WAS

THE GREAT ANNEXATIONIST.

AS it merely a curious coincidence that the very day last month on which Mr. W. E. Gladstone moved his Resolutions with the object of restraining our Government from helping the Turks to resist the Russian advance, the news should have reached this country that the whole Transvaal Republic has been swallowed up in our ever-growing Colonial Empire? We have no intention of sitting in judgment on the act of Sir Theophilus Shepstone, for the data are not yet public on which to form any sound opinion. It may be that his proclamation will be fully justified; and we even expect that it will prove to the ultimate advantage of the Dutch Boers themselves, however little they may relish the loss of freedom —that freedom for the sake of which they have endured the hardships of bringing new lands into cultivation, advancing time after time further into the interior of Africa as we have pushed forwards the frontier of our Cape Colony.

The case is so singularly parallel with that of the Russian advance in Central Asia, that it would almost seem to have been done on purpose to stop the mouths of the Russophobists. The principal. difference is, that we have done things on a much larger scale than the Emperor Alexander has. The Transvaal is no small state; it had an organised government, duly recognised by our own, and it occupied an area of some 115,000 square miles. It is therefore no mean acquisition. And then it is only one of a series, nor can we venture to suppose it will be the last. Griqualand West was taken possession of by Britain in 1871, because diamonds were found there in plenty; and Griqualand East followed suit in 1874. If we went back to the previous decade, we should have two other instances of the same kind to record, and so on. All this has been done by us in the interests of civilisation and good government,—the very same reasons as the Russians have had for their advances in Turkestan. And what are our neighbours likely to think of it? By these several acquisitions we have managed to invest the Orange River Free State on every side, so that we have completely encircled with British territory a republic of over 40,000 square miles in extent; a condition of things hardly likely to be satisfactory to the people of that State,

and which sooner or later must render its absorption almost inevitable.

Then we have been trying for some years past to lay our hands upon a portion at least of Delagoa Bay, which the Portuguese have long claimed as one of their possessions. It was too small an affair to fight over, so the matter was left to arbitration, and ultimately decided against us. By annexing the Transvaal, however, we have cut off all the trading routes into the interior, and left Portugal only a narrow strip of coast which is no longer of any practical value to her. No wonder that there is a fit of Anglophobia in Lisbon just now; it at all events is justified by facts.

Russia has so

Our new acquisition seems to point a moral. constantly been talked of as the aggressive power, aiming at almost universal dominion in the Old World, that this news from the Cape has reached us very opportunely to remind us that "those who live in glass houses should not throw stones." Certainly we are the last nation of Europe that should thus sit in judgment upon her.

We should, however, be content to let these alarmists pass unnoticed were it not that their persistency has been attended with much positive mischief, and may yet involve us in considerable danger. The successes which the Russian arms may be expected to gain, both in European and Asiatic Turkey, will doubtless give renewed vigour to the old cry that our road to India is in danger. It is true that we have used the Suez Canal of late years in making our regimental exchanges, but that has never been used as a war route yet, and therefore if it were closed to-morrow we should not be in a worse position than in former times of emergency. No other part of the Turkish Empire has ever been our route to India, or perhaps is ever likely to be. The advantages of an alternative one by the Euphrates has often been talked about, and it is perhaps the next best that could be chosen; but the journey by that route would be such a fatiguing one, that the old voyage round the Cape may be considered preferable, even though somewhat longer. Constantinople practically leads nowhere, so far as England is concerned, the Black Sea having no other outlet than the Bosphorus. The possession of this city, by whomsoever it may be held, is a matter of no strategic importance except to the countries bordering the Black Sea, and those through which its tributary rivers flow. Beautiful in

situation, and deeply associated with the history of the Eastern Empire, one can fully appreciate the sentimental feeling of those who, regarding themselves as its modern representatives, see the Imperial city in the hands of the oppressor of their race and of their co-religionists. And surely the Western Christians too should have more interest in seeing it restored to the descendants of those who founded it, rather than that it should remain in the effete hands of those who, ever since they took it 424 years ago, have been the plague of Europe.

ADDENDUM. Since the foregoing paragraph was written the sentiment there referred to has found expression at Athens in a very marked manner. The people of the little kingdom of Greece seem to think the time has come when they should no longer remain passive spectators of what is going on in the adjoining kingdom, but that they themselves should be up and doing; and the Government have felt it necessary to bow to the national will, at least to the extent of a change of ministry. Those who succeed to office must necessarily be pledged to some more decisive course of action than those they replace, and it will not be a difficult matter for the new Cabinet to find some excuse for their interference, unless they should be restrained by the presence of our fleet in the Piræus, or by the express desire of the other Great Powers.

