hollow. Winding sheets of mist unwinding reveal for a moment among the circles of the hills radiant fairy knowes, and across the shoulders of dark bens flash pathways of light, as for men of peace and angels directed through Eternity by the very finger of God. At our feet lie the waters of Loch Leven, grumlie black in contrast to the little sailing skiffs which, like white sea-birds, skim the Loch. The fishermen of Ballachulish are out for a race round the islets. Wide-spreading sails are flapping with every squall. The three fishermen I watch who do not take in their reef in time 'win' not round the island as they hoped they 'win' the other world. For at the very point which a seer of Ballachulish had years ago predicted as the point of a fatal accident, suddenly their boat capsizes, sinks, and they are seen no more.

The Rev. Alexander McInnes, minister of the Gaelic Episcopalian Church, has had so many and such varied experiences of what the Psychical Research Society would call 'veridical,' that the sublimal self' must in him be very active. Nor has any one in the district about which I am writing had the second sight stronger than his venerable father, H. McInnes, aged nearly one hundred, beloved and respected by all. It is to see him on this particular afternoon that the son leads the way from the village of Carnoch, at the foot of Glencoe, to his father's house at Ballachulish.

'If my father is alive to-day,' said the minister turning to me, 'he will tell you how and where he saw the big man of Ballachulish.'

As he spoke, we were nearing his father's cottage. Standing at the door I saw a tall upright frame, a beaming, kind old face through which it was plain the soul was fast wearing. His son spoke to him in Gaelic, and asked him to tell again in my hearing where and how he saw the apparition of the armed spirit.

'If you will follow me,' he said to his son in Gaelic, I will show you the place again where we last met him. That was many years ago. Donald came to see me, and I was walking with him homewards in the gloaming.'

I then walked on with father and son until they paused at a certain point of the road where the old man stopped us, saying:

'Here is where we met the giant; you see the road lies east and west. Now, we were going eastward and he was going westward; he took the south side of the road and we the north; I saw that we would pass each other in a moment. I saw that-and likewise that he was surely one off the shoulder of the seventh generation-the very step of a hero! "This man cannot be of this earth," I said to Donald, "but there is no bad in it! He'll be the big man of the glen! Come forward with me," I said; but he, Donald, shook with fear and stood where he was. Now I committed myself to the Holy Trinity, and forward I went, for I was not afraid that I should look upon him. Just here I took the road at an angle, for surely I thought

he would pass me if I would not stop him. He marched without sound nor haste, and now, as I faced him in the gloaming, he halted, standing two or three paces fornent me. I halted likewise. Well, I looked up at him, and that was far: I am over six feet in height, but he he was far above me. First I looked at his head, then upon his grand face there was peace written there. He was beardless; the like of his dress I have never seen before, nor have I since. If it was woven, it was of shining silver; there was a fall of it round his head and face, and that which clothed his body was of the same, and hung over that which covered his legs, and that was of the same, whatever it was. Round his throat he wore-well, whatever was there that looked yellow and raised in queer shapes. Now, I did not think to speak to him because of the wonder in which I stood. I told Donald all I was seeing and the wonder of it, but Donald for fear would not come forward one step from where he was for all that I told him. Never, till I took a step or two backwards, did the spirit offer to move, when with our eyes fixed on him, with slow and martial step, he turned off the road on to this mould here that rises beside us, and on this very spot before our eyes he passed into air. I again said, turning to Donald, "There is no bad in it whatever, and you or I will see it again to-night." "In the name of the Trinity let it not be me," said he, and we returned to my house together. That night when Donald went home, he went not alone, for the big man of the Glen walked beside him.'

JANEY SEVILLA CAMPBELL.

THE MODERN MACHIAVELLI

MR. JOHN MORLEY'S brilliant Romanes Lecture on Machiavelli could not fail to revive interest in the irresistible cynicism of the subtle old Florentine all the more that it turned a startling searchlight on men and movements of to-day, revealing sinister aspects behind the outer face. The bacillus of Old Nick' has passed through various 'cultures' in the course of four centuries; but it is still malignant and active. Every one who heard or read the Romanes Lecture kept asking, 'What is the moral of it all?' The occasion did not require (perhaps it did not permit) the lecturer to offer his own solution of the problem he stated with such incisive force. Mutato nomine de te fabula narratur. But who is-Tu? One suspects a somewhat large and vociferous company of politicians, orators, writers.

Mr. Morley has started a debate on the ethics of politics which interests all, but in which few care to speak out quite frankly. There is certainly a great deal of unctuous rectitude' in political life, especially on these international problems. Mr. Frederick Greenwood, who always has the courage of his opinions, in the August number of Cosmopolis tears the mask from this humbug, which is peculiarly odious to him. But frank and lucid as he always is, he has not stated his practical advice to statesmen with all the precision and detail we expect from a veteran publicist, master of so vigorous a style. It seems to come to this: that the Machiavellian patriot' is blameless, and only 'the Machiavellian egotist' is guilty. The Machiavellian patriot may lawfully do all that a wild beast does, if need be, knowing neither God nor Devil, sentiment or morals. He is like the Elect in the Predestinarian scheme who cannot lose their assured Salvation. For him morality simply does not exist. The trouble is, how are we to recognise this magnanimous but immoral Patriot? By what signs is he revealed? Were Brutus and Cassius Machiavellian patriots? Is Prince Bismarck? Is the Sultan?

