has regained its power, its right of voting supplies, of forbidding the exclusion of elected members by the mere will of the Council, and so forth. Yet, even when Cromwell had secured a means of re-establishing his darling system, the Cromwellian oligarchy was now to be looked for less in the Council than in the House of Lords. That body was deliberately organized with the intention of checking the errors of the people. After the Protector had once nominated its members from amongst his leading supporters, no new member could take his seat without the consent of the House, so that if any future Protector should think of creating peersas a Queen afterwards did after the Peace of Utrecht-in order to bring that House into conformity with the House of Commons, the sitting members could reject them, and thereby defy all the vehemency of a House of Commons, even if it had the nation behind it. That such a scheme should have been adopted sounds like midsummermadness. That it was so adopted shows that Cromwell, even in accepting constitutional in the place of military rule, battled to the last for that Puritan oligarchy without which his government was doomed. We may condemn, as I have already said, the line of thought which considered the maintenance of such a system possible. We have no right to charge Cromwell with conscious tyranny and law-breaking, because he strove, with the utmost versatility, to mould his government in such a fashion as to place it above the waves of popular discontent.

Samuel R. Gardiner.

The list of one hundred books for children, just compiled by the united efforts of nearly a thousand readers of the Daily News, is interesting, but it is hardly admirable. This list has been used by the judges as their touchstone in judging the prize of £10; for, according to the terms of the competition, the award was to go to the sender of the list which approximated to it most nearly.

First, of this plébiscite list. It is interesting, because it shows what nearly a thousand readers regard as (here we quote the Daily News' original announcement) the "Best Hundred Books for Children, selected with the immediate object of furnishing suggestions which may possibly be of use to the corporation of West Ham in a most excellent scheme which they have on foot: the establishment of a Children's Library for the use of their borough."

It will be noted that under the express terms of the competition all competitors were constituted literary advisers, so to speak, to the West Ham authorities. They were not asked to determine what are now the most popular books in the nursery. They were asked to advise as to what books should be placed in the hands of children by a responsible body, anxious to form a good library for children.

Here, then, is the plébiscite list, with the number of votes given to each book:

66

simply the books which are believed to be most popular with children. Indeed, we are disposed to accept it as a fairly veracious statement of the obvious reading-tastes of the nursery. But as an advisory document compiled for transmission to West Ham the list is a failure. As a matter of fact it has already reached West Ham; and Mr. A. Cotgreave, of the West Ham Library, has given his views upon it. These are just what we should have anticipated. Mr. Cotgreave feels "bound to say that, after due consideration, I believe that the larger number would more merit the title of popular than of best." Mr. Cotgreave holds and we agree with him that a children's library-formed as any such library should be, with a mingling of sympathy and sagacity-ought to include a fair proportion of interesting and simple works of a higher order than mere story-books." He adds, "I therefore regret to see how entirely these instructive books are excluded from the competition lists from which your analysis is made." Certainly nothing would be a lamer action on the part of the West Ham authorities than the adoption of the Daily News' plébiscite selection-a selection for which, of course, our contemporary is not responsible. To dismiss it, it contains: 89 stories, 4 books of poetry, 2 books of science, 1 book of travels, 1 biography, 3 annuals (mainly fiction). We now come to the list which-by the approximating most closely to plébiscite list-has taken the prize. It was sent in by Miss May Price Williams, and its agreement with the standard list is represented by the fraction 61-100; that is to say, it names 61 books which are approved by the united wisdom of all the competitors, and 39 books which are not so ratified. It is on these 39 that we at once concentrate our attention, and we are not surprised to find that the competitor, who has shown by at least 61 inclusions, that

she understands the more obvious tastes of children, is alive to their rarer tastes and aptitudes. We find that Miss Price's unratified thirty-nine books include such capital stuff as the following:

Life of Our Lord (Mrs. Marshall).
Little Arthur's History,
The Story of the Heavens.
Glaucus.

Evenings at Home.

How I Found Livingstone.

Tales of a Grandfather.

Homes Without Hands.

Men Who Have Made the Empire.
Under Drake's Flag.
With Clive in India.
Book on Nonsense.

Miss Price's list is better than the standard list inasmuch as it combines sympathetic knowledge of what children like in the way of stories, fancy, and fun, with a certain good judgment of what they may be led to like in the The Academy.

way of histories, deeds, and natural wonders.

