white gauntlets and gold cords round their hats; and how the gamins would jeer! Even the gamins seem to be impressed in America: but we fear that in Fleet Street this is more than could be expected. Imagine the establishments of Messrs Shoolbred and of Messrs Whiteley turning out to march through Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road for the Queen! "The great drapery establishment of Marshall Field & Company led the way-six partners of the firm riding abreast, and after them shop-walkers, salesmen, cashiers, porters, office-boys!" I am afraid that London would be convulsed with laughter instead of taking the spectacle seriously.

There is something very piquant in stepping back from the extremely lively To-day of Mr Steevens into Yesterday, mysterious and picturesque, full of intrigue and bewildering ups and downs, and such perpetual doublings and disguises as confuse the eyesight. Mr Andrew Lang a few years ago was chiefly known as an admirable writer, without anything very definite to say we do not know what action of circumstances or impulse of grace has turned him into a historical student, as learned. and industrious as he was once light-minded and elegant; but it is a good thing for us all that he has retained the graces of the earlier epoch to add charm to the researches of the new. His present subject is not so purely romantic, so inspiring and noble, as that study of Joan of Arc and her times which produced the 'Monk of Fife.' It is indeed a terrible chapter of history which he unfolds in the revelation of the Spy, a story of human baseness and

1

dishonour, of the downfall of high hopes and character, the worsening of everything and everybody concerned in what was at first, whatever its consequences and even motives might be, a high chivalrous enterprise, which wounds the sympathetic spectator, however little of a Jacobite he may be. Some critics have indeed attributed to Mr Lang a deliberate intention to break the charm of Jacobitism altogether by showing how poor a thing it was, much as Messrs Henley and Henderson are afraid they have done with Burns. And we doubt that a good many old-fashioned people in Scotland may object to Mr Lang's exposure of Pickle the Spy. Were we a Macdonald we should resent it warmly, especially as the evidence Mr Lang gives, though very plausible, contains no element of certainty, and is purely circumstantial, not enough to hang a man upon, we think, therefore scarcely enough to shatter his character. In all probability Mr Lang is right; but had we any special interest in the question we think we should claim, at least, a verdict of Not Proven, which, by the bye, for all practical purposes, is worse than guilty.

Pickle, a wretch of literary tendencies, since he took his nickname from Smollett's 'Peregrine Pickle,' was a Jacobite conspirator for James III. and his son, in the days when there was still some hope for the Stuarts, in his true name: and a servile spy reporting all their conspiracies to George II. under the other. The existence of this personage has been very well known for a long time, but no one had tracked him to his lair till Mr Andrew Lang found the scent and followed him remorselessly to the earth up to this time honoured

and consecrated, where the paltry villain lies as if he were, like the rest of his race, a true man. It had been supposed for this century back that he was another man, a man already well weighted with infamy,

and to whom a little more shame or a little less did not matter. But, alas, Mr Lang has found no difficulty in proving that Pickle was not James Mohr Macgregor. Was it really Glengarry, "the young Glengarry," chief of the most important of the clans, the handsome, accomplished young Celtic aristocrat, supposed to risk everything, his head included, for his romantic master? Mr Lang thinks Sir Walter knew it, but would not tell; and we do not think, though we are neither Jacobite nor Highlander, that we should have liked to tell but still that is an absurdity, and we already know that the whole age, though affording remarkable instances of the most romantic fidelity, was at the same time soaked in falsehood, treachery, and lies of every description. It is perhaps natural to conspirators, when once introduced to that labyrinth of intrigue, secrecy, and subtlety, where he who can best deceive his neighbour is the best man, to be led away by the very instinct which fits them for it. A man who is bursting with secrets has probably much greater temptation to betray them than one used to the common ways of honest life, when he finds himself suddenly burdened with too much knowledge. The labyrinth has an attraction which it is hard to escape, and no doubt there is a perverse pleasure in working out the double plot, framed on one side, and betrayed on the other, by the same impulse of mystification, chicanery, and deceit.

Pickle's letters in themselves are not exciting. It was no doubt ex

citing to hunt him up through print and manuscript, finding traces of him in unlooked for corners, and fully realising the surprise of the discovery that a picturesque Highland chief should fulfil such an office; but the traitorous gossip of a betrayer is not more entertaining than innocent gossip. Indeed it is curious to note how little all the accessories, in themselves so romantic,-the wandering Prince appearing now here, now there, like a Will-o'-the-wisp, the handsome and splendid traitor, familiar in all fine society, though writing like an old woman, succeed in moving our interest, and how little entertaining are the revelations which ought to have kept us breathless with excitement. Here is a more than usually interesting paragraph. It was written when "Lord Elibank's plot," which we hope the reader remembers, was on the point of execution-which it never was, however, for reasons which will be discovered in Mr Lang's volume :—

"The Young Chevalier has been in close correspondence with England for a year and a halph past. Mr Cade, the historian, has carried frequent messages. They never commit anything to writing. Elderman Hathcot is a principal manager. The very words the young Pretender told me and transacted by Whiggers, that no was that all this scheme was laid Roman Catholic was concerned, and oblidged me to give my word and honour that I would write nothing concerning him or his plan to Rome. After what I said last night this is all that occurs to me for the present. tions, and I will take care they will I will lose no time in my transacallways be conform to your directions; and as I have thrown myself completely upon you, I am determined to run all hasards upon this occasion, which I hope will entitle me to your favour and his Majesty's protection." A little later Mr Lang points

out that, notwithstanding this noble person's word and honour, he is found obsequiously communicating to his other Majesty in Rome the secret of his son's proceedings. This consists with our opinion that one plot leads to another, since there was nothing to hope for from James. Mr Lang indeed gives us to understand that Pickle was never paid at all, no more from London than from Rome-which it gives us pleasure to hear.

