papers-namely, the Examiner, Observer, John Bull, Sunday Times, Bell's Life, Bell's Messenger, Dispatch, and Age. These organs of public opinion, whether daily, evening, or weekly, are wonderfully improved, whether we regard paper, type, size, form, and the manual or material getting up, or the taste, tact, judgment, good tone, and literary ability with which they are conducted. The Times is now nearly three times the size it was in 1824, whilst its leaders and essays are twice as numerous and written with much more information than in the olden time. Within the last twenty years this journal has pre-eminently distinguished itself by its literary criticisms and reviews, and by its excellent and varied correspondence from every quarter of the globe. Five-and-thirty years ago there were not probably more than four or five writers of leaders in the leading journal; now there are at least double the number, besides literary and artistic critics of undoubted competency. Five-andthirty years ago there was no parliamentary summary, and no articles on the debate of the evening before, whether in the Lords or Commons; a day being generally allowed to intervene for the handling of such questions. Now the debate in the Lords or Commons on the Monday is followed by a leader on the Tuesday, at however late an hour it may concludeleaders sometimes distinguished by a mastery of the subjects, and always by literary ability and considerable general information. The wonderful correspondence of the Times from Central Italy and Turin (written by the same able hand) is distinguished by the highest literary ability, and by the most varied knowledge of the subjeet. The correspondence from Vienna, Calcutta, and Morocco should be studied by any one who desires to know what is going on in Europe, Asia, or Africa. It is possible, however, that the art of parliamentary reporting has retrograded. It certainly appears to me that the debates of 1824-25 are better re 131 ported in the Chronicle and Times of those years than any debates of the present day. The debaters, it is true, were generally more eloquent than the speakers of this time. In 1825-26, and 27, the leaders of the Chronicle were almost exclusively written by the editor, the late Mr. Black. Such leaders would not be tolerated a week in the present day. They were made up chiefly of crude extracts from old books and pamphlets, pamphlets written, some of them, a century or two before. Some of these leaders were ingenious, but more of them were crude and ill digested. The improvement in the moral tone of the press between 1824 and 1860 may be discerned by glancing at the Sunday papers of the former time. The John Bull, Age, or Satirist of 1825, 1832, or 1838 would not be endured now for a second week. Editors of newspapers, writers, and parliamentary reporters were great frequenters of coffee-houses and taverns five-and-thirty years ago. They patronized the Turk's Head in the Strand, the Dog in Holywell-street, the Crown opposite Drury-lane Theatre, the Eccentric Club in May's-buildings, St. Martin's-lane, and Fendall's Hotel in Palace-yard; and such of them as had a theatrical taste the Wrekin in Broad-court, Coventgarden. This house was one of the haunts of Kean. Here fast young men of rank used to sup with him, and some of the writers of the press were often of the party. In no profession, however, has there been a greater moral progress within five-and-thirty years than on the stage. We have no such actors as in 1824-25. Kean, no Young, no Charles Kemble, no Munden, no Dowton, no Emery, no Jack Johnson, no Knight, no Mathews, no William Farren; no Mrs. Glover, no Mrs. Davenport, no Miss O'Neill, no Miss Kelly, no Miss Stephens. But we have respectable performers on and off the stage, gentlemen and gentlewomen distinguished for discretion, good conduct, temperance, and the highest moral culture. No Shopmen, mechanics, and servants of all kinds have made immense progress since 1824 in mental culture. Whether they have made an equal progress in moral culture is more arguable. It seems to me there is not that respect and affection-not to say reverence-for employers and masters which existed in the olden time. There is more of self-assertion-more of independent feeling, occasionally bordering on the laissez aller, if not on carelessness or indifference. No class of people have benefited during the last forty years in the same degree as the humbler classes. Their lot has been continually improving; they have been for many a long year treading on the heels of those immediately above them; while their immediate superiors up to a certain social standing have been advancing in a like ratio. This is not so with the educated and professional classes. While the shopman, artisan, and domestic servant have been advancing on the shopkeeper, employer, manufacturer, and professional classes, the professional classes have not marched onward, remaining in statu quo, remaining educated, wellinformed gentlemen. This is the ne plus ultra of progress. Railroads, no doubt, have greatly benefited the raw material of labour since their institution, but railroads have probably rendered domestic servants more changeful and inconstant in their servitude. Gentlemen resident at Brighton, Cheltenham, Leamington, Hastings, Bath, and other watering-places, say it is now difficult to keep a domestic servant for any length of time. The facilities of locomotion give them the desire of change, and they embrace it. Even though they remain in their service, masters and mistresses say that excursion trains occasionally tempt them to roam, and lead them into undesirable company. Foreign travel has also considerably increased among clerks and shopmen, and also among the better class of servants who travel with their masters and mistresses. It may be well doubted whether this increased intercourse with the Continent has improved the subordinate ranks and humbler classes. In 1824 it took three days' travelling night and day to reach Paris, and often a week's posting and sleeping on the road. The cost of a journey