country which prevails in that country. Men like Döllinger, Pauli, Ranke have no successors. The better class of German now gets his notions of England from writers like Treitschke or Bernhardi, and if he has visited London, from the superfluous persons he may come across in society. The ordinary German derives his ideas of England from his newspaper. In Germany a journal hardly exists which represents independent thought. The Social Democratic organ Vorwärts is an exception. This journal is honestly conducted in the interests of the party it represents. The Kölnische Volkszeitung, a Catholic newspaper with a large circulation on the Rhine and in Central Germany, is also independent, and so are one or two other newspapers less widely read. They have almost no influence on the mind of the nation. The Foreign Office at Berlin and the great Jewish financiers by means of the Press manipulate public opinion in their own interests. Speaking generally, also, no German gentleman would write in a German daily paper. During the Crimean War there was a newspaper at Berlin called the Preussisches Wochenblatt, to which gentlemen contributed, but that state of things has entirely passed away, and the notion of an independent newspaper is so inconceivable to Germans that it is almost impossible to convince even a well-informed man that almost all important journals in London are not practically controlled from Downing Street, or that leading articles in our great papers are not written in financial interests. This want of knowledge of England was the reason why the German nation did not perceive the strong resistless tide, "too full for sound and foam," which was bearing England away from the inane and selfish policy of splendid isolation. The Japanese Alliance did not appear to them to indicate a real change in the

policy of England. Many foreigners in London imagined that it was merely concluded to enable England to maintain a smaller number of battleships in Eastern seas. They were the same class of people who at the outbreak of the war were confident that Russia would have an easy victory over Japan. They were convinced that Japan would be soon overwhelmed by financial difficulties and that England would ultimately abandon her ally. These people largely influenced the Stock Exchanges at Paris, Vienna, Frankfort and Berlin, and they scouted the idea that an understanding could be arrived at between France and England. The Ber- . lin Government took the same view, and hence, when the agreement about Morocco was published, the astonishment was great and the annoyance still greater. It became no longer possible entirely to conceal from the German people the position in which the conduct of affairs by the Government of Berlin had placed their country. Intelligent persons perceived that the international position was unsatisfactory, and notwithstanding elaborate misrepresentations and histrionic devices this conviction spread. It was plainly necessary to consider the situation. The first step, manifestly, to be taken was to endeavor to produce an unpleasant feeling between England and France. The word went out to the various newspapers influenced by the Berlin Foreign Office to attack France with varied and calculated degrees of violence. Then the journey of the Kaiser to Tangier was announced. In their usual ignorance of the spirit of the English people the Berlin Government hoped that England would manifest unwilliness to stand by France. The general conduct of some English politicians during the Boer War and a few speeches of unhappy memory made by them gave rise to the hope that some such indiscreet utter

ances and perhaps even some timid replies by Ministers might produce an impression on France which would result in an outbreak of French indignation against England. The Germans could not understand that conduct on the part of any political English party which would seem to favor Germany or tend to an abandonment of France in present circumstances would have the sure and certain consequence of excluding that party for an indefinite period from any chance of being charged with the responsibility for affairs of State. The visit of the Kaiser to Tangier, the general report of the language he held there, and the attitude of his diplomatists in various parts of the world, instead of weakening has greatly strengthened the cordial relations between England and France. When this became clear another move was made for the purpose of injuring the Anglo-French understanding. Some of the German newspapers directed by the Press Bureau of the Foreign Office used at first most violent language against France, and talked of the advance into that country of an army from Metz. More recently the same class of newspaper, particularly the Swiss papers inspired from Berlin, urged France to throw over England and come to terms with Germany. In connection with this a systematic attack has been made upon M. Delcassé, by far the most successful Foreign Minister who has conducted French affairs since the Duke de Broglie and the Duke Decazes. M. Delcassé has secured to a remarkable extent the confidence of foreign Powers in the French Republic. This is recognized everywhere except in Germany. Germans endeavor to persuade Frenchmen that it was great folly on his part to have concluded the recent arrangement with England. This view will hardly find more acceptance than the very opposite one which has been

