JOHN STUART MILL ON SOCIAL FREEDOM. THE Oxford and Cambridge Review has, as the distinction of its first number, an essay by John Stuart Mill on Social Freedom, or the necessary limits of individual freedom arising out of the conditions of our social life, which has never before been published. The manuscript was left among certain other effects in the house at which its author died at Avignon. The writer distinguishes two kinds of freedom, "the freedom to do what we wish to do, and the freedom to do what we do not wish to do." In the former class there are as many kinds of freedom as there are human beings in the world. The writer then overhauls the individualist theory of freedom, according to which

a state of perfect and universal freedom may be attained by merely assigning to each individual his own sphere of activity, by securing to him free and unimpeded action within this sphere, and by strictly and absolutely limiting his activity to this sphere. Every man will be perfectly free who has his sphere of action unencroached upon by others.

THE HIGHEST FREEDOM.

The writer has little difficulty in pointing out that a sphere of activity where a man was both unmolested and unaided would yield a freedom limited in most cases to the freedom to starve. By far the greater number of human desires are such as can only be satisfied by social relation, or relation between fellowbeings. The writer then approaches the idea from the side of comparative freedom or unfreedom. The man who acts from the higher motive is more free than the man who is prompted by the lower :

That man seems to me to act with freedom who yields to the impulse of the highest motive which demands his obedience, or which presents itself to his consciousness, at the moment of determination.

Unless there can be such gradation of human motives in a moral scale, the writer thinks there can be no science of ethics. He would place the animal appetites at the lowest extremity of human motives.

THE THRALLS OF MRS. GRUNDY.

The writer then proceeds with a very interesting scrutiny of human actions, in which we are rendered more or less unfree. It is not the force of judicial coercion which most limits our freedom. On the contrary, we are, though he does not use the phrase, thralls to Mrs. Grundy. He says :—

There is a vast, vague, mysterious authority which casts its shadow over all human affairs, and which governs men's actions with a far more stringent rule than that exercised by the civil governor-the authority of Conventionalism or Conventional Propriety. There is a strange and vague dread of doing what no one else ever does, of being altogether singular, which far more frequently restrains men.

The mordant humour in which the essay is written appears from the last paragraph :--

Whatever sense of unfreedom a man may experience in paying assessed taxes or parish rates, in filling up a census paper, or

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even in putting in an appearance to a writ of summons, I am quite sure that a man will often feel quite as oppressive a sense of unfreedom in "cutting" a shabby relative for fear of his genteel" neighbour, in appearing at a social gathering which is wholly devoid of cordiality or friendly warmth, and which comprises only persons disagreeable to him, in attending a religious service which is altogether wearisome to him, in complimenting a lady upon her musical performance, or in listening to the conversation of a noted bore.

ROYALTY AND HOME RULE.

A WRITER entered on the list of contents as Robert White, but who signs himself in the body of the magazine only as "A Student of Public Affairs," indulges in a very bitter attack on Liberal government and policy in the Fortnightly Review. He declares that Ministers do not mean business. Lord Rosebery's representatives in the Cabinet have had their way. He speaks scornfully of an Education Bill that did not satisfy the Nonconformists, and a Devolution Bill that did not secure the support of the Irish. But he insists that Ministers are not sincere. The management of Government business has been from first to last "an affair of blunder and muddle." The most important section of the article is that in which the writer dares to say what convention generally demands should be left unsaid.

He speaks of the operation in the background of Irish affairs, "of forces not easy to determine"; he remarks on the silence of the Conservative Party on the question of Home Rule; on the inexplicable reason which has led to the work of the Unionist Association being discouraged in influential quarters. He goes on to say :—

Concurrently with this policy it has been reported in Ireland, and is there universally believed by those whom it would be irony any longer to describe as loyalists, that a late LordLieutenant and a late Chief Secretary received instructions from "the highest quarters to do all that might be possible to settle Ireland and its affairs upon a basis agreeable to the Roman hierarchy there-in a word, Ireland was to be pacified and governed through the medium of the Catholic priests. pretend to no further knowledge than is here expressed. The report to which I am referring has been accepted with no misgivings as to its truth by those in Ireland who are favourable to the English connection. There is no wild talk of kicking the Crown into the Boyne. Language of that kind is not used when men are really serious. The republican spirit has never since 1798 quite died out in Ulster, and it would not be at all startling if futile attempts to evoke loyalty in quarters where it can never thrive by efforts at "personal" government in Ireland only succeeded in calling into active existence a dour republicanism in Presbyterian Ulster.

