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which cannot be paralleled in democratic France. It has long practised methods of social reform and organization for the benefit of the working classes, which England is only beginning to imitate. Its municipal institutions are in many respects a model which Liberals elsewhere might copy. And, finally, he might have added (if we may complete his argument for him) it is the German Reichstag, elected by universal suffrage, and not the Prussian Diet, which has given, by its food taxes and its Agrarian Tariff, the supreme example of class selfishness. Whatever criticisms .one may lavish on the work of the Prussian Diet, it does not always show the crude spirit of class egoism which one would expect from its composition. The claim that the Bureaucracy is in some sense above party and class is not so wholly preposterous as one might suppose. is a system of defence for a class ascendency, but at least it is an intelligent and benevolent system. It educates the voters whom it fears. It saves them from the worst phases of dependence and want. It cultivates in their minds, most dangerous boldness of all, a habit of expecting much from a State machinery which they desire to capture in the hope of obtaining more. The French or English workman, armed with the power of the ballot, has but a faint conception of the boons which he might win by using it. The Prussian workman is tantalized by realizing to the full the possibilities of State action which he aspires in vain to guide. A bureaucracy which has done these things may claim to be at once bold and, within limits, disinterested. And for a reason which Herr von Bethmann Hollweg carefully refrained from stating, it is possible for a Bureaucracy, inspired by the ideal of the philosopher-official, to count on its supremacy over a Diet which would

in any other country speak only for the manufacturer and the squire. The feat of managing it is rendered possible by the simple fact that of the deputies, and of the voters in the two higher classes, an immense proportion are themselves officials. A rigid discipline controls, within certain limits, their public votes, alike in the Diet and at the polls. The bureaucracy must, indeed, make terms with the plutocracy. But it is never its mere servant. It controls, from the deputies in the Diet anxious for promotion and patronage, to the postmen and teachers in the constituencies, a regimented phalanx which makes it, in its own right, a power.

The struggle for equal and secret voting in Prussia raises an almost insoluble problem in political mechanics. If it is to be conceded of free will it presupposes not merely the voluntary abdication of a class, but an act of abnegation by parties. When the franchise was gradually extended in our own country, not even a Labor Party existed. But in Prussia, Social Democracy is in numbers, in discipline, and in unity, incomparably the strongest popular force in the country. Liberals and Tories among ourselves hoped by turns to profit politically from reform. But not even the so-called "Radicals" can have anything to gain by it in Prussia. The Clericals desire a secret ballot; the National Liberals and the Radicals have much to gain from a redistribution of seats. only the Socialists effectively and sincerely want to abolish the ascendency of property. A successful recourse to force is not thinkable; the Bristol riots could not be imitated in Berlin. There remains only the supreme weapon whose edge the Socialists have been fingering doubtfully for years-the general strike. It will be tried sooner or later, not so much because it is a hopeful method, as because it is so clearly the

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only method of intimidating a bureaucracy which seems to occupy an impregnable position. The end will not come easily, and that chiefly for the reason that here is more at stake than the internal government of Prussia. The democratization of Prussia, as Herr von Bethmann Hollweg avowed in this singular piece of thinking aloud, would involve the democratization of the Empire. The fall of bureaucracy there would mean the adoption of responsi

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ble Parliamentary government in the Empire itself. The tariff would be in the melting-pot; the Navy Act would cease to be sacrosanct; the policy of the world's greatest military State would be exposed to the dictation of a party which is frankly anti-militarist. A bureaucracy which is at once intelligent, benevolent, and firm, dies hard. But it has made any half-way house untenable. The change will come, and with it a new Germany and a new Europe.

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The Duke of Norfolk has been making the flesh of the men of Norwich creep with talk of a great Power preparing for a great crisis in the near future, and how a time is coming, and we must all be prepared. How similar are the minds of most dissimilar men! At the same time, the anti-foreign party in China are placarding the walls with notices that the Powers are plotting the partition of China, and that all patriotic Chinamen must get ready for action. Thus strangely do like emotions produce like results. fellow feeling makes the whole world kin, and at the call of patriotism the Duke echoes the Mandarin. The Chinaman, indeed, has the advantage of the Englishman in picturesque expression. When a Chinese noble wishes to warn all true Chinamen against invasion, he tells them that foreign devils are scheming to carve the melon, and from that they understand that China is about to be divided up. The picture rivals in simple directness even the most impressionistic of our recent political posters. But the situation in China has very grave aspects. The anti-foreign agitation is being actively renewed. According to a well-informed authority, the North China Herald, the outlook is more serious than it

