we should have to expect such another social calamity in the rural districts as is recorded in 'The Village Labourer' and 'English Farming'—a large increase in the number of casual labourers. There can be no doubt, however, that, because of the present low-wage system, many farmers have got into the way of looking only for a certain amount of work from their men, and that, in the interests of the men and of farming efficiency, it is most desirable that a more businesslike system should be introduced. Farm labour should be better organised, and so earn more for both men and masters. A determined attempt should be made to raise wages as high as possible if only in order to compete with the wages and other attractions offered by the towns; not to speak of the glowing baits of the voluble emigration agent. But an economically sound and permanent rise in wages is not to be secured by legislation alone, and we do not find it easy to believe that the Government, when it comes face to face with practical considerations, at present unknown to its urban supporters, who manifest a desire to solve rural problems outright by Acts of Parliament, will commit itself to any particularly wild course of action. The way in which it was compelled to pick up information as it went along in the case of the Insurance Act is too recent a lesson.

Thus, in discussing the question of a minimum wage for farm hands, we are brought back to the question of rural education; for small good will result from a rise in wages if instruction is not given as to how to spend it to the best advantage. In the same connexion it is also impossible altogether to overlook the fact that the question of trades unionism for agricultural labourers may present itself before long. Mr Arch's organisation, though it failed to take root, owing to the difficulty of assembling and collecting the dues from widely scattered workers unaccustomed to correspondence and corporate action, did do something, as a few labourers remember, to raise wages. Now that every labourer has his bicycle and the local train services have improved; now that labourers are better educated, read a paper, and are more familiar with the idea of combination, there is always the possibility that, if capable and trustworthy leaders are forthcoming, agricultural trade-unionism may revive.

The first thoughts of farmers will lead them to be strongly opposed to such a development; though, as their men may remind them, they have a Farmers' Union. The business of a farm, which depends so much on the weather and involves the care of live stock, might receive, it will be contended, a fatal stroke from a sudden stoppage of work. On the other hand, it will be argued, no doubt, that stoppages of work are not a normal but an abnormal feature of trade unionism; that there are advantages as well as disadvantages in dealing with organised labour; and that, for good or evil, the conditions of rural life and industry have changed, and, willy-nilly, employers must recognise the fact. In any case, it should be realised that stolid antagonism to trade unionism will not suffice to prevent its development, if it should present itself to the modern agricultural labourer as a ready and sufficient means of remedying the undoubted grievance, in respect of wages and housing, from which he admittedly suffers in many districts. The only way effectively to combat the movement, which, it is as well to recognise, is already making some progress in the eastern counties, is to be beforehand with the reforms which intelligent labourers may legitimately demand. The men are not voiceless, as they used to be, and there is now a very much larger urban population and a widely circulated popular press to hear and magnify their complaint. The towns have grown accustomed to unionism in every urban trade; and if the labourers should be compelled to organise before those of their number who are poorly paid and ill housed can secure the wages and the dwellings to which skilled and hard-working men are entitled, they may certainly reckon on a considerable measure of popular sympathy. As Mr Disraeli bluntly told the Bucks Agricultural Association, an agricultural labourer has as much right to combine for the bettering of his condition as a manufacturing labourer or a worker in metal.'*

* Echoes of Old County Life,' by J. K. Fowler, 1892, p. 75.

Art. 11.- MADAME DU DEFFAND AND HORACE WALPOLE.

Lettres de la Marquise du Deffand à Horace Walpole (1766-1780). Première Édition Complète, Augmentée d'environ 500 Lettres Inédites publiées d'après les Originaux, avec une Introduction, des Notes, et une Table des Noms par Mrs Paget Toynbee. Trois Tomes. Londres: Methuen, 1912.

On

'L'AMOUR est comme la dévotion; il vient tard. n'est guère amoureuse ni dévote à vingt ans.' When he wrote those words Anatole France embodied a truth which is never frankly faced by analysts of the human heart, though it is one that is ever confronting the moralist and the director of souls. But even in France, where every way of love is regarded with such indulgent understanding and such charity, the strange, ardent, frustrate passion of Madame du Deffand for Horace Walpole has excited, for over a hundred years, uneasy surprise and curious speculation. And now the history of, perhaps, the most singular amitié amoureuse of which our world will ever have the secret, is revealed in three large volumes, containing eight hundred and thirty-eight letters, six of which only are imperfect. It is, alas, but a one-sided correspondence. Thanks to Walpole's nervous dread of ridicule, a large number of his letters to his 'dear old woman' were burnt by her at his request: others, returned to him in her lifetime, were, after her death, finally destroyed by Miss Berry, to whom he left the full responsibility of dealing with all his papers and correspondence.

