tune as a screw manufacturer of Birmingham. He entered politics by becoming first an alderman and then Mayor of that city.

The energetic republican Mayor so " rehabilitated" Birmingham that it seemed to many people he should be in the House of Commons. He went to Westminster as a Radical, and until 1886 worked in harmony with Mr. Gladstone. They split on the Irish question, Mr. Chamberlain leaving the Cabinet in loyalty to what he considered essential to the integrity of the empire and the supremacy of the crown." Then he became leader of an independent party -the Liberal Unionists-and at length, under the primacy of Lord Salisbury, took the Secretaryship of State for the Colonies" the pre-eminently Imperial portfolio."

With the conclusion of the Boer war and the resignation of Lord Salisbury as Premier, nothing has seemed plainer to many people than that the Prime Minister demanded alike by the present situation and the coming needs is the screw-maker and Mayor of Birming ham, applying to the world-wide problems of Empire the same general principles of adaptability, energy and enterprise which have proved so successful thus far. A strong opening paper in the Fortnightly Review for August begins as follows: "Had Lord Salisbury been succeeded by Mr. Chamberlain it would have been as truly as it is commonly said that his resignation of the Premier

ship had marked as definitely as any event in political annals the point of transition between two eras. . . With the transfer of the Premiership to Mr. Balfour it cannot be truly said" that England has passed from one era to another. "One era is indeed closed. The opening of another is deferred."

by the Czar and Czarina, and other royal personages at their respective palaces. Referring to a story which had found circulation that when presented to to the Czar she bent to kiss his hand, Miss Barton says (as reported): "If I must refer to that silly, sickening story of hand kissing, let me say that I have, in the last thirty years, visited and at times resided in most of the countries of Europe, and have had opportunity of becoming conversant with the customs of most of the prominent countries of the world. In none of these have I ever found the custom of a lady kissing a gentleman upon presentation, or any other way, and do not believe it exists in any civilized country in the world.

How the nonsensical report regarding myself upon introduction to the Czar or Emperor came into circulation or existence I have not the slightest knowledge." LORD HOPETOUN.

has

The Earl of Hopetoun who recently retired from the Governor-Generalship of the Commonwealth of Australia, reached Montreal on August 16 on his way to England. He became Governor-General in July, 1900 (Vol. X., p. 676), on approval by Queen Victoria. The exact circum

stances of the termination of his service in Australia have been a matter of considerable discussion. In the course of his letter bidding farewell to the people of Australia, Lord Hopetoun says: "My constant desire was to place my office on a pedestal, not for my own sake, but because I believed it the best way to make the office really useful to the Empire and acceptable to the Australians. I now know that I fell into an error not uncommon in new communities. I set to work to overbuild myself without being sure of the foundations, and if one day I found myself sitting on the

ground surrounded by the ruins of my own ideal I have only myself to blame. Possibly my successor may find amongst the debris fragments which will be of some use in building his own structure."

RABBI LEVINTHAL.

Perhaps the most prominent of the Orthodox Jews in the United States is

now Bernard L. Levinthal. After service for eleven years as Chief Rabbi in Philadelphia he has been appointed to succeed the late Chief Rabbi of New York, Jacob Joseph. Rabbi Levinthal came from Kovno, Russia. It was he who started the Kosher Beef Association to inspect the meat eaten by Orthodox Jews and see that the animals were killed according to the Mosaic law. He is Vice-President of the Federated Zionist Societies of the the United States. He was also recently elected Vice-President of the American Jewish Orthodox Society of Rabbis of the United States.

LORD DUNDONALD.

