doubt that the result of the legislation of recent years has been to place the Constitution on a democratic basis. It is to be hoped that the wider and firmer that we make the base, the safer will be the superstructure and the apex. But what we all have to look forward to is the reign of the crowd, and its good behaviour becomes a paramount matter in politics.

When we analyse and disintegrate the notion of a crowd, we perceive that the combination has a character which does not belong to the component atoms. In matters of fact a crowd is generally right; but in matters of opinion it is generally wrong. Where any matter of testimony is concerned, a crowd is valuable; the evidence of many witnesses has the strength both of the individual and of the aggregate. But in matter of feeling and opinion the crowd is oftener wrong than right. What makes the peculiar danger of a crowd is the diminished sense of personal responsibility.

A man

will combine to do with others what he would shudder to do in his own instance. The responsibility is spread over so large a mass that it seems infinitesimal in a particular instance. This is seen on a small scale in boards and committees, and on a large scale in large crowds. Not to lose sight of one's conscience is one of the first rules of good conduct in a crowd. Nothing succeeds like success, and it is pitiable to see the great desire of many people to belong to the majority. Victrix causa Diis placuit sed victa Catoni. I would rather take the opinion any day of a thoroughly enlightened and wellinformed man than I would of a crowd. One day I spoke to an aged clergyman in a tone of warm appreciation of the masses. masses!' he exclaimed.

'The 'Them

asses!' In Ten Thousand a Year the late Mr. Warren makes Mr. Gammon, of the firm of Quick, Gammon, and Snap, judiciously hire 'ten pounds' worth of mob.' Among the lower instincts of the human kind there is one which I will venture to call the 'mob feeling.' A popular cry is raised. The mob is hounded on to seize a victim. The blind mob instinct within us urges us to reecho the cry and join in the pursuit. Generally speaking, as we have argued, the popular instinct is just in the cry it raises; but the popular judgment and the popular conscience are wrong in the matter of the application of the sentiment to the circumstances. The brave Byng was shot to satisfy the cry of an English mob. Well may our great poet long for the day when

crowds be sane, and crowns be just.' When once a mob cry is raised in a land-like the cry of 'No Popery' in Titus Oates' time -reason, justice, and conscience go down before it. At any time when a popular cry is raised, a reasonable man will suspect the mob instinct within him, and try to rise to a higher level. History respects the herces who behave well in a crowd, and refuse to sanction its excesses.

There is even a physical side to be regarded in this matter of behaviour in a crowd. For among the evils of a crowd we may reckon endemic and epidemic diseases. When an illness breaks out in a crowd, such as in a pilgrimage to Mecca or a pilgrimage to Juggernaut, the people die off like sheep. The Crusading hosts were decimated by disease, and in nearly every army pestilence is more dreaded than fire and sword. It is said that the Asiatic cholera morbus was actually generated by the vast numbers of the wild devotees who met before the trium

phant procession of Juggernaut. In every crowd it is the persistent effort of sanitary science to prevent the evil effects of overcrowding. There are some sanitary philosophers who think that everything would go well if they could only prevent the mischievous effects, both moral and physical, of overcrowding. I have sometimes discoursed with people, fresh from a crowd, who have told me that they have just recovered from scarlatina or diphtheria. I was almost sorry they had recovered, for each would hardly fail to constitute a very nucleus of contagion. There is something in that striking phrase, the enthusiasm of humanity,' that suggests the good behaviour of each respecting the interests of each.

And for my own part, despite of all disagreeables, I have a very kindly feeling towards the crowd. I recognise them as my brethren and my sisters:

'Men, my brothers, men the workers, ever reaping something new.'

I believe that there is such a thing as the lore of the human countenance. You never see two faces alike, but you may recognise genera and species of faces as of everything else. I often think that it is only an accident, a mere accident of an accident, that may have prevented my being situated in the most intimate relations with people who are perfect strangers to me. That dear old man might have been my father in the flesh; that pretty nice-looking woman sister, sweetheart, or bride. Again and again I meet with people with whom I feel perfectly sure that I could have been sworn friends. It is just that wonderful power of circumstance that settles and unsettles human relationships. There are some faces in which one sees no attractiveness, and a few towards which one has a positive repulsion.

But for the most part our feeling towards our kind should be eminently kindly. Even if I meet with those who are weary, guilty, and debased, my idea is that if they had had my own advantages they might have used them better than I have done. Surely there will come a time when our instinctive craving for poetical justice will be satisfied, the inequalities of human condition rectified, the crooked made straight, and the rough places plain. Mentally I shake hands in the crowd all round. I say, 'Bless you, my children!' on every side. If it is my duty to entertain a brotherly feeling towards each person individually, it is almost my duty to do so towards the collective crowd.

