manner suffices to show that their usefulness can scarcely be exaggerated. The Norfolk Broads, for instance, and Wicken Sedge Fen, in Cambridgeshire, could hardly be surpassed as likely places for all sorts of water-birds and others that have a weakness for wide open tracts. Again, Spurn Point, in Yorkshire, and Lundy, together with the adjacent coast of Devonshire, may be trusted to afford asylum to many most desirable species of sea-birds. There is something particularly attractive in the idea of a sacred enclosure within which the timid bird may find itself safe from all chance of trouble. The experiment is, of course, as yet in its very early infancy, but it will be disappointing and surprising if it does not attract to our shores many hitherto very rare or almost unknown visitors, as well as encourage species which the increasing hurry and whir of modern life threaten to extinguish.

Such is the new dispensation which has dawned for our wild birds. May it grow ever wider and brighter! There is no room for two opinions as to the desirability of preserving them. The only question is how best the enterprise may be attacked and carried through, and it is hoped that this sketch of various possible plans of campaign may be of service in the cause. For more precise details of the various ways in which county councils have tried to make use of the Acts, the reader must be referred to the orders actually Issued. They are published originally in the London Gazette; and each county must make them accessible to the public.

It is not amiss, perhaps, to round off a series of suggestions for the accomplishment of a desired object with a remark on how not to do it. Roughly speaking, the least desirable plan is the method of organisations known as "sparrow clubs" and the like. If they would only stick to their last, these associations would be open to comparatively little objection. It is true that there is something not quite pleasing about the tale of slaughter which appears from time to time in the newspapers; but sparrows, even when destroyed by thousands, may be trusted to survive in sufficient numbers. These accounts, however, are usually accompanied by a minor and supplementary list of other birds which have fallen victims to the club's skill and energy; and this list often includes species which are, on the one hand, by no means too common, and, on the other, of considerable use to the agriculturist and others in whose interest the slaughter ostensibly takes place. Various kinds of hawks, for instance, or owls, should certainly be left in peace. It is true that they prey upon smaller birds, and might, therefore, be counted legitimate quarry for the would-be protector of wild birds; but VOL. CCLXXXII. NO. 1995.

R

this internecine warfare is of the nature of things, and there is no reason to suppose that it exceeds proper bounds, or is likely to disturb the balance of bird life on the earth. There is also another attitude which is generally to be deprecated-an attitude of fixed hostility to feathered things universally, merely because some particular specimens have been found to be destructive or annoying. This indiscriminating frame of mind is quite indefensible, and is even likely to be as inimical to the real interests of the person who labours under it as the action of the gardener, possessed of a fixed objection to vermin and reptiles in general, who, as he laid a fatally decisive foot on a useful specimen of garden life, muttered vindictively, "I'll larn ye to be a to-ad."

ROBIN BIRDILOVE.

WALTER PATER.

THE

HERE are some writers who, though by no means popular or even widely known, yet exercise a quite extraordinary, and sometimes widely-extended influence over their contemporaries. At first, it may be, their writings fall into the hands of but a chosen few who seize upon the teaching of the master and appropriate it to themselves. They too, in turn, teach others the knowledge they so much prize; and so the influence spreads; it is "in the air," as we say, and many become subject to a scheme or theory of life who have never even read the works of its originator.

This was the case with Mr. Meredith, who exercised an influence for a long time quite disproportionate to his popularity. And now every little scribbler will pen you a story in so-called Meredithese, though it may reasonably be doubted if he knows more of the master than may be gathered from the skilful imitations of John Oliver Hobbes. The influence of Walter Pater has, however, been deeper than this. It is true that, like Mr. Meredith, he made a certain style the fashion in a somewhat limited literary circle. But this is not his highest achievement; Walter Pater will not be remembered because he wrote beautiful, if somewhat over-ornate, prose, which many have imitated but few rivalled, but rather for the influence he has exercised over the actual lives of men. This influence has been both deep and wide-wider, indeed, we may suppose, than Mr. Pater himself had any idea of. At first, as with Mr. Meredith, his followers were few; but his philosophy of life proved alluring, and more and more added themselves to the number of his disciples. The ideal of life which he had formulated in the conclusion of the "Renaissance" proved, unfortunately, a satisfying ideal to many who read it, though not for long to him who wrote it.