He frankly declares that, in his opinion, the story accepted by the Anglo-Protestants of Ireland is well founded:

In connection with it, and with the failure of the Devolution Bill, their Majesties' somewhat sudden decision to visit Ireland immediately is worthy of note. Not without significance in the same connection is the change in the public spirit of the country with regard to foreign relations. In the late reign we English, who pride ourselves on our staid Conservatism, were proPrussian and pro-German, and Lord Salisbury, looking South, saw only decaying nations. We are now as strongly pro-Latin, and are invited to look across the Channel and the Bay of Biscay for our ideals.

THE GOSPEL OF RECREATION.

BY CANON BARNETT.,

CANON BARNETT, who has already written on the subject of the education of the working-man, writes on an equally important subject, the Recreation of the People, in the July Cornhill.

LIFE AND LEISURE OF THE PEOPLE. He wishes some Charles Booth would undertake an inquiry into the life and leisure of the people, to put alongside that into their life and work, for he says the people's use of leisure is a signpost showing whether the course of the nation is towards extinction in ignorance and self-indulgence or towards greater brightness in the revelation of character and the service of mankind. The country is being lost or saved in its play, and the use of holidays needs as much consideration as the use of workdays.

Canon Barnett looks closer at a few popular forms of amusement. He notes the sight of the beach at seaside resorts, with the mass of people brightly coloured and loudly talking; the nigger singers and buffoons; the lavish expenditure on food; the overridden beasts, etc.-everything so vulgar, so empty of interest, and altogether unworthy the expenditure of money earned by hard work. He considers the music-halls, to which there are some seventy million admissions in London in a year. And what are the attractions in the football fields or the racecourses? Would the people be present but for the excitement of gambling?

WHAT RECREATION SHOULD INVOLVE.

The right to shorter hours having been admitted, the provision of amusement, but not the establishment of healthy recreation, has become a great business. The knowledge of what constitutes recreation is not easy to teach, but Canon Barnett thinks it should involve some excitement, some strengthening of the less-used fibres of the mind or body, and the activity of the imagination. He mentions games well-played, music, travel, reading, a good play, and other forms of recreation which call out activity, leaving the use of the imagination to be considered last. This form of recreation, says Canon Barnett, depends on what a man is, and not upon what a man has. People must

learn to amuse themselves, their recreation must come from the use of their own faculties of heart and mind, their pleasure must come from within. The great need is to fit the people for recreation, to teach them how to enjoy their being.

EMPTY HOLIDAYS A BURDEN.

Various suggestions are offered. First of all, the notion that a holiday means a vacation or an empty time needs to be dispelled. To close the school and let the children have no lessons, or to enact an eight hours' day and leave the people without resources, is. not enough. An empty holiday is a burden to a child, and the idea that, given leisure, the people will find recreation, is not justified. Another illusion to be got rid of is that amusement should call forth no effort on the part of those to be amused. It is not enough to give leisure and provide amusement.

TEACHING PEOPLE TO PLAY.

Teachers and parents might guide the children, and the school buildings and playgrounds should be more at the children's service. Teachers of games and teachers who would conduct small parties to places of interest, organise country walks, etc., would help the children to use new faculties and develop new tastes. Parents are counselled to do more in planning holidays for their children; but in addition to parents and teachers a host of men and women can be found to plan excursions and country holidays--small parties in close companionship. Habits of singing might be developed. It is suggested, too, that employers might substitute holidays of weeks for holidays of days, and so encourage the workpeople to plan their reasonable

use.

Boys and other Wild Pests.

Black

IN the Girl's Realm appears an article, prettily illustrated, on a wild garden, and the flowers to grow in it. A corner of an ordinary garden might be utilised for a beginning and in default of a larger space. Another paper enumerates the living creatures which destroy the telegraph poles and cables. bears, in Maine, have been known to climb up the posts and break off the insulators, presumably thinking them something eatable. A Norwegian woodpecker, hearing the buzzing sound of the wires, imagines a nest of insects to be within the pole, and sets to work pecking holes in it accordingly; while a Californian woodpecker makes holes in the top of the poles and fills them with acorns for a rainy day. The American bison uses the poles as rubbing-posts, and is apt to rub them over altogether. Elephants pull them up, apparently for the sheer pleasure of doing so. The saw-fish is thought to have done much damage to submarine cables; and whales have certainly become entangled in them more than once. But after all, as the writer says, small boys are the most universally destructive pests as far as telegraph poles are concerned.

THE STORY OF INDIARUBBER.

