The quality that makes this book so particularly rich in suggestion, so stimulating to the imagination, is the acute sense of causation that pervades it. A great majority of people seem to see things only as things that are: their vision of affairs is static. They seem to think that mountains keep always the same height, rivers the same length, nations the same character. The Americans to them are a remarkable people, infested with Irish, whose cities are painfully uniform, and who spell offensively and put your railway check in your hatband whether you like it or no. To a minority, perhaps a considerable minority, of people nowadays, however, things are seen as things that becometheir vision of things is dramatic. That way of looking at things may be innate in some cases; in many it is the result of a study of, and comprehension of, the evolutionary idea. Now Mr. Steevens has the latter quality of mind to a contagious degree. The reader will be dull indeed who does not catch something of his fine sense of implication. You find that the iron-bound trunk at Euston Station, the ticket stuck into your hatband by a familiar-mannered conductor, the secret whiskey-bar in a scullery at Portland, are significant things, straws perhaps, but showing all the better for that the trend of the Democratic idea.

Over here we pretend to be Democratic. But it is the thinnest pretence in the world. Our country is an aristocracy in decay, an aristocracy with a leaky organization, a land of hyphened names, bogus crests and derived manners, where every one is strenuously putting on Side-toadying, imitating, presuming equality with some person supposed to be "above" him, holding aloof from or imposing charity or patronage upon some other person supposed to be "below" him. I never met an Englishman so pitiful that he did not find a consolation in being "a little superior" to some other Englishman. In this country the wine merchant's wife does not call on the ironmonger's wife, and the ironmonger's wife on the fishmonger's wife, and the fishmonger's wife on the publican's wife whose

license is only for beer; and the mere fact that each husband has a vote no more makes us Democratic in the face of these vulgarities of selectness than the fact that each husband has two legs and a head of hair.

And in return for the right to step on certain "inferiors" your Englishman is always ready to be meanly abject to certain "superiors." The tradesman cultivates an abject manner to his customers, the railway servant has to be not civil but "respectful," and such people as the jobbing workman, the jobbing gardener, in a rural community, literally crawl through existence touching their hats. When we travel there seems an understanding that we are all Ineffable Personages, incognito; if possible we go into a compartment alone to avoid losing caste by contact with our "inferiors," and we "snub" conversational advances and "tip" the guard beyond our means to keep him in his place. Of course, when one writes a book representing a man doing such things, every reviewer in the three kingdoms calls one's character a snob for doing what everybody does. But that is only the refinement of our snobbery. In America they really have purged their minds of much of this sort of thing. The conductor of the train is the man, your equal, who examines your ticket and looks after you while you travel, and you are the man, his equal, who travels under his direction. Both being sane human beings, you operate to get the business done with as little bother as possible, and so you hand him your ticket and he very properly whips your check into your hatband so that he can see it at a glance a dozen yards off. Then there is no more fuss for either of you. The formulæ and gestures of respect exacted by English travellers from railway servants are as much resented by the American conductor as they would be over here in a club smoking-room. So they must be in any genuine Democracy.

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Certain other things follow as a matter of straightforward deduction from the Democratic theory. There are no

white servants to be got there; there never will until the Democracy has rotted. As a consequence Mr. Steevens is perpetually recurring to the American ingenuity in labor-saving appliances. A house over there is built in a mood of elaborate civility. Over here, any one who will trouble to do a little househunting will find that houses-villa residences, built thirty or forty years ago, appear brutally indifferent to a servant's health or comfort. Perilous steps, sometimes out of doors, lead to the underground coal cellar; dismal illlit bedrooms for them are poked just anywhere; there are steep staircases, narrow, dark subterranean kitchens, an absence of water-taps on the upper floors, and so forth. These houses recall the happy days before the Board schools had turned the girls' heads and made them difficult to please. And in another direction, too, the American differs from us fundamentally, and that is his unsympathetic treatment of the poor. Here

we dispense charity. It is part of our social dignity; great ladies require an interesting and cleanly poor just as they require a park and deer. Poor English people stand being done good to in a most humiliating way; one must have been born in the English south country -Hardy's country-to appreciate the taint. In America the protrusion of

charitable offices would probably awake a dangerous resentment; exuberant fashion following European examples must needs avail itself of Irishry and niggers. To the ordinary American the permanent poor are a nuisance, the unfit and the lazy, and he resorts to stimulating methods of treatment. The casually poor takes his chance. To the American poor man the rich are not his providentially appointed almoners, but his luckier equals. He plays a game against them, keen but not personally spiteful-the Silverite campaign was essentially a move in that game. But certain things are not fair-he does not think that trusts are fair-and then he gets angry. "Certain commercial concerns," says Mr. Steevens. "make frequent, powerful, and successful combinations to override the public interest.