to Paris then in the cheapest way was about £6 108.; now you can go to Paris in eleven hours at an expense of 20s. or 30s. Whether this unrestrained intercourse with our neighbours is highly beneficial in a moral point of view remains to be proved. I am not quite sure that the facilities of foreign travel have very much benefited those in a higher position than servants and clerks; for it seems to me that in the old days of posting, when travelling was difficult and expensive, the literature and languages of the Continent were better understood and more relished by the upper classes than they are now. Now these benefits are more generally diffused, but diffusion has not added to depth. Every one has a scrap, a mouthful of a foreign language; but where are the men of these last twenty years 'thorough' in the knowledge of foreign languages and literature? We cannot alter the past, and we can only now modify the present. Wherein we differ from and surpass the men of five-and-thirty years ago, I have endeavoured to show; nor have I scrupled to state in what we should imitate our immediate predecessors. 'One moment wait, thou holy Man! On earth my crime, my death, they knew: My name is under all men's ban: Ah, tell them of my respite too! 'Tell them, one blessed Christmas night- Breathing self-murder, frenzy, spite, 'I felt, as I in torment lay 'Mid the souls plagu'd by Heavenly Power, An Angel touch mine arm, and say— Then I remember'd how I went, Its storms of dust, with burning heat; 'And in the street a Leper sate, Shivering with fever, naked, old: Sand rak'd his sores from heel to pate; The hot wind fever'd him five-fold. 'He gaz'd upon me as I pass'd, And murmur'd, Help me, or I die !- 'O Brandan! Think, what grace divine, 'Well-fed, well-cloth'd, well-friended, I "That germ of kindness, in the womb 'Once every year, when carols wake, I journey to these healing snows. "I stanch with ice my burning breast, With silence balm my whirling brain. O Brandan! to this hour of rest, That Joppan leper's ease was pain!'. Tears started to Saint Brandan's eyes: He bow'd his head; he breath'd a prayer. When he look'd up-tenantless lies The iceberg in the frosty air! MATTHEW ARNOLD. CHRONICLE OF CURRENT HISTORY. THE first half of 1860 has been marked by many great and many unexpected events. When the year opened it was still supposed that a Congress would meet to settle the affairs of Italy. The annexation of Savoy was not dreamt of. The possibility of a commercial treaty with France was only hinted at in the faintest whispers, and it was taken as a certainty that a moderate Reform Bill would be passed with the consent of all political parties. Within six months we have seen the affairs of Italy settled, not by the Congress which could not even agree to meet, but by the unanimity of the Italians and the astonishing successes of Garibaldi. Savoy has been annexed in a manner that sets in the strongest possible light the audacity of the Emperor of the French, the absurdity of universal suffrage, and the constant danger of imminent war to which the restoration of the French Empire necessarily exposes Europe. The Commercial Treaty has been announced and ratified, after having given rise to a budget which procured high admiration for the Chancellor of the Exchequer, until it was discovered that he could only be protected from its consequences by the anomalous intervention of the House of Lords. There have been also many minor events that are in their way remarkable. Spain has withdrawn from the religious crusade on which she was embarked, after having gained by it not only the satisfaction of thinking that her intentions at least were pious, but an accession of strength to the existing government and dynasty, and the novel pleasure of being owed instead of owing money. Prussia has summoned up resolution to show that she means to claim the leadership of all that is liberal and patriotic in Germany; and Austria, after having abandoned step by step the policy of intervention in Italy, has made an effort to unite the conciliation of her subject provinces with the maintenance of her empire. In America the San Juan difficulty has faded away into insignificance before the furious intestine dissensions that threaten to break up the union; the disclosure of a systematized corruption which appals the party that has long been excluded from office; and the growing excitement of the Presidential election. We may not expect that the half year that is now past will have affixed to it any very bright mark in the calendar of history, but at any rate we cannot accuse it of having been deficient in interest as it went by. Directly Parliament met, its attention was turned to the Commercial Treaty. No English statesman could pretend for a moment that it was in accordance with sound doctrines of political economy. It was a treaty of reciprocity, and treaties of reciprocity have long ago been proved to be a mistake, and to use Mr. Bright's language, have been generally ranked as Dodos, and supposed to belong altogether to a past age. But the advocates of the treaty, impersonated in Mr. Gladstone, argued, that although economically wrong, the treaty was politically right. The greatest gain we could possibly have would be the certainty of a settled peace with France, and nothing could contribute to this so much as a large commercial intercourse between the two countries. The question of ratifying or rejecting the treaty was never really open to the House, not only because a defeat of the Ministry would literally have left the Queen without a Government, but because when once the friendship of France was held out as the reward of accepting the treaty, to have rejected it would have seemed equivalent to an indifference whether France was our friend or our enemy. But even if the House could have deliberated freely, it might reasonably have attached great weight to the argument that commercial intercourse binds together nations, and that as the nation with which it is our greatest interest to be bound closely only takes the two-hundredth part |