The publication, in 1809, of a selection of Madame du Deffand's correspondence with d'Alembert, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Hénault, and the delight with which it was received, was probably the inspiring cause of Miss Berry's edition. Be that as it may, she published in 1810 four small volumes of Letters of the Marquise du Deffand to the Honble. Horace Walpole.' She thought it her duty to edit severely the three hundred and fortyeight letters chosen from the great mass of material then at her disposal, but, even so, the fragmentary correspondence made a prodigious sensation, especially in

France. In the Paris of that date there were still many men and women of the 'beau monde,' survivors of the guillotine, who remembered Madame du Deffand. To some she must have seemed the typical and traditional great lady, not only of the magnificent old régime, but of their own radiant, shadowless youth; while to others, more intelligently reminiscent, she was still more noted as having been the lifelong friend and correspondent of Voltaire.

In 1859 the Marquis de Saint-Aulaire published a further selection of Madame du Deffand's letters to her contemporaries. Miss Berry gave him five new letters addressed to Walpole; and he understood, or thought he understood, from her that the rest of the correspondence had been destroyed. This was certainly true of Walpole's share of it; but that of Madame du Deffand survived to be sold to Mr Dyce Sombre, in 1842, as part of an important lot of manuscripts and autograph letters, for the modest sum of 1571. The purchaser's widow left the papers to her nephew, Mr W. R. Parker Jervis, of Meaford, Staffs, to whose intelligent generosity the present and future readers of these volumes owe their good fortune. It may be added that that good fortune would have been much lessened, had it not been for the enthusiasm and fine scholarship of the late Mrs Paget Toynbee, to whom indeed their actual discovery at Meaford, when she was examining the Walpole papers, was due. She wrote the admirable introduction; and no page of the three volumes is left without some illuminative note. Indeed, it may confidently be said that no work containing so much fresh material for the understanding of social and political French history has been published since the 'Memoirs' of Saint-Simon.

But it is not their historical value, great as that may be, which makes these letters of Madame du Deffand of such poignant interest. What we seek and find in them is a light thrown on the deeper recesses of a woman's heart, already far too old and withered, according to all conventional theory, for love to find a place within its ossified fibres. Before, however, we attempt to probe into what must remain-even when every possible solution has been examined and considered-an insoluble mystery, let us consider what manner of human being

was this Frenchwoman, whose prose Sainte-Beuve ranked beside that of Voltaire, and whose genius as a letter-writer he regarded as equal to that of Madame de Sévigné.

Marie de Vichy-Chamrond was born in her father's Burgundian château on September 25, 1697. Her parents both belonged to that high little world of which she was in youth, and remained in old age, a typical example, and which, though lack of means compelled it to spend part of each year in the country, yet remained in constant touch with Versailles, the Louvre, and the Palais Royal. If poorly dowered, she was none the less the granddaughter of a Duchesse de Choiseul and a niece of that austere, fine-natured Duchesse de Luynes, who was to become the intimate friend and confidant of Marie Leczinska.

She must have been early brought to Paris, for it was in the Convent of the Magdalen, in the Rue de Charonne, that she spent her childhood and youth. As an old woman she was prone to lament that she had been badly educated, and in one of her letters to Walpole she draws a charming picture of the kind of education she might have received, had she, from the age of four onwards, possessed the good fortune to have him for guide and mentor. But a greater than Horace Walpole had something to say to her training. She was fifteen when her sceptical and enquiring mind surprised and alarmed the nuns in whose charge she was. Her attitude to the still unquestioned truths of religion was considered of sufficient importance to be reported to her relations; and the Duchesse de Luynes persuaded Massillon, then at the height of his fame, to come and reason with her. There remain various accounts of the great Churchman's interview with the youthful sceptic; but the discussion must have made an agreeable impression on his mind, for, when anxiously questioned by the Abbess, his only criticism seems to have been, 'Mais elle est si jolie!' and in answer to an enquiry as to what works of devotion should be given to the precocious girl, he replied, after hesitating a moment: Donnez-lui un catéchisme de cinq sols.'

We know nothing of the formative years which elapsed between eighteen and twenty-two, but it is clear that some difficulty was found in marrying Mademoiselle de Vichy-Chamrond. Her dowry was small, and she had