cannot doubt that the need will in time produce the

man, but in the meantime Lord Goschen appears unfortunately to be the last of a line, illustrated by the names of Peel and Gladstone, with whom it was the first business of statesman- ship to study with patient care the social, economic, and financial situation of the country. A great opportunity lies before the man who is able to take up his mantle, and to reconcile the legitimate claims and aspirations of the working classes with the welfare and progress of the nation at large on sound economic lines.

One of the first tasks to which a great Finance Minister would probably address himself would be the perfecting of his means of information and the proper organisation of his statistics. Recent writers like Mr. A. L. Bowley who have attempted to describe the material progress of the nation have drawn attention to the obvious gaps in our statistical knowledge, which it is apparently no one's business to fill up.

In the region of finance proper matters are little better, and a multitude of questions, such as those connected with the incidence of taxation, the distribution of income, and the comparative study of fiscal systems, are left untouched for want of proper machinery to deal with them. The time for the empirical treatment of such questions as these has gone by, and the general level of knowledge on these and kindred topics has risen so much in recent years as to make it imperative for Government Departments to utilise more diligently the mass of information which is within their reach. Lord Goschen himself has been moved to a strong expression of opinion on this subject, which we shall make no apology for quoting. The passage occurs at the end of his " Supplemental Study " on the " Increase of Moderate Incomes," one of the most interesting studies in this volume, but one which, so far as the Income-tax figures are con- cerned, has been rendered largely inconclusive by want of information. Official methods, observes Lord Goschen,

"do not contribute sufficiently to this class of research. Nor does there appear to be enough co-ordination between the various official centres which distribute statistical information. The statistical abstract issued by the Board of Trade is a mine of wealth and supplies some materials from the Customs and Inland Revenue, but the labours of the latter department have not Wen sufficiently utilised for statistical purposes. It has often occurrad to me that our national statistics should be concentrated under one head, whose business it would be to take a wider survey than the mere tabulation of figures supplied by others, who should not only publish what was brought to him, but consider scientifically what further materials, useful as throwing light on the economic condition of the country, might be extracted from official records and be made available by systematised arrangement for public use."

Coming from so high a source, and confirming as they do the impressions of outside inquirers, these words may possibly have their effect in the proper quarters.

We have no space to comment on the various essays in detail. In all of them will be found, combined with the gift of lucid and forcible expression, the sagacity and almost excessive caution, the careful attention to facts and the skilful analysis of figures, to which the public is accustomed in their author. Perhaps the most striking of all the addresses is that on our cash reserves delivered during the " Baring crisis." The dangers to which the Chancellor of the Exchequer then drew attention are dangers to which the nation is still exposed, and which receive too little notice from any but those responsible for banking interests, perhaps not even from them.

THE ENGLISH LAKES.* THERE is a simplicity—not to use that nobler word, humility —about Mr. Palmer's account of the lakes, mountains, and dales he knows so well and loves so dearly which

• The English Lakes. Painted by A. Heaton Cooper. Described by W. T. Palmer. London : A. and C. Black. POs. net.j

also some irritation. Perhaps this last is unreasonable.

Perhaps we ought not to want anything more than a series of wandering descriptions, sometimes pretty and vivid and informing enough, sometimes spoilt by tags, far-fetched adjectives, and other faults of style rather unworthy of a man born and bred in the land which has come to suggest some of the highest poetry. But Mr. Palmer probably knows what the present day wants to read about the Lake Country ; and no doubt such a book as this, with its illustrations, which, if hardly first-rate, will pleasantly remind many a holiday-maker of his holiday, is more likely to be popular than one on a higher plane, either literary or

artistic. The majority, after all, see Windermere from

the deck of a steamer and Thirlmere from the top of a coach. A motor or a bicycle gives little opportunity for real knowledge of a country the charm of which hides itself and is only to be found in perfection by a few. Mr. Palmer knows all this, of course, better than we do. If he describes ordinary sights and "main ways" in popular style, he also takes his readers into many a wild and picturesque corner where the usual tripper cannot follow him. And long may the lonely fells and mom secluded lakes keep their difficult remoteness!

Such remarks as the following, if well-intentioned, are saddening. How has the love of the Lake Country and its immortal spirit come to this, and " what will ye do in the end thereof " P- " Storrs Hall—now an hotel—was occupied a century ago by Mr. Bolton, who, a man of literary tastes, thought noble friendships a boon. lie communed with Wordsworth, North, Sir Walter

Scott, De Quincey, and many others who were attracted to that great coterie of genius. In these days the poetry of the Lakes school is often sneered at. The men with their simple tastes and pleasures are despised, but, leaving their work aside, never in history has a group of men so able, so high-minded, so far in

advance of their day and generation, been so intimately associated. They had their weaknesses, their vices, but conducted their worst hours without impairing the morality of their surroundings. Their influence was wholly for good, wholly for an upward trend of thought."

The last sentence but one is almost, if not altogether, cryptic. We trust that the modern ignorance which " sneers " and

" despises " and is capable de lout will not in any way

apply it to Wordsworth or to Scott, who, by the by, is rather oddly counted among the " Lake Poets." The book, naturally, is full of allusions to Wordsworth. Its

author does not fail, as we see, in reverence for him; but when he refers to "I wandered lonely as a cloud" as "the

fine sonnet known as ' The Daffodils,' " we could find it in

our hearts to wish that Wordsworth might have been left out altogether. However, there are diversities of gifts, and

Wordsworth himself would have rejoiced in Mr. Palmer's enthusiastic love and thorough knowledge of the country, with its marvellous variety of beauty and interest, and the many curious features of its characteristic life.