On the other hand the Spectator, criticising Mr. Greenwood, is for maintaining the loftiest morality. It seems not to disapprove the slaughter of Matabele black men in the cause of Christian civilisation. It approves the action of the Government towards the Transvaal, which must be made to feel that it is part of the Empire,

little as the Boers like this or will admit this. The Gospel of Peacealas!-has to be driven into backward societies with a firm hand. But the Spectator holds that dogmatic Machiavellism saps the springs of moral progress;' and in this nineteenth century it is useless as well as mischievous. If the Almighty, in his good purpose, wills us Britons to enlarge our Empire, even, if it must be so, with Maxim guns, we, must never lose sight of the Sermon on the Mount.

Mr. Greenwood is severe on the hypocrisy of professing moral doctrines whilst we persist in immoral action, and on the way we have of shutting our eyes to all the fraud, cruelty, and violence in public life. He is for calling things by their right names. Individual citizens ought to be personally moral; but he denies that statesmen can be, or (as it seems) ought to be moral. Morality in international affairs is either hypocrisy or weakness. Home politics should be run on moral lines, and he is indignant at the Machiavellism he sees rampant in party leaders; but he stoutly declares that Machiavellism that is, ex hypothesi, fraud, cruelty, and violence—is necessary and right in foreign affairs, where we have to meet the wickedness of our foreign rivals by equal or even superior villainy of our own. This is reassuring for Sir Matthew W. Ridley and Mr. Asquith-but rather hard on Lord Salisbury and Lord Rosebery.

We

This is no paradox of Mr. Greenwood's own invention. He is one of the acutest and most experienced publicists living, and one of the most honest and resolute. He is simply putting into plain words. the inmost but perhaps rather vague thoughts of influential politicians, financiers, and journalists-nay, of political parties and tendencies which have been rapidly growing for a generation or more. must agree with him that Europe is seething with Machiavellian ambitions, that we have to face the fact, that some of the most successful and popular leaders of our age are bent on adapting to the nineteenth century some of the dominant ideas of the Prince. These are summed up thus :-Be strong to smite, ready to smite, crafty, unsparing; and, if it come to the worst, know nothing of God, devil, sentiment or morals. All this is criminal and wicked in the private citizen-it is very wrong in party politics. But in foreign affairs, in dealing with other races, civilised or barbarous, it ceases to be immoral and becomes a duty. It is not-Our country, right or wrong! It is rather-For our country wrong is right! Machiavellism, so nakedly formulated, is indeed seldom professed. But it is practised, it is admired, and believed in. Jingoism, Imperialism, Manifest Destiny, are all forms of this Machiavellism-and no one need be ashamed to avow it.

Mr. Greenwood is no faddist, but an acute and serious thinker, undoubtedly expressing a latent but deep conviction of modern opinion. And a latent and widespread conviction of the kind will account for many things which are puzzling in the present day. But

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by what signs are we to recognise the honest Machiavellian patriot,' how distinguish him from the egotist,' from the miscreant, from the Borgias, Napoleons, and Abdul Hamids? All his wickedness, says Mr. Greenwood, is done not for himself, not out of delight in vice, cruelty and fraud, but out of pure patriotism, for the sake of his country. But so say most tyrants and evil-doers. Machiavelli thought Cæsar Borgia a type of a true prince. Napoleon, we are told, was an egotist,' a selfish tyrant, not a patriot. But in his own day he loudly professed to be a patriot, and was fervently believed by millions. So, too, Louis Napoleon swore that if he had to murder, it was out of love for France. Why is not Abdul Hamid a true 'Machiavellian patriot'? He does horrible deeds, but he profoundly believes that all his fraud, cruelty, and violence are necessary for the salvation of Turkey as a State, and millions of sincere Mussulmans in Europe and in Asia believe this to be true. We cannot deny that even Abdul's enormities are within the traditions of Ottoman policy, when at bay before the infidel. Mr. Greenwood says that to secure the existence of your State in freedom, 'you may do anything that a wild animal may do-knowing nothing of God or devil, or sentiment, or morals.' Well! that is precisely what Abdul the Damned says he is doing. And from the point of view of a fanatical Turk of the old school, this is a plausible contention. Abdul the Damned is really the beau idéal of the 'Machiavellian patriot '-who, says Mr. Greenwood, 'is blameless.'

And what about Golli and Caserio, and the murderers of the Czar Alexander, of Abraham Lincoln, and Rossi ; what about Orsini, and the dynamiters, and anarchists, and all the assassins from Brutus and Cassius down to Balthazar Gérard and Ravaillac? They all murdered public men under an inspiring belief that they were saving the State. Or if the anarchists do not desire to save the State, they desire to save free men from the tyranny of the State. Anarchism may be wrong, but it is a doctrine professed by philosophers like Herbert Spencer and philanthropists like Auberon Herbert. The political assassins were no doubt terribly mistaken as to what was for the true good of the State. But they were most of them sincere enthusiasts, and were supported by eminent rulers and by most holy priests. Whether the kings and statesmen they murdered were tyrants or not is a very intricate problem. They thought so, and sacrificed their own lives in that faith. The Machiavellian patriot' usually slaughters men wholesale. Why is not some obscure but sincere dynamiter and anarchist, who murders in the name of the people, equally worthy of being a Machiavellian patriot-and blameless?

It is sophism to talk of the State being above morality, so as to sanctify fraud, cruelty, and violence. This is to make a fetish of the State, a God Almighty, a sort of Moloch. The State is only an