ground. Being visible to all eyes, and famous in all coteries, he must become, even against his own possible desire, a champion rather than a mediator. A personality so intense and so predominating invests his summaries of European politics with the air of a personal narrative.

The ideal Paris correspondent of The Times is, no doubt, an Englishman, who should be also, as Laurence Oliphant was, a cosmopolitan. But where are these qualifications, united with the capacity of news collecting, to be found? Awaiting, therefore, a journalistic phenomenon, who is practically an impossibility, Monsieur de Blowitz will scarcely be eclipsed by any rival. Nor, so long as the sagacious, well-informed, cool-headed and cautious Sir McKenzie Wallace is charged with the supervision of the external relations of Printing House Square, is The Times, whether as to its leading articles, or its despatches from the other side of the Channel, likely to operate otherwise than as a peaceful agency. With the necessary modifications, the same thing might be said of nearly all the great European newspapers, English or Continental. In war time, when street newsboys press upon the passenger telegraphic accounts of the latest carnage in the field, journalistic circulation mounts up to mythical figures. But the conditions on which newspapers, especially those of a higher price, depend ultimately for material success disappear. Brisk trade means profitable advertisements, and to-day it is literally a fact that, in their capacity of news distributors, journals cannot gain much—may even lose a little; while, so far as they are advertising sheets, they convert their proprietors into millionaires. In the long run, therefore, the greatest of all newspaper interests is, like that of England and Europe, peace. It is a historical fact that the proverbial unpopularity of Englishmen abroad has never of recent years been less than about the season at which, some decades ago, the Comédie Française Company was paying one of its visits to London. In its wake there came, also, several distinguished men of letters and journalists from France. The late Lord Granville was then living, active, and, of course, charming. His command of the French language was equalled only by the purity of his idiom and the grace of

his manner. At public dinners, and in private hospitalities, this genial and urbane host made all visitors welcome, and united in his own as in his country's praise even those sections of the French press whose habitual pose is aggressively or satirically anti-British. Such an example may, and does, indirectly react on the current of journalistic comment. Never was there an epoch of closer approximation to, and more intelligent sympathy with, Continental ideas and modes of thought on the part of Englishmen than the present.

Voltaire's delight expressed in his "Philosophical Letters," with his observations of England a century ago, has been paralleled to-day by the souvenirs de voyage with which a Daudet or a Zola has signalised his return to his favourite boulevards from the northern climes of fog and rain. Foreign travel and subjective criticism have taught Englishmen the absurdity of their traditional self-complacency. The "comic anomalies and the farcical incidents," which by their presence in French courts of justice were once held to argue the superiority of English tribunals, are admitted now not possibly to be without parallel in our own legal machinery. For instance, the studiously reserved and moderate way in which English journalists of the better sort commented on the recent trial of the Marquis de Nayve is a marked and edifying contrast to the tone adopted by English writers when discussing the arraignment of Marshal Bazaine some twenty years ago. So far as the press of any country represents its public opinion primarily, and is occupied with the divisions among its politicians in a secondary sense, it must in the long run operate pacifically. In England, as has been seen, the press, which is above all things a national institution, distributes its sympathies among different political camps because, England being the home of party Government, the journalism which ignored party divisions could lay no claim to the attribute of nationality. As we have seen, it was in the days of Locke that English thought first began appreciably to colour the intellectual ideas of "the grand nation." So, in these later times, English newspapers have, after the fashion already indicated, left their moral impress upon the foreign newspaper system, even though insular publicists have not yet equalled the literary felicity and skill of their foreign

exemplars. In other words, the intellectual public of Europe, notwithstanding the geographical divisions of mountain ranges and seas, acquires more of unity and solidarity as the end of the century approaches. The press consequently tends more and more to become, if an arithmetical simile may be adopted, a common denominator in European thought. As such, notwithstanding periodical tendencies to patriotic chauvinism, a newspaper public co-extensive with the civilised world must, if wisely controlled, generally be favourable to the prevention of national misunderstanding, and therefore to the promotion of international amity. The peril to international peace is greater to-day perhaps from the pencil than from the pen. The runaway humour of comic draughtsmen, like Mr. Carruthers Gould, or his brethren, might conceivably sting sensitive foreigners into a desire for reprisals which the most chauvinistic of journalists would fail to excite.

