Literary Gossip.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 232, 19 February 1876, Page 6

Literary Gossip.

The whole of the late Sir William Jardine's extensive library and collections in natural history were to be sold in December. Mr. Robert Dale Owen has entirely recovered his physical health, and his mental condition has also improved. We {Academy) hear that Mrs. Masson, the wife of Professor Masson, of Edinburgh, • has in the press a collection of early English poetry, with an introduction. The opening of the Congress of Orientalists has taken place at Saint Etienne (Loire), M. de Rosny presiding. The aim of the gathering is to encourage a taste for the study of the Eastern languages. Mr. W. M. Rossetti proposes to bring out, through the publishing house of Ward, Lock, and Tyler, a volume to be named "Rossetti's Lives of British Popular Poets." The Queen has accepted from Mr. Francis George Heath a copy of his recent work. "The Fern Paradise, a Plea for the Culture of Ferns." Miss ICate Field, one of the liveliest of American literary ladies, has once more returned to England, and has taken tip her quarters in Sloane-street. An addition to the materials for the history of the Irish Rebellion of 1798 has been recently printed in Dublin—the "Memoirs of Mrs. Goff, of Horetown House, county Wexford." Major Butler, the author of " Akim Foo and "The Great Lone Land," who has just returned with Sir G. Wolseley from Natal, will probably write a series of papers describing that expedition for " Good Words." Messrs. Trubner and Co., the Academy states, will publish immediately a poem entitled "Jonah Fisher," in which the aiuhor, who is well known in literary and social circles, tells the story of work among the poor in a large city, with occasional discussions of the greatest social and religious questions of the day. Longfellow's new poem, "The Masque of Pandora," was issued to the public on the 22nd November. The story embodied in it is that told by the Greek writers, though in one instance there is rather an important departure from the myth in its original form. The second and concluding volume of Dr. Schmidt's " Shakspere Lexicon ; a Complete Dictionary of all the English Words, Phrases, and Constructions in the Works of the Poet," is nearly ready for publication, and will be delivered to the subscribers in November by Messrs. Williams and Norgate. Mr. Tennyson, the poet laureate, has written a letter from the Isle of Wight, stating that he should not be able to attend the banquet to the survivors of the Six Hundred, at the Alexandra Palace on 25th November. He, however, enclosed £'s, and expressed his intention of drinking a cup of wine on the date named to the health and long life of all those " fine fellows." Messrs. Provost and Co. have published for the author, Mr. William Alfred Gibbs, "an artist's edition" of his poem entitled " Arlon Grange, and a Christmas Legend." The illustrations in this edition de luxe have, if we remember rightly, been chosen after a prize competition. They are somewhat peculiar, but cffccfclVG The Rev. William I "ckey, Rector of Mulrankin, County Wexford, died lately, aged eighty-six. He was well known in the literary world under the name of " Martin Doyle." He was the author of a number of valuable and interesting works connected with agriculture and domestic economy, as well as contributor to the Agricultural Gazette, and similar periodicals. The public are really too inconsiderate in their demands on the time of hard-worked men. Mr. Thackeray, in one of his "Roundabout Papers," was most pathetic in his description of the thorns in an editor's cushion. /_ad now Mr. Herbert Spencer, the eminent sociologist, has been compelled to announce by a lithographed circular, that he is so deeply engaged in his special studies that he can no longer answer inquiries, requests for autographs, and other miscellaneous demands made upon him.

