be applicable to the whole territory. The criminal law would in the main be similar to that of the Cape Colony, which is a not infelicitous mixture of Roman-Dutch and English law. English would be the official language, but all laws and proclamations would have to be published in Dutch as well as English, and due provision would have to be made for interpretation in all courts of justice. The language question would present no insuperable difficulties, as most officials in South Africa understand both languages; and in any sound educational system to be hereafter introduced into the Transvaal and Orange districts, the teaching of English should be made a condition sine quâ non in all cases in which a Government grant in aid might be applied for.

As regards the choice of a new capital, I should be inclined to suggest the formation of a new city in a high and healthy situation as near the western side of the Drakensberg as possible; but if that be thought too great an undertaking the best existing position would, on the whole, be Johannesburg.

Municipalities for large towns and village management boards for small ones should be established as soon as possible.

Monopolies should be abolished without compensation. Free trade should be adopted. There are no manufactures or industries worth protecting. All customs dues for revenue purposes would be levied at the coast, as at present in the Cape Colony. Inland custom houses would not be required. An excise should be imposed and rigorously enforced. Equal rights should be secured to all white men; equal justice for all men, white or

black.

The supply of liquor to natives should be absolutely prohibited. As regards land, the South African system of registration of title and government survey is perfect. Land commissions could be appointed, of course, wherever necessary.

There is a wide difference between the late actual administration. of government in the Orange Free State and that in the Transvaal. In the Orange territory, the late government may be described as honest, fair and even liberal. It would therefore be desirable to make as few changes as possible in that part of the country; the oath of allegiance being required, of course, from all officials. A firm, just and conciliatory policy, steadily pursued with due regard and consideration for the natural feelings and sentiments of the respectable inhabitants of the Orange dis

tricts, and the prospect of representative institutions, and, ultimately, of responsible government will do much to reconcile all but the hopelessly irreconcilable to a change which, after all, will prove to them a blessing in disguise. Leniency, however, must not be carried too far at first. No crimes or offenses should be condoned, and the rights of all claimants for compensation should be duly considered and strictly enforced. In a conquered territory there is no danger that British officers will show excessive severity. It is quite the other way. Much harm may be, and often is, done by mistaken kindness. Justice should in all cases

come before generosity.

In the Transvaal many drastic changes will be necessary which it is needless for me to specify in detail. The Uitlanders' legitimate grievances will need prompt and complete redress, and the whole Augean stable of corruption will have to be swept out with an unsparing hand. Indeed, the reforms needed may be summarized briefly as the substitution in the government of the country of honesty for dishonesty, of purity for corruption, of justice for injustice, and of freedom for slavery.

As regards that weightiest of questions, the financial settlement-the crucial test of all sound government-it may be necessary for Great Britain to provide cash in the first instance; but, as already remarked, the burden must be made to fall in due course on the two extinct republics, and especially on the Transvaal. That this will heavily tax the resources of the Transvaal is certain. The gold-mining industry in particular will have to a great extent to meet the cost of striking off its shackles, but it is well able to support it. English shareholders will probably face their liabilities under the circumstances with resignation. The foreign shareholders who are so largely interested in Transvaal gold mines will grumble; but they can hardly expect much sympathy from us. The almost universal Anglophobia on the European Continent throughout the present war has occasioned equal surprise and regret in England. Our foreign foes rejoice at our misfortunes, minimize our successes and exhaust their extensive vocabularies of vituperation in writing and speaking about us. Their malice is only surpassed by their ignorance of the real merits of the case they so glibly discuss. If their support of the Boers should culminate in pecuniary loss to themselves, they will have no right to blame us for the result.