It is remarkable how every region of mountain and lake has its own differing character and charm. The English Lake Country, so full of grandeur and poetry, has quite

another atmosphere from the Welsh land, where legendary history and fairy lore and the spiritual vision of a people

have humanised Nature, so to speak. The English lakes and mountains, in spite of their position on the Border, have hardly any historical past wrapped in tradition and fancy.

They have fairy-tales and legends and ghost stories, but of an utterly different and more solid character; the Celtic dream, the spirit of magic, is lacking. Nature has her great world of mystery, but it is removed from mortals. The dales-

men are a part of their native country in one sense, but not in another. You do not meet a poet in every farmhouse or

wayside inn ; a mist is a mist, not an army of ghosts advancing with waving arms across a lake, after a storm, in the gathering twilight. But, though such comparisons are useless, one may say that the poetic charm of the English lake and mountain region is of a higher, more sublime kind than that of Wales. The nature of the North inspires greater poetry ; these are matters of high thought and immortal verse ; there is something better than romance here. In these days, when people dare to talk of "sneering at" the Lake poets, and espeoially at the poet and prophet, the greatest of them all, one is glad to be reminded of

" The mountains had waited long for a full adoration, an intelligent worship. At last 'they were enough beloved.' And if now the changes wrought around them recall too often the poet's warning, how

'All that now delights thee, from the day On which it should be touched, Mall melt, sad. melt orray,'—

yet they have gained something which cannot be taken from them. Not mines, nor railways, nor monster excursions, nor reservoirs, nor Manchester herself, 'touts entikre t sa proie attachke; can deprive lake and hill of Wordsworth's memory, and the love which once they knew."

Mr. Palmer claims, and evidently with justice, that his " attempt has been sincere." He knows a great deal about the outward aspect of the Lake Country; he has walked everywhere, boated. everywhere; has been a companion of the shepherds in their hardships on the mountains; knows the animals, fishes, and birds of the district as few other men do. Writing of the little-known Crummock Water, he has a good deal to tell of the rare birds, on their way to extinction, or to memory in a world of museums

"The wild moorland above the lake is one of the few remaining English breeding-places of the dotterel The nest is increasingly rare: for collectors will give long prices for a com- plete clutch of eggs, and the native shoots the bird on sight, for no more successful lure for trout exists than a fly made from the

under-wing of a dotterel Other summer birds of the mountains are the ring-ouzel, a white-throated blackbird, the peregrine, the kestrel, and the sparrow-hawk. The bittern no longer booms in the upper glens or by the lake; hen-harriers and their kindred are also gone. But the wailing of the curlew still rings in our ears, the plover is never at rest, and the sinister dowk ' or carrion-crow gorges on every dead carcase on the uplands. Of lesser birds, by every rill you see the pretty dipper in his uniform of brown and white, and less often tho bright metallic sheen of the kingfisher. Winter brings the fieldfare and redwing to tho mountain valleys, with now and then a flock of snow-buntings. On the lake, too, come the pochard and the golden-eyed ducks from the frozen north, with rarer species, such as the sheldrake, the widgeon, and the shoveller."

All this, with many other like pages, is valuable to the naturalist, and we hope that no readers will pass carelessly over the page where Mr. Palmer earnestly commends to the British public the preservation of Gowbarrow. The "National Trust for the Preservation of Places of Natural Beauty" is doing its best to buy Gowbarrow, as it bought Brandelhow. It saved something for Derwentwater ; it is now trying to save Ullswater.

" Twelve thousand pomade are needed. Rouse, ye who would save a hallowed spot for the unspoiled benefit of posterity." Thus we leave Mr. Palmer, really earning the gratitude of his countrymen, for here the daffodils danced, as he does not forget to remind us. But alas ! what does that matter to the millions who sneer at Wordsworth P

RECENT VERSE.*

PASSION and a new note are not so common in modern verse that we can afford to neglect them because of some surface imperfections of style. Our singers tend to be desperately correct, accomplished, and tuneful; it is only on reflection that we remember that their accomplishments failed to move us, because they had nothing to say. Whatever faults there are in Miss May Doney'e volume, triteness is not one of them. Scarcely one of these short songs but is surcharged with emotion, so that the verse halts and staggers under it. In a recent review of "Laurence Hope's" last poems we had occasion to note in them the attitude of the Oriental woman in her preoccupation with love and children. Miss Doney, though the accent of her verse is wholly Western, has a similar preoccupation, as witness the first two pieces, "The Slave" and "Body o' Breath." These curious, wild, irregular poems, tinged with false rhetoric and terribly cumbered with capital letters, are lit fitfully also with gleams • (1) Sony of the Red. By Way Doney. London : Nothuen and Co. rft. ed. not. —(1) The Golden Threshold. By &mita; Naidu. London : W. Heinemann. (Om 13d.J—(3) The Rainbow and the Bose. By E. Nesbit. London: Longmont; and Co. [le.] — (4) Pro Patric, and other Poems. By B. Paul Neuman. London Brown, Longhorn, and Co. [Os. net.]—(5) Verses, Wise or Otherwise. B Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler ..iHerst. Folldn). London: Cassell and Co. lies. Corseted Sonnets of d Hijiin. London: Henry Frowde. Os. ed. net.]—(7) Poems. By Fos Wheeler. London: Enda Mathew. 5s. net.]—(1) Studies in Rhyme and Rhythm. By Charles F. Clirrindro S. Boots publlobert ps. ed. set]—(p Euphoroare., a Collechr frresesTiovenca'fbPondo'n '[37,1d.117.1u: Feral or). WA Thyme : a Tale for Children ;older Ninety. By ayes. Landon W. Blackwood and Bona. [5s. net.]

"The wild moorland above the lake is one of the few remaining