But here a word of social advice may be interposed. As the worthy Zimmerman expounded, you may have the full feeling of solitude in a crowd. Just as a man may be never less alone than when alone, so you may be never less in company than when in a crowd. When Shakespeare spoke of troops of friends' I almost think he used a contradiction in terms. Friendship is a hardy plant of long slow growth, that flourishes singly and does not grow in thick plantations. The 'hare of many friends' is always an unfortunate kind of animal. Such are the inevitable limitations and narrowness of human life that, in reality, very few people can have more than half a dozen real friends. I remember a time when I had five hundred acquaintance at the University, and hardly five friends among them. Be friendly towards the crowd, but don't have a crowd of friends. Choose a few, choose them on good grounds, and stick firmly to them. Regard any man as a possible friend, but at the same time do not dissipate the limited stock of one's energy of friendship by

distributing it over too large an area. I do not agree with that cynical remark of Sophocles, which strongly illustrates what some people call his Irony, that you should look upon your friend as likely to be your enemy, and your enemy as one who will probably be your friend. Always feel friendly towards a crowd as being essentially your friends.

So each man has his life in the unit and his life in the aggregate. We cannot get out of the crowd, even if we try to, ever so hard; and so we have, as members of social organisation, an entity or entities additional to our own. Just as a house is made up of ever so many different bricks, and is yet an entity distinct from the bricks, or, to use a gentler simile, as stamen, pistils, corolla make up the flower, and are yet distinctive from the flower, so the human being is both solitary and gregarious, and makes up the crowd which is himself and is not himself. If one might venture on a little moralising on the subject, it would be to the effect that a man's behaviour in a crowd should be regulated by his behaviour in his own separate

identity. We must act in crowds, inasmuch as all great movements are effected by combination, but we must do our thinking alone. The more gregarious the life, the distincter ought to be the individuality. We cannot elude our responsibility by trying to hide ourselves in a crowd. We must define, correct, and adapt our procedure in the crowd by the meditation and resolve of our solitary hours. 'Like ships about to proceed on a long voyage, we need to withdraw for a time from the attractions of a crowded harbour, and correct our compasses before setting sail.' A crowd is very easily influenced for good. As Carlyle points out, where the bellwether sheep jumps, all the other sheep jump in their turn. Fortunately good behaviour is as infectious as bad. If we ourselves behave well in a crowd, it is possible that the crowd also will behave itself to admiration. Each man is necessarily social; he has his life in the crowd as well as by himself. Let there be good behaviour at home, especially in the home of a man's own heart, and there will be good behaviour in a crowd.

CHAPTER X.

THE dramatic situation at the close of the last chapter was decidedly strong. As the lover went out at the window, the enraged parent came in at the door.

Not another word, Georgina !' said the irate Mr. Buddlecombe, continuing the running fight, which had been going on between himself and his wife, down the stairs and all along the passages on their way back to the library, 'not another word! I mean to assert my authority.'

'And I mean to submit to it, Joshua, only up to that point where it continues to be lawful and just,' returned Mrs. Buddlecombe decisively. I've told your father everything, Florry dear,' she added, as Florence nestled up to her side.

'Florence,' said Mr. Buddlecombe, in the tones of a judge about to pronounce sentence on a hardened malefactor.

'Yes, papa,' faltered Florence, as she left her mother's side, and meekly stood with downcast eyes in front of her father.

'You had better go to your room at once and superintend the preparations for your departure. I have directed your maid to commence immediately packing up all that you will require for a prolonged stay from home.'

'O papa said Florence, with

The author reserves to himself the right of dramatising this story, or any portion of it.

VOL. XXXVIII. NO. CCXXIII.

a start and turning pale, as she heard her sentence of banishment pronounced.

'Yes, you go to your aunt Virginia's in the North to-morrow morning at an early hour, escorted by me.'

And I say she shall not go,' said Mrs. Buddlecombe, advancing with a resolute air and placing her arm round Florence as if to shield her. 'She is as much my child as yours, Joshua. She shall not go.'

With lowering brow, Mr. Buddlecombe was about to assert his supremacy, when old Bolitho, who up to this moment had been surreptitiously fastening the window and drawing the curtains after Algernon's exit-covering his retreat, so to speak-came forward and threw himself into the van of the contest.

'And I, Buddlecombe, on the grounds of our having been boys together-'

O, gracious burst forth Mr. Buddlecombe, clapping both hands to his ears and spinning round on his heels, that is at least the second time within my recollection that you have made that remark!'

'Well,' said old Bolitho warmly, 'I'll take up another position, that of Florry's godfather, and in that capacity I object. And if that's not sufficient, I'm a Fellow of the Royal Humane Society, and in the name of that useful and noble body I protest against the cruelty of sending this delicate little flower to droop and fade

G