has and is at Jesus' feet, counting it no sacrifice, but a joy and the benediction of Heaven on him that he may do it. Nay, that offering was made long ago: he was Christ's soldier before; only now he has got his marching orders.

The rest of the story is soon told. It was December 8th, 1886, that he landed at Aden this time, and five months after he was dead.

He had fixed upon a site for his station, a few miles back of Aden, on higher ground, where were wells of water and a community of six thousand souls, with as many more close by; a stopping place for caravans, a good situation for his hospital and his school, he had started building, had moved about in the vicinity and made a beginning of acquaintance with high and low, had just touched the work of teaching and healing, had found everything to encourage him so far; was every day growing more confident of being able, with God's help, to infuse a new element of blessing into the life around him, and more thankful that he was there, and happy as he could be, when the fever that is the peril of that country to foreigners overtook him. He fought against it, he would not have it, he was ashamed of it, he apologized for it, he explained in his letters home that he was not to be blamed for it, for the exposure that had brought it on had under circumstances not foreseen, been positively unavoidable. It was a slow affair at first, and he made light of it. "I have plenty of time for reading,” he tells his mother, and sets down an astonishing list of books he has improved the occasion to go through.

But gradually, with successive abatements and returns, it undermined his great strength and reduced him to an extremity of weakness. But he never lost his cheer. "Isn't it very strange (he said), I get generally so depressed when I am unwell? but now I don't feel in the least cast down. After all these weeks of illness I feel in perfectly good spirits." God's sweet comforts were with him. That was but five days before the end. He was his own manly, brave, loving and lovable self to the final hour. Early in the morning of May 10th, 1887, he fell asleep, having not yet completed his thirty-first year. And so in a land where he had trusted to plant the gospel he found only a grave.

Was it worth while? Was it not all a great mistake, his going there; the squandering of a precious life? Were this query to be discussed, it would be only reasonable to include under it the case of certain other young men, on commercial service and on military service, who about that time, and from a like cause, also died at Aden and lie buried there in the same cemetery with Keith-Falconer. It was certainly as well worth while to say the least, if we judge as Christians, for him to incur the hazards of that coast as for them.

But passing that matter: whether or no Keith-Falconer's life might have been better expended, it was not lost, but very far from it; as began to appear in the immediate sequel of his departure. His biographer most fitly heads the last chapter of his volume with that extract from The Pilgrim's Progress in which Valiant-for-truth ere he passed over the River “while all the trumpets sounded for him on the other side" says to those about him: "My sword I give to him that shall succeed me in my pilgrimage, and my courage and skill to him that can get it."

It is no surprise to learn that as soon as news flashed home that Keith-Falconer had fallen on the field, hands not a few were at once stretched out to seize the sword that had dropped from his dying grasp. There was great mourning for him in Scotland and in England, and many eulogies. Cambridge, his Alma Mater, it might be said, lifted up her voice and wept. But what would have given his heart most gladness, was the number of emulous youth that stood forward and begged to take his place; not necessarily at his post, but in the service. Eleven out of one college class at Edinborough offered themselves; one of whom, a scholar of notable promise in KeithFalconer's own department, and a kindred spirit it is said, was assigned to the mission at Aden, and is probably by this time there, may God bless him,-taking up the work where he left off. We may think of that young man standing beside Keith-Falconer's grave, and oft repairing to it, to renew above its mound, his faith, his courage, and his consecretion. A sacred spot to him it will be, and to those who succeed him, and to many another in all time to come.

This earl's son was, in our earthly way of speaking, cut off in his prime, his early prime. But was he cut off? Living and dying he was the Lord's. And who shall say that the fruit of his dying; the holy inspirations kindled by his example; causing his works to follow him as they are doing, is not to be reckoned with his life?

