The

caress, but his heart was heavy. cherished dream of his life had vanished. Mariana's angel had melted as mist before the sun. He felt twenty years older.

He touched the stocking in his pocket and patted it.

"It is as thou wouldst have wished, beloved, but ohimé, it was hard to barter thine angel to that daughter of Judas!" he murmured. "I will keep some for masses for my soul, and give the rest to those children to buy pots and pans with."

He came to his shop. In all the agitation of the evening he had forgotten to put up the shutters, and the rays of the lamp outside fell full upon the crystal chalice, touching its twisted gold handles to a pale radiance. There was a subdued gleam and shimmer from the shelves where the glass goblets and vases caught the light.

He unlocked the door and entered. A sudden thought struck him.

With reverent touch he took the chalice down and placed it on the counter; then from a fat rush-covered flagon of Chianti he poured a brimming measure into it. The lamplight struck ruby sparkles from the wine as he held the cup aloft.

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"It is well to be a philosopher: see, my hand does not tremble," he said to himself the slow tears of age flowing unheeded down his cheeks.

I

"I drink to thee, Mariana mia. drink to the only monument I can give thee. Better a little warm human happiness than the most magnificent tomb of cold marble. Repose to thy soul, my best beloved, and may we soon be together again!"

He drank, drained the chalice, and shattered it against the counter.

Then, with a touch of prose, he swept the gold and crystalline fragments into the Giornale which he had been reading that morning, and went with them to the water's edge.

It was

He paused for a moment. very still: no sound but the lapping of the water at his feet; no stir but the gliding of gondolas, whose lamps gleamed like yellow fireflies through the velvet dusk. He shook the shivered remnants into the canal in a little sparkling shower.

A curious neighbor, passing, tapped him upon the shoulder and asked him what he did.

"I am burying an angel, amico," Benedetto returned, with an odd little laugh-"an angel of glass!"

Rachel Swete Macnamara.

The

The great change involved in the death of the puppet Emperor of China, and of the masterful Dowager Empress has passed off quietly, and there is every ground for the belief that neither revolution nor reaction will ensue. succession has gone back to the right ful line; and though there is another long regency in prospect, it is a great gain that the rule of an erratic, fierce, and tyrannical woman should be replaced by that of a moderate and liberal man. Prince Chun is credited with

a more kindly temperament and a more calculable and less impulsive character than the late Empress, and he is said to have a certain degree of knowledge of, and liking for, the civilization of the West. His rule, aided by the strong hand and able intellect of Yuan-ShihKai, who has given abundant proofs of administrative competence and reforming tendencies, should prevent acute outbursts of reaction and secure advance at a safe, if moderate, speed. It is a strong point in favor of the main

tenance of order that the valedictory edict of the dead Emperor should have ratified the promise of a Constitution, which was solemnly made in 1906, and fixed a date, nine years hence, for its fulfilment. On the whole, indeed, the existence of a regency is a gain. Government by a strong and enlightened ruler has its merits, especially in the East. But it is impracticable in the case of an alien dynasty ruling over a country of vast size, with 430,000,000 subjects exhibiting wide differences in character, in intelligence, and in speech. Government by a syndicate, especially when some of the members are conspicuously intelligent and progressive, is infinitely better than Government by a secluded autocrat and reputed demigod, exposed not only to the contending influences or rival courtiers, but to the corruptions of the Palace life of the East. As things are, there is even a prospect that the Palace may be purged of its worst elements, and that the millions of treasure stored in it may come into fruitful employment; the reactionaries are quieted by the formal sanction given, in the most orthodox and forcible manner, to the new spirit, and to its outcome in practical reform; and the new nationalism, which is now not hostile to Western ideas, but slowly assimilating them, seems likely to act merely as a needful brake.

