and at once. But, in the lonely parts of the Engadine, the sentiment is exceptionally strong. A traveller, spending several weeks at the Riffel, has time to get his feelings into harmony with the solitude, and to become, as it were, part of the scene. But, in the neighbourhood of St. Moritz, such gleams of solitude as there are shine brighter through the contrast. After "communing with the universe on the Fex glacier, the tourist returns at nightfall to the Kulm Hotel, where not unfrequently a ball (with various civilised appendages, such as invitation cards for outsiders) is given by the Italians and English, where once in the season there is a cotillon duly besprinkled with princes and princesses, and lasting till two in the morning, and where last year a newly-arrived lady asked quite seriously the scarcely surprising and possibly prophetic question : "N'est-ce pas qu'il y a un théâtre ici?" To some persons who make a long annual stay in the Engadine, and who object to being bored, a contrast of this sort has its pleasant side; they are not sorry that their summer home should have a time for every work under the sun, including even "a time to dance." "a time to dance." But to the genuine lover of mountains, these dancing tourists are so many trespassers on his preserve; he looks upon St. Moritz as a sort of Ramsgate on the Alps, and hates it with perfect hatred. The fact is, that, through the Engadine being a favourite resort of over-worked students, a large proportion of the visitors consists of cultivated persons; and, as the autumn advances, the cockney element almost wholly disappears. But it is with the Engadine itself, as well as with its visitors, that the climbers are at war. Mr. Freshfield goes so far as to describe the Engadine rather enigmatically as bleak uplands "where a shallow uniform trench does duty for the valley which has never yet been dug out, and where the minor and most conspicuous peaks have a mean and ruinous aspect." So harsh a criticism is, we confess, to us incomprehensible; though, no doubt, when we gaze on the huge and hideous Kurhaus, and on the long and most incongruous street of bran new pensions, which already crosses the river, and will soon stretch for nearly a mile (from the Kurhaus to the village), we often think how different the stream and lakes would look viridi si gramine cluderet undas herba, and if giant hotels (to say nothing of the projected railroad) did not violate the native rock. But, at any rate, the hotels and pensions cannot "violate" the summits of the hills around; so that, at the worst, the immediate neighbourhood of St. Moritz will become-what both Ireland and Cheshire have been called—an ugly picture in a beautiful frame.

Another fault sometimes found with the Engadine is that the valley might be in any mountainous country; it lacks some of the characteristic features of Swiss scenery. There are many places out

(1) See Juvenal, III. 19, 20.

of Switzerland to which it is compared. It is said closely to resemble Nyneetal in India; and it has been likened to various places in Norway, in Scotland, and in Wales. To me individually, the drive from St. Moritz to Sils and to the Maloja-with the chain of lakes on the left hand, which sometimes wear the aspect of a wide river-most forcibly recalls the ten miles, said to be the most beautiful in North Wales, between Dolgelly and Barmouth. Those who have never seen the Engadine, will deem the comparison of Wales with it extravagant; but, in truth, though Pitz Languard is more than triple the height of Cader Idris, yet, when it is seen from the high Engadine valley, and through the clear Engadine air which makes mountains seem nearer but smaller, and also when the eye has been trained to judge by the Swiss standard of magnitude, the Swiss mountain does not appear much larger than the Welsh. Hence it arises that by mountaineers who have become blasés for all mountain views short of the grandest, as well as by some busy men whose holidays are short, and who need a total change, the scenery of the Engadine is thought tame and unattractive. But, for persons obliged to spend a large proportion of their lives in it, the valley derives an additional charm from its comparative homeliness and its manifold associations; it calls up old times, and gives a picturethough a magnified and idealized picture-of familiar scenes. Possibly there is a certain attraction even in that "hardness" of the Engadine scenery which is the bugbear of artists, who seem to say of mountain views-as Principal Tulloch says of religious opinions -that they should be somewhat hazy. Still, this clearness or hardness helps one, as it were, to keep hold of the entire scene; the outline of the mountains, if too sharp for painters, yet by reason of its sharpness sticks in the memory.

At all events, for the Engadiners themselves, the charm of the valley is irresistible. Their intense love of home may serve to explain a peculiarity which has often been noticed. When one considers their land and climate, one fancies that nature has done her very best to keep the inhabitants in penury. Yet, on entering their houses, one almost always observes signs of easy circumstances, sometimes even of affluence. In fact, it may almost be said that, of Alpine valleys, the Engadine is at once the poorest and the richest. No doubt, this general well-being is partly a result, because a condition, of a successful struggle with nature; those only can live and bring up families in the cold climate who can afford the comfort which the cold climate requires. Something, also, is probably due to the stringent rule which existed till within the last few years, restraining from marriage persons who had not means for the support of a family. But a similar regulation is said to have prevailed in other parts of Switzerland, and therefore does not account

for the pre-eminent prosperity of the Engadine. That prosperity is commonly ascribed to the fortunes which the Engadiners throughout Europe have made as pastrycooks. The strange thing, however, is, that these fortunes, having been made out of the Engadine, should ever find their way into it. Of the wealth acquired by Irishmen in America, only a small part is brought to Ireland; and even patriotic coolies enrich their native land, not with their money, but with their bones. But the emigrant Engadiners are still of the Engadine, and unto the Engadine they return; and the only reason they give for their so returning is that, from their beloved mountains, they cannot permanently keep away. They come back to the heights from which they went forth-bound, so to say, by a mechanical law, like that which raises water to its own level. Natives of the Engadine and of the adjacent valleys use touching language on this subject. Not long ago, at Tiefenkasten, attention was drawn to two sisters by reason of the marked difference between them in point of education. It was found that both had been to school at Munich, but that there the elder of them became ill and melancholy. The doctor pronounced the illness to be Heimweh-a recognised and not uncommon malady of the Swiss. The poor girl grew worse and worse, and drooped as if disappointed in love; till, at last, she was told to go home, and to save her life at the expense of her education. It is probable that her case was an extreme one. But of all the Engadiners, even of those who succeed best abroad, it may be said that, like the fallen angels, they count themselves strangers in the low country, and that their one hope is in after years

"To reascend

Self-raised, and repossess their native seat."

