A Spectator's Notebook
THE tragedy of William Graham's premature death is not so much that of unfulfilled promise ; rather we deplore the loss to the commonwealth of a public servant of proved capacity. I had the privilege of knowing him from his early days, and for .twenty years there was no surprise to be looked for in him. His re- markable powers came soon to maturity. He achieved a brilliant acadeMic record in the face of many difficulties ;• and had he been Content with a scholar's life, he might havd become a polymath on the grand scale, for I have never known a mind so quick in mastering a subject, or a. memory so exact and capacious. But he was one of those people who are happy only in the service of the State. He had none of the fire and imagination of his native Border, but he had all the traditional Scottish lucidity and acumen, and his speeches were models of exposition. He cherished many ideals, but he had his feet firm on the ground, and his mind was never closed. As a leader he had perhaps too much of the old-fashioned " dominie " in his manner, but as a counsellor he would have been invaluable to his party and to the. ition.
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This is the season of educational conferences, when those engaged in the teaching of youth make gallant efforts to discover the faith that is in them. The public schools come in for most of the criticism, but the ancient Universities do not altogether escape. I notice with interest a proposal in the Press to amend Classical Greats at Oxford by adding science, particularly mathematics. On general grounds there can be no objection. Mathe- matics are a part of literae, lLr[reaalorPB, if regarded in the spirit of the old Cambridge toast, " God bless the higher mathematics and may they never be of the slightest use to anybody." In the dark ages when I was an undergraduate, Greats was the chief school without any rival. To-day it has many competitors, not all of them " soft options." Its weak point is that history and philosophy are regarded less as sciences in themselves than as studies cohering round certain texts. A man may get a First and know little or nothing about modern developments in logic and meta- physics ; one learned philosopher got a gamma minus in his -logic paper from an examiner who, a stiff Aristo- telian, thought he was writing nonsense. The new schOol of Modem Greats endeavours to correct this drawback. But I hope that Classical Greats will never lose its appeal. It is more important from the point of view of education to read yourself into the mind of a great man than to have a smattering of history and philosophy at large. Its strength lies in its intensive study of one or two immortal hooks. Arc there any greater texts than Thueydides in the one subject, or Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Ethics in the other ?
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The other day I ease a disquieting sight at the Law Courts—not a " banker's clerk descending from a 'bus," but a Judge of the High Court. In the old days it was etiquette for judges to drive down to their work in a neat brougham. There is nothing against the new judical taste in transport except the reason for it—the extreme meagreness of their pay, to which Sir William Holds- worth haS very properly been calling attention.: When the salary of a puisne -judge was originally fixed it was worth the eqnivalent of at least £10,000 to-day. Aetually• • the nominal :ONO a year is reduced by taxation and recent cuts- to something under £2,500. That is scarcely enough for a judge to support his dignity on, and it is certainly not enough to attract the best men.: It is never wise to underpay. servants of the State, least of all the Judiciary, who are estopped from all other ways of earning moneyvf and whose pride is their independence. The consequence> is that it is getting harder every year to get good 'men for the Bench. Once a judge's position offered :leisure; freedom, dignity, and reasonable comfort. But to. the barrister in good practice to-day the firstthree hleSsings may seem to be dearly bought at the price of penury.;
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The Conference at Liverpool, last week, ofthe under,. graduate Conservative Associations shed an interesting light upon the point of view of the young men and women now at the Universities. It seems to be predominately left-centre. The delegates very properly reserved the- right occasionally to fling their heels, as when they passed by a large majority a resolution to deport Undesirable Irish immigrants from our shores. But in general the motions were sober and, in a true sense, liberal, and they were uncommonly well debated.. The curious fact was that the Scottish and the newer English Universities showed themselves more inclined- to orthodox Conserv- atism, while Oxford and Cambridge were boldly empirical: This may be explained either on the ground that the former are nearer the realities of life; or that the latter are so assured of their faith that they can 'afford to play about with it, just as in the ages of faith the devout could he ribald about sacred things. But the young Tory at the older English Universities has always been a daring innovator. I remember that the premier Oxford club, whose meetings began with the toast of Church and State, within the same month unanimously nationalized the land of England and disestablished the Church.
* * * * The French Exhibition comes opportunely at a time when French psychology is a matter to us of almost painful interest, since the soul of France is in her art almost more than in her literature. For the first char- acteristic of French painting is its Frenchness—its seriousness, its frugality, its orderliness; its certainty of purpose. The exhibition may help us to some under- standing of a people with whom we have been linked fot a hundred years but whom we have never understood, though they took possession of our soil at Hastings and we retaliated at Agincourt. How many, I wonder, of those who are visiting Burlington House realize that we possess a wonderful permanent gallery of one school of French art—the Bouchers and I'ragonards and Watteaus in Manchester Square ?
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The ancient and honoured sport of falconry has almost, died out in Britain, though it still flourishes in Eastern Europe—so far as anything can be said to flourish there— and; of course, in India. But it looks to be in a fair way of reviving, perhaps because of the popular taste -fot pageants. At any rate, you may meet to-day yaurig men carrying ruffled and angry birds for trial flightS iii Opeit places. A slight association with a peregrine or a goshawk, inspires an uneasy respect, for their tempers seem. to me capricious and their natures cold and unsentimental; The gentleman of the middle ages who, clad in cumbrous garments and mounted on an unwieldy horse, 'carried his tiercel on his bare wrist (as depicted by contemporary' artists), must have been a bold man, or else he lied birdi
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