TOPICS OF THE DAY.

OURSELVES. NEXT week the price of the Spectator will be increased to 9d. We need not repeat here the reasons which we have put before our readers several times. We wish, however, to say something as to one or two develop- ments in the paper which we have long contemplated and which the new conditions will give us a good opportunity to carry out. We do not desire to make, and shall not make, any changes either in the form, the size, the matter, or the spirit of the Spectator, but on one point we revert, as will be seen in next week's issue, to an important feature which has been for many years past absent from the Spectator. Henceforth week by week we mean to deal with Business matters, and to publish comments on, and information in regard to, the leading events and tendencies in Public and Private Finance.

Though it is perhaps unnecessary for us to do so, we may state at once that we shall not attempt to supply our readers with attractive Stock Exchange " tips, or inform people how to get rich quick. We shall not teach the maiden lady of the Provinces to soar on the wings of the Mexican Eagle or to hunt the gleam of " a perfectly safe 12 per cent." from China to Peru. Our humbler func- tion will be to let people know what is being done in the world of Business, to suggest to the best of our ability what would be done if reason ruled, and to give warning of what is only too likely to be done both in Public and Private Finance if due care and vigilance are not exercised by public opinion. The able financial critic to whom we have entrusted the work will be responsible for the views and opinions which he expresses. Our responsibility con- sists in finding a writer not only of probity but of experience, knowledge, judgment, and good sense. • ,11 In the realm of Private Finance the actions of the great financial inst: tutions, Banks, Insurance Companies, and the like, will be recorded, and if necessary criticized. Important developments will be noted and explained, and, where the occasion offers, suggestions beneficial to business men and to the public may be made. In the field of Public Finance the writer in the Spec- tator will do his best to emphasize in detail and from the technical side what we have always endeavoured to inculcate in our political columns—namely, the im- perative need for thrift and for the prevention of waste. High taxation is unfortunately imperative, but it is no less imperative to see that the evils which almost always accompany it are as far as possible mitigated and kept in restraint. We must never forget Peel s reminder that wealth fructifies far better in the warm pockets of the individual than in the cold and dreary recesses of the Treasury. The National Debt and the best methods for reducing its burden, though always without sacrificing even in the slightest degree the national honour, a:e a matter which in our opinion cannot be too carefully watched and considered. The Funds are destined to play as great a part in the lives of this generation as in those of their great-grandfathers.

It is imperatively necessary that at the present moment the mind of the nation as a whole should be turned to Finance. Men and women in the pre-war days might be excused for leaving such matters to experts. Now we must all bend our minds to the nation's business and strive to control it for good in the only way that such control can be exer- cised—i.e., through knowledge. The Poet, the Artist, the Man of Science, the Idealist must one and all stoop to conquer the foe—the universal wolf of Industrial Ruin which besets our path. But though to suit the time the Spectator can no longer leave Finance untouched, it must not be supposed that our attention to the City and to Business will involve neglect of matters political or literary or of the things of the spirit. We intend to dwell not less but more than formerly on two developments which mark now, as they have so often marked in the past, great mutations in human affairs. These are the revival of Poetry and of the Drama. During the war, and since the war, unquestionably the most notable new fact in literature has been the poetic revival. There never was a time in living memory when so much good verse, vital verse, verse inspired with the true passion of life and literature, was written as at present. What is almost, if not indeed quite, as important, there never was a time when men and women were more eager to read the new verse of the new poets. It is true no doubt that no great commander has yet emerged from the laurelled battalions that are assembling on the slopes of Parnassus. But who will venture to say that none of these eager aspirants to fame has the Marshal's baton in his knapsack ?

In any case we have now got an authentic poetic atmosphere both here and in America—wherever indeed the English language is spoken—and the Spectator means to do its best through its review columns to let its readers hear week by week of the new singers. We mean, that is, to abandon our omnibus reviews of " Minor Verse "—forty nightingales in a nest, horrescimus ref erentes! —and give a weekly notice of such verse as must be taken seriously.

We do not suggest for a moment that all the new ten- dencies in verse are good, or will last, or ought to last. We do not intend to " wonder with a foolish face of praise " merely because a man or woman writes daringly, rhymes madly, or is as free with his prosody as his oaths. A writer may defy all the rules of decency, syntax, prosody, and sense and yet be a thoroughly bad poet. This will seem a hard saying to those " commencing Vorticist," but it is true.

To sum up, we intend to let the public know what is being done in verse, how, where, and by whom, and to help poets worth helping to that right of audience which is their due. " For the press of knights not every brow can receive the laurel," though it sounds so noble, is a depressing reflection for the young, and above all for the young of Homo Poeticus. What we should all desire is so to order the press as to give visibility wherever it is deserved. The sympathy of comprehension is vital to the develop- ment of the Poet.

The dry bones of the Drama were stirring before the war, both in the matter of the writing and of the better interpretation of plays, old and new. Since the war there are abundant signs of a real Dramatic Renaissance. That being so, we mean to pay in the future more attention than before to the Theatre. Of what we may call technical or professional dramatic criticism the public gets plenty, and be it said of the most efficient and scholarly kind, in the pages of the daily Press. We have not, however, any desire to compete in the matter of first-night impressions, expert soliloquies, and learned disquisitions on the inner mysteries of acting and presentation or of the other arcana of the Drama. It will be the more pedestrian aim of the Spectator to regard the plays and the players from the point of view of the man of intelligence in the auditorium.