insinuated to us, that it would have been in the true interest of England to have made an arrangement with Germany regarding Africa and left France alone. Such an arrangement would no doubt have permitted the "Admiral of the Atlantic" to seize Mogador. It is hardly likely that this attack on M. Delcassé will succeed, but should it do so it would be one of the greatest misfortunes for French diplomacy that has happened since the fall of M. Drouyn de Lhuys in 1866. It seems also as if the efforts to excite friction between France and Spain had been equally unsuccessful. The days when MM. Bernhardi, Lothar Bucher, and Major v. Versen, directed by the master mind of Bismarck, could influence politicians in Madrid are over. It would also appear that in Italy there is no desire to listen to the counsels from Berlin or to drift into antagonism towards the Western Powers. In the United States Germany has not been more fortunate. The Government of Washington has not responded to the German proposals as regards Morocco. The attempt made to prevent the renewal and extension of the alliance between England and Japan is also not likely to be successful. It is hardly to be expected that the Japanese will forsake England for Germany, a Power which has done its utmost to raise the spectre of the yellow peril and which, up to the time of the Japanese victories, was notoriously and persistently hostile. It is amusing to compare these crude proceedings with the methods of Bismarck. The note of German diplomacy is now want of finish. It is as clumsy in its way as White's imitation of Sheridan.

The attitude of the Western Powers is clear. It is in their plain interests to stand firmly together. If they do so it is almost impossible to imagine that the Kaiser will take the responsibility of forcing on a European war. Most

persons will agree that such conduct might precipitate the formation of a new Germany on the lines indicated by King George V., and in which the House of Hohenzollern would find no place. At the same time ordinary prudence demands that the Western Powers should consider the possibility of a raid upon France. We all know that such an attack has been contemplated twice since the formation of the German Empire. Queen Victoria interfered in both instances, but on one occasion it is fairly sure that France would have been attacked had it not been for the peremptory prohibition of Russia. That Power is crippled by the war into which she has entered, incited by German advice against the friendly counsels of Great Britain. It is believed generally in Germany that England will not take up arms to assist France against aggression, and that France would not be able to resist a swift and steady blow. Moreover, it is held that France, at the last moment, unable to count on England, would agree to any terms rather than face the arbitrament of war. It should The Fortnightly Review.

also be remembered that the desire to imitate Bismarck in conjuring away internal difficulties by foreign quarrels may drive the German Government into a course which, in spite of themselves, might make war suddenly inevitable. The war of 1866, for instance, was hurried on for the purpose of overcoming internal troubles. Its success resulted in establishing firmly the Government of King William I., which before its outbreak was considered tottering, and compared to that of Charles X. on the eve of the July Revolution. The surest way to prevent international trouble is the steady adherence of France and England to the arrangement which has been conIcluded between them and the maintenance on both sides of a strict neutrality, subject to treaty engagements, during the course of the present war in the Far East. On those conditions it should be thoroughly well understood that any gratuitous attack on France will not be tolerated by England, and that in the event of war France will not stand alone.

Rowland Blennerhassett.

It is possible to be unmusical and yet to love music; indeed, it is more than possible, it is very common. Το be musical in any proper sense of the word a man (or woman) must have a true ear, a fair musical memory, and some critical faculty. That is, he must be able to exercise sufficient discrimination to enable him to conceive judgments and convictions concerning composers and executants so far as his musical experience, be it wide or narrow, will carry him. His judgments may be of no value to the world and his convictions erroneous, but if to

himself they are clear and instructive, then to a greater or less degree he is a conscious musician. But Music has charms wherewith to enchant the listener who has none of these gifts, whose ear is defective, who has little memory, and who is nothing of a critic. The unmusical lover of Music loves her always and everywhere, delighting in her for better, for worse. This is his only advantage over the true musician, who knows something which he can never know, has heard a secret which he may never guess, but who must pay for his fine perception by a not occa

sional pain. The voice of his mistress at her worst distresses him to the verge of desperation; while to the other if she speak at all she speaks to enchant. There is no sin about this susceptibility, yet few educated people will confess to it. They think it marks an artistic want. Take the question of street-music. We do not mean barrelorgans. To enjoy a barrel-organ one must be very young, or have heard very few other instruments. Only the nerves of children or of those who do not work with their brains can stand the rapid, and apparently unending, series of repetitive thuds amongst which wandering reminiscences of comic operas are rendered well-nigh undecipherable. But crowds of those who profess delight in hearing a band at a garden party or in the gardens of a foreign Kurhaus express distaste to the sound of a German band in the street, even when the latter is playing quite in tune. The present writer has sometimes been tempted to imagine that a great many of these professing critics enjoy both very much, and a great many more do not enjoy either in the least, for there exists, no doubt, a large class with whom this article has nothing to do, for whom all music is a matter of pure indifference. Speaking, however, for the ungifted majority who yet are not wanting in a sense, how many of us have trudged along a dusty pavement, turned suddenly into a street where a band was playing some familiar music, and suddenly forgotten that we were tired, that it was hard work to keep a hat on against the wind, that we had several things to carry and more to remember and worry about, and walked lightly to the tune till it was once more drowned in the traffic, and then gone on with it in our heads to the cheering of another few minutes? Or who has not opened the window early on a spring morning in London and looked out into the

