never had the smallest perception of England or of England's needs, can think, like the foreigner that he is, of no better trick than a fresh campaign of plunder. Mr Churchill, with the despair that comes at the eleventh hour, has thrown down an undigested scheme of twelve (or is it twenty?) parliaments. The Heptarchy was a very poor very poor experiment in disruption. We are to be not seven but twelve or twenty federal states, and if we fight one against the other it does not matter. There is at least an off-chance that somebody or other may be conciliated. To that, at last, has "statesmanship" degenerated. It has become a thing of words, not of thoughts. The best suggestion that our demagogues can make is lifeless by the time that it has reached the reporters' ears. Meanwhile Mr Churchill has incurred, for the second time in a couple of months, the fury and contempt of his own friends, and it will not be long before Mr Redmond, enriched by a new campaign of beggary, will insist that the ideal of "Ireland a nation" cannot be realised by the sudden manufacture of twelve new parliaments. Thus it is that the victory of Mid-Lothian could not have been more opportunely achieved. The Cabinet, divided against itself, is without a policy of its own, and, bankrupt in confidence, it finds itself unable to honour the drafts presented for payment by the Irish, the Welsh, and the men of labour. The victory of law and order, then, is at last as sured, and Great Britain owes Mid-Lothian a debt of gratitude for striking a bold and a decisive blow. The death of Dr H. A. Morgan, Master of Jesus College, snaps a link in the chain which binds the Cambridge of our day to the past. It is more than sixty years since, as since, as a freshman, he entered the College which he made his lifelong home. In 1849, the year of his entrance, Jesus College was not the house famous in arms and arts, on the river and in the Senate House-that it is to-day. It was small in numbers and honours alike. Five years before Dr Morgan assumed the tutorship, there was an increase only of six freshmen. Indeed the College, as we have known it in our times, was Dr Morgan's own creation. He filled it with undergraduates, and then endowed it with a soul- a soul of energy and patriotism. He gave to one and all a just cause of pride in their College, and warmed their courage at the fire of his own enthusiasm. In all sports-in rowing and climbing especially he took the keen and intimate interest of one who had practised them. He used to boast, and with justice, that he had rowed more eight-oared races than any man living; and his passion for the river is within the memory of all his friends. For half a century he encouraged the College boat by his voice and presence; he watched its rise and fall upon the river a general watching his army with the stern enthusiasm of Deep though his affection was for his College and University, he did not limit his outlook by the Cam. None knew better than he that there was a wider field outside for human energy and human brains. It was not for him to judge a man by his place in the Tripos. He was never of those who believe that a boy's intellect is incapable of growth after he has taken his bachelor's degree. And it is precisely because he possessed the tact of understanding character and stimulating ambition, that the old pupils who visited him never felt themselves strangers. They easily forgot the tutor in the friend. But an interest in sport was but one of Dr Morgan's manifold activities. There was nothing that enhanced the glory of Jesus College to which he was indifferent. The success of an old pupil in any career was always welcome to him. Few, indeed, were those who came under his spell who did not find in him a loyal, unchanging friend. Before all things, he possessed the gift of friendship. He was not a taskmaster set over the undergraduates; he was a light hearted companion, an amiable contemporary for he never grew old-of many passing generations. And he was able thus to keep the sympathy and appreciation of the young, because he was always, in the best and highest sense, a man of the world. It is the paradox of his career that, though he spent his whole life in Cambridge, he was never in the smaller sense a don. Being a man of the world, he was never censorious of others. He did not condemn the manifold eccentricities which were rife in the Cambridge of his earlier days. Many an oldfashioned don, whose extravagances brought upon him the contempt of pedants, received nothing but kindness from the Master of Jesus. Not merely was he gifted with a broad mind, but he had a quick sense of whatever was odd in talent or character. He eagerly welcomed whatever lay beyond the common experience, and thus his mind was stored with many curious chapters in the history of manners. To hear him discourse, with all his vivid sense of the picturesque, was like watching a panorama of the past. As he spoke, the Cambridge of fifty years ago, its strange narrownesses and prodigalities, flashed before you. He had a rare faculty of drama in speech. As a teller of stories he had few equals in his time. Instinctively he represented the accent and gesture of those whose deeds and words he recalled, and thus made you participate in his knowledge. Had he written down all that he saw and thought and said, he might have produced a social history of the University, beside which Gunning's reminiscences would appear a blurred and faded image. But his talent was a talent of converse. He needed for his best effects the quickening eye, the ear of sympathy, and his rare art