old.

I hope this little history of

Well, he gave me me great sport, as, being a light weight, I rode him every gallop in his training as well as in his races. And I find on looking through the list that during his time with me in England and Ireland he saw hounds with three packs of staghounds and fortyseven packs of foxhounds, to say nothing of odd days with harriers and drag-hounds.

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Being always anxious save the old horse in any way I could, whenever the meet was at any distance, and there was a railway handy, I took him by train, or, if not, sent him on overnight, as nothing could upset his equanimity or put him off his feed, and from so constantly running backwards and forwards between England and Ireland he would walk into his horsebox of his own accord, and seemed as comfortable and as much at home in it, or on the boat, as the most experienced traveller,-indeed, on a rough night, far more so than many of the humans on board. I used generally to turn him out in the park for a short time in the early spring after he had finished his season, and whilst the ground was soft and the grass green and fresh, and then take him up and do him well the rest of the summer, and he would come out in the autumn as

a real clinker" may warm the cockles of many a gallant old sportsman's heart, and bring back to him the memory of his own Real Clinker, and that in his mind's eye he, as I often do, will ride over again the many glorious gallops they had together whilst fighting for the "pride of place," close in view of a gallant pack of hounds, streaming with a breast - high scent and their soul - stirring music over a fine country, with a straightnecked fox in front of them, and nothing to hold him for several miles. I am sure it will to those of the few of my dear old "pals" who have survived the strain of life, and in former days fought it out with old Bally both with hounds and between the flags; and I hope it may convey a hint to the coming sportsman, who has not yet met his kindred soul in the hunting field, so that if he does, and I trust he may, he will cherish him as part of himself. For what is there in the life of sport that can compare with

"Forty minutes o'er the grass without a check, boys,"

SCIENCE, REAL AND

MAN OF GENIUS'.

CENSOR-COMPROMISE.

THE death of Professor Lombroso recalls, perhaps for the last time, a group of those false sciences which tempted the last half of the nineteenth century to eloquence. It is within the memory of us all that the rhetoric of Messrs Huxley and Tyndall turned into a popular fashion that which in the hands of Darwin, the master of them all, was a serious inquiry. Science became for the moment a maid-of-all-work, a universal provider. Not only would it enlighten our minds, we were told,-it would save our souls. The world, grown sceptical, eagerly welcomed what it regarded as a new solace; and science, in revenge, arrogated to itself higher powers than had ever been claimed by the fathers of a despotic Church. Today it has assumed a more modest demeanour. A fear of bank. ruptcy has persuaded it to look with suspicion into its accounts. Yet the habit of pride still clings about it. When it was proposed to celebrate in one ceremony the centenaries of Tennyson and Darwin, the men of science uprose in indignation. It was absurd, said they, thus to confuse the great and the small. Aloud they proclaimed the immeasurable superiority of

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Darwin, and recked not how strongly Darwin, in his wise modesty, would have rebuked their exaggeration. He, at any rate, would have remembered that Homer has outlived all the wise men of Greece.

And this fashion of science had another tiresome effect. It persuaded a mob of industrious persons to describe as scientific such harmless pursuits as had no nearer relation

to science than the gathering of pebbles on the sea-shore. Of these misguided ones none made a larger effect with smaller reason than Professor Lombroso. He set out to prove that crime is degeneracy, and that genius is a particular case of crime. He measured forearms and facial angles. He went about indefatigably examining heads. If he could, he would have treated the whole world as Charles Lamb treated the Comptroller of Stamps: he would have looked at its phrenological development. But he made the most of the opportunities which life afforded him, and he collected a larger mass of irrelevant and often incorrect observations than any man of his time. Show him a man lying under suspicion, and he could dis

pense with judge and jury. Crime was a disease which he could always diagnose, even if he could not cure it. And he overlooked the obvious fact that what he said was either a commonplace or an untruth. In either case it was not the material of a science. Long ago its statement and its refutation were crystallised into an anecdote. Thieving, pleaded a convicted criminal, is nothing but a disease. Yes, retorted the judge, but it is a disease that I am sent here to

cure.

But if you would measure the full folly of Lombroso, you must turn to his treatise upon 'The Man of Genius.' No more irrelevant work ever crept into a scientific series. Its thesis is as absurd as its method. We have all heard that great wits are allied to madness. We have not forgotten what has been said about the genus irritabile vatum. No one, indeed, would deny that that rare bird, the man of genius, is not as other men are. He is more sensitive than the others; he is quicker of perception; he possesses a faculty of divination which no industry will impart; he skips with ease the intermediate steps in an argument, and leaps in a single bound to the right conclusion. His superiority of mind makes him sometimes intolerant of his fellows, and prevents us from following his artistic and intellectual processes. But for Professor Lombroso, the man of genius was either a madman or a criminal. He discovered in

him

the same peculiarities which he detected in those unfortunate persons who inhabit prisons or asylums. And instead of confessing the plain incompatibility of his inquiries, instead of admitting that if the criminal and the man of genius seemed to be marked by the same stigmata, his investigation was at fault, he blundered along the wrong road, until he proved to his own satisfaction that no man endowed with brains had ever known the secure joy of sanity.

Absurd as was his thesis, it is his method which most clearly stamped him as an empiric. He is nowhere at the pains to explain precisely what he means. He does not define genius; he does not define madness; he does not define crime. If the term "man of genius" has any signification for him, it signifies no more than a man whose name has got into a biographical dictionary. Threequarters of those whom he mentions would find it hard to prove the possession of a modest talent. But Lombroso marked them all for his own, and detected in each some criminal defect of growth or character. Moreover, he collected his facts without the smallest discrimination. His book is the very rag-bag of science. It is made up of what the French journalist calls faits divers, gathered at hasard, and set down without test or trial. He seldom quoted his authorities-indeed there was no reason why he should. And, even if he failed in science, at