worth con- densing. It was, as regards the question of the day, utterly unworthy of the occasion. The debaters on each side tried only to throw the blame on the opposite party....

• T HE secret of the Queen's Speech, which was delivered on Thursday, was much better kept than usual, the tone of its dominant sentences remaining unknown to the public until...

place speeches from Lord Curzon and Mr. Houldsworth, the mover and seconder of the Address, after which Mr. Gladstone made one of his most powerful speeches, giving warm support...

a lifeless speech, in which he denied that the experi- ment of governing without a Crimes Act in Ireland had been a failure, and yet had to concede that it was not a success,...

It is our intention occasionally to issue gratis with the SPECTATOR. Special Literary Supplements, the outside pages of which will be devoted to Advertisements. The Fifteenth of...

hour in these words :—" I have seen with deep sorrow the renewal of the attempt to excite the people of Ireland to hos- tility against the Legislative Union between that country...

case.

Secretary for Ireland, and as he retains his scat in the Cabinet, and the Viceroyalty is to be put in commission, he will be virtually Minister for Ireland. The selection is a...

some interest between the Orange Party, as represented by Major Saunderson, the Member for North Armagh, and Mr. Healy, the Member for South Londonderry, on the subject of the...

the Duke of Bedford, expressing the hope that his " fidelity to party" was not about to be submitted to so severe a test as any attempt by Mr. Gladstone " to use his power in...

societies formed to sustain the action of the existing law in Ireland,—from the Irish Loyal and Patriotic Union, from the Irish Defence Union, and from the London branch of the...

protestations of confidence in Lord Salisbury as the statesman who, of all others, would most feel the duty of restoring order. We hope he may, and will give him our hearty...

make their new Rules of Procedure the first business, and to resign if the House declines to carry them through. It is not known whether they will be resisted by the leaders of...

hundred best books, a fac-simile of which is given in the Pall Mall of Tuesday, is a very amusing affair. Running his pen, as he says, " lightly through the needless, and...

briefly, a Radical one, to dismiss functionaries who do not support the Government ; to threaten the Church with "a brusque rupture "—that is, a stoppage of pay—if she does not...

have refused to disarm, and Bulgaria only agrees on condition that she obtains a guarantee against a Servian invasion. The Russian Government has, therefore, proposed that the...

prove a dead-letter, for the Chamber has already taken the reins into its own hands. On Thursday, M. Rochefort introduced a Bill granting a general amnesty, which the Government...

will as soon as possible organise the new Province. He cannot be too quick if order is to be restored, and Lord Randolph Churchill would do well to assent in advance to a...

(M.P. for North-East Bethnal Green) against Patrick Kenny for publishing, as an electioneering device, a charge against him of maladministration of a fund raised some years ago...

to have some sort of vague countenance from the Government. This is to form a Company, to be called the Soudan Company, on the model of the North Borneo Com- pany, and entrust...

declares that the Provost-Marshal, whom he does not name, recently extorted evidence from a Burman while covered by the rifles of a firing-party ; and that he, being an ardent...

THE GOVERNMENT AND THE OPPOSITION. IT ALF-HEARTEDNESS is the word which best describes the attitude at once of the Government and the Opposi- tion. In the House of Lords, the...

T HE Duke of Bedford's letter to Monday's Times, con- taining an implicit threat of revolt against the Liberal Party in case Mr. Gladstone should try to carry a policy of...

MAE humiliation with which thoughtful Englishmen regard their failure in Ireland may be lessened, if they reflect that an organisation greater and older than the British Empire...

T HE first di ffi culty is to decide whether M. de Freycinet's declaration of policy, which appeared on Saturday, is an Opportunist programme drawn out in Radical phrases, or a...

I T is useless to forget, annoying as the recollection may be, that inside the great Irish Question there is another, almost equally embarrassing, which must speedily be dealt...

T HE acquisition in the spring of last year, by an English Administration often reproached with indifference to the designs of Russia, of a new naval station in the Pacific,...

M R. GIFFEN'S " Further Notes on the Progress of the Working-classes in the Last Half-century," supply some strong confirmations, and some explanations which are tantamount to...

W E greatly regret to see, from the account of the Old Boys' dinner of King's College School, held on Monday at the Holborn Restaurant, that the public feeling at King's College...

T HE French police, it is stated, have come to the conclusion that the recent murder of M. Barreme, the Prefect of the Eure, which has even moved the Chamber to a debate, was a,...

T HIS is the time of year most perfect on the Riviera; the sky is serenely blue, the sea rolls lazily as if overburdened with warmth, the scent of the orange-blossom still...

THE DEMOCRACY AND HOME-RULE. [TO THE EDITOR OF TEE " SPECTATOR."] Sts.,—Mr. G. It. Portal's letter, in the Spectator of January 16th, seems to demand a response from me. To...