of storytelling will live only in the memories of the fortunate. And not only was he an admirable teller of stories: he was besides a man of genuine wit, and very apt for repartee. Yet his wit, if sharp-edged, was all untouched by malice, and he loved repartee, not as a soldier loves his blade, but as an artist loves his tools. He sought to amuse, not to wound, and never did he make a jest that might hurt a friend. Though he was a man of strong views, though in matters of policy in which he thought his country's safety and honour were engaged he would admit no compromise, his natural kindliness and sense of humour gave a benignity to his harshest judgments, and rendered him wholly incapable of violence in thought or speech. In national politics a consistent Tory, he considered the affairs of the University with an open mind and without prejudice. He was as far from those who will admit no change in custom or constitution as from those who hold nothing sacred. He represented the central opinion of the University, and few men in Cambridge might boast his influence or match his authority. He was, as it were, a steadying force, and it is characteristic that he was elected to the Council of the Senate by both parties. His attitude towards University reform was very different from that of his predecessor in the Mastership of Jesus College. When Dr Corrie was asked by the University Commissioners what he believed to be the chief wants of the University, "in the first place," he replied, "I trust the Commissioners will excuse me for stating it to be my opinion that the present chief want of the University is exemption from the disturbing power of Royal or Parliamentary Commissions." Dr Morgan, though he liked not the principle of interference, though he was never a reformer in the modern confiscatory sense, believed that the University was not incapable of improvement. As early as 1871 he advocated with a persuasive eloquence the abolition of celibate fellowships, proposing at the same time that the tenure of fellowships should be limited to seven years, save for those who had devoted themselves to the service of the College. His plan was adopted, even in its details; and it says not a little for his sense of prac tical affairs that the Cambridge which we know to-day, with its married tutors and its swiftly lapsing prize-fellowships, was devised in accordance with his shrewd, farseeing suggestions. Great as were the services which Dr Morgan did to his College and University, conspicuous as were his achieve ments in the field of sport, it is not for these that he will be most warmly remembered. It is no small thing to see, as he saw, a college emerge from neglect into the triumph of success; it is no small thing to be the first, as, with his lifelong friend, Leslie Stephen, he the first, to climb the Jungfrau Joch. Yet as we look back upon his long and happy career, a career which began in the pleasant shadows of the dark ages in Cambridge, we think of what he was far more eagerly than what he did. He was courtly in manner as he was kind in thought. The gifts of sympathy and understanding were his in an eminent degree. He may be said, indeed, to have engrossed them. A loyal champion of the honour and privileges of his college, he tempered his patriotism with a profound knowledge of the larger world. If he succumbed willingly to the genius of the place, if he could not have lived happily beyond its precincts, he enormously increased its worth and dignity by the constant exercise of a wise devotion. The future will encourage, no doubt, many and various excellences. It will not show us another head of a house like Dr Morgan, a staunch Tory, a sound sportsman, sharp in wit as a Damascus blade, perfect in friendship, and a great gentleman. Printed by William Blackwood and Sons. BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE. No. MCLXV. NOVEMBER 1912. VOL. CXCII. WHAT IS SOCIAL REFORM? "The people never give up their liberties but under A COMMENTARY upon the social condition of Great Britain to-day from the pen of, say, Lord Palmerston or of Mr John Bright, or one might even add of Mr Gladstone, would prove fascinating reading. The leaders of the great political parties in the Victorian era may sometimes have lacked foresight in political matters, -the Manchester School, for instance, singularly failed to appreciate the supreme value to Great Britain of her colonial possessions, but they were rarely found wanting either in conviction or in character. The men whose guidance Great Britain reached the zenith of her political and industrial supremacy were, above all things, jealous to preserve the spirit of sturdy independence which had always been the peculiar characteristic of Englishmen. Is it not probable that the first criticism of VOL. CXCII.-NO. MCLXV. such men as these upon modern England would be that Englishmen to-day are in serious danger of selling their individual liberty-the birthright of every Briton-for a mess of Radical legislation? Would Is it conceivable that Englishmen in mid-Victorian times would have delivered themselves and their country into the hands of an uncontrolled House of Commons? the Englishman of Lord Palmerston's day have submitted to bullying or espionage at the hands of the innumerable inspectors and other officials under who have been fastened, like leeches, upon the community by the Radical Government under guise of the Insurance Act, the Shops Act, and Mr Lloyd George's Budget? Do the electors realise the extraordinary powers with which inspectors, for example, under the Insurance Act are invested? 2Q |