Who can compute the value of his memory: being just what it is, to the church and to the cause of Christ? Perhaps, if he had filled out the full measure of his days, and had died an old man, having done all that he hoped to do, we should not have had so much reason to be thankful for him. At any rate we have reason to be thankful to him, various reason. He is the sign of a good many things that those who believe the Christian revelation, and that the kingdom of Christ is coming on earth; who are hoping and praying, and laboring toward that event, may well regard with gratitude and uplifting of heart. And, not the least, as was said in the beginning of this; that there is still in our generation a virtue abiding in the Gospel of the New Testament, to mould and fashion the all-surpassing individual of that confessedly supreme type of humanity, the Man of Faith.

JOSEPH H. TWICHELL.

ARTICLE II.-BRYCE'S "AMERICAN COMMONWEALTH."

The American Commonwealth.

By JAMES BRYCE, Author

of the "Holy Roman Empire," M. P. for Aberdeen. In three volumes. London: MacMillan & Co. In two vol New York: 1888. 8vo, pp. xx. 750, 743.

umes.

IN taking up or in laying down Mr. Bryce's book, it is impossible to avoid several familiar reflections. For example, it is just sixty years since Sidney Smith, castigating our na tional habit of self-adulation, asked: "In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American book? . . . Under which of the old tyrannical governments of Europe is every sixth man a slave, whom his fellow-creatures may buy and sell and torture?”—and here is an English book of three sturdy volumes, over 2000 octavo pages, altogether on American institutions and life, and American slavery has been by law extinct for almost a quarter of a century! Here also is a book that has the value which must have suggested the aphorism-"A foreign nation is a contemporaneous posterity." And this book too forces us to remember, and to contrast it with, other books written of America; most of all, with that classic for style and spirit, so fascinating to the young ambition of America, and, as we deliberately think, so philosophical, the "Democracy in America" of Alexis de Tocqueville.

Resisting for the present the impulse to comparison, such as almost bars our way, we cannot help venturing again so far into the region of commonplace as to call to mind the wellobserved fact, that insularity is a characteristic of the general British or English mind. With but few exceptions, it is only a matter of degree between different English minds. For example, Mr. Goldwin Smith just now thinks that if woman suffrage should prevail in England, its prevalence here would be greatly accelerated, English political precedents having such influence in the United States! And Mr. Smith has lived here and in Canada for more than twenty years! Whether Mr. Bryce is

among the few admitted exceptions, or how far he is affected by the fact of his nationality, will best appear as we proceed to examine his work. Putting aside, so far as is possible, all prepossessions and prejudices-using these words in their best sense -it will be our main aim to see how truthful, how life-like, a picture Mr. Bryce has drawn and filled up, of the American commonwealth.

One welcome limitation is imposed to our task-the Article of Prof. Baldwin in the April number of this magazine. It will be neither needful nor prudent to attempt to glean in the field which he has harvested.

The plan of Mr. Bryce's work involved at least one special difficulty, which ought in justice to him to be kept in mind. His effort was to describe the American commonwealth, both in general and in detail, laying the greater emphasis apparently on the details. Such a plan, well carried out, necessarily involved much patient plodding, along with a due degree of analytical skill and philosophical observation and discussion. In such a work, one or the other quality is quite apt to stand in the way of the best result. If details, mere items of information, greatly predominate, the book may be in a sense valuable; it will hardly be readable; and a highly valuable book must be readable. If discussion or generalization, on the other hand, be undertaken, on too slender a ground-work of information or exact facts, the result can in no sense be highly valuable.

Mr. Bryce has had this problem to meet, and we think he has met it with a fair degree of success. If the saying of Carlyle be true, that the biography of any man truly told, would be interesting, there is nevertheless a wide range of varying values in matters of detail, and it certainly produces a sense of incongruity to be told in the height of grave discussion of one of the foremost features of our government, that "each senator sits in a morocco leather covered arm-chair, with a desk in front of it." The fact has value for some purposes, perhaps for historical or literary realism, but it does not quite go well with other facts which have undoubted historic and diagnostic value in presenting such a theme as Mr. Bryce has to do with. He has plainly, however, worked in the spirit of his own re