from continuing a steady and judicious patronage of art; while the contemporary painting of England exhibits more than ever a marked national type, and reflects with still increasing fidelity and power the domestic life and national usages in which it is so much at home.

"

All lovers of music will be glad to learn that Signor Verdi is composing a new opera. The libretto has been written by Signor Camillo Boito, a Milanese poet, and himself one of the best musical composers in Italy. Signor Boito's "Mefistofele" may be considered to be the finest opera composed by an Italian maestro, after Verdi's "Aïda." Signor Marchetti, the author of 'Ruy Blas," is likewise engaged in the composition of a new work. New operas in abundance will be represented, no doubt, in the principal Italian theatres during the approaching Carnival season. There is hardly an Italian maestro who has not started with a poetical success or a fiasco. Few have deserved and earned the success obtained by Boito and Marchetti, but I might mention a dozen more maestri who have already acquired a certain popularity. The well-known music publishers of Milan, Ricordi, have just issued a series of new canzonetti by Signor Tosti and Signor Rotoli, two of the most popular composers of romantic and drawing-room songs. The names of Tosti and Rotoli have become familiar to English as well as Italian musical amateurs.

All who sympathize with Italy must admit that the Italians are doing all in their power to promote social, literary, and artistic progress. If the progress is not so great or so apparent, the cause must be attributed in great part to the unsettled state of political parties. The men who, during the last twenty years, have taken a prominent part in politics, and who now are considered the most influential statesmen of the two principal political parties in Italy, have never taken the pains to occupy themselves with that part of the Italian nation which anxiously awaited the accomplishment of Italian unity to promote the economical welfare of the country. Public attention has been constantly turned towards party-strife and intrigue, and very little notice has been taken of the material conditions of the nation. Had those party-leaders of Italian politics who, at this very moment, are forming offensive and defensive alliances between small groups, who seem persuaded that the future of Italy depends on the triumph of Sella or Depretis, of Cairoli or Minghetti,-had these party-leaders followed with conscientious attention the movement of Italian social, literary, and artistic life, the country would at this moment enjoy greater happiness and tranquillity. A considerable part of the energy and time wasted in useless struggles might have been spent in promoting the general welfare.

ROBERTO STUart.

EXPERIMENTAL LEGISLATION AND THE

DRINK TRAFFIC.

"A

FOOL, Mr. Edgeworth, is one who has never made an experiment." Such are, I believe, the exact words of the remark which Erasmus Darwin addressed to Richard Lovell Edgeworth. They deserve to become proverbial. They have the broad foundation of truth, and the trenchant disregard of accuracy in detail which mark an adage. Of course, the saying at once suggests the question-what is an experiment? In a certain way, all people, whether fools or wise men, are constantly making experiments. The education of the infant is thoroughly experimental from the very first, only in a haphazard and unconscious way. The child which overbalances itself in learning to walk is experimenting on the law of gravity. All successful action is successful experiment, in the broadest sense of the term, and every mistake or failure is a negative experiment, which deters us from repetition. Our mental framework, too, is marvellously contrived, so as to go on ceaselessly registering on the tablets of the memory the favourable or unfavourable results of every kind of action. Charles Babbage proposed to make an automaton chess-player which should register mechanically the number of games lost and gained in consequence of every sort of move. Thus, the longer the automaton went on playing games, the more experienced it would become by the accumulation of experimental results. Such a machine precisely represents the acquirement of experience by our nervous organisation.

But Erasmus Darwin doubtless meant by experiment something more than this unintentional heaping-up of experience. The part of wisdom is to learn to foresee the results of our actions, by making slight and harmless trials before we commit ourselves to an irrevocable line of conduct. We ought to feel our way, and try the ice before we venture on it to a dangerous extent. To make an experiment, in this more

proper sense, is to arrange certain known conditions, or, in other words, to put together certain causal agents, in order to ascertain their aggregate outcome or effect. The experiment has knowledge alone for its immediate purpose. But he is truly happy, as the Latin poet said, who can discern the causes of things, for, these being known, we can proceed at once to safe and profitable applications.

It need hardly be said that it is to frequent and carefully-planned appeals to experiment in the physical sciences, that we owe almost all the progress of the human race in the last three centuries. Even moral and intellectual triumphs might often be traced back to dependence on physical inventions, and to the incentive which they give to general activity. Certainly, political and military success is almost entirely dependent on the experimental sciences. It is difficult to discover that, as regards courage, our soldiers in Afghanistan and Zululand are any better than the men whose countries they invade. But it is the science of the rifle, the shell, and the mountain gun-science perfected by constant experimentation—which gives the poor savage no chance of successful resistance. To whom do we owe all this in its first beginning, but to the great experimentalist, the friar, Roger Bacon, of Oxford, our truest and greatest national glory, the smallest of whose merits is that he first mentions gunpowder; yet so little does this nation yet appreciate the sources of its power and greatness that the writings of Roger Bacon lie, to a great extent, unprinted and unexplored. It is only among continental scholars that Roger Bacon is regarded as the miracle of his age and country.