has been for many years. Several causes are combining to produce a situation which contains very dangerous possibilities. The reactionaries are carrying on an active propaganda by means of placards about the melon and its carvers. They are aided by the native Press, the circulation of which is rapidly growing. The most fertile soil for these tares to grow in is the student class. Stirred to enthusiasm by appeals to the old learning and customs of the country, the students are enrolling themselves into volunteer corps for the defence of the system from which they hope one day to gain their living. The people at large are being asked and persuaded to interest themselves in the movement in a manner which is peculiarly well calculated to increase the danger of the situation. It is pointed out to them that the hold which the foreigner has upon the country is due to its foreign debt, and to the railways which the foreigners have been allowed to build. Appeals are then made under official patronage for national subscriptions to pay off the foreign loans, to enable China to build her own railways, and to provide her with a navy. Considerable sums have been collected. Three years ago the inhabitants of Szechuan subscribed

$1,000,000 for their end of the Hankow-Szechuan line. The Provincial Government accepted the money, and "borrowed" it for its own purposes. Such, it is probable, will be the fate of all similar subscriptions. The people are too ignorant rightly to understand what the money is wanted for, and the Ministry of Finance is too cautious to publish accounts of the amounts received. When the subscribers begin to realize that their money has gone, and that the foreigner has not, it is only too likely that the combination of outrages upon their pockets and their prejudices will lead them into trying to take the law into their own hands.

On the top of all this, Halley's comet is coming. In a letter to the North China Daily News, the Rev. D. MacGillivray speaks of his experiences during a recent visit to the interior. A reference to the approach of the comet, he says, brought even officials to their feet with eager questions. We can understand that a business which has such an effect upon a Chinese official must indeed be one of moment. Eclipses and other signs in the heavens have a peculiarly disturbing effect upon Chinese minds. It is natural and inevitable for them to believe that interruptions in the ordinary course of nature are part of a general disturbance of the whole established order, including systems of government and all other human relations. Wars, revolutions, or dynastic changes are expected to follow, and if there is any delay in their appearance, the Chinaman will see to it that it is not his fault if there is not an adequate response upon earth to the celestial disturbances. Those best acquainted with the country are

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therefore apprehensive lest the advent of the comet should give the signal for an outbreak of the existing anti-foreign feeling. The uncertainty of the situation has just been proved all too clearly by a mutiny at Canton amongst soldiers trained in the European style, apparently against the hated un-Chinese customs which are forced upon them. Warned by such danger-signals these, missionaries and others are taking steps to spread information about the comet. Picture-posters of it have been published, containing all its known portraits, from the Bayeux tapestry onwards. It is to be hoped that these measures may have a good effect, though it is little that can be done in so short a time amongst such a vast population.

It is a cause for special regret that so much of the present discontent and unrest amongst the ignorant classes should centre round the railway question. As we have noticed of late on several occasions, China has grounds for real and solid satisfaction in the progress which she has made in railway development and construction on her own account. Amongst other undertakings, she has carried through a difficult and arduous piece of work, the Pekin-Kalgan railway, by means of Chinese engineers alone. Nothing could more disastrously impede her development in this direction than the employment of her achievements to promote jealousy of the foreign concessionaries, and as a means of inflaming popular feeling against the introduction into China of such of the benefits of European civilization as may be appropriate to her circumstances.

Eyes accustomed to the sight of still and running waters framed in green find something peculiarly desolate in the lakes and rivers of the Holy Land, and marvel that such saddening overflow from Hermon and Lebanon can have inspired the Psalmist with his raptures. Even the "bowery Jordan," as Disraeli called it, whose verdant banks are, to the very threshold of its bitter grave, in startling contrast with the arid barrenness of the smitten plain of Jericho, rushes in muddy frenzy through a parched land that cries in vain for some alleviation of its thirst. The glacial Abana, which comes tumbling from the mountain snows to be swallowed up in the streets of fanatical Damascus, flows, like some other rivers of Syria, through smiling scenes amid which grumbling camels pasture in their thousands; but Syria is a happier land than Palestine, and its face wears a less repulsive expression even in the time of drought.