A second edition, revised, of " The Rights and Duties of Nations in Time of War," by Sir Travers Twiss, will shortly be published by Messrs. Longmans and Co. There wilL says the Academy, be a new introduction to this edition, containing a judicial review of the results of the wars of the last ten years, and of the modifications introduced during that period in the exercise of bejligerent rights. The committee of the Byron Club have issued an address to the public, in which they state that they have determined to make every effort to set up a memorial yeilding a higher and a better homage to the immortal poet than any monument of mere stone or marble, whether in or out of Westminster Abbey. They believe that the most useful form and character such an institution could assume would be that of a club (named after the bard). IS MONARCHY AN ANACHRONISM? (From the Queenslander.) Such is the heading of a very able article in the October number of Fraser's Magazine. The letters " J.V." are attached to it, and noone will have any difficulty in recognising the initials of the versatile genius who has for some years presided over the public affairs of New Zealand. Sir Julius Vogel was, it appears, recently invited by some clever Radical friends of his to join the Republican Club. They were aware, as he says, that he held advanced views, and that, no more than they themselyes, could he be supposed to have any superstitious reverence for royalty. He was considered, in fact, a likely person to join them, because " he was an earnest advocate of peace, economy, and justice; in shorty something of a national reformer." They therefore considered him a likely person to> join them in "the mighty task of overthrowing the monarchy." This he declined to do, and now he has formulated his reasons for doing so ; has committed these to writing, and leaves it to his clever Radical friends of the Republican Club to reply to him in writing, if they feel inclined to do so. We have no doubt that they will find an opportunity of doing so in some form or other, and we shall thus have an interesting discussion of the literary kind on the relative advantages or disadvantages of monarchies or republics. Men are not made Republicans, or the reverse, by processes of this kind, any more than revolutions are made by the writers of leading articles in newspapei's or of reviews in monthly magazines ; but it is very desirable that we should know what gentlemen who combine literature, politics, and speculation so successfully as Sir Julius Vogel have to say on monarchies and republics as different forms of government. It is not very long ago since President Grant led us to infer, from some utterances of his in " Messages" to Congress, that the whole world was going very soon to become one vast Republic, after the model of the United States. It is, perhaps, scarcely necessary to remark that this is not an opinion universally entertained by intelligent persons, even on the United States side of the Atlantic ; much less is it held by experienced politicians in Europe, or even, as we now see, by one of the most distinguished politicians of the new Pacific States. That the old idea of monarchy based upon the divine right of kings, and resting on the authority of the Church, is clean gone for ever, no sensible man of experience will deny. But, between this idea of a monarchy and the Republic of Plato, or any other philosopher, there are now such varieties of mixed monarchies and mixed republics, that we are not at all surprised at the fact that Sir Julius Vogel hesitated before committing himself to the task of overthrowing the monarchy. He has a theory that many—indeed that most —thoughtful young men in the United Kingdom between eighteen and four-and-twenty are at heart Republicans ; that they then begin to think of marrying, and possibly do marry, and that, when between the age of thirty and forty, they settle down complacently to accept the monarchical institutions under which they live as, on the whole, preferable to any possible republic which might with infinite risk be created. John Bright at thirty is, of course, a different man to John Bright at sixty. It is probably a happy thing for the world that everyDody is not a young John Bright or an old John Bright. " We thus arrive at a compromise which produces a more harmonious whole ; and there is more harmony, perhaps, hecause a wider spirit of compromise is supposed to be possible under a monarchy than under a republic. So at least thinks Sir Julius, and it is only fair to say that the exPrime Minister of New Zealand has treated the subject in his essay with great skill, moderation, and breadth of thought. He i 3 not content with looking at the question from the mere conservative point of view, as a thing which is, and that, therefore, whatever is is best, as th« optimists say. He is not so lazy as all that. Indeed, he admits that, if it could be proved that a republic was likely to be more pacific (so enamored is he of peace), he would declare for "a republic ; but on this ground, as well as on others, he prefers a monarchy for its own sake, and states his reasons for doing so. One leading lineof the argument adopted refers to the superior applicability of a monarchy to what are called complex states of society. Republican government is held to be that which is suited for a people mainly of one sort. "Wherever," it is said, "there exists a free commercial city, a free colony, a body of nonconformist settlers, or a gold-diggers' camp, you may expect to have a republic established. On the other hand, where you have a large complex society, composed of persons of different races and creeds, and very various tastes and degrees of culture, of conservative and progressive parties, of agricultural, manufacturing, and trading interests, of provident and improvident, moral, immoral, and criminal classes, the whole can only be effectively bound together by the strong mediating and balancing government which we call a monarchy." But societies, whether religious or political, however simple in

t. fcbeir primitive origin—and republicanism is . admitted to be tlie 'primitive, unconstrained form —are sure. Sir Julius admits, to become more complex and organic. '.' This," he says, " haa plainly been the case with the various States of the American "Union; the first settlers both in the older and newer States, were for the most part small cultivators, people of one class, and well suited, by a similarity of habits, feel- ■ ings, and interests, to live together peaceably, and settle their public business by a democratic . convention." All this, however, is now changed. The rich are the richer, the poor are_ the poorer; there are criminal classes, requiring . strong repression ; there are powerful religious - parties, antagonistic to one another ; there are rival races—lrish, German, negro ; there is jealousy between the" agricultural, manufacturing, and railway interests. The States are less, the Union is more. The nation itself is gradually becoming more national; it is being welded into one, like a European power, and -thus the States are "forming together a great sum of social complexity which only the machinery of a monarchical Government can effectually balance and control. The late fratricidal straggle, in which the Southern rod of hickory was broken by the Northern rod of iron, proves as clearly as the civil war in La Vendue, the utter unfitness of a republican system of government to maintain harmony in a great complex community ; the continuance of that system for a much longer period in the United States is impossible ; the return to the political arrangements of the older nations of the world inevitable." This is, of course, a very different version of the future than that forecast by President Grant, but it is a forecast made by a self-made man—one who is, in his way, quite as much a product of the popular will as the great Ulysses himself. According to De Tocqueville and the political philosophers of the last generation, the world is marching on to democracy, and in each community the rate of progression is in accordance with the growth of popular enlightenment. Julius Vogel, on the other hand, fresh from the antipodes, " a captain of industry," as we suppose he might not unworthily style himself, takes an entirely different view of political tendencies. " Communities," he says; -"do not really become democratic according as they advance in civilisation, but as circumstances permit them to live in «an unorganised condition.' " Hence he infers that the Americans are more democratic than the Germans, not because they are more intelligent or cultivated, but because they have the undisturbed run of a whole centinent, and are perfectly secure from invasion. Change the conditions under which they exist, and the whole of their politics would be changed.