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to the side of the road, propped up the useless bicycle, and sat down in the hedge, surprised and disgusted.

"If I had not been out of condition

the thing would not have happened like that. It was the first ride of my vacation. But there it was; and for half an hour I sat in the hedge, and for half that time I felt quite beaten, and decided to go lamely back into Ipswich.

"But I revived and revolted. Only thirty miles more, and perhaps not

so much! It would never do to make

my day meaningless by surrender

to

mere weariness. Since the flesh was weak, the spirit must be the more willing. I felt an immense distaste for my bicycle; I hated the thought of the road ahead; I told myself that it did not matter in the least where I got to, since I had to stop somewhere. But I knew better. These things, I felt, were an allegory.

"I remounted at last and went on

to the end. It was rather painful. I remember that I made every little upward slope an excuse for walking. The milestones got further and further apart, so that I felt like Sisyphus. Ten miles from home a steady pouring of rain began, and again I was sorely tempted. But I kept on. Through the darkness-for it had grown late-I pushed and plashed and stumbled to my haven of rest. And what a delicious drowsiness, what a fine, dreamy sense of insuperable obstacles overcome, rewarded by labour! Home was the sailor, home from the sea, and the hunter home from the hill!' The analogy of a well-spent life occurred to me; but, indeed, no life is well spent, though, here and there, a day may be."

These, of course, are mere scraps, and give a very imperfect idea of Mr Allen's complete panoply. Two of his papers are capital stories: one embodies a rencontre with a ghost, the other with a more interesting personage-a nature worshipper, who uses the cycle as a praying-wheel, who

rambled away from home on a cycling tour of discovery, and never came back. Two A are mainly topographical. third discourses eloquently of the strong appeal that medieval art still makes to the wayfarer through the great monuments which have survived the cupidity, the fanaticism, and the ignorance of intervening ages. Two of the best-"A Dull Afternoon" and "By the Fire"- are rather metaphysical; but all alike reveal an essayist of genuine power and distinctive charm, who writes always because he has something to say, never for the mere sake of writing. I cannot allow the book to suffer any detraction in my regard from the fact that it is dedicated to me-in unduly flattering terms. I have known the author since he was in short clothes, and, Mr Micawber said of his playfellow

as

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as

Education,'1 which no one who takes an interest, whether professional or general, in the science and art of history and historical teaching can possibly afford to neglect, and which deserves a disquisition to itself. Or rather several disquisitions; for it is controversial at many points, and must be regarded from many points of view as there are separate schools of thought on the subject. In such a book, as was indispensable, the dyer's hand was in evidence and not to be be concealed. 'Wheel Magic' is pure relaxation, but the relaxation of an historian and of a philosopher. Of such books is good reading made. The material was intractable enough. Few men could build a volume from the dreams of a velocipedist. Discover for yourself by experiment how hard it is to disengage a philosophy of pure literary charm from such a volatile essence as these impressions and reminiscences as the wheel runs round; and then estimate what Mr J. W. Allen has "done."

I may be prejudiced, of course. It is nice to be the object of a dedicatory letter so well written and expressive as that prefixed to 'Wheel Magic.' It is nice to an extent, the greatness of which a younger essayist for all his cunning can perhaps hardly conceive, to be called by one's Christian name by a duly authorised person.

Days there were when grown men were chiefly interested in one on account of one's grandfather. It is appalling now to think how few people there are who really knew one's father. And the third stage is defined for all time by Charles Lamb's hungry lament-"There is no one left to call me Charlie now." But no, I am not to be demoralised by a caress, and I do not think I am unduly prejudiced, for if I know, to my cost, how difficult the subject is, I know also what a very real thing is Wheel Magic. There is a magic power about the wheel, to be sure, and to prove it I will instance no more than the transformation it can effect in the faculties of an average townsman, - how during the space of one brief year, in a being who knows only streets, suburbs, and railway stations, it will engender a knowing interest in the country-side, in natural objects, in rural beauties, and in the arterial network of roads that connect the whole,no rigid iron framework to lacerate the landscape on which it is geometrically superimposed, but roads that have grown up and into the landscape and made it what it is. Boats, camps, links, moors, river-beds will effect as much, and more, no doubt, upon a suitable soil; but their operation is slower and more costly, they take time and money. As soon as the cyclist

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1 The Place of History in Education. By J. W. Allen, formerly Brakenbury Exhibitioner, Balliol College, Oxford; Hulsean Professor of Modern History at Bedford College, University of London. W. Blackwood & Sons.

VOL. CLXXXVI.—NO. MCXXVI,

T

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realises that the Chilterns and old faces peering at the sailer-by over a blind-young girls in their best clothes racing home as the clock strikes ten- the glances of young men as they cross the street-the hesitation of groups with children preparing to plunge across the road Here are a few beats of the ceaseless tide of impressions that flit through the brain of the least heedful of cyclists whose mind is attuned to the hum of the wheel.