The two lakes in all that region which irresistibly call for contrast are obviously Galilee and the Dead Sea. Their appearance to-day bears out their story in the past. Galilee owes little of its witching beauty to its setting. True, there is forbidding grandeur in the clear-cut purple and, ochre mountains that tower around in an atmosphere peculiarly conductive to the predominance of the middle distance. There is picturesqueness in the white domes of the religious houses at Tiberias, and there is welcome interruption of the oval coastline in the little splashes of ruin at Capernaum and elsewhere. Nor can the frequent presence of half-naked Bedouin, whose smooth black buffaloes wallow luxuriously in the shallows while their masters ply the cast-net or sit on their haunches among the reeds, smoking the kief pipe and dreaming of

Paradise, fail to provide a touch of life in the picture. Yet the haunting glory of Galilee is in its story. Shorn of its wondrous legend, it would be no more than any other gleam of water resting the eye in the midst of the desert. There is something joyous about its image from end to end. In no light, neither in sun nor moon nor the thousand effects between, does it breathe the silent tragedy of the Dead Sea, the most sinister sheet of water I ever

looked upon. Long before I had stood upon its pebbly brink it had seemed to me that Lake Pontchartrain--Pontchartrain which lies outside New Orleans, brooding with memories of the vanished glories of loyal Frenchmen and the ruined gentlemen of the Confederate States who came after themwas the saddest water of my travels east and west. Yet as I drew rein beside the Dead Sea, having ridden over from Jericho before the sun was up, the memory of Pontchartrain, which came all unbidden to my mind, seemed hilarious by comparison with the deathly stillness that lay before me, this most unnatural of lakes wherein no fish can live, no ephemeral insect come to being. Nor was a bathe in its water, though welcome after so hot a ride over the plain, unattended by abnormal experiences in harmony with this morbid mere. The swimmer loses control of his limbs. His head and body float at angles impossible in ordinary waters, fresh or salt The brine is so dense that it must at all costs be kept from the eyes, and is even said to be injurious to the ears. The body, on emerging from this strange brew, dries rapidly, but retains a coating of salt crystals that sparkle like frost. About this dreadful sea there is none of the sense of holy calm and infinite peace which invests the dancing waters of

Gennesareth, with its bird-life, its shoals of fishes splashing in every shallow, and its merry fishermen, who in calm or storm navigate its surface in craft stout enough to live through even those sudden squalls, one of which inspired surely the most majestic mandate ever uttered to the raging elements: "Peace, be still!"

There is no village like Tiberias to relieve the monotony of the Dead Sea shore, and that fruitless lake, with its surface a thousand feet or more below the Mediterranean, and its bed another thousand, touches the lowest depths, a very slough of despond. It is undeniable that Tiberias as we know it to-day, is but a sorry hamlet, from which all its former glory is departed, a dirty agglomeration of hovels, with inhabitants in keeping, and with the sweet Casa Nova of the Franciscans as the one sympathetic spot amid all its squalor. Yet, though its palaces and synagogues be no more, Tiberias lends a character to the sacred lake which is wholly missing from the other and final goal of the Jordan, which runs between them in a turgid torrent, beset with shoals, disappointing to the fisherman, yet ever the lodestar of a million pilgrims of a dozen Eastern churches.

The Jordan and Abana may be famed in history, but there is a smaller stream running into the plain of Jericho, between that place and Jerusalem, which is more lovable than either. It is by common consent regarded as EliThe Outlook.

jah's brook Cherith, "which is before Jordan," but better known locally by the Syrian name of Wady Kelt. By its crystal pools, which gleam under overhanging rocks hidden in blossom that scents the homes of songbirds, happy schoolboys from Jerusalem camp out in their holidays; and there also I have gone to bathe and fish and rest after the glare and dust of riding in the plain. It carves its winding way, this pretty stream, through towering mountains, and can be reached only by a bridle track, which no doubt accounts for the otherwise surprising fact that its beauties are unknown to the majority of American tourists, who rarely leave Jerusalem for Jericho save in vehicles, and are therefore debarred from enjoying a glimpse of what seemed to me the most attractive water in all that thirsty land. There is the glamor of legend about the Jordan, and there is strength and beauty of a kind in the Abana; while even the Dog River, where it debouches, north of Beyrout, into the Mediterranean, rushing through the shadow of the rocks that bear the cuneiform inscriptions of dead dynasties, is not without a picturesqueness of its own. Yet not one of these greater streams has the quiet beauty of Cherith, which moreover has fonder memories than any other for the angler, since alone among them all it gives him sport with the fly-his highest test of water all the world over. F. G. Aflalo.