IN the American Review of Reviews Mr. William B. Ivins gives a very interesting account of the discovery, sources, supplies and uses of indiarubber. Columbus first had his attention attracted to the peculiar qualities of the gum. It is first mentioned in a "Universal History of the Indies," published in Madrid in 1536. A little later a Jesuit, Father Charlevoix, called attention to the bouncing qualities of the ball made of it. The word " gum was first used by Tordesillas in speaking of the balls used by the Haitians, which they call "gumana." In 1736 La Condamine, sent out by the Paris Academy, despatched home a piece of what he called caoutchouc," which he said came out a white, milk-like fluid from the cut bark of the "hevé" tree. spoke of its elastic, resinous and waterproof qualities. Its use for syringes has given it the name in Brazil of "seringua." The Englishman Priestley, in 1770, found that the material was good for rubbing out pencil marks, whence it has ever since been known in England as indiarubber.

THE RUBBER LANDS.

He

Some three or four hundred shrubs, herbs, and trees have been found yielding a milky latex with the properties of rubber. These plants are found in the tropical zone, which is the true rubber belt. The chief sources at present are the Amazon Valley and the Congo. Ceylon and the Straits Settlements will probably supply great quantities in future. In 1875 the Kew Gardens. authorities sent Mr. Cross to Central America to study the rubber plants with a view to artificial cultivation in India. At the present time many millions of trees have been planted in India, and a new industry is growing up which bids fair to be one of the most profitable in the world. Rubber is a white vegetable latex, that when ground from the plant looks like milk. "In fact, it looks precisely like the milk of the milkweed, which is allied to the rubber-yielding herbs." (One wonders whether in the familiar and despised milkweed there may not be potencies of a rubber supply that will make it one of the most precious of our natural possessions.) Rubber belongs to the class of solids known to chemistry as colloids, but chemists are in complete ignorance of the real nature of the colloidal state. It is a carbo-hydrate, which can be expressed by the symbol C10 H16. There is a great variety in the long list of so-called rubbers, the selecting and compounding of which forms a very intricate business.

A PRIME NECESSITY OF LIFE.

Charles MacIntosh succeeded in 1833 in dissolving rubber in benzine, which was the beginning of the industry of waterproof clothing. In 1839 Charles Goodyear, of New York, discovered that by combining rubber and sulphur in proper quantities the product would not break at a low temperature and would not become sticky at a high one. This is the process known as vulcanisation. At that time practi

We are using quite one-half of the world's product, and rubber may now be regarded as a prime necessary of life, and one of the things which enters as closely as anything else into the satisfactory solution of the tremendous problems of transportation and communication. Without it the air-brake would be an impossibility, and without it it would be impossible to insulate the wires which are used in all the departments of electrical conduction. To say this is enough to show how essential to industrial progress rubber has become. The world might get on without it for shoes and clothing, if the worst were to come to the worst, but for the purposes of transportation under progressive conditions on the railway train and on the automobile, for purposes of insulation for electrical communication and lighting, and for the purposes to which it is put by the medical and surgical professions, rubber is an absolute essential for which there is no substitute.

EVERY TON COSTS A HUMAN LIFE.

The market value of the world's total production of crude rubber is about sixteen millions sterling. Its weight is about 125 million pounds. The world's great rubber markets for distribution to consumers are New York, Liverpool, London, Antwerp, Hamburg, Lisbon, and Havre. As yet cultivated rubber has so far yielded not more than one hundred tons in the year. Too frequently the trees of the natural state are killed. The labour problem is the crucial one, both in the great Amazon region and the Congo Free State. No one can live and work in these river bottoms except a native :

The mortality in the State of Amazonas, in Brazil, for example, corresponds with almost diabolical exactness to the number of tons of rubber produced, so that it is said that every ton of Brazilian rubber costs a human life, and although there are no such atrocities in Brazil as have been charged against the Congo, it is nevertheless true that the labourers who are brought into the rubber fields from the coast do not average more than three years of life, and are, if not in law, at least in fact, subjected to hardships never known or endured by the slaves in the United States, or even by the slaves in the coffee countries of Brazil. The greed of man as expressed in terms of rubber has proved itself almost fiendish, and the requirement for this necessary of life probably holds more men to-day in abject and irremediable slavery than any other field in the world's work.

In the United States, with the exception of one large concern in Boston, the entire rubber boot, shoe, and clothing industry of the United States is absorbed by one company, the United States Rubber Company. It is interesting to note that rubber can be used up again. In the United States alone nearly fifty million. pounds annually consists of reclaimed material.

A SPECIAL feature of Poet Lore, published quarterly at 194, Boylston Street, Boston, Mass., is the publication in each number of a translation in its entirety of an important foreign play. The spring number, for instance, gives us Gabriele d' Annunzio's "The Daughter of Jorio," the English version being the work of Charlotte Porter, Pietro Isola, and Alice Henry. To convey the spirit and vitality of the play, as a whole, has been the master-aim of the translation, and as a means towards this end the translators have endeavoured to reproduce the artistic impression while adhering with fidelity to the text.

