Edward was highly potent, and, although exercised in quite a different fashion, was as powerful as that which was exercised throughout her long and glorious reign by Queen Victoria.

It was in the exercise of this influence that the King's love and knowledge of his fellow-men, his genial temper, consummate tact, and complete freedom from rancour or sustained resentment, clothed him with an undisputed authority greater, because far more subtle, than autocratic power would have given him. The pre-eminent men, politicians, religious and social leaders, foreign statesmen, and the most distinguished of his Colonial subjects, who came into contact with him, never left his presence without a desire, in so far as in them lay, to meet his wishes.

Queen Victoria's influence was, during the latter half of her reign, based upon her profound experience and recognised freedom from personal aims, her firm grasp of the constitutional principle which governs a limited monarchy, and her wonderful instinct for gauging the feelings of the serious middle class which was predominant in political England throughout her reign. Her personal contact with her subjects was so rare that it was practically non-existent.

Very few out of the millions of her people, notwithstanding the Jubilees of 1887 and 1897, had ever seen the Queen, and her interviews with her most prominent and most powerful servants were of rare occurrence. Nearly the whole of the State business, with which she was so largely identified, was carried on by correspondence. The advice given to her, when a girl Queen, by the King of the Belgians to have every request for a decision in writing, and to take time to consider, was followed by the Queen to the day of her death. The system had enormous advantages, but it also had its drawbacks. While it undoubtedly led, on many grave occasions, to wise reconsiderations of hasty ministerial action, it often harassed hard-worked Ministers, and sometimes led to unfortunate delays.

King Edward's methods were in direct contrast to these. He was always accessible to his Ministers, and far more than half of the business transacted by the King was transacted orally, by personal interview. He

enjoyed putting questions to his Ministers, and he liked to state his own views, not in a formal document, but face to face with those whom the matter concerned. It is true that he fortified himself for these interviews by frequently instructing his private secretaries to make enquiries, or to remonstrate against public acts or speeches of which he disapproved. But, in the long run, the King himself had his say, and, unlike Queen Victoria, he had his say verbally. It is certain that in saving time and in minimising friction' these methods were superior to those of the previous reign.

At the same time, if, in view of the brilliant success achieved by King Edward, a criticism is not out of place, it is, perhaps, pardonable to doubt whether, on such an occasion, if such had arisen, as that of the Trent affair,' when the Prince Consort's direct amendment of a Foreign Office despatch composed a most dangerous difference between Great Britain and the United States, the more methodical plan of obtaining from Ministers reasoned statements on paper of their policy would not have proved to be an extra security for the maintenance of peace, which was always King Edward's chief

concern.

To attempt anything approaching to biography, or even to try to examine critically the reign of King Edward, is impossible here. Even analysis of the influence of the King upon Society and public affairs, if it goes beyond the obvious, is treading upon ground hedged in by the sanctity of recent loss. All that has been attempted in these pages is to place in harmonious contrast the boy Prince and the King as all his people knew him. Lord Rosebery has called King Edward 'Le Roi Charmeur.' All the civilised world has called him the Peacemaker.' His people have grasped his ideal, and Lord Rosebery has indicated his method. A nobler epitaph no Sovereign could desire.

Personal charm is indefinable. It is also a most potent weapon, and a dangerous one in the hands of the unscrupulous. King Edward's charm was invincible. The individual man succumbed to it, and the multitude went down before it. When the King walked into a room every one felt the glow of a personal greeting. When he smiled upon a vast assemblage every one responded unconsciously. On the Derby day, when the King raised his

hat to the immense concourse of his people, his salutation reached the heart of every man and woman. This gift was priceless to him. The fact is that, just as their hearts went out to him, his heart went out to them, and they knew it. There was not an atom of pose about the King. If he visited the most mighty potentate, if he called upon a humble subject, if he went into a cottage garden, he was—and this may seem exaggerated, although it is the simple truth-equally interested and pleased. His joyous sense of life, his broad sympathies, and his complete freedom from ennui, made him genuinely pleased with the lives and homes of others. He was interested. It was no perfunctory sense of politeness, it was no conscious desire to please, which made him note details and suggest improvements or alterations in a strange house or garden. He would say to his host, 'you should cut or plant a tree here,' or he would say to a cottager, don't you think that flower-bed would look better so, or that fence would be better in such and such a position,' and he would add, 'I shall see whether you have done so when next I come,' and the effect upon the mind of his hearer was that he really cared. And he did really care. That was the wonderful thing, and it was also the irresistible charm.

