merely in defence of political interests, but in order to secure for the growing population of her islands an indispensable field of economic expansion on the mainland. Not only are Korea and Manchuria now open to her, but if she can quicken and direct the energies of the great commercial middle-class in China, probably the most intelligent and enlightened class which at present exists in that country, she will control the richest and most inexhaustible field of commercial and industrial enterprise in the world. It would be no surprise to find that, just as Russia used her predominance at Peking to secure political ascendency, so Japan will use hers to secure economic ascendency in China. That is at any rate a prospect with which it The Outlook. behooves British statesmen to reckon.. Fortunately our relations of close friendship with Japan, together with Japan's need of capital, should enable us to co-operate with the Japanese on those lines with profit to ourselves as well as to them. But if the AngloJapanese alliance is to safeguard not only our political, but our commercial interests in the Far East-and our political interests in that region cannot conceivably be divorced from our commercial interests-we shall have to be up and doing. Politically Japan may be said to have fought our battle, whilst we merely held the ring. But in the economic struggle we shall have to go forth ourselves into the forefront of the fray, or our allies will leave us behind-and little blame to them. CHILDREN'S LITERATURE. There is no more delightful page in the whole of that wonderful book, "David Copperfield," than that which describes how little Davy read aloud to Peggotty by the parlor fire, "about the crorkindills": I had been reading to Peggotty about crocodiles. I must have read very perspicuously, or the poor soul must have been deeply interested, for I remember she had a cloudy impression, after I had done, that they were a sort of vegetable. I was tired of reading and dead sleepy; but having leave, as a high treat, to sit up until my mother came home from spending the evening at a neighbor's, I would rather have died upon my post (of course) than have gone to bed. There is no need for me to call attention to the absolute truth of this delineation of a child's state of mind; most of us can look back to that period of our own lives when we weut through some such experience. Children are nowadays more pampered than the youth of a previous generation; for they are on more familiar terms with their elders, enjoy greater liberty, and are not infrequently more accustomed to rule than to obey; but in one particular, at least, the twentieth-century youngster is at a disadvantage: he is obliged to retire to bed at a much earlier hour than his predecessor. The latter-day child's hour-that time so punctiliously set apart for him and his amusementgenerally precedes dinner; whereas the great joy of the child of my generation was to "come down to dessert," and to spend a certain portion of the succeeding evening in the company of his elders. I can still remember the thrill of bliss which used to run through my small frame, when, in company with an elder brother and sister, I sat crosslegged on the floor at my mother's feet, the while she read out to us certain chapters from what I then designated "A Wavering Novel." "Rob Roy," "Woodstock," "The Fortunes of Nigel," "Old Mortality"-the very names evoke a kind of reflex glow of wonder and delight. I am quite astonished, now, on looking back, to find how much we understood and how fully we appreciated. Children of to-day are not quite so patient in hearkening to the long pages of description in which Sir Walter delights; they are also inclined to become a little bored by the minute and, in their opinion, prolix, details of the hero's changing moods. A certain little six-yearold girl of my acquaintance, possessed of a very curly head, was wont to shake it violently at intervals while listening to the adventures of "Waverley." The reader was somewhat puzzled at this note of disapproval, until one day, after the curls had been flying from side to side for a minute or two, their owner announced with every mark of irritation: "I know he's going to be plunzed in melancholy reflections," and on turning the page, behold, he was! Thenceforth it was deeemed advisable to keep an eye upon the curls with a view to a little timely skipping. Yes, I venture to say that it is better to feed the young mind on the best literary stuff, even if it be necessary to cut out here and there a particularly tough morsel, than to nauseate it with the pap, so many varieties of which now flood the market. One brand in particular, though concocted with the purest of motives, by the most worthy of people, seems to me unwholesome. I allude to the books which deal with the woes of the unappreciated child, the child who is unhappy at home, the child who is so excessively highly strung and reserved that he finds it impossible to confide his secret aims and inspirations even to the members of his own family, and who suffers excruciatingly in consequence; the child who, for no fault of his own, is perpetually blamed and misconstrued by the authorities; these have a morbid tendency, and their effect on the impressionable minds of their little readers cannot fail to be pernicious. All children are imitative, most of them are imaginative. The child of thirty or forty years ago got into trouble through trying to emulate the dangerous adventures of which he read: the papa of those days, for instance, did not always relish Young Hopeful