4o8 



The Review of Reviews. 



October 1, 1906. 



the mysteries of predestination and freewill, who 

 were more concerned about the origin of sin than 

 about the present day manifestations. Mr. Winston 

 Churchill paints us the New England of modern 

 times, where the great-grandsons and great-grand- 

 daughters of the generation that grew up under the 

 teaching of Jonathan Edwards are revealed to us, 

 no longer as transcendental theologians, but as ma- 

 terialised politicians. The meeting-house has ceased 

 to be the hub of the system. In place of the Minis- 

 ter of the Divine Mysteries of Grace we have the 

 Boss, the dispenser of the carnal favours of the 

 Caucus. 



But although the spiritual superstructure is 

 abased, and a sordid society of wire-pullers and poli- 

 ticians has superseded the austere idealists who as- 

 pired to found the Kingdom of Heaven in a new 

 and holier England, the primaeval source of inspira- 

 tion remains imperishable in their midst. For in 

 " Coniston " we feel in almost every page as Byron 

 felt as he wandered in the " land of lost gods and 

 godlike men." 



"Art, Glory, Freedom fail, but Nature still is fair." 

 " The mountains look upon Marathon, and Mara- 

 thon looks on the sea,' and the glory of the Conis- 

 ton mountain is the same to-day as it was before the 

 Mayflower sailed. 



" There's one power I always wished I had," says 

 Jethro, the hero of Mr. Churchill's stow — 



"' the power to make folks see some things as I see 'em. 

 I was acrost the Water to-night, on my "hill farm, when 

 the sun set. and the sky np thar above the mountain was 

 all golden bars, and the river all a-flamin' purple, just as 

 if it had been dyed by some of them Greek gods you're 

 readin' about. Xow, if I could put them things on paper, 

 I wouldn't care a haycock to be President — no. sir!" 



The eternal message of the sun and the stars, of 

 the sky and the sea, of the hills and of the plain, 

 fails not. Nor does the more articulate message 

 wherein the Divine reveals itself to the heart of 

 man in the love of woman, of the mother and the 

 child. Of all which messages we find copious tran- 

 scripts in the pages of " Coniston." 



The story of " Coniston " will be read bv most 

 people as a love story, a double-barrelled love story, 

 and it will be appreciated, or the reverse, chieflv by 

 the response which it arouses in the heart of its 

 readers. But it has another interest which appeals 

 directly to the head. It is a sympathetic picture of 

 the evolution and the regeneration of a political 

 Boss. Mr. Winston Churchill has rendered us all 

 good service in thus delineating one of the sove- 

 reigns of the new Republic, who are often spoken of 

 And written about as if they were as inhuman as 

 the Thirty Tyrants. The ' American Boss is no 

 monster — no hideous saurian reared in slime. He 

 is a very human man. and very often a veu- much 

 more lovable man than those who abuse him. When 

 I studied the Citv Government of America in the 

 slums of the City of Chicago I realised the great 

 truth of the goodness of the badness of the Boss 



.-ystem, and the essential services which the corrupt 

 political organisations of America were rendering to 

 the Commonwealth. It has always seemed to me 

 one of the little ironies of fate that a book which 

 proclaimed aloud this much-ignored truth should 

 have been mistaken, especially bv those whose func- 

 tions it did so much to vindicate, as a mere attack 

 upon the evils of a system which everyone assails 

 but which few take the trouble to understand. 



In •Coniston" we have a study of the evolution 

 of the country political boss in the days following 

 the^reat Civil War. His methods are primitive in 

 their simplicity. Jethro Bass was a tanner of no 

 education but of great strength of character,^ w^ho 

 from humble beginnings made himself Boss of a 

 New England State. The foundation of his power 

 was the mortgage. He made money and saved it, 

 then he lent it out on mortgage to his neighbours, 

 and so secured an informal but very real lien upon 







w4 



Cynthia and Judge Jethro. 

 Their progress along Broadway."— p. 254. 