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This personal magnetism which won the hearts of every one with whom he came into contact and of millions who never saw him, was a national asset worth more to us in our King than the military genius of a Napoleon or the diplomatic gifts of a Metternich, because of its more abiding quality and more permanent results.

King Edward, like his mother before him, has exalted the standard of monarchical government, and shown to all the world the enormous value of the personal factor of the Head of the State under political institutions which leave the people free to make their own laws and to administer them.

The pomp and pageantry of kingship, sometimes decried, were in his hands always used for the State service, and never for personal display. The King lived more simply than many of his wealthy subjects. He liked comfort and even luxury, but he disliked waste. So marked was his repugnance that those about his person often noted it with surprise, but the reason was the sense of his

kingship and of the poverty of millions of his subjects surging up within him.

It was another illustration of his personal charm, instinctive and unthought out, but singularly potent.

No one ever possessed a keener sense of proportion. The examples of this almost supreme gift in one so highly placed are too numberless to mention, and besides in order to make the point most effective it would be necessary to describe actions and analyse motives quite beyond the scope of these pages.

The King's retentive and well-ordered memory, not only of names and faces, for that has often been the subject of remark, but of the obscure ramifications of world-wide events, and not least his mastery of anecdote, made him one of the best conversationalists in Europe. It is also one of the main causes of his influential judgment upon political affairs. In his presence much of the ordinary kind of knowledge, mere information, was apt to drop into unimportance. The things he knew seemed majestic and significant, and common learning appeared a mere accomplishment. Lord Beaconsfield had noticed much the same quality in the talk of Queen Victoria. No attempt has been made in these pages to give a dispassionate and detailed survey of the character of King Edward, and still less of his reign. Our loss is too recent, and our perspective too obscured. Like other mortals, our King had his failings, but what benefit has ever accrued to mankind by taking note of the failings of great men? And King Edward was beyond all question in the category of the great. Character, strong, firm and brave in quality, is the true test of greatness. These gifts were inherited by the King from both his parents, and his upbringing tended to enhance their virtue. To throw some light upon the value to Great Britain and her dominions over-sea of a monarchy thrice blessed in a Sovereign thus bred and trained, was the main intention of these pages. If the nation owes a debt of gratitude to Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort for having given us King Edward, in like manner, as years roll on, it will be seen that the King has given us in his son, to whom he was tenderly devoted and of whose virtue, modesty, and high abilities he was so justly proud, a successor not less worthy of admiration and respect.

Art. 2.-THE PROSE OF WALTER SCOTT.

1. The Waverley Novels.

2. Memories of Sir Walter Scott. By James Skene. Edited by Basil Thomson. London: Murray, 1909.

3. Sir Walter Scott's Friends. By Florence MacCunn. London: Blackwood, 1909.

WHEN Byron and Scott were approaching, one of them the end of his life, and the other of his prosperity, they exchanged in a monumental correspondence the princely compliments of literary diplomacy; and Byron, who, though he had then disclaimed the quarrel of 'English Bards' with Scotch Reviewers,' was engaged more deeply than ever in defending the Augustan manner of Pope against the fashions which he himself had helped Scott and others to introduce; Byron, than whom few men have been more independent of fashion and of flattery, affirmed that he found no one of whose superiority Sir Walter could reasonably be jealous, either among the living or, all things considered, among the dead. It is certain, from the principles and practice of Byron as a critic, that in this judgment he regarded form as well as substance, technical merit not less, perhaps even more, than abundance of imagination and invention; certain also, that it was upon the prose of the romances that he built his judgment, rather than upon the metrical merit, already questionable, of 'Marmion' and 'The Lady of the Lake. And after the lapse of a century, when there is no more any question of living and dead, and the measure of Scott is to be taken solely by the standard of what is common to good work universally, the opinion of Byron may still stand as defensible. It is true that Scott's works show the mark of his rapidity, and that in average pieces of narrative he is not fastidious in expression or always correct. It has been said, and may perhaps be said with as much truth as is demanded from an epigram, that in average pieces of his prose' he has no style at all.' But it is also true that in the great moments to which those rapid sketches are subsidiary, in the pinnacles for which the scaffolding is somewhat hazardously piled up, he displays not only a touch of hand peculiar to himself, but also perfect command of Vol. 213.-No. 424,

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