Since the war with Japan, China has been in transition, and has gradually progressed towards the acceptance of Western ideas. Unexpected zeal has been shown for European science and learning; and if they have been sought in too narrow a spirit-for their practical value rather than for their service as mental discipline, they have not yet made for revolution, as in Egypt, or for disintegration and reaction together, as seems to be their effect in India. Nor, since the Boxer episode, have they provoked acute resistance. The memory

of that crisis and its ultimate solution is not pleasant for Europe, but the lesson taught to the Chinese is not likely to require repetition. At present, though the progress is slow, its signs, as interpreted by skilled observers like Sir Robert Hart, seem to indicate that it is sure. The provinces are gradually submitting to greater centralization, and there is even a central army. The Chinese Government has made sincere and honest efforts to get rid of opiumsmoking, not merely, as was formerly suspected, to protect native industry by preventing the importation of the drug. The people has overcome its superstitious objections to railways, and the younger members of its better classes are eager to hasten progress at home, while seeking the new learning in Japan, America and Europe. Much can be done to help the intellectual transition, both by the European missionaries and by foreign assistance of a more secular kind; and the proposed University at Hongkong may yet be for a re-generated China what Robert College at Constantinople has been to the adolescence of Bulgaria. Ten years ago it was commonly believed that China would be gradually partitioned among the European Powers and the United States. That danger is now past; and so is the danger of the exploitation of the country and the people, even by Russia or Japan.

It is true that the progress, being strictly on Chinese lines, occasionally takes curious forms. Attention has been called in these columns to the "rights recovery policy" applied for the last three years to railway and mining concessions, and to the doubts entertained whether the Chinese are yet competent to carry out and manage the schemes. They have got back all the more recent concessions, and there are occasional indications that they are trying to oust, or to overbear, foreign management, both on some of the ear

lier railways and in the Customs service. The whole recent railway policy of China is to dissociate the capital borrowed for the newer undertakings from control of their management. The latest railway loans are not secured on the railway itself, but on the provincial revenues. Chinese ways, like those of the Egyptians as described by Herodotus, are usually the reverse

of those of other nations; and this railway policy just reverses that of several Spanish-American States, where the national debt, or part of it, has been converted into a definite charge on a particular railway or on a State monopoly under foreign management, thereby affording a much better security than the promise of an unstable Government. Still, Chinese ethics, though peculiar in some respects, are exceptionally stringent in all matters of commercial obligation; the Chinese commercial instinct is highly developed, and the national pride is acute. So far as investors are concerned, therefore, the "rights recovery policy” need not cause serious apprehension. Jealousy of foreign enterprise is common in most countries, and even in Central Europe British undertakings have been bought out and transferred to native hands. China presents a boundless field for European capital,

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and we think investors are justified in their confidence in Chinese good faith.

The two dangers on the horizon are trouble with foreigners and internal revolution. The spirit manifested in the "rights recovery" movement may conceivably lead to trouble with the owners of the French or German railways, conceded before that movement began; and both Governments, especially that of Germany, are rather too fond of connecting trade with "the flag." There may be difficulties on the Franco-Chinese frontier, or suspicions, like those which led to the seizure last spring of the Tatsu Maru, that revolutionists are being aided from Tongking or Japan; and, with China as loosely organized as at present, local disorders are at least as likely as in South America. A still graver danger is that of an anti-dynastic movement, of which there is an ominous sign in the protest against Manchu rule just made by the Chinese community in Burma. The Manchu element in the new central army is small, and its percentage in the population trifling. But the best security against such an upheaval lies in the sound government promised by the new régime. Should it come, there is not that prospect of Russian or Japanese interference that existed nine years ago.

In

two next strongest naval Powers. Mr. Asquith replied in the affirmative. The meaning which Mr. Lee attached to his formula is not open to question. the debate in March last on Mr. Murray Macdonald's motion, he insisted that our shipbuilding must have regard simply to the material strength of other Powers on the ground that "every Power, however friendly for the moment, must be reckoned as a potential

enemy." Hitherto, however, it has not been the practice of Liberal Ministers to rely on purely arithmetical calculations of strength. Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman refused to do so in 1907, when he declared that it would be absurd for us to build against strong naval Powers with which we were in alliance. Mr. Asquith took the same line when, in March of this year, he declared as Chancellor of the Exchequer that "the standard we have to maintain is one which would give us complete and absolute command of the sea against any reasonably possible combination of Powers." And, a few days later, Lord Tweedmouth, then First Lord of the Admiralty, was presented by Lord Cawdor with this same notion of building against the two strongest Powers, and rejected it. He preferred, he said, to base the twoPower standard on "any reasonable and probable combination." The same language, we observe, was used on Thursday night by Sir Edward Grey.

