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an opportunity of practically confuting the slander. He was invited to Brook Street; he was made welcome at Fryston, and not long afterwards came the peremptory demand, not for the five pounds, "but for £50, which he must have within twenty-four hours to stave off imminent ruin. And when Milnes, instead of sending the £50, writes kindly to him, inquiring the nature of the emergency which has necessitated such a demand, he is repaid by a letter, modelled apparently on the immortal epistle of Dr Johnson to Lord Chesterfield, in which his 'patronage' is repudiated, his character maligned, and his pretensions to literary eminence turned to ridicule."

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'I cannot sign the appointment to the Chiltern Hundreds without a word of regret, though I write it partially in the dark. . . . If you are

about to be removed to another place,' I sincerely hope you may derive gratification from the transfer, which I believe would be regarded by the public as a just tribute to your character and powers. The superior beings among whom you may then go, could not have more pleasure in receiving you, than we, your humble companions, have regret in losing you."

We may remark, parenthetically, that Milnes, although an advanced Liberal, and a hearty admirer of Mr Gladstone's genius,

never hesitated to differ from the great man, and to speak his mind

notably on the American and Oriental questions, and on the arrangements at the British Museum, as to which he probably believed himself by far the better authority. There are happy and graceful notes from Mr Delane and Dean Stanley, and one from Carlyle which is characteristic: "The new Grace of Fortune is a thing we are all glad of and wish well to. I will only say, may the noble British Peerage, once one of the noblest things in all the world, and still a very noble, find you an honour and possession to it, and you it a ditto, ditto to you!" The two men had been attracted to each other from the first, perhaps by the cynical and paradoxical humour which was common to both; and the irritable Chelsea Sage had taken kindly to the hospitable master of Fryston. At Fryston he had licence to indulge his humours, and was made comfortable, so far as possible, in monastic silence and seclusion. On the very last visit, we are told that he came down to breakfast the first morning in a shockingly bad humour, but was gradually soothed into complacency by unobtrusive attention.

In 1866, as one of the English Commissioners to the French Exhibition, Lord Houghton revived old friendships, and made He many new acquaintances. was introduced to the reigning spirits in light literature and fiction-to About and Flaubert, to Daudet and Zola. For the friend of Mr Algernon Swinburne had a catholic toleration for all the eccentric forms of French genius, even when it confounded licentious realism with artistic freedom. At the same time, there are letters from graver men,

which show that the catholic liberality was reciprocal. We may single out a flattering passage in a letter from Montalembert: "Mrs Craven would be delighted to hear from you, particularly if you take the trouble to read her book, 'Récit d'une Sœur.' I am sure it will greatly interest you."

Unlike most of us, Lord Houghton early got over the worst of his earthly trials, and few men upon the whole led a more pleasant or placid existence. When he had once resigned himself to carry the cross of the disappointment of his political aspirations, he walked away with it contentedly enough. And when the destructive fire occurred at Fryston in 1876, he consoled himself philosophically with the general sympathy of his friends. He was happy in his circumstances, his habits, and his children. Possibly, as infirmities began to grow upon him, he may have felt the mortification of honours coming too late. He very sensibly declined the succession to the Presidency of the Geographical Society, although he had always taken a lively interest in its proceedings, and would once have delighted in the duties of the post and the distinction it conferred. He writes rather sadly in 1882 that his limbs are crippled and his brain growing dull, so that he found himself incapable of writing a promised article for the 'Quarterly.' Nevertheless, he stuck manfully to his

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métier. 66 Though he was thus crippled, he resolutely pursued his social life, resolved that illness should make as little difference as possible in his ordinary habits. During his stay in Scotland, he visited at many of the country houses he had known in earlier days. And he could talk just as delightfully as of old of the people and the places he had known in bygone times." But his old friends had been dropping off fast, and death came to surprise him at Vichy in the summer of 1885. One Šunday he took part in an animated conversation at the table d'hôte of his hotel, explaining to some French Republicans the services the Prince of Wales was able to render to English society. That night he was suddenly taken ill, and he had breathed his last early on the following morning. So the intellectual viveur and the man of society par excellence may be said to have literally dropped in harness; but we know that he deserved the eulogy pronounced by Mr Reid: "The kindest of human hearts ceased to beat, and the shadow of a great sorrow fell upon a thousand homes of rich and poor, of cultured and simple, scattered throughout the world, in all of which his presence had been welcomed as that of a friend." There was no man to whom, as a simple acquaintance, we should have turned with more confidence for counsel or assistance of any kind in case of real and urgent distress.

