collision between a handful of soldiers and a small crowd, voluble in abuse, and too free with clubs and snowballs. There was a sputter of musketry, and five or six civilians dropped down dead or dying. That was the Boston massacre."

He does not tell us that the mob has been described even by American historians as a howling gang of miscreants, that the life of a sentry was in danger, that his comrades had to come to his rescue, that part of the firing was without orders, and that the judge who tried the officer in charge congratulated him upon his conduct, and expressed his disgust for the conduct of the crowd. He does indeed detail the trial of Captain Preston, but mainly for the purpose of pointing out how generous the lawyers were to defend him and how honest were the jury who gave the verdict in his favour. It is not much to say of the profession of the law that its members

do their duty like gentlemen; and it is not much to say of a jury that they were not murderers determined to give a verdict against evidence. The choice, for lawyers and jury, between doing their duty and incurring eternal infamy was not a perplexing one.

When the author tells us of the affair at Lexington he is equally misleading. He

says:

"At four in the morning, just as an April day was breaking, they (the British detachment) reached the village of Lexington, and found sixty or seventy of the local militia waiting for them on the common. Firing ensued, and the Americans were

dispersed, leaving seven of their number dead or dying."

VOL. CLXV.-NO, MI.

This is not history as it should be written. The local militia had been stealing royal stores. They were in a state of quasi-rebellion. The royal troops were going to recover royal property or destroy the munitions of rebels. The local militia had no right to be in arms. Being in arms, they had to suffer the consequences. They fired first, and then ran away. Later on they gathered from all quarters, and literally murdered the troops on their return. It was a kind of bushfighting, of which there was much during the war; and every episode of the kind is termed in their histories а "battle," and every man command is a "general."

in

scuffle at Lexington John Hancock was to have stood his trial at Boston for smuggling. The fight was opportune and prepared. The embattled farmers had saved the smugglers from fines that might have lessened their fortunes, or imprisonment that would have put them out of mischief. They plunged their country into war to save their pockets.

In the end it was not the Americans alone who won the victory over England. The combination against England was that of America, France, Spain, and Holland. A little more loyalty among the Whigs at home, a few thousand more troops, and a little more unity of policy among the commanders at the North and South, and the result would have been different. It is quite too late to discuss the might-have-beens

But it

of history. The great American nation has grown out of unpromising beginnings, and has so far achieved a great destiny. It has accomplished a vast material prosperity and acquired a great power among the nations. It has faced wars and been victorious; has found difficult problems of government, and has solved them. has produced also a remarkable race of historians and critics in our day, who have given up many of the old "minute-man views of history, and who are aware of the weaknesses of the vast and complicated civilisation that environs them. They are not afraid of criticism; they have adopted it. They do not want panegyric; they mistrust it. They will courteously accept the favourable views of Sir George Trevelyan; but they will not quote them as history.

It becomes us to mark that the death of President Faure evoked more apprehension of violent disturbance in this country than in France. The news of that event carried with it in its flight through Britain anticipations of immediate disorder-disorder which perhaps would end in civil war. At the same hour France itself was so little affected by such fears that the business and even the pleasures of life went on again after momentary interruption. We should note this difference, because it seems to show that we in England had been misled by exaggerated representations of the state of things in France. According to these accounts, not only was every other Frenchman steeped in villany, but the Republic was mined by conspiracies of the most desperate character. These stories were believed in London but evidently not in Paris; or the fear in the one capital that Revolution had found its opportunity would have been panic in the other.

It is said, however, that there was no attack on the Republic by the joint-stock conspiracy of Bonapartists, Royalists, Boulangists, Jesuits, and Jew-haters, because the conspirators had no time to organise their forces. This may be true; but if so, we have here to do with a conspir

acy nullified by negligence. It has existed for many months, or perhaps for years: any week, any day during that time might have brought the hour for action; yet when it did arrive, through one of a dozen possible accidents, it found the conspirators unprovided with a single button for a single gaiter. And this was still their unprepared condition when they knew that the now-or-never hour was at hand. President Faure died when-and perhaps becausethe decision of the Court of Cassation and the publication of reasons for it were only a few days off. The conspiracy must have seen in that event its grand occasion; yet there was no preparation for it when it came so near. That is so improbable a thing that we may almost believe with the Parisian public that there is no such conspiracy at all.