T. H. S. ESCOTT.

SPAIN AT

AT THE NEW GALLERY.

THE Frenchman who declared that Africa began at the Pyrenees disguised a truth in the cloak of insult. Once across the mountain range, though you are not in Africa, you are manifestly in a foreign land. It is no longer the Europe of your familiar fancy; you have travelled an immeasurable distance from Paris or Berlin. At every turn there is an impression of strange men and stranger manners. The very landscape is distinguished by a bleak savagery, which speaks of another continent, while the little walled towns on the hillside are neither of this century nor of this world. Even the life that is lived in their solemn seclusion must be sterner, more primitive than our own. But we are not in Africa; rather we look upon a country of noble prejudice and ancient civilisation. Everywhere there is a sense of irrefragable tradition. The common traveller who vaunts his own cloak against his companion's, or sucks the stopper of a wine-skin, is at once more courtly and more simple than the casual Londoner. As the leisurely train carries you to Madrid, the impression of curiosity is so far deepened that a violent tragedy would afflict you only with a transient horror. The incidents of life and death seem to assume a different value in this rare atmosphere. A wayfarer's head, severed by a passing train, would produce a terrific shock and a special edition in England, the end of whose civilisation is to save the shedding of one drop of blood. In Spain the accident appears proper to its background, and goes unrecorded. Not even may the falsely Parisian aspect of Madrid claim the merit of sincerity. Its power of deception endures but a moment, nor can any man squander an hour at a Spanish café and believe himself in France.

As you penetrate further into the country, the character of its cities becomes, so to say, more personal. If Granada

is the paradise of the Moors, Cordova is a picturesque epitome of Spanish history. Before all things, it has the gift of intimacy. It resembles an old man prattling of the past over the fire, an old man who has known many generations, who has witnessed the rise and fall of alien dynasties. For Cordova will reveal to you half a dozen civilisations at the same level. In one aspect it is still a Latin town, and conveys to the seeing eye a deeper impression of the Roman Empire than the most pompously professional ruin. After you have stood upon the bridge, and wandered by the ancient gateway, you are in no wise astonished to cross the square which is called after Seneca, nor to take the street which keeps green the name of Lucan. Along the white wall of the great Mosque the bundles of rags still huddle, now and then betraying themselves as beggars, too idle even for their own easy trade. And within the Mosque, that no contrast be lacking, is the barbarous church of the Christians, with its heavy carven stalls and its solemn, stifling curtains. One rapid impression succeeds another, and each is an impression of extravagance. The achievement of the Moors is unique, and when Spain seized upon the Gothic style she sealed it with her own character. Not even the Renaissance restrained with its golden fetter this secluded land, which tortured the elegance of pillar and pediment into new and wayward shapes. Now, though the barbarity of twisted columns, high relief, royal purple, and multicoloured furniture is not always discreet, it is Spanish, and within its own borders magnificent. But the glories of Spain displayed in England would be as far out of place as the Assyrian bulls of the British Museum, and it is fortunate that this, the most foreign country of Europe, is still self-contained.

In truth, to see Spain you must cross the Pyrenees. There is no short cut to an experience of Spanish art, and hence it is that the New Gallery, where once you might catch a sufficient glimpse of Italy, a land always dear to the amateur, shows you little else of Spain than the masterpieces of two or three painters. The colour, extravagance, and variety of the land elude you completely. There is but a faint suggestion of Moorish grandeur, and no suggestion at all of the opulently false taste which dignifies so many churches of the Peninsula.