ITH some truth a certain want of taste or innate refinement

WITH

is urged against the ordinary English character. Taste may be defined as being to skill what tact is to manners, and neither can be complete without these adjuncts. The analogy between the two can be carried further also, as both taste and tact may be taken as resulting in the individual from a fine perception of what has been called the "eternal fitness of things."

The great enemy to a growth of "taste" in the English nature is its deification of utility—a worship which does not, or will not, recognise that truth, in the essence of all things, is the close and indissoluble union of use and beauty. It is for popular culture to

assert and teach this fact, that with utility the beautiful is allied, and that the study and practice of both must go hand in hand. The progress of the times is happily tending to place the means of culture within the reach of the working classes, in which we include all those in the lower middle ranks of society who are called upon for the exercise of productive power. The opening of museums, the founding of free libraries, the establishment of art classes, and the multiplying of institutions, art galleries, &c. throughout the country, must all necessarily tend to raise the standard of culture. There is much virtue in a portrait, and we are glad to see hanging in the home of a working man the picture of some great and good man; of one who has been prominent not so much perhaps through his talents, as through the power of his character. Must not the characteristics of that favourite face have some influence, as it hangs on the wall? Is there not a lesson, be it endurance, heroism, truth, courage, energy or otherwise, set forth in the lines which mark its individuality, and may we not expect that lesson to be learned by the constant observer? In a higher rank, even, may not the portraitgallery of ancestors have some influence in forming the character, stimulating the ambition, preserving the honour, and handing down that feeling of noblesse oblige which mark this rank, when the descendant sees these qualities set forth in the silent, yet speaking, features of his family portraits ?

Certainly "taste we cannot teach, any more than we can impart the divine fire of genius, but by the spread of art culture we may look for a proportionate increase of it in the masses. And the first and greatest teacher and guide of taste is Nature. Art, the representation of the beautiful, is founded upon nature; art is indeed imitation, and we assert that there is no true artist or lover of art who is not a lover also of Nature, and its manifestations. How can architecture and the beauties of form be appreciated and felt, if there be no earnest admiration of the forest tree and its arching boughs? What full or honest delight can painting and colour give, unless there is a higher delight in Nature's culminating colour-effect-a sunset? What joy in music and sound can be felt when there is no love in the higher nature for the song-birds and the murmuring of the leaves? In taste, Nature never makes a mistake. She is ever true, ever harmonious; from the colouring of the bird's wing to that of the

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simplest flower, from the shaping of the "human form divine" to that of the smallest leaf. Nature makes nothing tasteless; in her own rich harmony of landscape she shames man's blunders in planting a garden him she made perfect in the ideal of form, and he cannot dress himself to improve, but rather mar her design. She is there as a great example, the great schoolmistress of taste; and not only would we send the masses to her as an æsthetic teacher, but as a moral one also-not alone that they may learn the subtleties of beauty, but those higher, nobler lessons for the soul which Nature can teach, that they may find "sermons in the stones, and books in the running brooks." Nature is moreover the greatest elevating and refining influence under which man can place himself, and so art, its type, must rank next in possessing this power. But after these influences on the heart and mind, the culture of taste has a strong practical value. It will raise production from a mere mechanical to a mental effort. It will employ the finer faculties of the mind as well as the fingers, and by the exercise of these, of art, originality, and power, it will enable the workman to give us better work. In the first place, it will render him more the master of his craft; he will know better its requirements, its resources, and its capabilities of improvement. And the case may be applied to every branch of work. Thus, the builder acquainted with the principles and beauties of form will be better enabled to carry out the design of the architect; whilst the study by the latter of architecture, more as an art than as a trade, a knowledge on his part of the ancient styles and their pure, simple completeness-a completeness which has rendered it impossible, it is said, to invent a new style-would protect us from the vulgar absurdities which are daily perpetrated in our homes and buildings in the name of architecture. And art culture would be no less useful to the fashioners of apparel for either sex. The cultivation of taste through art will teach the customer what to choose, and the tailor and milliner what, and how, to make. To the carpenter, upholsterer, workers in metal, to the makers of every, even the simplest articles indeed, will a knowledge of art be of advantage.

But in addition to this practical value of art culture, we must return again to insist upon its higher uses. The spirit of the age in judging a man is too much, perhaps-What has he done? Action is said to be the highest, noblest condition. But the soul's first duty is