parrot-cry of motorists that they are not responsible for dust raised by their cars, on the ground that the dust ought not to be there at all. It is indeed a curious fact that, so far as we are aware, no action has yet been brought, by some dairyman on the Ripley Road, for example, against the owner of a motor-car for incurably spoiling his supply of milk by polluting it with dust. It may be said that the results of such an action, if successful, would not be commensurate with the trouble involved. The direct result, perhaps, would not be great in money; but the case would be one of the simplest, and the indirect results would be of the utmost value.

It would be necessary only to prove the open shopfront, the existence of so many gallons of pure milk in the shop, the first fast passage of a car and its ownership, the resultant entry of the dust, and the ruin of the milk. The direct result-judgment for the plaintiff for the value of the milk, and costs-would be almost a certainty; and, if such a judgment were obtained, the indirect results would be priceless; for the automobile papers, which regard the world through motoring glasses only, would be full of indignation, and, expressing it in no measured terms, would spread through the whole motoring community the fearful tidings that, if this monstrous view were upheld, as it almost certainly would be, they could no longer damage the property It is indeed of their fellow-citizens with impunity. astonishing that no such action as this has been attempted, although the suggestion has been made in public more than once; and we cannot but think that some of the anti-motoring societies would be better employed in practical work of this character than in mere talk and written expression of more or less just indignation. The law of England helps those who help themselves; and it is the plain duty of Englishmen to use the weapons given to them by the existing law before they appeal to Parliament for new laws. 'The law,' said Mr Bumble, 'is a hass'; but, although its officers sometimes err, the law is rarely so foolish as those who are unfamiliar with it are willing to believe.

It is a tenable opinion that motorists are responsible for the damage done by the dust they raise, in excess, of course, of the average stirred by other traffic, which

may be said to be protected by custom; and, if they are not responsible, they must be subjected against their will to that responsibility. This, it may be added, would be an excellent reason for carrying out Mr Walter Long's suggestion that, simply in order to reduce dust-clouds to tolerable dimensions, a speed-limit of ten miles per hour should be prescribed for motors passing wayside houses, were it not for two facts. In support of it me: may urge truthfully that, at ten miles an hour, motor cars raise-for motor-cars-very little dust. As a matter of fact they still raise more than the horse-drawn vehicle does at the same speed, because the pneumatic tires suck it up from the crevices of the metalling, and because the body of the car, being set lower than that of any carriage, causes a disturbance of the air at a lower level than that of a carriage does. But the objections to such a law are fatal. In the first place, it could never be enforced; in the second, if it could be enforced, it would not touch more than half the evil. It would not save the fruit-crops or the pasturage adjoining the wayside; and the only safe course is to hold motorists responsible for all the damage they can be proved to have done by raising more dust than is stirred by the ordinary horse-drawn traffic of a district. This, it is suggested in all sincerity, would be found on experiment to be the law now; but, if the experiment failed, there ought certainly to be no difficulty in procuring the speedy passage of such a law.

To sum up, then, it is believed that the existing undoubted evil may be reduced to a bearable degree by the retention of a general speed-limit-not necessarily of twenty miles per hour; by the stern punishment of reckless driving; by making motorists responsible, if they be not so already, for all the damage they do by abnormal dust-raising; by improving the roads as they ought to be improved; and last, but by no means least, by fair and unprejudiced administration of justice.

Art. 8.—MILTON AND DANTE: A COMPARISON AND A CONTRAST.

No celebrations in our time have been more serious, more scholarly, or more impressive, than the various gatherings, held during the recently concluded year, in commemoration of the three hundredth anniversary of the birth of Milton. The earliest was held, with peculiar appropriateness, at Christ's College, Cambridge, in the month of June. In the hall of the college was given a dinner, presided over by the Master, who had gathered round him men holding high positions alike at Cambridge and Oxford, and poets, scholars, artists, historians, and essayists of true distinction. On this occasion an admirable eulogium of Milton was pronounced by Mr Mackail. The dinner was succeeded by a representation of Comus' in the theatre of the town, by the students of the University, with all the charm that usually accompanies the efforts of competent amateurs. With the advent of the exact date of the tercentenary the celebrations were many in number and interesting in variety; and in these the members of the British Academy took a prominent part. On December 9 a musical celebration was held in the afternoon in the church of St Mary-le-Bow, at which the Bishop of Ripon delivered an eloquent sermon ; and at the same hour the writer of this paper gave a private lecture before the Dante Society, from the notes of which this article is expanded. In the evening he had the honour of attending and responding to the toast of Poetry, proposed by the Italian ambassador, at the banquet given by the Lord Mayor of London at the Mansion House, to the largest and most impressive gathering of men of eminence in letters, the arts, the drama, the law, and the Legislature, that has ever met in that spacious hall of traditionally magnificent hospitality. A week later a performance of Samson Agonistes' was given in the Burlington Theatre before a large and representative audience. The more serious section of the daily press, moreover, allotted much space to reports of the celebrations in honour of Milton, the 'Times' maintaining in this respect its best traditions.

