These allowances are, of course, independent of other reductions, such as those for earned income or lifeinsurance. Indeed to these an allowance for house rent might be added, since more house room is a necessity for large families. Super-tax and excess profit tax would remain. The figures given are meant simply to illustrate the working of the principle in present conditions. By changing the rate of tax deducted at the source, or the scale of abatements, the sum lost by these allowances could be recouped or any other required result could be obtained.* With such equitable allowances for children as are suggested above, the income tax, which must be kept at a high nominal rate to meet the interest on our huge national debt and the cost of reconstruction which peace will make urgent, will do much less harm to the nation. It will be better to make reductions in direct taxation, when such become possible, by lowering death-duties rather than income tax. Owing to the inevitable chances of family life, death-duties are often grossly unfair to one family as compared with another; and anything which would lessen the real hardships they inflict, and the feelings of injustice they engender, would be of benefit to the community. The death of a father is a bad opportunity to rob his widow and orphans. When all possible readjustment of taxation has been * Since this article was written, the Fabian Research Department has issued a book called 'How to Pay for the War.' In this work, besides schemes for increased national efficiency and economy, about some of which opinions may differ, an interesting and valuable summary of incometax figures and practice is given. The present injustice and inefficiency of the tax are well brought out, and a scheme of readjustment outlined which is similar in principle to that here advocated, though it is elaborated in greater and somewhat different detail. carried out, it remains true that economic causes are not the only ones at work in our diminished birth-rate; and a change of psychological attitude in the classes affected is needed. We must educate potential parents of sound stock to their importance for the future of the nation and of mankind. Patriotism, as the war has proved, remains one of the strongest motives; and, when it is clearly understood that the welfare of the country and the Empire depends on an adequate supply of satisfactory men and women, we may hope that the supply will be forthcoming. As we have already said, signs of a change of attitude are not wanting. Early marriages benefit the population in two ways. They increase the number of years of potential parenthood, and thus, in natural circumstances, the number of children in the family. And they also shorten the interval between succeeding generations and thus bring the new crop of children sooner into the world. Hence the marriage, of men of twenty-three or twenty-four, who in peace time might have remained bachelors till the age of thirty or forty, may do much to recuperate the ravages of war in the upper and middle classes. Such marriages, then, should be warmly encouraged. A corresponding change of outlook remains to be effected in the minds of the older generation-of us who are no longer potential soldiers or potential parents. Let us not blame the mote in the eye of the young, and ignore the beam in our own. Improvements in environment have greatly increased our probable length of life; and that alone may, unless we are careful, entail a heavy additional charge upon the generation which is following us. We need more services through longer years, and we are by no means inclined to reduce our standard of living in proportion to the inevitable reduction in our powers of social usefulness. Members of the civil service perforce retire at an age of sixty-five; and it would be desirable to extend the rule to other public offices and appointments. Why should not some such similar accepted age become a customary point at which those in possession of family estates or fortunes retire on a fraction of their revenues, and place in the hands of their sons and daughters of thirty or forty, who are in effect the principal acting members of the family, a proportionate share of the accumulated family resources? However that may be, in the interests of the many young households we desire to see establishing themselves around us, it is most desirable that we of the older generation should learn to moderate our demands on the time and attention of our children, and, if it be in our power, should hand over permanently, and not merely in occasional and capricious gifts, a large part of the capital which they need more and can use better than ourselves. It is in this way that we older people can best make our own contribution towards inaugurating the new era of social and racial reconstruction. We have called on the young to offer their lives, let us not grudge this far smaller sacrifice in order to extend the utility and promote the happiness of those who return to us. With daily casualty lists proclaiming the death of the young and vigorous, we cannot but feel acutely the loss our race is suffering. But, whatever the cost, in racial qualities as in other things, this war must be fought to such a finish that Germany can never again attempt to dominate the world with Prussian ideals. To count the cost is not to doubt that it should be incurred. Indeed we shall be better able to continue to face with stern composure the loss which is inevitable before we overthrow the enemies of humanity, if we know its full meaning, and, in this as in other ways, bethink ourselves in time how to make every effort to repair the ravages of war. W. C. DAMPIER WHETHAM. Art. 3.-JOHANN ZOFFANY, R.A. Bentley, 1828-30. 1. Reminiscences of Henry Angelo. White and 3. Court and Private Life in the Time of Queen Charlotte. By C. L. H. Papendieck. Edited by Mrs V. D. Broughton. Bentley, 1887. 4. Calcutta Old and New. By H. E. A. Cotton. Calcutta: Newman, 1907. 5. Old Kew, Chiswick and Kensington. By Lloyd Sanders. Methuen, 1910. ZOFFANY'S position among the British artists of the 18th century is a peculiar one. His name is inseparably connected with the greatest era of the British stage, with Garrick its proudest name and with the worthiest of Garrick's successors during the thirty years which succeeded his death-even including some like King, Parsons, and Jolly Jack Bannister, whose personalities still live for us in the immortal pages of Elia. In this genre, which he made peculiarly his own, reaching in his best examples a brilliance and animation far beyond any of his rivals, he established a school destined to be carried on in the hands of de Wilde, Clint, Harlowe and others to the middle of the 19th century. He was, moreover, a fashionable portrait painter in the classical age of English portrait painting; and, if his larger portraits do not show him at his best, nothing could be more delightful than those little full-length figures and family groups, small in scale, sometimes almost too neatly and precisely executed, sometimes uninteresting in colour, yet always broad and vital in conception, which (though our public galleries contain no examples of them) are to be found in so many private houses throughout the kingdom. In these the artist seems to raise the curtain for a moment and to show us his generation as it lived and moved. The vivacity of the scene may perhaps be a little heightened, the pose a little selfconscious; the spectator may feel that he is looking not at actual life but at the representation of it by some inimitable band of drawing-room comedians, but the representation is none the less real and marvellously alive. Truly Zoffany was blessed with a remarkable talent and remarkable opportunities for its exercise; yet he has left behind him only the scantiest traditions of his wayward and adventurous career; and his art, in spite of its eminently human qualities, enjoys even now only a limited reputation. That he was wholly devoid of imagination was remarked by Walpole, and may be seen in the few subjectpictures of his which still survive. He painted Garrick in tragedy, but the result is always a little stiff and ridiculous. He painted religious works, such as that now at Brentford, and historical pictures, like his death of Captain Cook at Greenwich; but his religion never rises above a milk-and-water sentimentality which affects even his drawing with weakness, and his scenes of blood are as perfunctory as a stage-battle in an empty theatre. In all these one can see that his interest was never really engaged. There is no observation and no vivacity. These were qualities which nothing could arouse but the thing which was his chief interest-the life of every day, of the tavern, the drawing-room, the music-room, the playhouse, the daily contact with his fellow-men. For, throughout the very scanty records of his life which still survive to us, we can see at every point his insatiable zest and curiosity for life. However successful he might be, he could always spend more than he had, and was always ready to leave an assured position for the promise of novelty and adventure. And it is through these qualities that, although he never rises to be more than petit maître, his work attains that ease, vivacity and neatness, which give it so enduring a charm. Something perhaps of this constantly fresh and dramatic quality in his observation may be due to the fact that Zoffany came to England as a foreigner and obtained his first introduction to English life through the medium of the stage. Or, again, we may perhaps attribute something to the romance of his parentage and earlier life, still dimly discernible through the mist of conflicting traditions. Zoffany's father seems to have been a remarkable man, for, after beginning life as a carpenter at Prague, he had, before the birth of his son (some time between |