The Daily News has published one of the unsuccessful lists-sent in by Miss Grace Mackay. This deserves the praise awarded to its workmanlike qualities. It is impossible, without more space than we can afford, to compare Miss Mackay's list with the plébiscite and "champion" lists. It will be found in the Daily News of January 30. But it has many good inclusions, and if it errs, it is on the side of solidity; yet four books of natural history can hardly be too many in a hundred, nor six books of travels, nor five of biography, nor three of poetry.

It is amazing to find how few of all the many hundreds of children's books which have poured from the press in, say, the last ten years, have been included in the lists. The proportion of such books is almost infinitesimal, and whether we take the fact in connection with the plébiscite list or the "champion" list, the fact is significant.

They

The conquest of Africa by Europe will not be so easy a matter as the diplomatists who arranged the Conference of Brussels probably imagined. were preoccupied with plans for soothing away or preventing European jealousies, and never seriously considered the possibilities of effective resistance from Africans themselves. The process of conquest, which was advancing by leaps and bounds, has, however, been seriously interrupted by a rising in the South, the revolt of the only community which is at once white and African, and it may be still more gravely impeded by a vast insurrection in the North. It is by no means inconceivable that within the first decade of the coming cen

tury torrents of blood, and much of it European blood, will be set flowing in North Africa. The word "Senoussi" conveys to the Englishman scarcely any meaning, but to officers of the Intelligence Department in Egypt, to French "administrators" in Tunis and Algiers, to one or two of the ConsulsGeneral in Morocco, and to the Sultan of Turkey it is a word of most alarming import. The great religious chief of the Hinterland of Tunis who calls himself the "Senoussi" and holds his Court at Jerabub, in Libya, has, there is the strongest reason to believe, gathered into his fold not only a large section of the "Moorish"-that is, the halfcaste Arab-population of Northern

Africa, but nearly the whole of the converts whom the Arab missionaries have for the last sixty years been making among the negro tribes. The slaves in particular have, it is said, been specially addressed, and have accepted the faith with eagerness as promising them a new dignity as well as a chance of freedom. Negroes once converted to Islam, as we see in the instance of the Hausas, become fine soldiers; and all along the southern shore of the Mediterranean, for a distance of at least twelve hundred miles into the interior, the blacks are affiliating themselves to the society of which the Senoussi is the head. It is believed upon evidence which will one day startle Europe that the Senoussi gives absolute orders to twenty millions of followers, to whom his army of missionaries-there are fifteen hundred of them, Mr. Threlfall says in the Nineteenth Century-are continually adding proselytes. All these men accept Mahommedanism in its Wahabee form-that is, practically in its original form-as a religion licentious in some respects, but strictly ascetic in others, propagandist in the highest degree, and with the thought for central dogma that to die fighting the infidel is the one certain expiation that cleanses from all sin. Large sections of the tribes are well armed, though only with scimitars and riflesat least there is no clear evidence of modern artillery-and all are filled at once with the fierce Mahommedan pride, which is like no other pride, because no other has the support of a revelation, and with an irremovable dread and detestation of the white races. Whether this is quite shared by the pure negroes, when left to themselves, is doubtful; but that it is felt by the half-caste Arabs is beyond doubt, and the negro, when converted, takes from them his teaching. No one, we believe, who has really studied the subject now questions that if the Sen

oussi gave the signal hundreds of thousands of brave swordsmen and riflebearers would precipitate themselves upon the Europeans and the Turks, who between them hold North Africa. The time of the outburst is, of course, uncertain, but many reasons forbid the supposition that there will be long delay. The Senoussi, who was recognized as absolute chief forty years ago, has been extending his power and making preparations for the whole of that period, and if he is to do anything in his lifetime he must proclaim the Jehad very soon. The destruction of the Mahdi has, it is believed, at once irritated and relieved him, while bringing a large accession of force to his standard by the extinction of all religious authority in Africa other than his own. His followers grow weary with waiting, they are aware in some dim way, that Europe is unceasingly pressing forward, on the Nile, on the Zambesi, on the Niger, on the Congo, and they see that even the Shereefian throne, to them a great throne, is shaking under the pressure. They would rather, perhaps, wait for a great European convulsion, but the patience even of Orientals has limits, and incidents occurring in the far Hinterland of Africa of which Europe knows nothing may at any moment give the necessary impetus to chiefs who believe with all their hearts that God can give them the victory as easily to-day as any number of years hence. There is unrest among all Mahommedans, a fierce consciousness that they are losing, and a decision that the hour has arrived when they must fight or disappear may be more sudden and more widely spread than Europeans believe. The final order once given would be distributed from missionary to missionary. There is nothing to do but assemble in arms with a month's commissariat, and in a few weeks all North Africa through a belt fifteen hundred miles deep would