No one, therefore, can say that the birth, the poetry

and prose, the character and the career and the influence of Milton have not been solemnly celebrated by his countrymen. But it is necessary to add, in the interests of truth, that the celebrations were essentially and exclusively scholarly, and were hardly, if at all, shared in by the nation at large. The intellectual sympathies of the educated were warmly touched, but the heart of the British people was not reached.

Now let us turn-for the subject of this paper is not Milton alone, but Milton and Dante-to the sexcentenary of the birth of Dante in the city of Florence, the month and year of his birth having been May 1265. I had been spending the winter in the City of Flowers, and I could not leave it, in order to journey northward, till after the Dante Commemoration had been held. I shall never forget it. From dawn to dusk the entire Florentine people held joyous festival; and, with the coming of night, not only the entire city, its palaces, its bridges, its Duomo, its Palazzo Vecchio, that noblest symbol of civic liberty, but indeed all its thoroughfares and the banks of its river broke into lovely light produced by millions of little cressets filled with olive oil, and every villa round was similarly illuminated. The pavement of the famous square of the Uffizi Palace was boarded over; and overhead was spread a canvas covering dyed with the three Italian national colours. Thither thronged hundreds of peasant men and women, who danced and made merry till the early hours of the morning. At the Pagliano Theatre were given tableaux vivants representing the most famous episodes in the 'Divina Commedia,' Ristori, Salvini, and Rossi reciting the corresponding passages from that immortal poem.

What a comparison, what a contrast it suggests between the solemn, serious, but limited honour done by us to Milton, and the exultant, universal, national honour paid by his countrymen to Dante! I should add that eight thousand Italian municipalities sent a deputation carrying their local pennons to the square of Santa Croce, where a statue of Dante was unveiled, amid thunderous applause, to popular gaze.

Now let us turn to a more personal contrast between the two poets. To many persons, probably to most in these days, the most interesting feature in the life of a

poet is his relation to the sex that is commonly assumed, perhaps not quite correctly, to be the more romantic of the two. In comparing Dante and Milton in that respect one is struck at once by the fact that, while with Dante are not only associated, but inseparably interwoven, the name and person of Beatrice, so that the two seem in our minds but one, knit by a spiritual love stronger even than any bond sanctioned by domestic law for happiness and social stability, Milton had no Beatrice. It would be idle to contend that the absence of such love has not detracted, and will not continue to detract, from the interest felt in Milton and his poetry, not perhaps by scholars, but by the world at large, and the average lover of poetry and poets. For just as women can do much, to use a phrase of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, towards 'making a poet out of a man,' so can they do even more, either by spiritual influence or by consummate self-sacrifice, to widen the field and deepen the intensity of his fame. No poet ever enjoyed this advantage so conspicuously as Dante. It will perhaps be said that this was effected more by himself than by her. Let us not be too sure of that. In Italy, far more than in northern climes, first avowals of love are made by the eyes rather than by the tongue, by tell-tale looks more than by explicit words. What says Shakespeare, who knew men and women equally well?

'A murderous guilt shows not itself more soon

Than love that would seem hid. Love's night is noon.'

'At

Dante's own account of his first meeting with Beatrice confirms this surmise. This is what he himself says, after Beatrice, as Boccaccio relates, 'very winning, very graceful, in aspect very beautiful,' had turned her gaze on Dante from time to time at their first meeting. that moment the spirit of life which abides in the most secret chamber of the heart began to tremble, and tremulously it spake these words," Behold a god stronger than I, who cometh to lord it over me." These may perhaps seem strange words in which to record the first meeting of a boy of nine with a girl of eight. But, over and above the fact that they are the record, written several years later, of the feeling aroused by that first meeting, allowance must be made for the proverbial precocity of genius, and also for that of southern over northern temperaments.