PROFESSOR LOMBROSO'S NEW THEORY OF POLITICAL CRIME.

LITTRÉ, that eminent French writer and thinker, lays it down as his opinion that political crime is among all crimes that which most demands our careful attention-at least as modern society is constituted-because its effects not only operate on individuals, but on the public weal, international relations, and public morality. "This crime," he goes on to say, "is worthy of being studied as a case of social pathology."

Whether it was this suggestion on the part of Littré, or whether it was the logical consequence of all his previous studies in criminal science, in any case the Frenchman's desire has been carried out by Professor Lombroso of Turin, in a large and important work just published in Italy, called 'Il Delitto Politico e la Řivoluzione' ('Political Crime and Revolution'). It is a book crowded with a mass of careful research, of facts and figures and data, and, as such, forms rather stiff reading for the general public, to whom also the circumstance that it is written in Italian will help to make it less accessible. Still, like all Professor Lombroso's previous works, it cannot be overlooked by those who would keep themselves au fait of the modes and methods of modern thought; for the influence of Lombroso's books in Italy, France, and Germany has been as immediate and decisive as that of 'The Origin of Species.' It is not to our honour that in England as yet he is so little known.

It is for this reason that I propose to give an account of the book in these pages, though from its technical character, its discursiveness, and its great length, my

remarks thereon must necessarily be but cursory. But if they excite the reader's curiosity, and induce him to go to the fountainhead, some purpose will have been effected.

This important work, yet another evidence of the powerful vitality which informs the Italian School of Criminal Anthropology, is divided into two parts. The first, treating of the anthropology and sociology of political crime, is entirely the work of Professor Lombroso himself. In the second, which sets forth the manifestations of political crime in ancient and modern history, and studies penal codes from the point of view of criminal anthropology, Lombroso has been assisted by Professor Laschi. The methods of investigation pursued by the Italian scientist in his previous works are, of course, also followed in this book that is to say, the criminal is regarded as rather an organic than a psychological anomaly. He is studied in himself, physiologically and anatomically, as well as in his milieu. Tables of statistics and graphic representations of the relative frequency of a particular kind of crime are given. In short, an attempt is made to introduce the light and order of science into the great limbo of crime, with the hope thus in time to lead up to a legislation somewhat more rational and discriminating than the inadequate patchwork which mere empiricism and antiquated and unscientific conceptions has begotten for us.

It is needful, first of all, to define what is meant by the term political crime. Many celebrated penal lawyers have asserted that

tion, by some neurotic genius or historical occurrence. Nevertheless, the genius and the occurrence are, so to speak, accidental; the changes they work have been slowly ripening throughout the course of years, just as the infiltration of a little water and the generation of a certain amount of steam may produce some tremendous telluric catastrophe, which in truth has been preparing for long ages in the gradual, ceaseless working of the earth's internal forces. Revolutions, therefore, are crime. They are the historical expressions of a people's development. They are necessary from the point of view of the physiol

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such a thing does not exist. Daily experience shows us how very lightly the so-called "free" countries regard political crimes committed on the territories of their less fortunate neighbours. Lombroso, on the contrary, insists that such a crime does exist. He maintains that the majority in every country is a hater of everything new (misoneistic). He goes on to assert that we are all misoneistic —even the most progressive-minded among us — adducing endless examples from customs, religion, science, letters, arts, even fashions, to prove his point. This leads him to the momentarily startling assertion that the existence of misoneism in the majority implicates-ogy of society regarded as an ennay, necessitates the existence of political crime. This crime Lombroso defines as any violent assault against the political, religious, or social misoneism of the majority —against the form of government which results from it, and the persons who officially represent it. For misoneism is, from this point of view, as much a physiological characteristic of society as a whole, as material and mental functions are physiological characteristics of each particular individual. Every violent assault on the misoneism of society is therefore an assault on a physiological fact; and since this fact is a social fact, an attack on it is anti-social, which is equivalent to saying that it is a crime.

