appearance excites his curiosity, and as no one on board is willing to share his adventures, he determines to visit it in one of the ship's boats alone. But the boat is capsized, the captain imagines him to be drowned, the ship sails away, and the hero gains the shore. He finds that the island is inhabited by an idyllic community, who are half English and half Tahitian in origin, and who, nominally at least, are subjects of Queen Victoria. But their own island is the only country they know. The climate is perfect, the scenery exquisite, the soil is exuberantly fertile. Everybody is able to produce from it all, or nearly all, he wants. There is consequently no division of labour, and such requisites as require division of labour to produce them they secure by a process of barter from occasional British ships. All are equal socially; all are equally rich. They consequently love one another in a manner worthy of Eden. Every one is happy; work is as pleasant as play; as for vice, they have absolutely no temptations to it, and their nearest approach to crime is the killing of a neighbour's cat or the injuring the bark of trees by the cutting of lovers' names on it. One germ of trouble only lurks in this spotless paradise. The simple inhabitants feel, with a touching humility, that well off as they are, it is clearly possible that they might be better. They realise that England, the wonderful mother country-the country of fabulous wealth, the country of hoarded wisdom-has many advantages, many sources of happiness beyond and above any that are accessible to themselves in their isolation; and they wistfully wish that it were possible for them to be as wise and as happy as the English. The daughter of the governor, a young lady of great attractions, in a moment of confidence expresses these feelings to the hero, and begs him to unfold to her the secret of England's social blessedness. Here Mr. Whiteing, having thus prepared his ground, begins, through the mouth of his hero, to deliver his social gospel, revealed obliquely, as the reader will probably conjecture, by means of what Mr. Whiteing intends to be withering satire and pathos. We shall presently have occasion to consider his utterances in some detail, as interesting indications of the mental soil from which they spring. It is sufficient here to observe that, in response to the young lady's request, he informs her that if her island community would really be as perfect as England, the first thing to do is to establish a division of labour, and division of labour, he proceeds to explain, means this. As the foundation of society, a race

of beings is developed who make everything for everybody else, and themselves enjoy nothing. On this useful foundation there rises a middle class, whose sacred function is not to produce, but to be respectable; and above the middle class there rises an aristocracy, whose function is to do the crowning justice to life by realising its possibilities of pleasure, leisure, and beauty.

This argument, the drift of which will be readily apprehended by the reader, is taken up again in 'Number 5 John Street,' and is explained with what Mr. Whiteing imagines to be a mass of overwhelming illustrations. 'Number 5 John Street'is a story of London life, in which the author attempts to paint, and set side by side, life as it is lived by the two extremes of the population--the life of the poorest of the poor and the life of the richest of the rich; and he seems to be under the impression that a picture of this violent contrast affords us a scientific chart of civilised society as it exists. This story, too, is in the form of an autobiography. The supposed narrator, however, here is not a lord, but a baronet. But though not a lord, he is the next best thing: he is the friend of one. He is the intimate friend of the social philosopher of the island. This latter personage has somehow mysteriously disappeared, and has left to his friend, as a legacy, a duty that had been undertaken by himself. This duty is to represent the governor of the island at the Jubilee, and he is also requested by the governor as a very particular favour to send a report to him of the condition of the mother country. The baronet, who is at first perplexed by this large request, is suddenly visited by an entirely original idea. A great many people have talked and written about the poor. He resolves that he will do what no one has ever done before he will learn for himself how the poor actually live, and his report shall be a description of what he learns. He accordingly disguises himself as a workman, takes up his quarters in John Street in a workmen's lodging-house, and lives for six weeks on half a crown a day, which he earns. The six weeks over he returns to his natural sphere. He gives us all particulars as to how he spends his days, his own pleasures and luxuries, the pleasures and luxuries of his friends; and he reveals to us more of the splendour of the highest of high life than most people familiar with it would have discovered in twenty years. Then he pays another visit to John Street. The reader is presented with another study in contrasts; and the book ends with a series of extracts from the report which the baronet now is

qualified to send to the island governor, and which read like a continuation, enriched with more details, of the social philosophy of the lord in the previous volume.

Now, if Mr. Whiteing did not possess many merits, we should not, whatever might be the sale of his works at the railway bookstalls, look on him and his social philosophy as worth serious discussion. But being, as he evidently is, a remarkable man in many ways, his books have a significance, because they are produced by him, beyond any that could attach to him merely because he has produced his books. He is a man of education; he is not deficient in taste; his mind is active; his observation is quick. Solemnly and seriously as he takes himself and his views, he treats the most burning problems with a certain self-restraint and sobriety, and instead of being content with describing the life of the poor from hearsay, he has, like his hero, set himself to observe it with his own eyes. Despite his having chosen to adopt in both of his stories the imaginary standpoint of an unoccupied man of fashion, his view of the world and his knowledge of it, as he has shown in every chapter, are essentially those of a man of the middle class, and hence his books afford us an exceedingly interesting picture of a state of mind and feeling with regard to social subjects which prevails in a section of the great class in question-a section which possesses an importance out of all proportion to its numbers, and has frequently exercised, and may possibly exercise again, a very considerable influence on the legislation of this country. It is a state of mind and feeling which well deserves examination. It results from a curious compound of ignorance and partial knowledge; of feelings and modes of reasoning that deserve sincere respect; of feelings and modes of reasoning that deserve nothing but ridicule. It is a state of mind and feeling which initiates many valuable movements. It is a state of mind and feeling which carries them to mischievous and grotesque extremes.