THE " SPECTATOR."] SIR,—Mr. J. J. Murphy has called attention to the very large number of abstentions at the recent elections in the provinces of Munster, Connaught, and...

LTo THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."1 Sia,—In a letter which appeared in the Spectator of January 2nd, under the heading of "The Irish Elections," it is stated that the Irish...

[TO THE EDITOR OP THE " SPECTATOR."] SIR,—Your correspondent, Mr. G. R. Portal, in his letter of January 11th, says :—" Is it so certain that the Irish are in the least...

[TO THE EDITOR OF THE " sexcrxxoa.'1 Sra, — It may interest your readers to see two boycotting notices lately issued in the County Galway against two land- lords who ask for...

To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR." I SIR, - If the proposal which Mr. Llewelyn Davies defended in the Spectator of Jan. 9th—that Parochial Church Boards should be elected by...

[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."1 Sts.,—In view of the apocryphal stories that are told of Liberal promises to the county voters, your readers may be interested in knowing...

Nothing good is got by worry. Bide the hour to make the spring ! Take life easy : that's the thing. Do not trouble, do not trouble ! Heavy hearts make toiling double. Groans...

AMIEL'S JOURNAL.* MRS. HIIMPHRY WARD closes her thoughtful introduction to this interesting book with a shaft at the people who are "certain" about the existence of the higher...

FTO THE EDITOU OF THE " SPECTATOR." _I SIR,—One of the most suggestive circumstances of the sad affair at King's College School seems to have attracted little or no attention....

HAD .3Iitre Court been the work of a writer of less established reputation than Mrs. Riddell, we should have been inclined to speak of it with almost unqualified admiration. The...

"NEWER any one living thought like you," said to Swift the woman who loved him with a passion that had caught some of his own fierceness and despair. That love which great...

knowledge, is becoming specialised. It is to have a cyclopredia of its own, with an appropriate editor in the person of a ducal Maiter of Fox- hounds. Each branch is to have one...

Scotch preacher in the memorable years of the latter half of the seventeenth century can hardly fail to command attention ; and these " hitherto unpublished sermons," collected...

MR. HOWLEY undertakes, as he tells us in the preface to this little work, to show that the moral law known to pagan philosophers and Christian theologians has not lost its...

has unmistakably taken the place here which Mr. Burroughs has taken in America, of a thoroughly reliable photographer of Nature in prose. We are glad, therefore, to say that in...

The English Rhetorical Review. Edited by the Rev. M. Creighton. (Longman.)—Nothing can be more readable than this new Quarterly Review. There is not a second-rate paper in it,...

is a very clever and amusing satire on American and English peculiarities, the authoress taking good care that the English dogs should have the worst of it, though she wields a...

good wishes for this new " monthly magazine of liberal religious thought and life." Though the views expressed in the Editor's Introduction are not to our mind, the programme...

appear- ance of its annual volume, The Journal of Education, the seventh of the New Series (86 Fleet Street). It is a publication that has done and continues to do, excellent...

and T. Clark, Edinburgh ; Kegan Paul, Trench, and Co., London.)—The second annual volume of this excellent periodical is fall of valuable matter. We may mention a very...

Co.)—This magazine will probably have something to say on Art which will be worth hearing, if we may judge from the three "Notes" -which Mr. Selwyn Image contributes to the...

—There are some obvious criticisms to be made on this novel. The plot has some unnecessary convolutions. It might have been worked out, for instance, without any mention of the...

Co.)—In some respects Mr. Langbridge's book is good. He hits off with success the conversation of his boy-heroes, for it is with school-life chiefly that he has to do. In his...

(Cassell and Co.), by Various Authors. There is a delightful absence of method in the collection. It consists, in fact, of popular studies of such different scientific subjects,...

Univin.) — This is a business-like account of the three Reforms, 1832, 1867, and 1885, with an outline of the chief legislation that took place between those dates, and a brief...

Augustus Hulbert, M.A. (Longmana and Co.)—The vicar of Al& monbary, Yorkshire, presents us with one of those local histories which, even when they are, as here, written...

and arranged by Jules Beaujoint (Remington and Co.), is neither fish nor fowl. In other words, it is neither sufficiently piquant from the anecdotical, nor sufficiently serious...

B. Sanborn. (S. Low and Co.) —We regret to say that this volume is disappointing, and from the literary—though certainly not from the literal—point of view, rather thin. The "...

Blackett.)—Miss Stuart's story is as pleasant and as wholesome a novel as we have read for some time. She tells the love-story of her heroine in a simple, straightforward way ;...

edition of The Land and the Book. By William M. Thompson, D.D. (Nelson and Sons.)—This third volume is devoted to what may be called the outlying parts of the Holy Land,...

tedious. They abound with language beyond the comprehension of their readers, and not always correct. "I was forced," says an autobiographical donkey, in one place, "to lay...