No doubt it is to Francis Bacon, the Lord High Chancellor of England, that the world generally attributes the inauguration of the new inductive era of science. This is hardly the place to endeavour to decide whether the world has not made a great mistake. Professor Fowler, in his admirable critical edition of the "Novum Organum," has said about all that can be said in favour of Lord Bacon's scientific claims; yet I hold to the opinion, long since stoutly maintained by the late Professor De Morgan, not to speak of Baron Liebig and others, that Lord Bacon, though a truly clever man, was a mere dabbler in inductive science, the true methods of which he quite misapprehended. At best, he put into elegant and striking language an estimate of the tendency of science towards experimentalism, and a forecast of the results to be obtained. The regeneration of these last centuries is due to a long series of philosophers, from Copernicus, Galileo, Descartes, Newton, Leibnitz, down to Watt, Faraday, and Joule. Such men followed a procedure very different from that of Francis Bacon.

Do we

Now we come to the point of our inquiry. Is the experimental method necessarily restricted to the world of physical science? sufficiently apply to moral, social, and political matters those methods which have been proved so invaluable in the hands of physical philosophers? Do our legislators, in short, appeal to experiment in a way

English

which excepts them from the definition of Erasmus Darwin? legislation, no doubt, is usually preceded by a great amount of public discussion and Parliamentary wrangling. Sometimes there is plenty of statistical inquiry-plenty that is, if it were of the right sort and conducted according to true scientific method. Nevertheless, I venture to maintain that as a general rule Parliament ignores the one true way of appealing directly to experience. Our Parliamentary Committees and Royal Commissions of Inquiry pile up Blue-books full of information which is generally not to the point. The one bit of information, the actual trial of a new measure on a small scale, is not forthcoming, because Parliament, if it enacts a law at all, enacts it for the whole kingdom. It habitually makes a leap in the dark, because I suppose it is not consistent with the wisdom and dignity of Parliament to grope its way, and feel for a safe footing. Now I maintain, that in large classes of legislative affairs, there is really nothing to prevent our making direct experiments upon the living social organism. Not only is social experimentation a possible thing, but it is in every part of the kingdom, excepting the palace of St. Stephen's, the commonest thing possible, the universal mode of social progress. It would hardly be too much to say that social progress is social experimentation, and social experimentation is. social progress. Changes effected by any important Act of Parliament are like storms, earthquakes, and cataclysms, which disturb the continuous course of social growth. Sometimes they do much good; sometimes much harm; but in any case it is hardly possible to forecast the result of a considerable catastrophic change in the social organism. Therefore I hold unhesitatingly that, whenever it is possible, legislation should observe the order of nature and proceed tentatively.

Social progress, I have said, is social experimentation. Every new heading that is inserted in the London Trades' Directory, is claimed by those private individuals who have tried a new trade and found it to answer. The struggle for existence makes us all look out for chances of profit. We are all perhaps in some degree inventors, but some are more bold and successful. Now every man who establishes a shop or factory or social institution of a novel kind is trying an experiment. If he hits an unsupplied need of his fellow-men the experiment succeeds; that is, it has something succeeding or following it, namely, repetition by himself and others. The word "success" is a most happy one etymologically. To have success is to have a future-a future of imitators.

It is quite apparent that all the great novelties of recent times have been worked out in this tentative way. How, for instance, has our vast and marvellous railway system been developed ? Did it spring forth perfect from the wise forethought of Parliament, as Minerva, fully armed and equipped, leaped from the head of Jupiter? On the contrary, did not our wise landowners and practical men oppose railways to the very utmost-until they discovered what a mistake they

were making? There is no great blame to them. Who, indeed, could see in the rude tram-line of Benjamin Outram the germ which was to grow into the maze of lines, and points, and signals which we now pass through without surprise at Clapham Junction or at London Bridge? That most complex organization, a great railway station, is entirely a product of frequent experiment. Gradatim-Step by Step-would be no unapt motto for any great industrial successes. In such matters experiments are both intentional and unintentional. Of the former the public hears little, except when they result in some profitable patent. The preliminary trials are usually performed in secret, for obvious reasons, and the unsuccessful ones are left undescribed and are quickly forgotten. As to unintentional experiments, they are too numerous. Every railway accident which happens is an experiment revealing some fault of design, some insufficiency in the materials, some contingency unprovided for. The accident is inquired into, and then the engineers set to work to plan improvements which shall prevent the like accident from happening in the future. If we had time to trace the history of the steam engine, of gas lighting, of electric telegraphs, of submarine cables, of electric lighting, or of any other great improvement, we should see, in like manner, that the wisdom of Parliament has had nothing to do with planning it. From the first to the last the rule of progress has been that of the ancient nursery rhyme-Try, try, try : And if at first you don't succeed, Try, try, try again.

To put the matter in the strongest light, let the reader consider what he would say about a proposal that Parliament should decide arbitrarily, by its own wisdom, concerning any great impending improvement; take, for instance, that of tramways and steam tramcars. It is quite conceivable that steam tramcars will eventually succeed so well as to replace horse conveyance to a great extent. All main highways will then, of course, be laid with tram-rails. But what should we think of the wisdom of Parliament if it undertook to settle the question once for all, and, after taking a score of Blue Books full of evidence, to decide either that there should be no steam tramcars, or that steam tramways should be immediately laid down between all the villages in the kingdom. The House of Lords did take the former course two sessions ago, and prohibited the use of steam on tramways, because it might frighten horses. In the next session they felt the folly of opposing the irresistible, and expressly allowed the experimental use of steam on tramways.

It may, perhaps, be objected that these are matters of physical science and practical engineering, in which the supremacy of experiment has long been recognized. That is not wholly so; for the success of a system, like that of the railways or tramways, depends much upon social considerations. However that may be, there is no difficulty in showing that the same principles apply to the most purely social institutions. If anything, it is the social side of an enterprise which