Yet that France is broken into groups and masses of virulent faction is plain enough; one of them being represented -though in ignorance of the fact, apparently-by the newspaper correspondents who declaim against that horrible state of things every day. And of course this is a very grave danger, portentous of general upset, whether by conspiracy or mere anarchy. The choosing of a President to succeed M. Faure

went off far more peaceably than was expected even in Paris itself-thanks to a most fortunate concatenation of circumstances and the existence of a M. Loubet. He has been President for some days when this is written, and order still prevails in Paris. The explanation may be that nothing has happened in France but a change without alteration. M. Faure dies; M. Loubet succeeds; the factions, pausing to watch the change, see no provoking difference in it, and the business of contention is resumed at the point of interruption. It is resumed, it will continue, but can hardly go on much farther without coming to the test of settlement by peace or war. These alternatives will present themselves for instant choice, probably, when the Court of Cassation makes known its decision in the Dreyfus case.

There may be no such conspiracy as the frenzied Dreyfusards accuse the furious antiDreyfusards of plotting; but it is not unlikely that the army hides a determination that will work out to similar effect. Only a certain outcome of the Dreyfus inquiry will pacify the Dreyfusards, who are already fixed as to the justice of the case. Only a different outcome will content the army, which has its own ideas of the justice of the case. It is conceivable that, quietly awaiting the decision of the court, the army may propose to take a strong course whether the judges decide for or against revision. If against, then the army will prepare to put down immediately and rigorously

whatever resistance the Dreyfusards may oppose to the verdict. If, on the contrary, revision is ordered, then we may see the military rising, which has been roundly cursed beforehand. And perhaps it will deserve to be cursed. We only speak of what may happen—of what is on the cards-and see nothing there more probable than this. For besides that it is heartily sick of the Dreyfus affair and its monstrous recriminations, the mass of the people are with the army. This the army knows, of course, and it is knowledge enough (in France) to warrant a minor revolution.

The succession of M. Loubet to M. Faure takes nothing from this view of the probabilities, but rather strengthens it. M. Loubet may be a strong man and a just; but he has a reputation for mediocrity to get rid of, he will have little time to do it in before the crisis arrives, and-more important than all the French nation begins to lose complacency under a Head of the State so little majestic as M. Faure or M. Loubet. It is not an unreasonable impatience, or even unprincipled. Even a French Republican of the best might hold, I think, that France is inadequately or even improperly represented by such highest personages. But however that may be, the feeling exists and spreads, and has to be taken into account accordingly.

Only on the surface is the commotion in the Church a

quarrel over ritualistic detail, such as in times past has disturbed the Anglican communion. On this occasion we need not look deep to discover the simmerings of social revolution. To most people that will seem too large a word. But then it is the habit of most people to shrink from the perception of great disturbing changes till they are fully accomplished: which accounts for a great deal in the history of the world that historians wonder at. It is of the highest importance at the present moment that there should be no such shrinking. Common-sense they call it who are subject to it, while in fact it is a form of cowardice-answering in all respects to the weakness of the feeble folk who have not the courage of their convictions. Or it is the same weakness, perhaps. Vision is withdrawn from what we see lest we be compelled to acknowledge its existence, and so be forced to act upon troublesome conclusions. That is certainly cowardice; and too much of it has crept into England with its luxuries and refinements, and that love of peace which is the love of ease. See where it most abounds: always where the luxuries and refinements have had time to do their worst as well as their best. Below these topmost regions there is better guidance because there is more courage, as we have lately seen by a great and memorable example. In continuation thereof, it will be well if we turn not our eyes inwards when confronted with the worst in what

is called the Crisis in the Church, but regard it for what it is and proceed accordingly. And there is one broad and comprehensive standpoint (comprehension being in favour, too) from which every man of us may and should regard the whole trouble, namely, that the de-Protestantising of England is not an affair of religion alone. It is a matter of the profoundest importance socially, and in every department of social life.

This

As they stand, the facts are these. In the spring of last year complaint arose that many priests in the English Church, though manifestly not of it, were practising a Roman Catholic ceremonial and teaching Roman Catholic doctrine. At first disregarded, or treated as vexatious matter of no importance, the complaint was presently forced on the attention of the bishops as a corporation through a mistake of one of them. was the bishop who wrote to the effect that if a parishioner found the service in his own church too Romanist he could go somewhere else. The commotion occasioned by this unguarded reply obliged the bishops to consider what truth there was in the general accusation against the Church. This time it was no mere charge of "Romanising tendencies, of "dangerous ritualistic innovation," but of open return to doctrine and practice that brought about the Reformation. That was the charge; and it is not to be forgotten that at their conference in May last the bishops avowed that it was true. Some of them declared