intellectual curiosity but a compact with evil?-man's surrender of the best portion of his immortal soul for the possession of more knowledge than falls to the share of mortals. This was the sin to be atoned for. . . . As we watch Faust through the concluding stages of his existence, we find the seductive arts of Mephistopheles gradually losing their power, and foresee his future deliverance, through a purified progressive activity, from Satanic toils. The moral of the story cannot be better conveyed than in these musical verses of that true poet, if mystic, Dr. Newman :

'There is not on the earth a soul so base

But may obtain a place

In covenanted grace.

So that his feeble prayer of faith obtains

Some loosening of his chains,

And earnest of the great reliefs which rise

From gift to gift, and reach at length the eternal prize.

All may save self; but minds that heavenward tower

Aim at a wider power,

Gifts on the world to shower;

And this is not at once-by fastings gained,

And trials well sustained;

By pureness, righteous deeds, and toils of love,
Abidance in the truth, and zeal for God above.'

With regard to translations, we can say with a clear conscience that of the metrical translations which have appeared, Sir Theodore Martin's is distinctly the best. He has not only been careful to enter into the spirit of his original, and has thereby been in the best and only true sense literal; but he has caught the rhythm, the charm, and has generally been happy in conveying it into English. True translation is transfusion. It is more than twenty years since Sir Theodore first printed translations from "Faust"; and all that time he has been wont to turn in happy moments for relief to Goethe. He has thus become familiar with "Faust" and has entered into the spirit and life of it. The lyrical pieces are especially well done, though we confess we could have wished a less forced rhyme for the final stanza of the song of "The Flower Girls," than "bias" and "eye, as," and in another song for that of "made, ye" and "lady;" but it is above all difficult to follow the sweet and tricksy turns of Goethe's music and to find adequate English equivalents for it. The rendering of the "Helena"the testing-point of a translator's skill-is almost without fault. Dignity, ease, and power prevail in it, and a comparison of Sir Theodore's work with the version of Carlyle-surely a very trying test-only heightens our impression of his truthfulness, strength, and felicity.

Here is one specimen-a chorus-exquisite in movement as in

general effect :

For another specimen take the song of Lynceus, the Tower-watcher,

at sight of Helen:

Let me kneel, and let me view thee,

Live or die, I reck not how !

For, oh godlike woman, to thee
All my soul is bond-slave now.
Watching for the morning's blushing,
Looking eastward, where it glows,
All at once, with magic flushing,

In the south the sun arose.

To itself my gaze it rooted:
Rocky pass and valley green,
Earth and heaven, were all unnoted,
All save her, that peerless queen.
I with eyesight keen am dowered,
Keen as any lynx on tree,
But in vain I strove, o'erpowered
By that vision fair to see.

What to me portcullised gateway,

What if roof or tower be cleft?
Mists arise, far off, and straightway
Forth a radiant goddess stept!
Eye and soul I straight surrender,
Drinking in the blissful light;
Dazzling all, her beauty's splendour
Dazzles me, poor minion, quite !
I forgot the warder's duty,

Quite forgot the trumpet call;
Menace, yet, oh, spare me! Beauty
Holds all angry thought in thrall.

This is almost all that poetic translation should be. In the more sarcastic and playful passages, too, Sir Theodore is generally happy.

In the metrical dedication of the Translation to his "friend of many years," Mr. J. A. Froude, Sir Theodore thus felicitously indicates his general impressions of the "Faust":

You know-who better?—all that gives
This book its charm, the grace that lives
And breathes throughout its perfect verse,
The saws sarcastic, vivid, terse,

The wild wit flashing to and fro,
The varied lore, the sunny glow

Of fancy and of passion, fit

To glorify the exquisite

Conception of an Helen meet

To make Faust's dream of bliss complete,

The tender beauty of the thought,

That his deliverance should be wrought

By her that could in death forget

The wrong he did her-Margaret,

And twined his soul with hers by love
Eternal, pure in realms above.

This, by the way, suggests the more individual interpretation of the "Ewig-Weibliche." Margaret is figured as drawing the soul of Faust to heaven; so, as Mr. Bayard Taylor says, "the spirit which Women interprets to us here, still draws us upward." But the abstraction and the symbolism are more than the dramatic action in Goethe's hands. Something more of conscious relation to Margaret and her influence should have been realised and pictured to the reader. The drawing heavenward is, after all, magical or dæmonish.