Walter Pater, indeed, modified and almost entirely altered the views he had therein expressed; as we hope to show in this essay, his ideas, from being purely Pagan in the "Renaissance," became in the greatest and most thoughtful of his books, "Marius the Epicurean," actually Christian. His disciples, too, changed-not, alas! with the

master, but rather away from him. Taking the conclusion of the "Renaissance," they exaggerated its teaching, forcing it beyond its author's own intention.

Thus the influence of Mr. Pater has not been altogether for good, simply because those who were pleased with his first scheme of life did not care to follow him as he developed and improved it.

What, then, did the conclusion of the "Renaissance" teach that, though but a few pages long, it has exercised, and does still, so strong an influence over the minds of young men? The ideas in it are not new, though they had not been expressed before in this century, in England at least. Hedonism is very old, as old as man nearly, we might be tempted to say, so hard is it to picture man as he really was in the most primitive times. Greece knew of it; Rome in its decadence knew it; and again the Renaissance was no stranger to it. And then, when Hedonist ideals had fallen for long into abeyance, crushed especially by the practicality of life in this nineteenth century, came Walter Pater, offering to us a peculiarly refined and delicately expressed Hedonism-offering it to us as the key of life.

Perhaps its very aloofness from practical things gave it a special charm; its author moved in a world of thought, of sensation; the hurry and rush of modern existence were naught to him. He taught how life could be made exquisite and beautiful, not how we could get on, or gain material prosperity. Life was to him entirely a subjective thing, and the dramatic elements of life were not incidents, but rather inward impressions and sensations.

The year '69, in which the "Renaissance" first appeared, was not, I suppose, more remarkable for its appreciation of beauty than any other year of the Victorian age which preceded it; certainly less so than the last few years have been, for the Pre-Raphaelites had as yet made but little impression on their contemporaries. Nor were our homes at that time glorified into beauty by Mr. William Morris. It was, in fact, a time of singular ugliness; and the ideas of life then prevalent were well in keeping with the uncomely externals of existence. "To get on" was the sole aim of a man's career; to be opulent in the world's goods was considered the goal to which all. men must strive. This on the one hand. While on the other there was indeed one who cried in the wilderness-Thomas Carlyle, whom the more thoughtful followed and revered.

But his philosophy was grim enough, and often violent and unlovely. Carlyle never freed himself from all the narrow influences which had beset his boyhood. Moreover, he was not a constructive philosopher. His mission was to destroy the present rotten erections

f

of society, and to sweep away all the shams of modern life. This he was ready ruthlessly to do; but he had nothing to offer in their place. Having cut the ground from under your feet, he could give you no other foundation on which to stand.

So, he was a hard master to follow, and one, moreover, who had a fine contempt for happiness. "The greatest happiness for the greatest number" was mere pig philosophy to him. Thus he was a singularly repellent teacher to young men, or rather to a certain section of young men; those who felt an intense yearning for happiness, and had an equally intense love of beauty.

To men of such a sensitive temperament, the teaching of Carlyle was of far too bracing, too grim a character, though amongst the less susceptible it might be welcomed joyfully.

Yet even in these there must have been a certain sternness, a certain touch of the misanthrope, perhaps, before they could fully accept his message as their gospel.

It was to those, then, who were repelled by the teaching of Carlyle, and who were asking for some teacher who would show them how they could best make their lives things of beauty and pleasure, that the writing of Walter Pater came with peculiar force.

The ideal he offered was in this instance purely Pagan; there is no trace of religious influence in it, and therefore perhaps it appealed all the more strongly to those who may have been repelled from Christianity by the cold, harsh Protestantism which infected the Church more strongly then than now. And then, too, when we consider how many have never thought of religion at all-or, if they have, have lightly cast it away as a trammel upon the development of their individuality-we shall easily understand how little the frank Paganism of Mr. Pater's teaching would stand in the way of its success. Make your life dramatic (this is the sum of Mr. Pater's teaching); let it be filled with sensation. Remember that no moment can return; let it, then, be as exquisite as possible. "Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself is the end. A counted number of pulses only is given us of a variegated dramatic life. How may we see in them all that is to be seen in them by the finest senses? To burn always with this hard, gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life. And again: "While all melts under our feet, we may well catch at any exquisite passion, or any contribution to knowledge, that seems by a lifted horizon to set the spirit free for a moment, or any stirring of the senses, strange dyes, strange colours and curious odours, or work of the artist's hand, or the face of one's friend ;" and he ends his essay with phrases which have long ago