riding amuck among his dairy-cows because he had been reading about a buffalo-hunt. But when the modern child has been wrapped up for hours in the imaginary wrongs of some "dreamy, large-eyed" hero or heroine, what more likely than that he should begin to fancy himself also misunderstood and ill-used, and to judge his father and mother after the fashion of his prototype? "Don't tell me, my dear," remarked a certain sturdy old lady, in speaking of a certain volume, much in vogue some years ago; "that child wasn't misunderstood-it only unwhipped." was Without going quite as far as this, one may nevertheless deplore the tendency to foster, at so early an age, the introspective spirit which is surely quite harmful enough at a later period. A child's active mind and quick fancy wants something to work upon, something to play with; it is no true kindness to force it to feed upon itself. Judging by my experience, little people delight far more in the books which, though designed for their elders, it is permissible for them to read, than in those especially prepared for their delectation. The most severe punishment which was ever inflicted on me was being forbidden "Nicholas Nickleby" for a whole week. Shall I ever forget the anguish with which I used to eye the beloved big shining volume as it lay unused upon its shelf, or how slow the hours passed, until that blessed Saturday afternoon when, the time of penance being concluded, I carried it off under my favorite tree? Dickens we adored; Thackeray, too, we read, but Thackeray is too subtle for the very young; a taste of life, a little personal experience is needed before the mind can grasp and appreciate the admirable quality of his work. Miss Edgeworth we tolerated, particularly "The Moral Tales" and "The Parent's Assistant," but we stoutly refused to have anything to do with "Harry and Lucy," in their three-volume stage; and we were not particularly enamored of "Frank." I have spoken of the contrast between the relations of parents and children of the present time and those of a preceding generation: it is still more edifying and instructive to note the attitude which the father and mother of Miss Edgeworth's day seem to have devoted towards their offspring. They seem to have arrogated to themselves the position of demigods, if not indeed deeming themselves entitled to stand on a yet higher plane. Was ever such inscrutable wisdom, such immovable purpose, such foresight one had almost said such omnipotence? Then with regard to the meting out of rewards and punishments, what impartiality, what imperturbability! With what bland selfsatisfaction did they watch the efforts of their misguided infants to obtain experience! A little girl mistakes a glass jar with purple stuff in it for a purple glass jar; the short-sighted parent of to-day would have condoned and possibly explained the error: not SO Rosamond's mother. The child is allowed to buy the purple jar at the cost of going shoeless for several weeks, catching cold in consequence, being denied several small treats, and undergoing various other penalties of the like improving nature. The illustrious Mr. Fairchild is perhaps the most notable example of the Spartan father. Because one small daughter slapped another in a fit of childish temper, he conducted his entire family, including a four-year-old who was carried in the arms of a footman, to a dark wood, in the centre of which the body of a malefactor was hanging from the gallows, and there delivered a lecture on the evil of giving way to intemperate passion. Miss Mitford, though she would perchance draw the line at the gallows, is unswerving in upholding parental authority. Her fathers are extremely affectionate, her mothers tender to a degree, yet, though Mr. Fitzgerald folds "the truly penitent child to his heart," he is resolute in the infliction of chastisement, while George Cranston's mother with a tear in her soft blue eye bids him "think of his duty and profit by his punishment." As a kind of golden mean between the Fairchild family and the introspective literature offered to the youth of our day, came the tales of Miss Yonge and other writers of the sixties. I remember a series called "The Magnet Stories," every item of which was of a high standard of excellence. Mark Lemon, Mary Howitt, Mrs. S. C. Hall, Miss Yonge, Miss F. M. Peard, were some among the writers who contributed to this most satisfactory result; the tales were instructive but not aggressively so, the children with whom they concerned themselves were real children of flesh and blood, to whom real everyday, but interesting, things happened: would that we had more of their kind now! No paper dealing with literature for children would be complete without the name of Mrs. Ewing-a name indeed to be loved and honored by folks of all ages and all times. Work as admirable as hers can be appreciated by the grandmother as well as by the child. "Mary's Meadow" will delight both equally; and while the child will laugh and clap its hands at the deThe Academy. scription of Jackanapes and his red pony, its elders will linger over the moving, reticent page which sets forth his death. M. E. Francis. THE EARLY NOVEL.