After all, plays are written for the public and are acted to the public. Therefore, though the expert guidance and the scintillating reflections of the theatrical virtuoso may be, and often no doubt are, exceedingly entertaining, the point of view of one who cannot claim to be a stage encyclo- paedia but who loves a play as heartily as Pepys himself will, we feel sure, prove of interest. A critic too who has read our dramatic literature, and not merely read of it in the critical studies of other people, may also often say what will not be amiss.

But we have dealt quite enough with the future—partly because, as we have said, there is to be no change in the Spectator but only development, and partly because one must always dread Nemesis when one talks about w1.6'.; is going to be done. It is true no doubt that the future is in essence of far more concern than the past, or than that evanescent moment which trembles breathless between the poles of being and becoming—the transient ani embarract _e I present. For all that, a glance at the past may be useful as well as amusing. It is at any rate apropos to note that do Spectator, which, by the way, in the first twenty or thirty years of its existence used to cost a shilling, was wont to pride itself specially on its dealings with Business and with the Drama. A Dutch correspondent has lately sent us an advertisement of the Spectator discovered among old papers at the Hague—a charmingly presented miniature page issued in 1830. This advertisement we reproduce literatini below.

Though we may not say so ourselves, we trust that our readers will be able to say that the Spectator at this moment has a right to make the same general claim on its readers' confidence and support as it made ninety years ago. In any case, readers of ultra-conservative inclinations who might be prepared to tremble at the thought of a Business article in the Spectator and of hearing more about the Drama, will be glad to see that that severe Tory critic, " Christopher North," specially commended the Spectator • for its mercantile articles and for its theatrical criticism. We sincerely hope that in this region we may be able to exhibit the benevolence claimed in the Spectator advertise- ment of 1830 :— gilt ptrtater

!THE SPECTATOR avows the ambitious aim of being at ones

-I. the most informing, the most amusing, and the fairest of all Newspapers. Its large, though not unwieldy size, enables the Editor, by careful selection and laborious compression, to record every useful Fact and interesting Occur- Yews. whether at home or in foreign countries ; and at the same time to give an uncommonly large space to Original Compositions by some of the ablest Pens.

Politics are treated chiefly as matter of history, and with an impartial exhibition of all the leading facts and arguments on every side, from every source. The SPECTATOR is not a sectarian or a partisan, in any sense, but a citizen of the world.

Fair Criticisms on all the New Books of note are given ; with select passages for the entertainment of those whose time may be too much occupied to read tha original works. The Drama is reviewed in a spirit of benevolent, though free criticism ; and Music, and Painting, with its necessaries, are treated at once scientifically and popularly as elegant arts.

Being a NEWSPAPER, and not a mere Literary Periodical, the SPECTATOR exhibits Life and Society as they exist ; but being also a Journal for FAMILIES. it systematically excludes from its pages every paragraph, sentiment, and expression, unfit for universal perusal in respectable circles.

There are two Editions,—one for the Country, published on Saturday. in time to be sent by the post of that evening ; another for Town. published very early on Sunday morning, and bringing down all public news to the latest hour.

CONTEMPORARY TESTIMONIES DT FAVOUR OF THE SPECTATOR.

" North—There, James. lies Tug Sencx.rron, a weekly paper of the highest merit, and I wish I had some way of strenuously recommending it to the reading public. The Editor, indeed, is Whiggish, and a Pro-Catholic—but moderate, steady, and-consistent in his politics. Let us have no turn-coats. His precis of passing politics is always admirable • his Mercantile Information —THAT I knoW on the authority of as good a Judge as lives—is correct and comprehensive. Miscellaneous News are collected judiciously and amusingly from all quarters ; the Literary depart- ment is equal, on the whole, to that of any other weekly petiodical. I no- where see better criticism on Poetry— add nowhere nearly so good criticism on: Theatricals. Some critiques there have been, in that department, superior In exquisite truth of tact to anything I remember—worthy of Elia himself, though not apparently from Ella and in accounts of Foreign Literature. especially French, and above all, of French Polities, a subject on which I need to be enlightened. I have seen no periodical at all equal to the SPECTATOR.

" Shepherd—The numbers you sent out by deserved a' that ye said o' them. It's a moist enterteenin' and instructive —a =List miscellawneous miscellany.

" North—And without being wishy- washy.

" Shepherd—Or welsh. Review, No. " North—The Spacraxori is impartial. It is a fair,- open, honest, and manly periodical."—Blackicood's Mag. April, 1829.'

" A Paper distinguished among its weekly contemporaries for its percep- tion of the ludicrous in manners, and its piquant, yet not malignant satire upon the foibles of society."—Globe. May 28,-1929.ry . The SPECTATOR, bY far 'the best- informed and the-best-written of all the neutral journals."—Standard. April 8, 1830.

- A Paper supported by first-rate

talent." . . . Again. (in quoting a critique on the Italian Opera)— "The wit, truth, and spirit of the an- nexed observations, which appear in the SPECTATOR of this date, entitle them to a place in my Diary. They ought, and probably will, find a corner in every scrap-book in the dominions of our Sovereign Lord the King."—Diary of a Dilettante.—Harnionicon, June. 1829.

" We esteem the Dramatic Criticisms of the SPECTATOR to be quite unrivalled for a fine discrimination, tempered with good nature, and for the happy expres- sion of poetical thoughts and feelings without the pomp of words."—New

Monthly Mdg. March, 1838.

" A Paper of admirable variety and excellent management."—Westnibiatcr

TO ADVERTISERS.—The universality of the Plan of THE SPECTATOR. and its rapidly extending circulation among the higher and more affluent classes of the community, render it one of the very best channels of ALTER- TiSINO. -

Published by JOSEPH CLAYTON, at 4. Wellington Street, Strand.

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