The Earl of Dundonald, the new Chief of the Canadian militia, was born in

1849 the twelfth in the Earldom. The tenth in the succession, Lord Cochrane, destroyed the fleet of Napoleon Bonaparte in the Basque Roads in 1809. The present Earl has been in the military service of England more than thirty years. He was a member of the Nile Expedition of 18841885 under General Lord Wolseley, which was sent to the Sudan for the

When the frontier is crossed from Russia to Finland conditions change abruptly. The opposite workings of the laws of simple political economy achieve their results side by side. The sordid poverty of the slaves of despotism is suddenly left behind, and at the first Finnish village the stranger finds that he has returned to the modern civilization of a free and enlightened community.

The prosperity of Finland is built on the results of a constant combat with iron-bound natural conditions in which productive victory has been achieved by moral not material cause. Intelligence, sobriety, energy and thrift are its key, notes, and the country has been erected by the penni that the people have earned and have not squandered. For six hundred years its destinies were cast with the progressive ideals of Sweden, as a semi-independent Grand Duchy, before the peace of Fredrikshamn transferred this autonomous control to Russia.

When Admiral Cronstedt surrendered the island fortress of Sveaborg, the Gibraltar of the Baltic and key to Finland, in 1809, the articles of peace were drawn up by Alexander I. and agreed to by Sweden and Finland, stipulating that the Finnish constitution should be sustained intact, Russia retaining military rights in the various strongholds and ice free ports necessary for her supremacy on the Baltic.

For nearly a century, under Russian suzerainty, the Finns have enjoyed a freedom equal to that of a British colony. Despotism has protected advanced constitutionalism. Exempt from crushing military burdens, with very light taxa tion of its population of 2,380,000 souls. the little state has made amazing prog ress. It has constructed 1,200 miles of railroad and created a vast network of internal communication by connecting the larger of its thousand lakes by numer ous canals or widened rivers. Large

sums have been expended for popular education and public buildings. Carefully adjusted tariffs and bounties have fostered manufactures, the annual exports exceeding $15,000,000. The imports, mainly food stuffs which the climate prescribes for home production, slightly exceed that sum, but a flourishing carrying trade is in the hands of the Finnish mercantile marine of 2,400 vessels. Immense landholders, notably the Russian barins in Viborg province, have been bought out, and the vast estates there let out in small holdings to the landless peasants. Opened up, drained, and cleared, the unearned increment has been devoted to internal improvements, and, harvest failures notwithstanding, the national debt has been reduced by over one third; and in recent years an annual surplus has been always carried forward to swell the ensuing year's

revenue.

Education is in a most advanced state. Finland and Russia present the two extremes of continental Europe in this respect. There are over one thousand public schools, the smaller inland communities all being embraecd by the system. The private schools and Stateaided Lyceums are numerous and excellent and there are first-class technical schools. In the universities women enjoy full privileges with men, the roll of nearly 2,000 undergraduates speaking eloquently of the desire for higher education that dominates all classes of the community. With the small population, these figures give the highest ratio attending college in the world.

The purity of Finnish politics is proverbial, and the civil service has been the country's proudest boast. The administration is, constitutionally, in the hands of the Diet, consisting of hereditary nobles, and the elective representatives of the clergy, burgesses, and peasants. Finland has two political parties the "Svekomans (the Swedish element who can claim seven centuries of residence) and the "Finnomens " (the national or Finnish party). For centuries the native or Suomi language had been dying out, and until the last decade Finnish

was only the tongue of the peasants. The Finns felt that the language which had produced the "Kalevala," fifth of the world's national epics, should not be entirely superseded by Swedish. For a time party strife waged bitterly, until in 1881 an act passed the Diet by which Finnish was made of equal official value to Swedish and was revived in the schools. For general policy, strenuous nationalism has since leveled party differences and politics have been most harmonious.

But reaction in Russia had long looked at the tranquil little nation for some opportunity to curtail its liberty. The tardy sequel to the language differences, long since settled, was the curt intimation. from St. Petersburg that the independent spirit, not unnaturally shewn by the nationalists in their triumph over the Svekomans, constituted a source of Imperial danger. Reactionists of the Pobednostseff School had found the cloak for their desire to attack the religious liberty of