ALEX. H. JAPP.

473

THE

ALIENS.

I.

HE history of aliens in this country may be fitly regarded as one of the romances of our constitution. In these later days we are wont to reflect with reasonable pride that the characteristic growl of the true-born Englishman has here been exchanged for a practical charity and unselfishness which have contributed more than any other good work to designate England as the pioneer of constitutional liberty amongst the nations. But it was not ever thus. It would seem that from very early times the alien question became a prominent feature in the political history of this country. The Danish Vikings—those self-invited visitors to the summer shores of the North Sea-must have been regarded by our Saxon ancestors as aliens of a peculiarly aggressive type. Even the peace concluded between Alfred and Guthrum, whereby the permanent settlement of the Danes was recognised, did not establish any degree of harmony between the two peoples. In fact, as a measure of precaution, all intercourse was strictly prohibited, except under certain conditions calculated to prevent a breach of the peace. Therefore we are not surprised that the inevitable explosion took place, after a further period of Danish invasion, in the form of an organised massacre of unsuspecting aliens on that memorable feast of St. Brice.

However, the Danes should more properly be counted as colonists, rather than as foreign residents within a strange allegiance. The true alien is to be sought in the trader who, since the twelfth century, visited this land from the Baltic or Mediterranean states, submitting to the rigour of an enforced exile, and to all the perils of national jealousy and antipathy for the sake of the enormous profits that were to be extracted from a primitive mercantile community.

With the accession of the Norman house, England had assumed a new position in Europe. No longer distantly known in the Roman Court as the country of the Angles, she had become, thanks to Norman prestige in both France and Italy, one of the chief centres of the commerce of the world. Hither, during the next four centuries,

merchants were wont to repair from many a strange land. Hanse burghers laden with costly furs and gems then deemed indispensable accessories to the equipment of a civic magnate or courtier à la modethese procured from the great Russian fair at Novgorod, those from the warehouses of every Baltic or North German city. Hither came also the citizen of the free Italian states with great store of silks and velvets; the Fleming, with dainty fabrics of wool or flax rendered precious by the weaver's matchless art; the sun-burnt Gascon with his cargo of full wine vats; and last, but not least typical, the Jewish or Lombard exchanger, usurer, or pedlar, alike in every character, and amiable in none.

During all this period the status of the alien, though laid down on favourable lines by the legislature, was practically almost unendurable. The Great Charter had given freedom of access and security both of purse and person to foreigners in amity with this kingdom; but few of the excellent provisions of this statute of liberties have in any age been found easy of execution in the face of royal interest and class jealousy. Aliens, in truth, were taken under the special protection of the Crown, to the intent that the fines which they reluctantly paid in return for "licenses" and "safe conducts" might go to swell the bulk of a precarious revenue. This, however, was not the only source of profit to the Crown in its character of director of alien traffic. It would happen at times that the exigencies of foreign warfare demanded the replenishment of the royal commissariat, or the new decking of the royal pavilion in the "North parts," or in the "parts of Flanders," at a moment's notice. To supply these wants some alien vessel, newly arrived at Southampton, would be seized "for the king's use," and straightway navigated to the port nearest to the seat of war.1

In their everyday life aliens laboured under a hundred drawbacks purposely contrived in the interests of the native traders. They might neither buy nor sell except under the closest supervision. They were compelled to contribute 25 per cent. at least beyond the ordinary tolls for merchandise. No sooner did they appear to be prospering over-much in any particular branch of commerce to the disadvantage of English competitors, than they were straightway enforced to withdraw, though, on the other hand, when, as it rarely happened, the speculation was favourable only to the English

There exists in the Public Record Office a file of worm-eaten tallies bearing the contemporary endorsement "De vino capto de diversis et per diversa loca ad expensa domini Edwardi, principis Walliæ, &c." One of these tallies, taken at random, bears this superscription, “Contra Walterum Gome de Ebor. de iij doliis xij sextariis vini captis ab eodem anno xxxiiij."