...

One of the most odious forms of this is a combination among great employers of labor-railway companies and the like to keep a mutual black list. If a working-man offends one of them, in time of strike or otherwise, he will get no employment from any. Men have changed their names and disguised themselves in vain to escape this omniscient and merciless boycott." . . That, again, is emphatically not fair. And such things provoke reprisals. "It is becoming rare now to find a strike in which gunpowder and dynamite are not the ultimate appeal." There lies the danger of the Democratic Idea; the rich are irresponsible, they are not "superior," they have no feeling of noblesse oblige, and there is no palliative of territorial or class loyalty to soften the rigors of poverty. . . . Is it possible for the ideas of equality and loyalty to be operative side by side? That is the problem America must solve to live. H. G. W.

From The London Times.

THE NORTH POLAR PROBLEM.1 It has taken centuries to obtain even a very general idea of the north polar region. Three centuries ago Mercator adopted the theory, which was derived from the mysterious Nicholas of Lynne, that four great rivers flowed down a chasm at the Pole. Later there was

Maury's theory of an open polar sea; and the most recent opinion that has prevailed was that the polar sea was shallow, with land, in the form of islands, extending north from Franz Josef Land. Facts could not keep pace with theories, but they have gradually vealed to us the truth. It has long been and painfully refuted them, and reknown that a great stream of heavy ice flows down the east coast of Greenland. The American side of the polar sea was gradually discovered to be of a very different character. Collinson found

1 Address before the Royal Geographical Society at London, by Sir Clements Markham.

that very heavy ancient ice formed the pack from Behring Strait to Franklin Bay, only a narrow lane being kept open by the current of the Mackenzie and Colville rivers, between the land and the pack. M'Clure discovered that the same ancient ice extended along the whole western shore of Banks Island. Parry met with this ancient ice when he attempted to go westward from Melville Island, and it flows down M'Clintock Channel south-east until it impinges on the coast of King William Island. Sir George Nares's expedition met with the same ancient ice extending for three hundred miles along the northern coast of Grant Land and Greenland. Every indication pointed to the conclusion that there was no land to the northward. But the sea was supposed to be shallow, because there were only seventy-two fathoms of water at a distance of forty miles from the shore, and because the positions in which driftwood was found furnished an argument that there had been a general recent upheaval of the adjacent land. We thus find that this line of ancient ice extends from Behring Strait to the north coast of Greenland, a distance of twelve hundred miles, for that it is continuous across the gap of four hundred miles between Prince Patrick Island and Aldrich's farthest is deduced from the coincidences of winds, tiue, and drift. The fact that the heavy ice actually reaches the western part of the North American coast seems to indicate that there are no intervening lands, of any extent, to the westward of Prince Patrick Island. The discovery of Franz Josef Land brought to our knowledge a group of volcanic islands of the same geological period as Spitzbergen, approaching Spitzbergen closely at its western end, and on the same bank; in short, a continuation of the Spitzbergen group. There is an eastward drift of the ice on the coast of Grant Land; and it was assumed that there was a general drift of ice across the polar basin from the eastern to the western hemisphere, as well as a drift from left to right, due to the flow of warmer water into the polar area, which, as a cold current, seeks an outlet