THE COST OF CLOTHING A MAN OF FASHION. THE FOOLISH EXTRAVAGANCE OF A FOP. THE interesting article on the cost of dressing a woman of fashion, which appeared in last month's Pall Mall Magazine, is followed up in the July issue by an equally startling paper, also by Susan Carpenter,

on

The Expenses of a Man of Fashion."

It would be easy to find excuses for the expenditure of even the £2,000 a year which in the last issue of the magazine was set down as the amount which a fashionable lady often spends upon dress; for if she be in a position to afford such extravagance, she does at any rate carry about with her a colour, a charm, and a grace which would be missed by many of those who are in less fortunate circumstances. But what in the world can be said for a society man in the smart set who spends £2,000 or more on his dress and personal adornment! Who will dare to say that the finished article in this case is worth the money?

Susan Carpenter truly says that "a reputation for extravagant dressing, instead of rendering a man an object of envy to his fellows, has the effect of making him rather ridiculous," and for this reason we incline to the belief that such extravagance in dress is less common among men than it is among women, for in the latter case the effect is generally the reverse.

sents birthday and wedding presents, mostly to ladies. But it is a shock to be told in the next paragraph that "the annual corset bill of many a smart man is much larger than that of an average smart woman," and that "a leading corsetière who supplies most of them puts down a good customer's bill at £150." The corsetière who supplied this information is loud in praise of her male clientèle, as well she may be if they are such good customers as we are asked to believe. Military men form the majority of such customers, and it takes three months of coaxing before a man's figure is what it is expected to be.

For jewellery and incidentals £100 is allowed; a horse during the season costs £40; and a man may spend as much as a woman-say, £150-on beautification (manicures, chiropodists, Turkish baths, shaving, shampooing, etc.); £40 or £50 on cigars ; and about 5 an evening in entertaining lady and other friends at the restaurant and the theatre. Adding to this numerous tips, the writer gives a grand total of £2,265, concluding with the obvious remark that "the fashionable man cannot throw a stone at the fashionable woman as regards extravagance or vanity."

WIFE AND HUSBAND.

MISS CONSTANCE SMEDLEY contributes to the Fortnightly an interesting study on the perennial problem, the relations of husband and wife, under the title of "The Hedda Gabler of To-day." The writer laments that the man fixes his ideal of wifehood on any woman whom he fancies, and expects the wife to live up to that ideal, however incongruous her temperament and disposition may be; while he never for a moment thinks of striving to discover and live up to his wife's ideal of husbandhood. The wife philoso

on her dresses and mantles.

But whereas a lady may spend £150 on millinery, the man's account with his hatter is stated as £32. In the hosiery department, however, the smart man is said to run riot.

The appalling total is £768. For

this he gets sixty undervests, seventy-two suits of underwear, fifty-two shirts, ninety-two pairs of gloves, 120 handkerchiefs, 126 ties, eighteen scarves, eighty-four pairs of socks, seven dressing-gowns, besides collars, braces, etc. But a comparison of the prices quoted in this list to bring the total up to £768, with the highest prices of such goods in, say, the Army and Navy Stores catalogue, leads to the belief that a very large margin has been allowed for the long credit which, no doubt, has to be given to fashionable customers. (The lady's expenditure in gloves, sunshades, and lingerie was given last month as about £550.)

The cost of his motor outfit (including accessories and the chauffeur's wages and livery) is given as £303 145. 6d. ; and the bootmaker's bill is £109 for about thirty pair of boots and a dozen boot trees. The lady's outfit in this department was given as £115. The gentleman apparently spends £148 on umbrellas and sticks, but £100 of this amount repre

hood, realising that it doesn't fit. The man is less accommodating. The writer proceeds :

The fact is, all men, wed or unwed, are universally accorded full range of the field of impersonal interests, however uninterested their wives may be in their hobbies or careers, lack of interest being indeed counted as a fault in the wife; and to restrain such energies or turn them aside on account of the wife's indifference or aversion to such interests would be held unmanly and weak-minded in the extreme. Abandonment of a career on account of the wife's counter-tastes would be considered a pity; a wife's abandonment of hobbies or pursuits disliked by the husband would be termed devotion. Husbands, in short, are granted individuality, and a possessive ideal of husbandhood would suppress his individuality. So the young wife's first ideal of husbandhood crumples cobwebwise and vanishes, and she accepts the natural manhood of her husband with a more or less degree of content, according to her temperament, but always with a certain amount of resignation.