* The name of Mrs. Aphra Behn has associations, not of the sweetest, which are now unlikely to be dispelled. The Comedy of the Restoration was a bad school for women, and Mrs. Behn was too apt a pupil in it. Mr. Baker, who says what he conscientiously can for her, owns that from her plays "it would be difficult indeed to compile even a book of elegant extracts that would give the modern reader any adequate idea of their merits, without either emasculating them altogether or nauseating him with their coarseness." In short, Pope's couplet about Astræa, more pointed than decorous, rises to the mind, and of Mrs. Behn's work one feels inclined to ask, with Lord Melbourne, "Why can't you let it alone?" Mr. Baker has his answer. Mrs. Behn, he says, was not only the first Englishwoman who made her living by her pen, but also the first English novelist. But the stories which make up this volume can scarcely be called novels. The best of them, "Oroonoko," or "The Royal Slave," has no merit except that it reproduces Mrs. Behn's impressions of Surinam, and hints a doubt whether slavery can be justified by the principles of the Christian religion. It is sometimes indecent, and always dull. The highest praise that can be honestly bestowed upon it is that it shines by comparison with Mrs. Behn's other "The Novels of Mrs. Aphra Behn." With an Introduction by Ernest A. Baker. (Routledge. 6s. net.) "The Adventures of Ferdinand Count tales. Curiously enough this bad novelist, a mere ranter in prose, did once write what Mr. Swinburne calls a "melodious and magnificent song." The first stanza, by far the best, does indeed bear out this description: Make haste, Amyntas, come away, Some of her other lyrics, especially "Love in fantastic triumph sat," and "O love, who stronger art than wine," are not to be despised. A period of eighty years divided Mrs. Behn from Smollett. She just saw the Revolution. He lived well into the reign of George III. Meanwhile Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding had created the English novel. Mrs. Behn was groping in the dark. Smollett had plenty of examples, if only he could have come up to them. His masterpiece, "Humphrey Clinker," was not produced until 1771, the last year of his life. "Ferdinand Count Fathom" is a much earlier work, though later than "Peregrine Pickle" Fathom." By Tobias Smollett. With illustrations by Thomas Stothard, R. A. (Hutchinson. 1s. 6d. net.) He and "Roderick Random." The favorite novelist of Dickens must have an interest for all lovers of fiction apart from any merits of his own, and Smollett's merits are considerable. had real humor, though it sometimes sank into mere extravagance of caricature, and much of it is too coarse for a modern palate. His style is uniformly excellent, even when, as here, his narrative is almost intolerably prolix. He knew his Shakespeare, though he does not always quote him correctly, and his classics. If his continuation of Hume's "History" is not worth very much, there is point in Lamb's droll question, "What if Hume had continued 'Humphrey Clinker'?" con "Ferdinand Count Fathom" belongs to the class of Fielding's "Jonathan Wild" and of "Barry Lyndon," in which some think that Thackeray surpassed himself and struck the stars with his sublime head. It is the account of a blackguard, much the same sort of blackguard as his temporary, Jacques Casanova. The Count's only redeeming feature is musical talent; otherwise "our adventurer," as he is called, approaches as near perfect badness as the infirmities of human nature allow. Smollett, with all his ease and grace of manner, had not Defoe's art of deception of writing fancy as if it were fact. When he tells us that Fathom's designs were "uncertain" we instinctively say, as we should never dream of saying to the author of "Robinson Crusoe," "You at least ought to know them." But, indeed, the book is more interesting now from the historical than from the literary point of view. We read it, if we read it at all, not so much to find out what became of Fathom as to ascertain what England was like in the reign of George II. Fleet prison and stage coaches were much the same as when Jingle and Mr. Pickwick made their acquaintance. We read of Bristol springs instead of Bath waters, and have the old jokes about doctors from one of themselves. "In short, his constitution, though unable to cope with two such formidable antagonists as the doctor and the disease he had conjured up, was no sooner rid of the one than it easily got the better of the other." Matrimony, in spite of the Divorce Court, is stricter now than it was when "passengers were plied in the streets by clergymen, who prostituted their characters and consciences for hire, in defiance of all decency and law." The relations between authors and patrons, familiar from the stock instance of Johnson and Chesterfield, are as obsolete as the cadging parson. But it is impossible to read Fathom's letter to Wilhelmina without some idea of the joy with which Dickens must have lighted on such a sentence as "No! my charmer, while my head retains the least spark of invention, and my heart glows with the resolution of a man, our correspondence shall not be cut off by the machinations of an envious stepmother who never had attractions to inspire a generous passion; and now that age and wrinkles have destroyed what little share of beauty she once possessed, endeavors, like the fiend in Paradise, to blast those joys in others from which she is herself eternally excluded." It is signed "Fathom." But surely it might be Even signed "Wilkins Mica wber." "mutual" in the sense of "common" Dickens might have found in Smollett, who speaks also of "sustaining" a loss when he means suffering it, just as if he were a modern Member of Parlianent. Characters in "Ferdinand Count Fathom," as distinguished from caricatures, there are none. Sir Stentor Stile makes Squire Western seem a finished gentleman. Dodson and Fogg, even Quirk, Gammon, and Snap, might |