England is in the proud position of needing no foreign alliance. She fears no foe, no combination of foes. Her own sons can protect her. Her fixed policy is to avoid the entanglements of any alliance with foreign States. Englishmen well know who are their real enemies and what their relative strength is. Not even with the United States of America will Great Britain ever seek alliance; but the British value the sympathy and appreciation of their kinsmen across the Atlantic far more than the good opinion of all other nations put together. The moral support of American citizens of British descent is most highly esteemed in England by all classes. The present deplorable struggle in South Africa, in which so many of England's best and bravest have already perished, is the war of freedom, justice and equality before the law, against the powers of darkness, and we feel sure that the verdict of enlightened American citizens will be as just and impartial as the future judgment of history. SIDNEY SHIPPARD.

MODERN PERSIAN LITERATURE.

BY E. DENISON ROSS, PROFESSOR OF PERSIAN IN UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON.

THROUGH the medium of Omar Khayyam and his inspired interpreter, Edward Fitzgerald, a peculiar interest has of late been aroused, on either side of the Atlantic, in Persian Thought and Literature. The object of the present article is to offer to those amateurs whose acquaintance with Modern Persian Literature is confined to translation a brief survey of its rise and of its present status in the kingdom of the Shah.

It is curious to note how universal the opinion is, among the uninitiated, that the Persians do not possess a Literature in the accepted sense of the term. This popular misconception is, no doubt, partly due to the fact that those who have undertaken to clothe the Persian Muse in English dress have confined their choice to a limited number of poets, and have produced fresh versions of the poems of Sádi Hafiz and Omar in large numbers, to the almost entire neglect of the other great singers of Iran. After all, it is the scholar who must be the first means of introducing a foreign poet into a new language; and Persian, for a long time, suffered from a marked neglect at the hands of Orientalists. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which produced many notable Oriental scholars-especially in Hebrew and Arabic -Persian was merely regarded as a side-study, and hardly taken. seriously; almost the only Europeans who turned their attention. to that language were resident diplomatists in India and travellers in Persia. Although many of these obtained a fair knowledge of Persian, they merely learnt it for official or practical purposes; and in acquiring it, under the guidance of natives, they probably seldom read anything beyond a few of the best-known classics, without inquiring into, or even hearing of, any Literature be

yond. The interest of scholars in Persia was, however, at length aroused by the "discovery" of the sacred books of the Zoroastrians, and the decipherment of the Achemedian Inscriptions. And it was through this new interest in Persia that, at the beginning of the present century, Persian began to be studied for its own sake, and assumed an important place in the list of Oriental studies.

In 642 A. D. the Persians suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of the Arabs at the battle of Nahavand, and, with the fall of Merv, in 651, the fate of the old Zoroastrian State was decided. The overwhelming progress of the arms of the Arabs was only equalled by the rapid dissemination of their creed and language. Wherever the conquering Arab established himself, there, too, sprang into practice his new religion and his old language. In Persia, with the suddenness of magic, Ormuzd and Ahriman were changed for Allah and Satan, and the solar for the lunar year. Such was, at any rate, the case to all outward appearance, and, so long as the Kalifate remained in the hands of the powerful house of Omayya, the language of Persia seems to have relapsed into silence, and her national spirit into obscurity. For a period of about one hundred and fifty years we find no trace of a national literature, nor have we any means of forming a precise notion of the language spoken by the Persians during that time. As far as documentary evidence is concerned, we pass directly from the old Parsi of the "Fire Worshipping Guebres" to the modern Persian, with its predominant element of Arabic words and expressions-an essentially Mohammedan language.

So long as the Central Government in Baghdad made its authority to be felt throughout the Eastern conquests of Islam, which extended from the Persian Gulf to the frontiers of Chinese Turkestan, the language and culture of the Kalif were predominant in every province. It must, however, be admitted that the Court of Baghdad owed more than half its brilliancy to the Persians themselves; it was conducted on lines closely imitative of the late Sassanids court at Ctesiphon, and though the Arabs, at the period of their emigration from the deserts of Arabia, possessed a rich and powerful language, together with an innate taste for poetry, they had but a small degree of culture. Moreover, wherever the Arabs carried their arms, they were on the look-out for men of genius and learning among the conquered,