Here, therefore, would seem to be a real distinction of policy, based on a different interpretation of facts. For example, the old Bannerman-Asquith formula would certainly exclude a German-American combination. The Cawdor Lee formula must as certainly include it. The earlier Liberal reading of the two-Power standard would not call upon us to build against Japan and France in combination, or Germany and France, or Japan and Germany, in union. In fact, and in view of the course of European politics as modified both by Liberal and Conservative statesmanship, it would merely bind us to keep well ahead of the German navy and of any inferior naval Power, such as Austria or Italy, which might be drawn by her into an anti-British alliance. Such a course was measurable, fairly definable, and consistent with some degree of success for the great Liberal aim of a common reduc

tion of armaments. On the other hand, the Lee formula binds this country not merely to an absurd mental re-arrangement of the map of world-power, but to a boundless extravagance in armaments, in which we must always have an enormous lead, thus forcing the pace for ourselves and exposing every British tender of disarmament to an overwhelming retort, while we commit our people to a practical doubling of the sea-power of the richest and most formidable nation in the world, with a population twice as large as our own. In a word, this unhappy form of words, first framed to meet a not impossible, or even improbable, union of France and Russia, is now being used to pile burdens on our shoulders and those of our neighbors at a time when the disposition of those Powers towards us has completely altered, and when a new European situation, incomparably more favorable to ourselves, has arisen in its stead. It is even employed to drag us into competition with America, when the diplomacy of the two countries has completely altered the disposition of the British fleets, when we profess to have ruled America out of the possible range of war, and when, as we know, American shipbuilding, serious as it is, does not carry even a remote reference to ourselves.

It seems necessary, therefore, to ask for explanations, and we hope they will be forthcoming. We are not thinking alone of the shipbuilding programme for this and the coming year. That, indeed, must undergo extension if the hardening of the formula of the twoPower standard is more than a verbal slip. But the whole political position seems to us to have had a disquieting shift. The common calculation in the "Naval Annual" of anti-British strengths is precisely that combination of Germany and the United States to which the Prime Minister's adoption of the Lee formula, on the face of it,

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seems to apply. For this year America stepped into the position of second Naval Power, with Germany close behind, and likely to overtake her. Against the two fleets the authorities now assure us that we have a superiority of three "capital" or battle ships. three years hence we shall be slightly behind these "two next strongest Powers." Are we, or are we not, to add these two Powers together, one of which is probably building against the other? seven

And supposing they construct "Dreadnoughts," and complements, are we, irrespective of the political aims of these Powers, and of their relations to us, to lay down eight or nine?

The Government which has to answer this not unimportant question may be a Conservative or a Liberal Administration. If it is Conservative, its answer is not doubtful; if it is Liberal, the pressure from naval and Conservative sources to fulfil the letter of Mr. Asquith's declaration will be tremendous. Under the earlier interpretation of the two-Power standard, we could always put something to the credit of diplomacy, and the moral force and the wisdom of our statesmanship could be relied on to have an immediate reaction on armaments, and therefore on taxation. But if only the arithmetical table avails, and the strength of British fleets depends on the doing of a sum in simple addition, diplomacy merely plays a set of meaningless games, while reality rests alone with the hammers of our shipwrights and the incessant call of our tax-gatherers. Even on this ground the calenlation seems to us a thoughtless and shallow affair. What are "capital"

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ships? And how can these vessels, when they are duly tabulated, be pitted against each other in these rigid mathematical proportions? What “percentage" are we to set aside for character, discipline, seamanship, engineer. ing, gunnery, the disposition, availability, and handling of ships, the skill of admirals and officers, the character of a conflict, the spirit in which one nation or another enters upon it, its material resources and financial reserves? The old formula, in its "rough and ready" shape, was a poor enough equivalent for the many moral or semimoral calculations that enter into warfare. What does this new turn of words represent more than the exaggerated fears and the political ignorance and scepticism of our "experts"? Was it even presented to the Government with any sincerity of aim? We doubt it. Certainly its reaction on the political situation, the value to the Protectionist Party of having a Liberal formula as to the Navy which may be used to cover a recourse to duties on foreign goods, is clear enough. The "Daily Chronicle" talks lightly of a twenty millions deficit next year as a consequence of an addition of five or six millions to the naval budget. How is Mr. Lloyd George to find this sum in a single year? He may answer with justice that he will go to the classes who have demanded a larger Navy. A Protectionist Chancellor will have no such recourse; he will bind his burdens on the mass of the people, and we are afraid he will find his excuses in the formula to which apparent, but not. we hope, substantial assent was given on Thursday week.