This is enough of Pickle. It is not the Spy but the unfortunate figure of the Young Chevalier, the noble youth, the broken man, victim of his birth, of his circumstances, of all that went before him, which is the chief and most interesting thing in this book. The picture is at once spirited and pathetic. The curious episode of his life so often passed over, between the great romance of the '45 and the squalid tragedy of the end; his wanderings on the Continent, seen here and there in alarmed glimpses by his friends, pursued blindly everywhere by his enemies of the English and other Governments, struggling against the inhospitality of one country after another which refused to receive him, and preferring to lead the most precarious roving life rather than be driven to the dull and spy-haunted refuge at Rome, is put before us with great vividness and originality, no one, we think, having done it be fore. Mr Lang has but little of the natural foible of a Scotsman for poor Prince Charlie, and is not a partial witness, feeling no doubt that even the vagaries of a man so doomed can but increase the tragic interest of his story. That

long fight against fate which this narrative shows, is full of all the elements of pity and terror. Charles would not yield till every hope had forsaken him. From one refuge and one assumed name to another he battled on, occasionally disappearing under the waves, but always raising his head again, till nature could no more, and, exhausted, discouraged, hopeless, he could resist his fate no longer. There is much that is affecting in the picture, as well as much that is painful, and it is new to us at least. Even Miss Walkinshaw is made excusable by Mr Lang's story. We feel that it is a thousand pities there was not some one among that party of gentlemen who gave the Royal Wanderer so poor a reception at Father Crackenthorpe's on Solway-side, when even the devotion of Redgauntlet could not save him-to say it was Pickle and not Miss Walkinshaw who betrayed the movements of her Prince. And did Sir Walter know and hold his peace not to betray Glengarry? But he might have said it was Pickle all the same.

Here is a book1 of again the most immediate matters of to-day, which comes blazing into our records, blazing, but yet groaning and spitting like a damp torch in an excess of wrath beyond knowledge, or rather beyond power of expressing it. Yet it is strange to attribute to Mrs Olive Schreiner any want of power to express what she means. It is her distinction that she has known so well how to describe at least what she sees or imagines she sees, that she has managed to make almost into a classic a work as full of absurdity

By Olive Schreiner.

London:

and hysterical passion as ever was taken for a great work by the amazed public before, and that is saying a great deal. The present saying a great deal. The present work is a political pamphlet of great bitterness, linked on to the very smallest thread of story that ever carried red-hot opinions and personal abuse of the fiercest kind into the world. So far as this little thread of story goes, Trooper Peter Halket is a remarkable study, and probably gives as clear an idea of one of the wild soldiers on the borders of savagery, without principle or moral guidance or any kind of education, except a determination to grow rich, as fiction could convey. Yet we cannot but doubt whether intelligence so rudimentary could grasp the idea of floating Gold Mines Companies, and gaining money by fabricating shares and then selling them, after the process which he describes, and declares to have been followed by Messrs Barnato, Beit, and Rhodes. He is himself the son of a pious washerwoman, and remembers her with great affection and kindness; but he sees all kinds of atrocities go on without any compunction, though he allows that to see niggers flogged or hanged does not please him. "Some fellows think it the best fun out to see the niggers kick; but it turns my stomach," he says; "if it's shooting or fighting I'm there. I've potted as many niggers as any man in our troop, I bet." But we should scarcely have expected this savage youth to run on, as he sat on the lonely veldt under the stars, all alone in the desert, in peril of his life, with thoughts like the following:

"All men made money when they came to South Africa: they all made money out of the country-eight millions, twelve millions, twenty-six mil

lions, forty millions-why should not he? Peter Halket started suddenly and listened. But it was only the wind coming up the koppje, like a great wheezy beast creeping upwards; and he looked back into the fire.

"He considered his business prospects. When he had served his time as volunteer he would have a large piece of land given him, and the Mashonas and Matebele would have in time, and the Chartered Company all their land taken away from them would pass a law that they had to work for the white men, and he, Peter Halket, would make them work for him. He would make money. Then he reflected on what he should do with the land if it were no good and he could not make anything out of it. He should have to start a Syndicate, called the Peter Halket Iron - mining, or some such name, Syndicate. Peter Halket was not very clear as to how it ought to be started, but he felt certain that he take shares. They would not have to pay for them. And then they would get some big man in London to take shares. He need not pay for them; they would give them to him, and then the company would be floated. No one would have to pay anything; it was just the name, "The Peter Halket Gold-mining Company, Limited." It would float in London; and people there who didn't know the country would buy shares. They would have to give ready money for them, of course-perhaps fifteen pounds a-share when they were up. Peter Halket's eyes blinked as he looked into the fire. And then when the market was up he, Peter Halket, would sell out all his shares. If he gave himself only six thousand, and sold them each for ten pounds, then he, Peter Halket, would have sixty thousand pounds! And then he would start another company and another. Peter Halket struck his knee softly with his hand. That was the great thing, 'Always sell out at the right time.""

and some other men would have to

While this African Alnaschar was thus gloating over his basket