Leading Articles in the Reviews. 



:?:3 



'JOHN MORLEY." 

 An Afpreciatiox hv an American. 

 In the Atlantic Monthly for January Mr. George 

 McLean Harper publishes an elaborate appreciation 

 of " John Morley " as a man of letters and a philoso- 

 pher rather than as a statesman. Mr. Harper thinks 

 that it cannot be an unprofitable task to set " forth 

 the personal opinions upon historical tendencies, 

 chiefly religious and political, which constitute the 

 philosophy of such a man as John Morley. They 

 have the tonic vigour, the fortifying sting of the un- 

 perfumed and impartial sea. They brace the mind 

 against comfortable sophistry. They are fatal to 

 flabby growths of emotion expatiating in the semblance 

 of reason." 



MR. MORLEY'S PRINCIPLES. 



Mr. Money, says Mr. Harper, would find no place 

 in American politics : — 



The principles of an English viscount would be too dcmo- 

 . ratic for the countrymen of Lincoln. A professed believer in 

 •lie doctrines of the French Revolution would be regarded as 

 liangerous in the nation that Thomas Jefferson helped to found. 



His agnosticism would have ostracised him in the 

 States. His principles, as laid down in his writings, 

 " are essentially the principles of the eighteenth century. 

 Enlightenment translated, through the medium of an 

 English mind, into terms appropriate to an age which 

 has seen the conjectures of rationalism confirmed by 

 natural science and historical criticism." 



HIS MAGNU.M OPUS. 



Mr. Harper, who dismisses the Gladstone biography 

 in a paragraph, devotes pages to Mr. Morley's little 

 treatise " On Compromise." He says : — 



His essay "On Compromise" is a work ol extraordinary 

 value. Not to have read it is to have missed a powerful 

 stimulus to right living. It is the moral portrait of the author, 

 .tnd although drawn so long ago as 1874, it is still true in every 

 feature to the prolific writer and active statesman who developed 

 m later years. 



A SUCCESSOR OF SAINTE-BEUVE. 



Mr. Harper traces his place in the literary philo- 

 sophical succession as follows : — 



He shows no tendency to yield to the fascination of mystical 

 natures. For this reason, he is, as a psychologist, far less rich 

 in haunting sympathies and profound .md delicate observations 

 than Sainle-beuvc, for example. The play of religious and 

 political forces in the region of practical intellect, not purely 

 speculative or purely active inlcllccl, but mediatory Ijctwcen 

 literature and life, may be belter oljserved, for the (>crio<l 

 between 1826 and 1869, in the life and works of the great 

 hi! ich critic than anywhere else. For the preceding fifty years, 

 (;X%ic performs the same office. For the period since Sainte- 

 BeU».:'s ilcalh, one who would follow the course of the game 

 might content himself with Matthew Arnold and .Morley. The 

 latter alone would not suffice. There is not enough pocfry in 

 him, nor enough breadth of feeling. Morley begins almost 

 precisely where .Sainte-Ucuve ended, with a sure grasp of several 

 elementary principles ; but api>arently he ha* never entertained 

 so many conflicting emotional sympathies. 



HIS i.imhatkjns. 



Of Mr. .Morley as a biographer of Cromwell Mr. 

 Harper says : — 



Lord .Morley is no painter. He has few colours on his 

 palette, and they are ready-mixed. There is no Rtvour of regret 



in Lord Morley's writings, no tone of renouncement ; above 

 all, no sentimentality. There is hardly a trace in him of 

 sympathy with the great reactionary movements that enriched 

 the imagination of Englishmen and Americans in the nineteenth 

 century. 



But for all that he has rendered great service to his 

 day and generation. For, says Mr. Harper : — 



John Morley, believing that " the spiritual life of man needs 

 direction quite as much as it needs impulse, and light quite as 

 much as force," has stood patient, sober, and tenacious of his 

 ideals throughout a generation when the contrary doctrine was 

 insistently taught. 



THE JEWISH QUESTION IN RUSSIA. 

 Baron Hevking, in an article which he contributes 

 to the Fortnightly RrAe-iV, adverts to the Jewish 

 question. He regards the maintenance of the present 

 system which confines the Jews to the " pale " as an 

 act of necessary self-defence. Incidentally, he takes 

 occasion to protest against the popular delusion that 

 the " pale " is a kind of Ghetto in which the Jews are 

 cramped and crowded without elbow room in which 

 to live. Baron Heyking says the district which the 

 Jews are free to inhabit in Russia is 



a territory which surpasses in size the largest Slates in Western 

 Europe ; it is double the size of both France and Germany, one 

 and a hall times larger than Auslria-Hurvgary, and two and a 

 half times the size of Great Britain. It can therefore hardly be 

 said that the Jews in Russia are crowded together. Within 

 the same territorial limits dwell 44,000,000 Christians, anumbei 

 eight times as large as that of the Jews, without suffering from 

 any congestion. 



Dealing with the complaint made by some that tne 

 refusal to permit Jews to enter the rest of Russia 

 crippled business by putting obstacles in the way of 

 Jewish representatives of British business firms visiting 

 St. Petersburg and Moscow, he declares that there 

 is no 



obstacle in the way of the entry of Jewish business representa- 

 tives of foreign commercial and industrial houses into Russia. 

 Their passports are provided with a visa by Russian State 

 consular olhcers under the same regulations .is the passports of 

 Christians, and in both cases the visa is valid for six months. 



But even the Russian Jews are by no means strictly 

 confined to the Polish and Lithuanian provinces. 

 Baron Heyking says : — 



If Russia were lo give to the Jews all the rights which are 

 enjoyed by her other subjects, she would expose the most 

 numerous class of her population, the millions of good-natured, 

 easy-going, unsuspecting, and hard-working pc.is.ints, to a 

 merciless exploitation and subjugation by the Jews. It is pre- 

 cisely for these reasons that the majoiiiy of the Jcvvs in Russia 

 arc kept within certain territorial limits and are not allowed lo 

 wander all over the Empire. This restriction docs nol, however, 

 apply to those Jews who are merchants of the first guild, i.e., 

 who are not small trailers, nor to persons employed by them, 

 nor to artisans, graduates, or undergraduates preparing for their 

 examinations ; professional persons such as doctors, lawyers, 

 and dentists j and such persons as chemists, assistants ol 

 chemists, midwives, and so forth. In the case of all those Jews 

 who can prove that Ihey are engaged in useful and self-support- 

 ing occupations, no limitation exists to their rights of settling in 

 whatever part of the Empire Ihey may choose. Jews may be 

 members of the Duma for any constituency in Russia. Only the 

 unprotluclivc classes, the host of middlemen of all kinds, .ind 

 those persons who have nol qualified for a particular trade 

 recognised by law, are confined lo certain territorial limits. 