Hence, by comparison, it may be judged how strong a fascination this delightful valley exercises over the delicate people whom it exactly suits, particularly over those who can enjoy tolerable health by spending season after season in it, and who can enjoy such health in no other way. Some of these-such, especially, as have not had too much of a good thing by being obliged to spend entire winters in the Engadine-look upon it as their favourite home, and can say in regard to it: Ubi bene, ibi patria.

LIONEL A. TOLLEMACHE.

M. TAINE'S NEW WORK.1

THE announcement that one of the most ingenious and accomplished men of letters in Europe was engaged upon a history of the French Revolution raised some doubts among those who have thought most about the qualifications proper to the historian. M. Taine has the quality of the best type of a man of letters; he has the fine critical aptitude for seizing the secret of an author's or an artist's manner, for penetrating to dominant and central ideas, for marking the abstract and general under accidental forms in which they are concealed, for connecting the achievements of literature and art with facts of society and impulses of human character and life. He is the master of a style, which if it seems to lack the breadth, the firmness, the sustained and level strength of great writing, is yet always energetic, and fresh, and alive with that spontaneous reality and independence of interest which distinguishes the genuine writer from the mere weaver of sentences and servile mechanic of the pen. The matter and form alike of M. Taine's best work-and we say best, for his work is by no means without degrees and inequalities of worth-prove that he has not shrunk from the toil and austerity of the student, from that scorn of delight and living of laborious days, by which only can men either get command of the art of just and finished expression, or gather much knowledge.

But with all its attractiveness and high uses of its own, the genius for literature in its proper sense is distinct from the genius for political history. The discipline is different, because the matter is different. To criticise Rousseau's Social Contract requires one set of attainments, and to judge the proceedings of the Constituent Assembly or the Convention requires a set of quite different attainments. A man may have the keenest sense of the filiation of ideas, of their scope and purport, and yet have a very dull or uninterested eye for the play of material forces, the wayward tides of great gatherings of men, the rude and awkward methods that sometimes go to the attainment of wise political ends.

It would perhaps not be too bold to lay down this proposition: that no good social history has ever been written by a man who has not either himself taken a more or less active part in public affairs, or else been an habitual intimate of persons who were taking such a part on a considerable scale. Everybody knows what Gibbon said about the advantage to the historian of the Roman Empire of having been a (1) Les Origines de la France Contemporaine. Tom. i. L'Ancien Régime. Par H. Taine. Paris: Hachette. 1876.

member of the English parliament and a captain in the Hampshire grenadiers. Thucydides commanded an Athenian squadron, and Tacitus filled the offices of prætor and consul. Guicciardini was an ambassador, a ruler, and the counsellor of rulers, and Machiavel was all these things and more. Voltaire was the keen-eyed friend of the greatest princes and statesmen of his time, and was more than once engaged in diplomatic transactions. Robertson was a powerful party chief in the Assembly of the Scotch Church. Grote and Macaulay were active members of parliament, and Hallam and Milman were confidential members of circles where affairs of state were the staple of daily discussion among the men who were responsible for conducting them to successful issues. Guizot was a prime minister, Finlay was a farmer of the Greek revenue. The most learned of contemporary English historians a few years ago contested a county, and is habitually inspired in his researches into the past by his interest in the politics of the present. The German historians, whose gifts in reconstructing the past are so valuable and so singular, have for the most part been as actively interested in the public movements of to-day as in those of any century before or since the Christian era. Niebuhr held more than one political post of dignity and importance; and of historical writers in our time, one has sat in several Prussian parliaments; another, once the tutor of a Prussian prince, has lived in the atmosphere of high politics; while all the best of them have taken their share in the preparation of the political spirit and ideas that have restored Germany to all the fulness and exaltation of national life. It is hardly necessary to extend the list. It is indeed plain on the least reflection that close contact with political business, however modest in its pretensions, is the best possible element in the training of any one who aspires to understand and reproduce political history. Political preparation is as necessary as literary preparation. There is no necessity that the business should be on any majestic and imperial scale. To be a guardian of the poor in an East-End parish, to be behind the scenes of some great strike of labour, to be an active member of the parliamentary committee of a Trades Council or of the executive committee of a Union or a League, may be quite as instructive discipline as participation in mightier scenes. Those who write

concrete history, without ever having taken part in practical politics, are, one might say, in the position of those ancients who wrote about the human body without ever having effectively explored it by dissection. Mr. Carlyle, it is true, by force of penetrating imaginative genius, has reproduced in stirring and resplendent dithyrambs the fire and passion, the rags and tears, the many-tinted dawn and the blood-red sunset of the French Revolution; and the more a man learns about the details of the Revolution, the greater is his admiration for Mr. Carlyle's magnificent performance. But it is dramatic