Jdly 7, 1882.] 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



93 



muuities with our own over-populated country, wc cannot 

 fail to be struck by the marvellous way in which, at the 

 antipodes, production has outstripped population and given 

 to progress a true cornucopia running over with an 

 abundance of the good things of this life. 



Clearly between two such communities reciprocity should 

 exist in the fullest and most generous sense of the expres- 

 sion, and thanks to many happy causes, among which 

 the great acceleration in steam navigation is one of the 

 chief items, this reciprocity does exist in a large degree, 

 and unless our statesmen, in dealing with these nature- 

 favoured colonies, commit some extraordinary tiscal or 

 political blunders, we may fully rely in the future on 

 the readiness and ability of our Australian cousins to 

 make good the shortcomings of our corn-fields, our stock- 

 yards, our sheep-lolds, and even of our orchards. 



Let us examine in detail, then, the true character and 

 extent of these Australasian resources in all their home- 

 bearing aspects. Turning to the parent colony, New South 

 Wales, we find that the total area includes 198,626,143 

 acres, or, in other words, it is about the size of England and 

 France combined. It is within bounds to assert that 

 everything produced in England can be grown in new South 

 Wah's, including^besides the familiar fruits of the temperate 

 zone — oranges, lemons, tigs, ic. During the latest year 

 for which we have comprehensive statistics, 252,540 acres 

 were under wheat, yielding nearly 4,000,000 of bushels, 

 while over 50,000 tons of good potatoes were also raised, 

 to say nothing of oats, barley, rye, sugar, and grapes, 

 which last gave 584,000 gallons of excellent wine and 

 6,600 gallons of good brandy. This is, however, not all. 

 There were, at the period in question, 706,498 acres under 

 cultivation, and no less than 21,351,4.33 enclosed ready for 

 agricultural operations, while some 6,000,000 acres lay 

 outside ready to be brought within the productive pale. 



The stock returns were no less remarkable. SVe find 

 that there were on March 31,1881, of horses 395,984 ; of 

 horned cattle 2,580,040 ; of sheep 32,399,547 ; and of 

 pigs 308,205. Such were the resources, roughly speaking, 

 in bread, beef, and mutton of only a single member of the 

 great Australasian group, and at the date in question the 

 population, all told, was but 503,981 souls. The figures 

 relative to the live stock resources are of great moment, for 

 the requirements of Great Britain in the way of butcher's 

 meat are computed to reach over 600,000 tons per annum, 

 a quantity coEstaniiy increasing, be it observed It is gene- 

 rally admitted thati n England the meat consumption per 

 head is full 1201b. per annum, and it is well known that 

 we do not ourselves produce 80 lb. of this amount The 

 difl'erence has, therefore, to be made good from alien 

 sources. To till up the deficiency requires full 20,000,000 

 of sheep, and here we find that a single colony — New 

 South Wales — can very nearly accomplish this tremendous 

 commissariat feat unaided, and still feed her own people. 

 New South Wales, however, is by no means Australasia, 

 as wo shall presently perceive. Let us now turn to the 

 most highly civilised and, to borrow an apt scientific 

 phrase, differentiated of all the Australasian communities — 

 Victoria. 



TiiF. jABLOcnKOFP LiGiiT.— Tlio contrnrt for illiiininntiiiK llio 

 Avenuo do I'Opi'ra with tlio Jabloclikoff candles has been renewed 

 by tlio mnnici()nlity of Paris for three years. Power has been 

 Rrantod, in connection with this now contract, to introduce the light 

 into the houses in the district. 



Wateb Power AMD the Ef-ectric Licnr. — It is rnmonrod that n 

 wealthy company is maVinf; arrangements to bny the water power 

 at Harper's Ferry, on the Upper Potonino river, witli a view of 

 lighting Washington city and Baltimoro by the electric b'ght. 



3^tbit\3)i, 



SHAKESPEARE STUDIES.* 



EVERY Englishman ought to study Shakespeare till, as 

 far as in him lies, he knows him well. When certain 

 passages not corresponding with our present ideas are 

 omitted, the same may be said for every woman, and for 

 the young folks, too. We want Shakespearean teachers 

 for such study : so that the splendour of Shakespeare's gift 

 to his people and to the world, to his age and to all time, 

 may be rightly seen, while yet the spots on that splendid 

 sun may be recognised also. But, thus far, most of our 

 teachers — nearly all of this present day — are word-carpers, 

 metre-measurers, comma-counters, allusion-hunters, and 

 antiquarian note-gatherers. They do good service in their 

 own way, but it is not the kind of service which is 

 chiefly wanted. It is interesting to know that the 

 poet we have learned to love as Shakespeare spelt his 

 own name Shakspere, and probably pronounced it Shax-per ; 

 to learn that in " Love's Labour's Lost " the proportion of 

 unstopt to end-stopt lines is 1 in 18-1432 ±, while in 

 "The Winter's Tale" this proportion has sunk to 1 in 

 21214 ± ("Bless thee. Bottom!"), and to learn the 

 numbers and percentages of light-endings, of weak- 

 endings, of verse lines, and so forth (" God bless us, 

 a thing of naught!"), and to classify the plays into 

 Life-Plea Plays, Unfit-Nature or Under-Burden-Failing 

 Plays, Ingratitude and Cursing Plays, and Plays of 

 Reconciliation and Forgiveness.t But "when all is 

 done," this is not studying Shakespeare, any more than 

 measuring star-places is studying astronomy, or counting 

 the colours in a noble painting is studying art Even the 

 attempt to recognise from the style what Shakespeare 

 really has or has not written, in works attributed to him, 

 or what he has written when at his 1>est or not so well, is 

 of little real worth compared with the loving study of his 

 grand creations. Loving, yet not unthoughtful. We 

 would not see Shakespearean students accepting all that he 

 has left us, as if it were beyond criticism. There is scarcely 

 a play of his whose plot is without fault or blemish, and in 

 many of the finest the borrowed story, which not only 

 forms the groundwork of the plot, but is left to form tlie 

 plot itself, is absurd, and sometimes even monstrous. Those 

 who try, in their love for the poet, to defend or to praise 

 Trhit ir«= no pirt o£ his ^ork (tho^igh he «-s3 in fault for 

 not rejecting t), n tea ity fail to understand him, and do 

 his fame illservice. Claudio's light-hearted acceptance of 

 Hero's cousin, Bertram's sudden resolve to love Helena 

 "ever, ever dearly," the Duke's "Your evil quits you 

 well" to Angelo (murderer in intent), Valentine's "All 

 that was mine in Sylvia I give thee," and hundreds of such 

 flaws, belonged as certainly to the original story as Cscsar's 

 A'< III L'nite ! If we take them as Shakespeare's we mar 

 his work. Nor can any thoughtful reader fail to see in his 

 earlier writings the signs of weakness and bad ta.<.te, — the 

 weakness that of inexperience, the bad taste not his own, 

 but that of his age and surroundings. It is only by 

 separating these imperfections from his true and matured 

 work that we can rightly and lovingly appreciate the 

 greatest poet the world has known. 



The edition before us is not injured by the petty talk of 

 letter- and line-counters, date-hunters, and the like, for no 



• " Tlie Leopold Shnksporo." Messrs. Casscll, Pt-tler, A Golpin, 

 London. 



t If there is one IhinR more than anolhor wliioh ronld mnrk a 

 man ns thoronRhly nnnblo to rei>i);nifO the trno >-aI«o of Shake- 

 Kjienro's gift to man. it is snch nn atlenipt (<i clncsify his many- 

 sided plays. 



