ligation of casting the ballot and engaging in public life.-I am, Sir, &c., Andrew Macphail.

216 Peel Street, Montreal.

Macphail's

[The conclusion of Dr. striking letter will be published next week. While feeling no small pleasure in finding space in our columns for a communication so vivid, so suggestive, and so incisive in style, and, we may add, in many particulars so timely and so wholesome, we are bound to make certain reservations. It is not necessary to disclaim any intention of giving publicity to a general attack on the women of America. Dr. Macphail renders it abundantly clear that he makes no such attack. He recognizes the soundness of the women of America as a whole, and does not fail to realize that the "American woman" of his indictment is to be found throughout the modern world,in Britain, in France, and in Canada, as well as in the United States. She is more visible in America because she is more adulated and more advertised The Spectator.

there, and accordingly is conveniently distinguished by the designation imposed upon her by our correspondent. She is also a special danger to America, and that is why we, who yield to none in our sympathy with and admiration for the people of the Union, shall be glad if we can do anything to call attention to a very great danger to the larger half of our race. We desire to point out that we by no means agree with Dr. Macphail in his opinion that the luxurious idleness which he rightly condemns is to be cured by all women becoming nurses and cooks. That is a view as erroneous as it is conventional. Α woman rich enough to employ nurses and cooks is quite justified in doing so, and in devoting herself to the care of her household and her children

in other ways. She can find plenty to do if she has the will and is inspired by a sound tradition of domestic and social duty. There are many rich women who are neither idle nor luxurious, and yet avail themselves of the freedom from hard work which their wealth allows them.-Ed. Spectator.]

The birds' seasons for silence and song do not coincide completely with the general course of the year's increase and decay. As the days grow shorter in early autumn, the earth is cleared of its harvests, and the dense foliage of later summer begins to yield steadily and unmistakably to the onset of deadening winter. But, by the time when the first elm-boughs are touched with gold, and the mists strike cold at evening by the riverside, the song of the birds shows an increase rather than a decline; and, although the numbers of the autumn singers are comparatively few, and the whole volume of their song but small, this resumption

of the music which they lost in the heats of July brings a strange underlying contradiction, a note of hope, to the pageant of the ruined year.

The end of each bird's song-time is noted by few ears in comparison with those which may welcome its beginning; and, amid the abounding fulness of flower and insect life in July, the familiar singers of the garden fall, almost unnoticed, into the silence of their moulting-time. Even for those who study birds closely, it needs careful vigilance to fix the exact day on which each bird is heard for the last time. But, if we have been conscious in July. while the blossoms opened on the

limes, of the first morning when the thrush called no more from their crown, we hear the first fitful and uncertain resumption of its song in some cool noonday of September with a new anticipation of spring which not all the failing of autumn can destroy. It is the same with the autumn song of the robin, which begins, as a rule, its period of summer silence earlier than the thrush.

The impression of melancholy, traditionally associated with the robin singing among summer's last roses, is a fallacy of unobservant minds, to which the redbreast seems to be plaining its last notes of the year, in sadness for winter to come. In actual fact, the robin is now singing its first songs of reviving vigor and defiance, after some week's silence during the height of the summer heats. there is an added note of pathos in its voice, as compared with spring-a point on which it is hard for the ear to assure itself this is assuredly not due to any infection of melancholy from the autumn scene, but to the fact that the bird is not yet fired by the full impulse of spring.

If

Birds of different species vary a good deal, even among themselves, in the time at which they abandon and resume their song, The time of silence, which marks, as it were, the deepest period of midwinter in their calendar, comes for some even before midsummer; while the woodpigeon, which now nests occasionally as late as September, does not cease its cooing until the onset of the October rains and gales. In warm and still Septembers, the afternoon shadows in the garden seem to lengthen on the golden lawn to that note of long-drawn peace. But the song of many birds, from the nightingale downwards, does not last even till the longest day; and, after the first week in July, we begin to count the singers, and find them fewer day by day. As a rule, the last song-thrush

stops singing before the middle of the month; the notes of the blackcaps and garden warblers die away to broken soliloquies, as of birds speaking in their sleep, and hardly outlast the thrush. One of the latest and most persistent singers is the ever alert and sprightly goldfinch, which has, happily, shown distinct signs of regaining its lost ground during the last few years as a consequence of legal protection. Throughout July, and even up to the middle of August, the bright, though not exceedingly musical, phrases of the goldfinch can be heard repeated with much of the true spring vivacity among the dense foliage of the outer branches in which it loves to search and flutter, like a noisier willow-wren, and where it often places its nest among the outmost sprays. But the goldfinch is still too uncommon in most districts to be familiar as a singer in the general silence of July, that seems heavier, because of the very fulness of sunshine, herb, and blossom, than the deadest stillness of frost or winter calm.

