496 



The Review of Reviews. 



POETRY IN THE MAGAZINES. 



Mr. Francis Meynell contributes two poems to 

 the October English Review. The first is to Ireland, 

 of which one stanza may be quoted here : — 



O love loss-manifest ! I prize 



The beating heart of your sunset skies ; 



Your patch-work fieltis ; the low-winged cloud ; 



The voices, rich and not too loud, 



That lake some sweetness from the birds, 



And music make of our Saxon words ; 



Tlie valley-cup, brimful of mist ; 



A moon that's tender to be kissed ; 



A wind-bent tree — all, these and these 



Are the things that move, and the things that please ! 



In the October Forum Louis V. Ledoux writes two 

 stanzas on Socialism, the second of which we quote 

 here : — 



Not laws ; but virtue in the soul we need, 



The old Socratic justice in the heart. 



The golden rule become the people's creed 



When years of training have performed their part; 



Tor thus alone in home and church and mart 



Can evil perish and the race be freed. 



"Betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross." 

 l\Ir. Albert A. Cock contributes to the Dub/in 

 Raiinii an interesting study on the poetry and life of 

 Francis Thompson, in which he declares that Francis 

 Thompson is in some respects the greatest achieve- 

 ment of Catholicism in the nineteenth century. He 

 pronounces " The Hound of Heaven " as the most 

 synthetical representation of the movement of English, 

 and perhaps European, thought in the nineteenth 

 century that we have. He concludes by quoting the 

 following stanzas from Thompson's " In No Strange 

 Land " :— 



Not where the wheeling systems davlctn, 

 .And our benumbed conceiving soars — 

 The drift of pinions, would we hearken, 

 Beats at our own clay-shuttered doors. 

 The angels keep their ancient places ; 

 Turn but a stone, and start a wing ! 

 'Tis ye, 'tis your estranged faces. 

 That miss the many-splendoured thing. 

 But (when so sad thou canst not sadder) 

 Cry ; — and upon thy so sore loss 

 tjhall shine the traffic of Jacob's ladder 

 I'itched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross. 

 Yea, in the night, my Soul, my daughter. 

 Cry, — clinging Heaven by the hems ; 

 And lo, Christ walking on the water 

 Not of Genesareth, but Th.ames ! 



A Poetic Tribute from Jai-an. 

 In the Taiyo j (Tokio) Yone Noguchi published 

 a poem on King George V.'s Coronation. 1 extract 

 the following invocation to England : — 

 O England vast as are the suns vast, 



O England « itii the widest breath of widest love. 

 Would I salute thee from the seas red with the rising sun, 



(Thou upon the Western seas burning by the sunset fire,) 

 Not for thy wealth which runs through thy veins like wine. 



Not for tliy .strength like that of the days and sun. 

 But seeing thee with all thy children true and hard. 



Who deal not pale death but life, 



The single-souled worker of the glory of Heaven's plan, 



The builder of Truth upon the peaks of stars and song, 

 'J he builder of song amid liberty's pines of echoing lieait ; 



Thou scorncst luxury, thou scornest sham and cheat. 

 Thou art the true friend of humanity deathless and plain. 



WAS GAMBETTA A CREATURE OF BISMARCK? 



Abbe Dimnet writes in the Quarterly Review on 

 the real Gambetta, and supplies admirers of that 

 French orator with much unpleasant reading. The 

 Abbd reviews the appendix to Bismarck's " Recol- 

 lections," from which it appears that Count Henckel 

 von Donnersmarck, who had married a wealthy 

 courtesan, was in close touch both with Bismarck and 

 with Gambetta. There is no proof, says the Abbe, 

 but there is every likelihood that Gambetta would 

 have been less anxious to haunt the Donnersmarck 

 establishment if the presiding deity had been a Diana. 

 The Abbe' resumes : — 



The chief points made apparent in the correspondence 

 between Donnersmarck and Bismarck are the following. 

 Gambetta had had confidential dealings with an emissary of 

 Bismarck's; he had very early admitted the possibility of a 

 personal interview with the Chancellor ; he had, in order to 

 please him, been instrumental in removing an ambassador who 

 was T\oX perso}Hi grata, and in appointing a Foreign Minister of 

 whom Bismarck would approve as a Protestant and an anti- 

 clerical ; he had been anxiouo to get some mark of sympathy 

 from the Germans on the occasion of the Exhibition ; finally, 

 according to Donnersmarck, he was willing to come to an 

 agreement concerning the War Budget and entailing a common 

 action of France and Germany .against Rome. The limitation 

 of the War Budget was especially serious. If Gambetta 

 admitted the possibility of coining to an arrangement with 

 Bismarck on this vital point, it amounted to confessing that, 

 liardly seven years after the loss of Alsace-Lorraine, he had 

 given up all intention of recovering these provinces by force. 

 Vet, all the time, he went on repealing privately to his friends 

 and publicly in his addresses — the Oierbourg speech in August 

 1880 is famous — that " Ea Revanche " was a duty and a 

 certainty. 



The Abbe declares that history shows Gambetta 

 more the dupe than the ally of Bismarck : — 



While trying to deceive Bismarck, he did all tlie time unsus- 

 pectingly what the Chancellor wanted him to do. Gambetta 

 contributed to establish the colonial, anti-clerical, ultra-pacific 

 but internally divided Republic which Bismarck longed to see 

 strike roots in Fr,ance ; and he did bowiih the hapjiy lighl- 

 hcartedness of perfect innocence. 



If you want practical advice how to avoid disease, 

 and to get ease if you are already ailing, read Eustace 

 Miles' "Prevention and Cure' (.\lethuen. 3s. 6d. 

 net), but do not stop there : take the advice and 

 carry out his interesting suggestions. 



Those who care for account;; of seldom done 

 journeys may be interested in Mrs. Roby's story of 

 how she travelled 2,000 miles in the Congo in five 

 months, through country not before traversed by a 

 white woman. This is the chief feature of the 

 November number of the Wide World Magazine. 

 Another article is on a modern treasure-hunt — the 

 account of the excavations undertaken in Jerusalem 

 by Captain Montagu Parker and his party, who 

 thought they were on the trail of the sacred articles 

 in the ancient temples and of the buried riches of 

 the old Jewish Kings. In their search they began 

 digging in the Mosque of Omar, thereby outraging 

 Mobanmicdan religious feeling, so that they had to 

 fly hastily from the Holy City, some of them being 

 detained for a time in prison. 



