VI 

 NATIONAL LIFE AND CHARACTER* 



IN "National Life and Character; a Forecast" Mr. 

 Charles H. Pearson, late fellow of Oriel College, 

 Oxford, and sometime Minister of Education in 

 Victoria, has produced one of the most notable 

 books of the end of the century. Mr. Pearson is 

 not always quite so careful as he might be about his 

 facts ; many of the conclusions he draws from them 

 seem somewhat strained; and with much of his 

 forecast most of us would radically disagree. Nev- 

 ertheless, no one can read this book without feeling 

 his thinking powers greatly stimulated; without 

 being forced to ponder problems of which he was 

 previously wholly ignorant, or which he but half 

 understood ; and without realizing that he is dealing 

 with the work of a man of lofty thought and of deep 

 and philosophic insight into the world-forces of the 

 present. 



Mr. Pearson belongs to the melancholy or pessi- 

 mist school', which has become so prominent in Eng- 

 land during the last two or three decades, and which 

 has been represented there for half a century. In 

 fact, the note of despondency seems to be the domi- 

 nant note among Englishmen of high cultivation at 



* The Sewanee Review, August, 1894. 



(289) 

 VOL. I. 



