March 26, 1886.] 



SCIEXCE. 



293 



* I suppose I must take the thing myself. Come 

 up stairs with me, Helps, when the council is 

 over. We will look at the maps, and you shall 

 show me where these places are." It occurred to 

 Mr. Froude that it would be a good thing not 

 merely to find out where the colonies were, but 

 to make a tour among them, to talk to their lead- 

 ing men, see their countries and what they were 

 doing there, learn then feelings, and correct what- 

 ever erroneous impressions he himself shared in 

 common with his countrymen. He sailed for 

 Melbourne in the beginning of December, 1884, in 

 the new steamship Australasian ; and on the 16th ot 

 May. 1885, he landed at Liverpool from the decks 

 of the Etruria, on her first return vogage from 

 New York. In this volume the events of that trip 

 around the world are most charmingly narrated. 



His first encounter, however, was with an inhab- 

 itant of an island much nearer Downing Street 

 than New Zealand. He thus narrates the inci- 

 dent : "I saw an Irishman in the unmistakable 

 national costume, the coat-seams gaping, the 

 trousers in holes at the knees, the battered hat, 

 the humorous glimmering in the eyes. I made 

 acquaintance with him, gave him a pipe and 

 some tobacco, for he had lost his own, and 

 tempted Mm to talk." The man, who had prob- 

 ably never heard of Mr. Froude or his books, 

 opened his heart to him. After describing how 

 the Manx men had come down and taken all the 

 herring in his neighborhood (for it seems that 

 he was a fisherman), he went on: "And then 

 there was the bit of land" — here he paused a 

 moment, and then continued, ••Thhn banks was 

 the ruin of me. I had rather had to do with the 

 worst landlord that ever was in Ireland than with 

 thhn banks. There is no mercy m them. They'll 

 have the skin from off your back.*' Poor feUow ! 

 No sooner had 1 e got fixity of tenure than he had 

 borrowed money on the strength of it, and the 

 result was emigration to the antipodes. " How 

 many hundreds of thousands of his countrymen 

 will travel the same road ?" queries our author. 



A few horns only were devoted to the Cape of 

 Good Hope ; for Mr. Froude had sojourned there 

 ten years before, and had seen all of the mis- 

 government of that colony that he desired. 

 Adelaide was merely glanced at, but a long and 

 interesting visit was paid to Melbourne and 

 Sydney. A trip was taken to Ballarat, Bendigo, 

 and other points in the interior of Victoria. Every- 

 where he was well treated, and everywhere he 

 saw nothing to blame and much to praise. He 

 was in a land where patriotism was not " a senti- 

 ment to be laughed at — not, as Johnson defined 

 it, 1 the last refuge of a scoundrel,' but an ac- 

 tive passion." He predicts a glorious future 



for Australia. People wrote to Mm afterwards 

 that he had purposely been shown the bright side 

 of things, "that we let ourselves be flattered, be 

 deluded, etc. Very likely. There was mud as 

 well as gold m the alluvial mines. The manager 

 pointed out the gold to us, and left the mud un- 

 pointed out. The question was not of the mud at 

 all, but of the quality and quantity of the gold. 

 If there is gold, and much of it, that is the point. 

 The mud may be taken for granted." Rather a 

 dangerous method of investigation, one would 

 say, and a method the pursuing of which has 

 destroyed much of our faith in Mr. Froude's 

 deductions. 



He next passed over to New Zealand, this time 

 in an American steamer. But though the captam 

 and the steamer were American, the crew was not. 

 Indeed, our author, puzzled to make out what 

 they were, asked the captain how he had picked 

 them up. " I make a rule," the captain replied, 

 "to take no English, no Scotch, no Irish, no 

 Americans. They go ashore m harbor, get drunk, 

 get into prison, give me nothing but trouble. It 

 is the same with them all, my people and yours 

 equally." He preferred Danes, Norwegians, Ger- 

 mans, Swedes, and Chinamen. It took five days 

 to make the voyage from Sydney to Auckland. 

 Then followed a month mainly devoted to sight- 

 seeing in the wonderful volcamc mterior of the 

 North Island. This part of the book is well illus- 

 trated, and we remember no better description of 

 the last retreat of the Maori. In fact, it makes 

 one wish that the author had devoted more of his 

 time to descriptive writing, and less to historical 

 dissertations. 



From Auckland he voyaged to San Francisco 

 via Honolulu. It is always pleasant to hear one's 

 country and countrymen praised, and Mr. Froude 

 has been by no means stingy of praise when 

 speaking of us. " The Americans," he declares, 

 '•are the English reproduced m a new sphere. 

 What they have done, we can do. The Americans 

 are a generation before us m the growth of de- 

 mocracy, and events have proved that democracy 

 does not mean disunion." But all the desirable 

 results were not brought about by the spirit por- 

 trayed m the following sentence. He has been 

 speaking of the scheme for a real imperial par- 

 liament (something akin to our congress) to take 

 charge of the ' foreign and colonial policy ' of a 

 federated British empire, — Oceana, — and says, 

 " Of ail the amateur propositions Mtherto brought 

 forward, this of a federal parliament is the most 

 chimerical and absurd." Why? it may be asked. 

 Because the English house of commons is omnipo- 

 tent, is the reply. " Who is to persuade it to abdi- 

 cate half its functions, and construct a superior 