Now, the progress of the world requires that misoneism should not reign supreme. It must be

offended from time to time. But in the mode of offending it consists the difference between political crime and the legitimate working of change. -in other words, between rebellion and revolution. Revolutions, in the proper sense of the word, are immediately determined, almost without excep

tity, and can in no sense of the word be classed as anti-social. They change the religion or the government with which the genius of the people among whom they occur is no longer in harmony, with the smallest possible amount of friction, substituting the new order of things with the least offence to the misoneistic tendency of the majority, and hence with the greatest possible amount of success. Rebellions, on the other hand, are hatched out hurriedly, artificially, at false temperature, and under high pressure; they are therefore embryos doomed to certain death.

Such is the key-note of Professor Lombroso's new work. Under the heading of misoneism, he adduces endless examples to show that the extension and tyranny of the law of inertia in the moral worldthat hatred now so little recognised, which takes its rise in the difficulty and disgust which we feel when we have to substitute a new sensation for an old one-is so common even in animals that it must be classed as physiological in its character. The dislike shown

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by animals to all that is new is well known to those who have observed them closely. Lombroso cites the instance of an ape, which, let loose in its native haunts, after having been dressed in European fashion, was received with horror and shunned by its companions; and a hen which, painted green by an artist, was mercilessly pecked and hunted out of the yard by the other fowls. (Esop no doubt would have deduced from these incidents other conclusions than those drawn by Lombroso.) Dogs which always bark quite needlessly, and not because they have to keep watch, at every carriage which passes through the silent street of the village horses which shy when their riders appear in a different dress-cows which refuse to be milked when the milkmaid is in holiday attire,-these and endless other cases may be cited as examples of the fundamental misoneism of organic nature.1 Nor need we do more than mention the ingrained conservatism of children. Every one, for instance, who has told them stories, knows how they delight in the repetition of the same tales-nay, even of the self-same words-and how they notice and correct any change. Varigni tells us how a little boy two years of age, who was very fond of him, recoiled from him in horror when he was obliged, in consequence of rheumatic pains, to wrap up his leg in cotton wool, looked at him with suspicion, and uttered frantic howls. Even after he was well he sought to avoid him, and cried whenever he went too near; and

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only after several months, and in the presence of a third person, did he consent to listen to him and shake hands. Women, too, have a large dose of this quality. They cling to their particular method of religion, to time-hallowed customs, to forms often grown empty of meaning.

In some regions and tribes this extends to the language of their ancestors, so that they often speak differently from the men, when these, as in America, or on the Orinoco, have adopted the tongue of the surrounding tribes. To this day the peasant women of the Romagna speak a language hardly changed from the Latin of old times. Savages are classed by Lombroso in the same category as women and children— i.e., as beings whose psychic weakness is such as to prevent them, once they have assimilated a certain number of sensations, from assimilating others, especially if the difference be great, and there is no connecting link between them. Thus in primitive languages an elephant is a bull with the teeth; in Chinese, horses are big dogs; in Sanscrit, a stable for horses is a stable for oxen for horses; a pair of horses is a yoke of oxen of horses. If connecting links be wanting, the perception is associated with such fatigue as to produce real pain, which sometimes reveals itself in horror. There then takes place in the normal mind that which happened in the case of a lunatic woman, who, whenever she went out of doors, remained impressed with the first object or first person she and for the whole day sub

saw,

1 Lombroso himself is an amusing case in point. From early youth he possessed the art of divining fruitful ideas, which at the time seemed absurd to scientific men as well as to the public. Every line of investigation he took up was at the time apparently opposed to the current tendency of thought, and only received attention at a later date.

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