southward at every opening, owing to the polar sea itself being surcharged, but only finds it for the ice it bears on its surface along the east coast of Greenland. The warmer water comes to the surface along the Siberian coast, and, aided by the outflow of the Siberian rivers and the prevailing winds, forms a current northwards across the polar area. These were the conclusions which were derivable from the facts within our knowledge before the departure of Dr. Nansen. His return, with the rich fruits of his expedition, has thrown new light on the whole question, and, as I said on a former occasion, the north polar problem begins to take definite shape. Nansen's chief discovery is that there actually is a very deep sea north of the Franz Josef group, continuous with that which was known to exist north of Spitzbergen, and that this deep sea has a relatively warm temperature in its depths. He ascertained that the time occupied by the ice in drifting across the polar basin on the parallels of the track of the Fram is a little over three years, and that the ice-bearing ocean extends at least as far as the pole. For the Fram's track southwards to Spitzbergen leaves a great width thence to Greenland, down which a vast volume of ice drifts, which must necessarily come from a region north of the track of the Fram. The question remains to be decided whether there is land of any extent in the vast unknown region between the Parry Islands and the New Siberian group. At one time I held the opinion that a chain of islands probably did exist, extending from the neighborhood of Prince Patrick Island towards Wrangel Island. This opinion was solely based on considerations con nected with the apparent line of Eskimo migration from Melville Island to Greenland, as indicated by a continuous series of remains. But I now concur with Dr. Rink that these vestiges are due to visits from the American continent in times past. The presence of the ancient floes of heavy ice along the north shores of the American continent is evidence that no land of any size exists to the northward on the meridians from

In

Behring Strait to Franklin Bay. fact, I am disposed to regard the whole line of heavy ancient ice which presses upon the shores of the American continent, of the Parry Islands, and of the northern side of Greenland as evidence of a continuus drift from the eastern to the western hemisphere, across an ocean uninterrupted by land of any magnitude. The presence of warmer water in the depths of Nansen's polar sea is an important discovery. It commences one hundred fathoms below the surface, and extends down to two hundred and fifty fathoms. If this warm current originates in that which flows up from the North Atlantic, Professor Mohn has observed that its greater salinity and consequent greater density would keep it in the depths when it cools down, while the water from the great rivers would be much lighter, and continue on the surface. But there are, I believe, other opinions respecting the origin and eventual destination of this warmer undercurrent in the polar ocean, respecting the part it plays in the economy of that ocean, and respecting the causes of its long retention of some of the warmth derived from the equator. Looking back into past ages, we may discern the evidence of great changes in the Polar area, as throughout the earth's surface. The Spitzbergen archipelago, including Franz Josef Land, seems to be the broken fringe of a continent which, in the Jurassic age, was clothed with pine forests. At a still later period there was abundant arborescent vegetation in Grant Land, and it is probable that the conditions within the vast area of the Polar ocean were then very different. From a geological point of view there is much food for reflection, based on the knowledge we already possess respecting the North Polar region; and much further research is needed, especially with regard to the upheaval of the land, which is reported from so many directions. A geological point of special moment is the extent to which the Polar phenomena of an extensive land mass in the South, and a deep ocean in the North, are illustrative of

and explicable by the theory of earthfolds. In reviewing the whole Polar question it will be seen that great progress had been made towards its solution, in various directions, before the departure of Nansen's expedition, but only fragmentarily and by side lights, while even the collected facts were often misinterpreted and misunderstood. I consider that the light thrown upon it by Nansen has not only extended our knowledge positively, but has had the effect of piecing together what appeared before to be fragmentary, and of making the detached pieces fit into their proper places and form a consistent whole. There is much, no doubt, that needs discussion and a free interchange of opinions, both on the broad aspects relating to the physical geography, and to the special subjects of oceanography, meteorology, terrestrial magnetism, biology, and geology, on which I have touched very briefly. There is, however, still much to learn. An expedition should be sent up Jones Sound to connect the four hundred miles between Prince Patrick Island and Aldrich's farthest, and to examine the line of ancient ice in that unknown region. Another expedition should complete the examination of the northern side of Greenland. A third should be equipped on Nansen's plan, and sent to carry out Nansen's principle, by commencing the drift much further to the eastward, and passing over the Pole itself. This would probably occupy four years, but it would bring back a further instalment of knowledge respecting the depths of the ocean, the currents and temperatures of the vast unknown area, and another series of magnetic observations. It should also decide the question of the existence of land between Prince Patrick and Wrangel Islands. It is true, therefore, that much remains to be done. Still, we already have a large mass of facts respecting the Polar region, from which scientific deductions may be drawn, and this has been enriched and materially increased by the labors of Nansen and his gallant companions.