The way out of this impasse is held by the writer to lie in the outlet that is opening for woman's energy in the working world, out of the half-lights and perfumed confines of her drawing-room. There she learns discipline and begins to understand without despising the work of man. And in this better understanding of her fellows, life becomes better for the Hedda Gabler of to-day.

THE MIDINETTES OF PARIS. THERE is a very interesting and sympathetic article by Mrs. Van Voorst in the Pall Mall Magazine for July on "The Girl Who Makes Our Paris Gowns," that is the girl who is known in Paris as the midinette:

That part of the dress-making and hat-trimming trade about which the English woman shopping in Paris knows the least, is the life, either in its pleasures or its struggles, of the little working girl, the girl who embroiders one gown, the girl who stitches pearls and sequins on another, the girl who makes the wonderful artificial flowers, the girl who curls and prepares the feathers and plumes.

Four-fifths of all the working girls in Paris are needlewomen, or ouvrières de l'aiguille. They are distributed in the various ateliers where are created the gowns, hats, lingerie, corsets, shoes which make Paris famous as a centre of fashion. The remaining fifth of the group work upon feathers, flowers, passementerie, and other accessories which, though made necessarily by hand, are not needlework.

The nickname given to this young girl labourer is suggestive of the life she leads: she is called the midinette-the little "noon-girl." From twelve to one o'clock she is granted the hour of freedom which counts for her to the extent of submerging in forgetfulness the ten other working hours of the day. As the fated hour strikes its twelve successive strokes the whole region about the Rue de le Paix, the Avenue de l'Opéra, Rues St. Augustin, du Caire, du Sentier, St. Denis, and Montmartre become thronged with the midinettes. Dressed in simple black frocks, relieved by a bow of coloured ribbon or a line of white at the throat-it is not upon such modest toilettes that they count to give them their little triumphant air. All their science de femmes in matters of mode is applied to the skilful arranging of their hair. They are coiffées to perfection, and under this natural crown, which takes the place of a hat, there is a face, wan sometimes, pale and marked too clearly by the hand of toil, but lighted always by a smile.

And yet it appears that the gay little midinette often enough has to eat and drink and clothe herself on a wage of £2 a month. The year's expenses of one little seamstress, whose total income for a year was only £24, are given by Mrs. Van Voorst in this pitiful little account :

that the labourer in America makes double what he does in France, and spends only a fraction more. She says:

During the months I worked myself in the various American factories and ateliers, seeking to learn more of the working girl's condition by sharing completely her work, her life, her pleasures, I was never, even at the outset, offered less than three shillings a day. As for board, lodging, heat, light, and washing I never paid more than twelve shillings a week, so I had, from the start, a balance of six shillings a week for clothes, "pin-money," pleasure, and savings.

But although the American working girl is well off, as far as material conditions are concerned, she is not as truly happy as the French working girl. The American girl, as fast as she earns it, spends her money, and not on others, but on herself." And, as a result of this peculiar intensity of desire for wealth and longing for independence, the American girl in the working midst, as in the worldly circles, is restless and dissatisfied." Whereas with her sisters in France it is far otherwise.

COURTSHIP AMONG ANIMALS.

SOME Curious instances of the etiquette of courtship among animals are noted by Mr. Percy Collins in the June Treasury. Almost every species of animals, he writes, has its peculiar etiquette of love-making. Such timid creatures as the hare, the squirrel, the mole, and the beaver engage in desperate conflicts during the season of love, and the bigger animals, such as the deer and others equipped with formidable horns or tusks, mark the period of courtship by sanguinary conflicts. But there are exceptions to this rule of love-warfare among the mammals. Certain lady monkeys, for instance, are attracted by any tendency to grow side-whiskers on the part of their suitors. The male mandrill, with his colours at their brightest at the approach of the breeding season, is a brilliant dandy.

Birds are particularly punctilious in all points connected with the etiquette of love-making. The victor must display his charms before the hen-bird will condescend to glance in his direction. The female of the cassowary pays court to the male, and leaves him to incubate the eggs and care for the young chicks.

The amorous stickleback commences by building a nest for his fair lady, and from its neighbourhood he drives away all intruders. Then the female comes to survey the home, and the male is transported with delight. When a rival appears on the scene a pitched battle ensues. In the case of insects courtship is a recognised institution. The male cicadas are thought to sing in rivalry, and their shrill notes charm the females. A male spider has been observed to execute a love-dance before the female.

Pearson's opening feats in colour are pictures for children. Another paper contains more or less reticent sketches of the beautiful women of the Second Empire.