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the Downs, with their whalebacks and their mamelons, their subtle subtle suggestion of mountain and their distant peep of plain, are within easy striking distance, he is as good as saved. The magic of the wheel will enter into his being, and the throng of associations, the train of observations proper and peculiar to the wheelman, will become a part of his consciousness. The dive into the dusky shadow of the wood as twilight approaches the wan atmospheric effect over bare hills to the north-west the mysterious reservoirs of warm and often hay-laden air that one passes through in the all-day-long days of summerthe unwary confidences of small mammals and finches surprised in the gloamingthe apparition of girl cyclists in light blouses, like white moths in the hot dusk, converging upon some provincial city-the warm breath of west wind or spring rain on the face as one rounds a corner, breathing of the space beyond the town-the lunge forward in the saddle, the swerves of machines avoiding the trafficthe vibrating disk of light that one's lamp lets down in front -the hammer- tick of the motor-cycle - the concentric rings of electric light on the expanse of wood pavement-ery has nearly always been the the stealthy approach of the trolley-car-the click-click of the free wheel movement cyclists pedalling rapidly along the transverse street the effort of the ankles as a road ascends sharply over a bridge

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The historic destinies of the bicycle would have been more interesting had it developed contemporaneously with the roads that prepared the way for it and made it possible. Had it preceded railways, for instance, or been used in the Napoleonic wars, or even had it been grafted immediately upon the caprice of the hobbyhorse from which it derived, its annals, perchance, had been more illustrious. Lord Sherbrooke, it is said, once cast a blighting eye upon it in its infancy as a possible source of revenue. Society played with it for a season in Battersea Park. But, like the warship Shannon, it has always been an unassuming vehicle- the Cinderella of the sports family. It has the distinction, indeed, of being a wholly popular and democratic invention. Machin

rich man's prescription, imposed from above. The bicycle, contrariwise, has asserted itself and reasserted itself persistently from below; and though I do not think that it is assigned a place of any import

ance in Mr Wallace's 'Wonderful Century,' it seems to me unmistakably the most benevolent mechanical invention of the Industrial Era. If you wander through the sheds that contain the admirable science collections at Kensington, you can trace with infallible accuracy the development of the steam engine, of locomotive and postal machinery, of the marine engines that you watch so intently during a stormy channel crossing, of the motor-car, the type writer, the telephone, the piledriver, the spinning-jenny, et id genus omne. Trains and steamers between them have spoiled travel. The Post Office has destroyed letter-writing. The motor - car and the telephone between them have tainted life whole-at its source. Such inventions could only come from above. The one unmixed benefactor to mankind is that ma

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chine of which you will hardly discern specimens dangling in chains from the roof like condemned felons. Suspercollated placards describe the historical development of the pendent machines hoary bicycles of the early 'Seventies. Montaigne once said that he would like to die travelling-on horseback. Charles Lamb once expressed a desire that his last breath might be drawn through a pipe; a better ending than either, in my opinion, was that of Edward Bowen, who "died in a moment, while mounting his bicycle after a long ascent, among the lonely forests of Burgundy, then bursting into leaf under an April sun. "His foot was on his bicycle step; and then in one brief moment

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as the lightning cometh out of the east and shineth even unto the west' - all was

over."

THOMAS SECCOMBE,

THE SOUTH AFRICAN UNION.

EVERY well-wisher of South Africa rejoices at the prospect of the early unification of the four British Colonies. We regret therefore to observe in certain quarters a disposition to exploit this feeling for party purposes and to congratulate the present Government at the expense of its predecessors. The argument used is as follows: unification is the result of the grant of self-government to the Transvaal and Orange River Colony; this was the work of the Liberal Administration, reversing the policy of Mr Lyttelton. The inference drawn is, that the Liberals are the friends, and the Conservatives the foes, of the new South Africa. We believe this line of argument to be both untrue and ungenerous. It is unfair to the present Opposition, because when they are told that a certain event is the direct result of their defeat at the polls in 1906, they are sorely tempted to question the desirability of that event. So

far, we are glad to see, their patriotism has stood the strain. That the argument is untrue, we think a brief reference to recent South African history will show. It is a well-worn theme, but our excuse must be that the lessons to be drawn are often forgotten.

It is undoubtedly true that the first attempts to establish one central administration in South Africa were made by Lord Carnarvon and the Con

servative Government of the 'Seventies. It is also true that the retrocession of the Transvaal by Mr Gladstone indefinitely postponed the realisation of this ideal. The necessity of some form of union was early seen by most South African statesmen, but the establishment after 1881 of an essentially hostile Republic in the north made room for alternative aspirations. The need for union might be admitted, but the question remained under what flag? How long this might have remained an open question it is hard to say, had not the discovery of gold in the Transvaal profoundly altered the situation in two respects. On the one hand, it provided President Kruger with the means for his attempt to create a United Dutch South Africa. On the other hand, the growth of the mining industry established a British garrison in the heart of Boerdom, and brought the question of supremacy to a head. It cannot be doubted that this was the true issue in the Boer War, and that war was made inevitable by the conflict of inconsistent ideals.

The war established British supremacy. The political problem (as distinguished from those that may be called material or economic) which faced Lord Milner was how that supremacy was to be maintained. The Boers were returning to their homes, still

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