somewhat opaque sunshine, smelt the wall-flowers in the window-boxes, and listened with a real, even if a sentimental, pleasure to the strains of a distant band? Ich weiss nicht was soll es bedeuten Dass ich so traurig bin, say the notes of the German folk-song, and Melody with her favorite spell of association brings before our minds the face of a former singer, a former listener, a former self.

Church music forms perhaps the greater part of the scant store treasured in the shallow receptacle of an unmusical man's memory. As a rule it was the only music of his childhood. A child who is slow at picking up tunes is regarded by his parents and guardians as having no taste for music, and what he hears in church is all that he hears sufficiently often completely to recollect. For such a one religious music will probably always remain the greatest of all. It is interwoven with his first appreciation of fine words, with his first grasp of the things of the spirit. It is bound to his heart by what Mr. Kipling calls "the threefold cord of memory, use, and love." It is not easy to go through the whole "Te Deum" in one's mind without humming some accustomed chant, and it is not too much to say that the airs of the "Elijah" and the "Messiah" are literally part of many men's religion.

Martial music, and in the same category dance music, also delight the unmusical, to whom the satisfaction of absolute rhythm and time gives something of the sense of absolute rightness that is conveyed by verse of perfect sound and scansion. A marked cadence appeals to an untrained ear. So we suppose music began. Does not legend relate how Jubal, "the father of all such as handle the harp and organ," received his first inspiration from the resonant hammer of Tubal Cain? But, it may be said, all this is a matter of melody. A love of melody is almost

as natural, though not so universal, as a love of flowers. What of the music in which melody plays a lesser part? Can this delight the unmusical? The crowds who fill the Queen's Hall on .Sunday afternoons are a sufficient answer to that question. Such numbers of musically gifted persons could not be brought together week after week, at any rate not in this country; yet the audience is not largely composed of those who go for the sake of fashion, nor entirely of those to whom a small .sum of money is a matter of indifference. The mass of the audience are unmusical, but it is easy to see that they are not unmoved by the music. The wiser spirits among them-those, that is, who have discovered and humbly acquiesced in their own limitations -do not study descriptive programmes, or make any determined attempt to understand-there is no such thing for the unmusical as understandingneither do they distress their minds with questionings as to the musical rank of the composition to which they are listening, or the perfection of its execution. Such considerations they leave for their artistic betters. They simply sit down and wait, following meanwhile their own thoughts, for that delightful moment, which must come sooner or later, when the music will seem suddenly to call them. Music (apart from the associations of song) does not speak, at least to such as these, in definite words. She calls them from desultory cares, desultory dreams, desultory imaginings, pleasant or painful, to a delightful and wholly effortless attention. When once the call has been heard the soul of the listener is carried along upon the wings of sound The Spectator.

a prey to emotions of a nature which music alone can produce. They are in some sense primeval, such perhaps as a poet might have imagined in the days of man's innocence. Sadness enthralls them untainted by regret or remorse. A formless pleasure floods the imagination, unshadowed by the fear of its swift passage, unspoiled by any after sense of expenditure. Musical visualization-the calling up of mental pictures-is, we believe, rare among unmusical people, for whom as a rule music, divorced from association, suggests no similitude, nor any message which can be carried away. For them the baleful effects of the more sensuous kinds of music about which the musical speak sometimes with regret are incomprehensible. For the unmusical music may excite religious emotion, and thus far become tinged with morality; but apart from religious association it cannot be said to enter the realm of morals at all. In its more illustrative forms even the unmusical man may feel the joy of the tireless chase, the delight of a guiltless lawlessness, the satisfaction of an inevitable solution; but what he has pursued, from what shackles he has broken loose, and to what question he has found an answer he does not know. When the music stops and he goes out into the street, he takes away with him absolutely nothing. He only knows that he has experienced a time of recreation, a strange rest from life, with its recurrent efforts and its constant restraints. Unlike all other forms of rest, its recuperative power has not lain in the soothing and dulling of the perceptions, but in their passing quickening and enhancement.