Since M. Ferdinand Lot’s vast survey of ‘the most difficult problem of history’ was begun, in 1913, and even since the completion of the French version, in 1921, the movement of events and thought has given it an actuality once suspected only by a few. M. Lot is at pains to discount facile comparisons, pointing out that an economy based on usury is the antithesis of an economy based on credit, that the organisation of the Roman Empire, developed from the city-state and over-ruled by the army, in spite of superficial resemblances, differs radically from any modern government, that the exhaustion of economic resources is not to be feared in the present world; and yet, one cannot read without a continual and uncomfortable sense of precedent and analogv. A footnote, c this was written in 1914,’ has to qualify the statement that progressive economic downfall ‘is a very surprising phenomenon to us, who are accustomed to an ever-growing prosperity.’

As M. Lot shows, even before the barbarian invasions of the fifth century, the Roman Empire was only a ‘ruin in repair,’ disintegrating, in spite of the herculean efforts of a Diocletian, a Constantine, a Theodosius, through ‘the dissolution of its vital forces’ . Wealth is drained away through the growth of ‘tentacular’ cities; the currency, thrice restored, grows increasinglv debased and scarce, and ends by disappearing altogether: taxation becomes a crushing burden, and Diocletian seeks in vain to fix maximum prices for provisions, salaries, and articles of common use.

Equality of function and equality of opportunity will make the world no happier or better. But where there is equality of consideration social peace reigns.

In a flower sepal, petal, stamen, anther, root, each has its contribution to make to the life and sweetness of the flower, and each is concerned in the health of the whole. So in the Christian State everybody is to be somebody, but not ‘ nobody to anybody.’ Each human being is ‘a separate thought of God.’

If a young man is taught to be as attentive to plain and poor girls as to attractive and smart ones, to the governess as much as to the heiress, if he is taught to treat inferior races, when among them, with respect and sympathy, he will be a better man than if he should thrill with the political theories of Harrington, Sidney, Condorcet, or Bright.

The modern child is encouraged by assiduous deference to its ideas and desires to be inconsiderate to others, especially its elders; the schoolboy has a snobbish way of refusing recognition to the claims of ‘outsiders’ or of social inferiors. Whereas it is by his behaviour and special courtesy to outsiders and inferiors that a gentleman is known. A lady also.

Queen Victoria wrote in one of her letters : ‘I was taught to beg my maid’s pardon for any naughtiness or rudeness towards her—a feeling I have ever retained.’

Father D’arcy, in his book on St. Thomas Aquinas, has pointed out that, although the tnought and writings of the saint continued after the Renaissance to be potent influences on the Continent, in England they fell into almost total neglect. ‘E ew among the lovers of the New Learning imitated the example of Erasmus and excepted Aquinas from their censure of the Scholastics. The majority were of the mind of Bacon .... The tradition of medieval thought and culture lingered on in Oxford .... but was seldom, if ever, renovated by an adequate knowledge of the writings of St. Thomas/ And m another passage, ‘No one, save a Catholic, thought of studying his system from the point of view of pure philosophy.’

This is indubitably a fact; and one that renders all the more interesting those individuals who ran counter to so strong a current of national thought and feeling. For there are brilliant, though sometimes unsuspected, exceptions to this general rule of neglect. The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas continued to influence the few if not the many; and of these none is more worthy of note than Thomas Traherne, that most attractive seventeenth century devotional writer, who has been rediscovered by our own age, and who is being proclaimed as one of the greatest mystics England has produced, perhaps the greatest Nature-mystic the world has ever seen. This Traherne, whose limpid poetry and surpassingly lovely prose are attracting more and more readers to-day, owes much of his power to the beauty and wholeness of the personality his writings reveal; and from this point of view it is interesting to discover how deeply he was influenced by the spirit and thought of Aquinas.

When I was close upon sixteen there appeared a book of poems which was quickly recognised by the judges of literature as a classic. From that verdict there has never been any appeal. A Shropshire Lad is one of the great achievements of English poetry. The author’s vernacular English is chiselled to a Greek perfection, his metrical mastery is triumphant. Until 1922 he published no further collection. To one familiar with A Shropshire Lad, Professor A. E. Housman’s Last Poems betray a notable falling off. Very few of these pieces are worthy to rank with those of the earlier volume; and that which seems to me by far the best I well remember reading in some periodical (was it the excellent Monthly Review?) about thirty years ago, a masterpiece of verbal and rhythmic beauty.

The words ‘musicology,’ ‘musicologist,’ and the like will not be found in English dictionaries—sufficient evidence that we lack the science which the words connote.

Since Burney’s day, English musical history has been either a safe following of ‘recognised authorities’ or a self-conscious appraisement of national achievements—plagiarism or parochialism, to be perfectly frank. But the ‘authorities’ have usually been a generation or two out of date, and our national achievements have been too rarely measured with those of other countries; hence our defective sense of proportion and our un-catholic (in the literal sense) outlook.

It is, therefore, refreshing to take up a book embodying the latest research, written by a Frenchman who is also a musicologist, and there to find ordered and logical arrangement as distinct from our own haphazard or individualistic methods, together with a Frenchman’s cultural breadth as distinct from our own musical nationalism.

Mungo Park walked on in the belief, absurd as he knew it to be, that he had died. There are catastrophes (so he assured himself) where the victim need not add to his perplexity the pain of suspending his judgment. And this hypothesis was some relief to him here and now—if, as in his anguish he thought, it is here and now. He dismissed as impertinent his own critical question : when did it happen and where and how?

One thing at a time, he answered himself. For he wanted no more than a mind sufficiently at ease to draw inferences from the evidence of his bewildered senses. He did not deny that he felt well. All his reactions were perfect; he had no physical pain; his breathing was right; there was not the least irritation on any part of his skin; no blister, fly-bite, soreness; his clothes, hat, boots seemed ideally part of himself. His stick hung on his wrist; he could hear his watch ticking; he .verified, by touching the places, that his many pockets held their expected contents.