In dealing with Mr. Whiteing let us consider his merits first, only pausing for a moment to make one observation as to his style. Assuming, as he does in his narratives, the pose of a man of fashion-or, as he elegantly describes it in many places, of a 'swell '-he has adopted a manner which he imagines to be one of aristocratic ease, but which is in reality one of affected and vulgar jauntiness, and which no more reproduces the manner of well-bred men than the 'swell' on the stage of a music-hall reproduces their gait and aspect. He thus vitiates a style which is naturally easy

and pleasing, as we see continually when he drops his pose and is himself. This defect having been allowed for, Mr. Whiteing's pages reveal to us a keen sense of beauty; an unusual power of describing it; a gift for simple romance which is sometimes almost poetry; a quick observation of those social aspects of life which he has been able to study adequately; an artistic adroitness in selecting and grouping their typical details; and, within limits, a certain shrewd miscellaneous knowledge of the world. But his pages show that he is more than a mere observer who looks at life and civilisation through the medium of artistic and philanthropic feeling. He not only feels about what he observes, but he also does his best to think about it, and many of his observations show an admirable fairness of mind, coupled with a keenness of insight, which are worthy of a true philosopher; while, whatever we may think of Mr. Whiteing's philosophy as a whole, he is obviously a well-intentioned man, who preaches it with the most sincere conviction.

The following passage, though marred by the vulgar jauntiness which Mr. Whiteing has so unfortunately affected, will illustrate what has been said of him as a person of quick and comprehensive observation. It is taken from the first chapter of 'The Island,' and describes the scene in the City to which we have referred already, and which is witnessed by the hero from the steps of the Royal Exchange:

'It was such a sight,' he writes-civilisation in a nutshell. That was what made me pause. I was a part of it; and Apollo was taking a peep at his own legs. Why not? We all seemed to be going on so beautifully; we were all busy, all doing something for progress. What a scene! The Exchange I had just left, with its groups of milliona res gossiping Bagdad and the Irrawaddy, Chicago and the Cape; dividend day over at the Bank yonder, and the well-known sight of the blessed going to take their quarterly reward; a Sheriff's coach turning the angle of the Mansion House (breakfast to an African pro-Consul, I believe), a vanishing splendour of satin and plush and gold; dandy clerks making for Birch's, with the sure and certain hope of a partnership in their easy grace; shabby clerks making for the bunshop; spry brokers going to take the odds against Egyptians, and with an appropriate hesitation of air; a parson (two hundred and fortieth annual thanksgiving sermon at St. Hilda's, to commemorate Testator's encounter with Barbary pirates, and providential escape); itinerant salesmen of studs, pocket combs, and universal watchkeys; flower girls at the foot of the statue, a patch of colour; beggar at the foot of the steps, another patch, the red shirt beautifully toned down in wear→→ perfect! we want more of this in London-giant policemen moving

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him on; irruption of noisy crowd from the Cornhill corner (East and West to demonstrate for the right to a day's toil for a day's crust); thieves, bludgeon men and stone men in attendance on the demonstration; detectives in attendance on thieves; shutters up at the jewellers' as they pass; average 7s. 6d. to the hundred pockets; with a wall only to divide them from all the turtle of the Mansion House, or all the bullion of the Bank! and for background the nondescript thousands in black and brown and russet, and every neutral hue, and the sun over all, and between the sun and the thousands the London mist!'

As a piece of observation and artistic grouping this is excellent, and the following comments on the scene show reflection in alliance with observation.

'It was something as a picture, but so much more as a thought. What a wonder of parts and whole! What a bit of machinery! The beggar, and occasionally the stock-jobber and the nondescripts, to go wrong; the policemen to take them up; the parson to show them the way of repentance, and the Sheriff to hang them if need be when all was done. With this, the dandies-myself now altogether unornamental the merchants, the clerks, and the dividend takers, all but cog and crank of the same general machine.'

Let us now consider Mr. Whiteing as a poet and a writer of romance-as a man with a perception of beauty and the pathos of human affection. As has been said already, the hero of his first story meets in the fortunate island a young lady of great attractions-the daughter of the patriarchal governor. In spite of certain exaggerations, her character is well described. In general appearance she is a kind of Venus of Milo, strong, supple, and fearless, yet instinct with feminine feeling and absolutely devoid of guile. It is almost needless to say that the hero falls in love with her, and the developement of his passion is described with delicacy and self-restraint. The young lady herself conceives gradually a corresponding feeling for the hero. She has, however, plighted her troth to a curly-headed midshipman of a vessel who visited the island long before the story opens. The midshipman, having made his conquest, had departed, leaving with the young lady no tangible token of his identity except one of his buttons, and the young lady has never heard of him since. But, singularly unlike her more civilised sisters, she has felt that a troth once plighted binds for ever and ever; and in this conviction she has been hitherto justified by the fact that the midshipman has had no rival who could make her even wish to be false to it. But the rival has now come. The memory of the midshipman