The first notes of the new season of song are generally to be heard from our garden robins. The robin seems sensitive to the earliest waft of misty autumn coolness that breathes through the dog-day air; and he acclaims its invigorating power, and its hint of spring to come, by the resumption of bis clear and piercing chant. The new song of the robin may not force itself upon our notice until some fresh morning in September, after rain and wind in the night, when plums and apples lie scattered among the grass, or even until the October leaves of the Virginian creeper lie drifted under the robin's perch on the railing, redder than his own red breast. But often, while sleeping under canvas, in early August by wood or riverside, if we wake in the gray of dawn we may hear the song of the robin already uplifted to challenge the keener touch of autumn

in the air that is often perceptible at the very beginning of the month, when the nights have already been gaining for five weeks upon the day. By the time that the human world is astir, strong summer seems to reign unmenaced over the land; but the voice of the robin in the dawn has marked for the senses that heard it a new moment in

the revolving year. Deep in the heart of summer, the seeds of autumn are already maturing their change; and we learn from such phases of nature to see how no season is ever stable and complete, but how each conceals, a little below the surface, the preparation for its own eclipse.

It is generally in the last fortnight of September that the opening notes may be heard of the most persistent of the autumn and winter singers. The voice of the song-thrush is first heard freely in most parts of the south of England about the middle of October. From that time onward it may be heard singing in mild weather, with little less than its full spring vigor, until in February it fully welcomes the birth of the new season, which it has so indomitably foretold. In September it regains its song, not with the immediate fulness of the robin, but in low and halting notes, which have often only the elements of resemblance to the freedom and sweetness of its perfect music. The song-thrush seems to need the yellowing of the elms to mature its notes, just as the sight of the cocked hay in the meadows is believed by country people to crack the voice of the cuckoo. While the September elmcrowns are still heavy with the green of later summer, or only flecked here and there with a single golden bough, the song of the thrushes comes harshly and uncertainly from their depths. But when the great trees, which even at their first April budding bore a duller verdure than most others, flame forth at last into the most splendid shades

of amber, orange, and gold, the songthrush lifts his voice under the pale blue November sky as if winter already were past. It is only the loneliness of his song that distinguishes it from the music of spring. For in autumn and winter are seldom more than two or three singing-thrushes within earshot in the landscape, where in March and April there may be too many to tell apart; and except for the fluting and clucking of starlings in twos and threes about the tree-tops, there is seldom other music to be heard among the loftier boughs.

It is this isolation of the autumn singers that adds much clearness and attraction to their song. Though the woodlark sings persistently from an early season of spring, comparatively few ears then learn to recognize the exceedingly rich and resourceful melody of this local and rather unobtrusive bird. But its notes may not infrequently be heard again under the paling gleams of a September or October sky; and then they can hardly escape the attention of the most unlearned or uncritical of listeners.

The

song is both richer and more sustained than that of the sky lark, though it has hardly the remarkable individuality which is given to the skylark's music by its silvery sweetness and the height from which it is poured. The woodlark also sings while on the wing; but it mounts in wavering circles, and floats with an air of careless indifference instead of springing at once into the air and into song, and soaring high into heaven. It also frequently sings when perched upon a tree, or even a telegraph wire; while much of the peculiar attraction of the skylark's melody is due to its being almost always uttered in mid-air, although rarely the bird will also sing from some heathertuft upon the common or large clod in the bare March ploughs. Unbroken and impetuous as is the skylark's mu

sic while it lasts, the amazing songflights seldom occupy more than three minutes from ear to earth; but the woodlark's easier song may be poured out much longer without a break, and is hardly less continuous. It combines the silvery quality of the skylark with a touch of the deeper and softer tones of the blackbird or black cap. But its most distinctive feature is that rare crescendo on a single repeated note, which is characteristic of no other British bird except the song-thrush and the nightingale. It is a rare moment of surprise and pleasure for the birdlover when this rich and delicate music is heard, for the first time, it may be, for months or years, streaming, in negligence of the lapsing season, to the barred October sky. Wandering from its breeding haunts with the close of summer, it may sometimes be heard in autumn in neighborhoods where it is unknown in spring. Like the treepipit, which it resembles both in plumage and in many habits, it is a lover of the tree-dotted meadow or hillside, or of the open flanks of the woodland, rather than of the inner shades. It can be distinguished from the skylark by its shorter tail and conspicuous pale eyestripe, as well as by its perching habits and special mode of flight.

