The most notable article in the Edinburgh Review is that
entitled " The Return to Protection," in which the present position of the Fiscal controversy is admirably described. The writer shows that Mr. Chamberlain's methods are not new, but identical with Mr. Gladstone's on the Home-rule Bill. " We shall hear that Retaliators and Tariff Reformers are the true Free Traders, just as we were told eighteen years ago that Mr. Gladstone and his followers were the true Unionists." At first the country was taken aback; the Chamberlain case was skilfully put before it at once, but it took a little time to restate the Free- trade position, which most people had accepted without question. But a year's familiarity with the controversy has shown "how old and threadbare are the plausibilities which were at first listened to as the financial discoveries of a statesman who was up to date.."' The writer does full justice to the Imperial side of the Protectionist case, and it is largely on Imperial grounds that he rejects it.- "The contentment and prosperity of the people of these islands are elements of great importance in the prosperity and strength of the Empire." He is convinced that Protection has suffered a complete argumentative reverse, and that there is small chance of its success. " It is one thing to capture a caucus ; quite another thing to convince a nation." We are glad to see that Professor Smart's admirable recent work is praised as it deserves. "Matthew Arnold and Insularity" is a clever study of Arnold in his relation to foreign modes of thought. The writer finds him a man of ideals rather than of ideas, and many of his best ideas were assimilated from foreign sources, and were rather the offspring of esprit than of geist, geist ' being, as Goethe defined it, esprit with time in addi- tion. In considering Arnold's social philosophy, he points out that many of his forecasts have not been fulfilled, and that society has developed on lines which make much of his criticism irrelevant. " The fact is," he concludes, " that Arnold's message is one for individuals and not, as he insisted, for communities." Though there is too much straining after epi- gram,, and in consequence occasional obscurity, it is a fresh and valuable paper. An instructive study of " France in Africa" gives a very favourable account of modern French methods of colonising. The difference is so radical between the new and the old methods that "the verdict that the French were 'no colonisers,' which grew out of the old system, may not im- probably have to be reversed in face of the new." We would mention also an interesting paper on "The History of Magic during the Christian Era" ; and an article on that remarkable poet-administrator, Sir John Davis.
We have already commented on the most striking article in the new Quarterly, the character-study of the Czar. Another publieist article, but of a very different kind, is the paper called " India under Lord Curzon," which attempts to give a succinct account of the chief achievements of Lord Curzon's viceroyalty. On the North-Western Frontier his aim has been to provide tribal Militia as far as possible as frontier guards, and to secure the friendship and loyalty of the Amin "The task of the Government of India is not one of forming a policy ; that has long ago been settled beyond all possibility of change. To-day the task is one of overcoming suspicion, of inducing co-operation, of making fertile an alliance which has long been sterilised by. jealousy and mistrust." In Persia and Tibet Lord Curzon's policy has been to come to a clear understanding with Russia, to delimit "spheres of influence," and to insist that Russia abides by them. The writer deals at length with the most interesting question of the recent University reform, which met with so much opposition in the native Press, and with the new measures taken to provide careers for Indian Princes. He thinks that Lord Curzon has been especially successful in securing the loyal co- operation of protected chiefs. " Sixty-six chiefs attended the Durbar of 1877. One hundred and two chiefs attended the Durbar of 1903. In 1877 they attended as spectators of an Imperial pageant. In 1903 they attended as partici- pators in an Imperial rite." The general comment on Lord Curzon's term of office is that " there has never been a Viceroy more generally respected by the whole community, or more thoroughly unpopular with so many particular sects." Professor Ray Lankester contributes an interesting account of the " Sleeping Sickness," that terrible scourge of West and Central, Africa, the source of which scientists have at last located. The microbe or, trypanosome is probably carried by the West Coast tsetze-fly, so that the sleeping-sickness becomes a kind of human tsetze-fly disease. " It is not at all improbable that the trypanosome undergoes some kind of multiplication and change of form when sucked into the tsetze-fly, as happens in the case of the malarial parasite when swallowed by the Anopheles gnat." Professor Lankester thinks that white people have no special immunity from the disease, but that the comparative scarcity of its occurrence among them is due to their sensitive- ness to the mere touch of a fly, and the consequent precautions that are taken. Among other papers, we would mention an amusing and appreciative review of Sir Conan Doyle's novels, and a study of Herbert Spencer by Professor Pringle-Pattison, which seems to us the most judicious estimate wo have read of that philosopher's work and position. Altogether, it is an ex- ceptionally strong and interesting number.
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