Of the few other birds which occasionally resume their song as early as the beginning or middle of September, the chiffchaffs are the only summer migrants. First to be heard among the boughs of naked spring, they are never wholly silent till they leave us in October for the South. Though the volume of their spring chiming is very greatly diminished after mid-summer, a faint echo of the incessant April call is to be heard from the dense roof of the beech or oak woods, even in the July heats, when the stillness of bird-life is most intense. When the mornings freshen in September the chiffchaff calls more clearly, before the sun is VOL. XLI. 2148

LIVING AGE.

high, though seldom with its full spring zest. Its comrade, the willow-wren, may also be heard drowsily whispering its song in the July woods; but it seems seldom to sustain even the echo of it until the last days before its departure in September. The ringing song of the chaffinches is also occasionally to be heard in September, on days when the mingled warmth and freshness in the air seem to stir a sense of April in their blood. But autumn chaffinchsongs are much rarer than autumn primroses, and even the birds which call in the September garden with the native music of spring are seldom heard again till the lengthening days of February. More familiar and characteristic of warm autumn weather, after the ingathering of the harvest, is the gentle music of the linnets, that now traverse the country in their free winter frocks. After the corn is carried, and before the land is cleaned and sown, parties of these gentle little finches are a constant feature of the landscape in any country of large arable fields. They spend much time in searching the stubbles and rootfields for the seeds of the corn-field weeds on which at this time of year they chiefly live. But the quest for a living is easy in these golden autumn days when the dun stubbles sleep for leagues beneath the sun; and, when the linnets come to one of the tall, straggling hedges of the cornlands, where their kind will nest in mid-April, they love to halt their company in the upper boughs of the thorns and clematiswreathed hazels, and to utter a little murmuring song of peace, of which the united volume fills the spaces of still autumn sunshine. Of all the birds' autumn music, there is none that realizes so completely the sense of the completed year, which is expressed so fully to the eye by the landscape of wide, reaped fields. Now, as always, Nature is dying and being born; and, while the

smoke of weed-fires ascends through the autumn mists, the birds and catkins of a coming summer are already moulded upon the tree. It is the truth of Nature's resurgence which is proclaimed in the keen voices of the robin and the thrush. The emulous instincts of the spring burn already within them, and they will sing on of what their soul foreshadows until it is fully come. But there is also an inevitable sense of parting in autumn; a memory dwells before us in the golden stubThe Times.

ble-fields beneath the sky, of the changeful succession of an English summer outworn, and all the stamp of the one individual year. This sense of retrospection and fulfilment, present in all the quiet autumn landscape, seems to find audible expression from Nature in the linnets' murmuring. It is purely an echo of what is past, and will fade into long winter silence before the pack breaks up for spring, and each singer is again a warrior and lover.

It is to the credit of criticism and of all who have to do with books that Francis Thompson dead does not appear likely to lack for appreciation. We suppose that during his lifetime the praises bestowed upon him by the people who knew and loved him were sufficient from his own point of view, and as he had the approval, and knew that he had the approval, of the only kind of persons whose approval is worth the having, we must not lament him precisely as a poet of the neglected order. In an ideal world the questions which beset such a career as that of Francis Thompson would never arise, they would never be allowed to arise even in a moderately sane world; and for sane people they really should not arise. The modern general mind, however, is an affair which exists, and which insists upon being taken into account; though of course its conclusions are usually wrong, and for that matter ridiculous. On almost the first page of the selected poems of Francis Thompson-a volume which has just been issued by Messrs. Methuen and Messrs. Burns and Oates-we find the following familiar stanza:

Nothing begins, and nothing ends,
That is not paid with moan;

For we are born in others' pain, And perish in our own. Here, of course, though it was not so intended by the poet, is an opportunity for that confusion of thought and belief in which the general mind so delights. For we shall be told that the four lines quoted, in common with other lines of Thompson which it would be easy to set forth, indicate or reflect the terrible sadness and darkness and utter despair of at any rate periods of Thompson's all too brief life. Of course it is notorious that poets in rude health and in the full possession of competence and comfort have produced precisely similar appeals to the less exhilarating emotions, and while a poet no doubt learns in suffering what he teaches in song, it is well-known that woefulness, melancholy, and despair, in the ordinary acceptation of the terms, are not vital or essential to the matter. If a man's contemporaries are ever to acquire the capacity to see him in his right place and to extract from his work its full value and meaning as art and its full value and meaning for themselves-and such achievement is generally supposed to be possible only to posterity-they must get rid of their tenderness for personal detail and phys