tance to us, and delightful links with our forefathers; and they have in many cases an inherent beauty and fitness which we could ill afford to lose. Even in the case of our exotic cultivated plants we would cling to the old names which have been handed down to us through the last three or four hundred years and more. But every effort to popularize plants by merely giving them English names has completely failed. In his 'Proserpina,' Mr. Ruskin ran a tilt against Latin names, chiefly on the ground that they had been no help in teaching him botany, and boldly proposed an entirely new system of arrangement and nomenclature. He suggested a plan which 'to be thoroughly good must be acceptable to scholars in the five great languages, Greek, Latin, French, Italian, and English; and it must be acceptable by them in teaching the native children of each country.' It is scarcely possible to imagine a system less fitted for its purpose than the scheme he proposed. He arranged all plants under thirteen classes with Greek names, beginning with Charites, which included Roses, Apples, and Strawberries, and ending with Moiride, which included Conium, Papaver, Solanum, Arum, and Nerium. Plants were classified according to their supposed moral or æsthetic qualities. Mr. Ruskin seems to have been quite serious in his suggestion; but no one else has taken it seriously, and the book remains as one of the prettiest of Mr. Ruskin's works, adorned with all the delightful language and beautiful drawing of which he is such a master,a literary curiosity, and nothing more. At present the great champion of the exclusive use of English names is the editor of the 'Garden' newspaper, who has not only invented a number of names and encouraged his readers to help him in inventing more, but continues to use such new names, and very often without giving a hint of the scientific ones, so that only a constant reader of the paper can guess what plant is spoken of. But the effort has not as yet succeeded, and we cannot wish it success. If it could possibly be carried out, it would end in our being isolated from all gardeners who did not speak or write English, and it would merely increase the present confusion. How little the use of English names only is a help can be seen by the loose way in which English names, as already mentioned, are applied to our native plants, the same plant having a different name in different counties, and often in the same county. A familiar instance of such confusion is the harebell and bluebell: the harebell of Scotland is the bluebell of England, and the harebell of England is the bluebell of Scotland. As to exotic cultivated plants, the adoption of English names will not rid us of synonyms. Every one one has a full right to give any name he likes to a plant, but no one can enforce it on others. Plant names can never be forced into growth; like the plant itself, the name springs up, no one knows how, and only custom can fix it. Horace's rule for names is everlasting; they can only spring and grow'Si volet usus, Quem penes arbitrium est et jus, et norma loquendi'; and one curious result of this usus is worth noting, that many popular native names disappeared in favour of their classical rivals. We do not know for instance that there were ever any other names for Rose or Violet; but we do know that the now common names of Cyclamen, Crocus, Aconite, Orchis, Anemone, Arum, have quite superseded the old English names of these plants in every-day language. We must draw to a conclusion. Plant names are to description what local colour is to a painting. They bring special scenes before our eyes. Of what use is it to read of a walk through a forest, surrounded by lovely blue flowers with dark green leaves, while overhead was the thick foliage of gigantic trees, among which pink or yellow orchids waved their long tresses, and gorgeous birds and butterflies flitted in every direction? The description is too general to enable the reader to realize the scene. In Mrs. Peary's account, for example, of her long stay in Greenland, it is tantalizing to read of the abundance and beauty of the flowers which appeared on the melting of the snow, without a hint as to what the flowers were, except the Iceland poppies. On the other hand, it is refreshing to read her husband's delight in the one flower which he saw at the edge of the great Ice Cap in lat. 81° 57' N., because he tells us it was a dandelion with a humble-bee buzzing round it. Good alone is good, without a name,' said the king in 'All's Well,' and poor Juliet in her distress tried to make out that there was nothing in a name; but in spite of the king and Juliet we hold the contrary opinion. The more a gardener knows of his flowers, the more he sees to love. So far from the study of their names leading him into dry, profitless paths, he will find that it will brighten much of his other labours in the garden, prove a resource to him indoors, and increase the interest of every part of his much-loved garden. ART. ART. XI.-1. Report of Select Committee on Irish Industries. London, 1885. 2. Report of Royal Commissioners on Technical Education, London, 1884. 3. Report of Royal Commission on Irish Public Works. London, 1887, 1888. 4. Reports of Congested Districts Board, Ireland. 1893-1895. London, 'We desire to adapt our remedy to the character of the country's needs. Our desire is to hold the scales evenly between the various sections into which the people of Ireland are divided, without distinction of creed or class. Our desire is to remedy every grievance from which any section of the Irish people can legitimately be said to suffer. Our desire is to establish an industrious peasantry in the ownership of the land which they at present cultivate, and, in those cases where the relation between landlord and tenant is not thus done away with, to do something at least to remove the friction which in many cases makes the relation between them a misfortune to both. Lastly, our desire is to be not only just, but generous, in promoting the industrial and material development of the country, and so to sow the seeds of future prosperity.' TH HE above words with which Mr. Gerald Balfour closed his first address to the House of Commons as Irish Secretary afforded most satisfactory evidence, were evidence required, that the Cabinet of Lord Salisbury recognises to the full the nature of its responsibilities. But it is not quite so clear as every sincere Unionist must desire, that the public opinion of Great Britain is equally alive to the precise character of those responsibilities, or understands, as it ought, the unique importance of the present opportunity. That there rests upon Great Britain, as the predominant member of the Imperial partnership of the United Kingdom, a direct moral responsibility for the welfare of Ireland, is a proposition that scarcely requires stating, so often and so generously has it been admitted and acted on,-during the present. century, at all events. The important, but also the difficult, thing is to express this sense of responsibility in the right way. And the importance of this is as great to England as it is to Ireland. The latter is entitled to demand that measures taken in obedience to the dictates of Imperial duty shall be founded on such a right understanding of the problem as will ensure to the weaker partner the help she really requires; the former is not less entitled to expect the legitimate fruits of her honest desire to fulfil the duties of her position. It is equally super fluous fluous to argue that hitherto the statesmanship of the Empire has failed to satisfy either the needs of Ireland or the hopes of England. To the natural irritation born of frustrated hopes, of beneficent intentions baffled of their effect, of chagrin at the apparent failure of the applied remedies to produce any evident and material improvement, may be ascribed, more than to any other cause, the measure of reluctant acquiescence in a counsel of despair which Great Britain was induced to give to the theory of the Home Rule problem propounded by Mr. Gladstone. And now that she has recognised in that passing contemplation of surrender an abandonment of her duty both to Ireland and the Empire, now that she has refused to make the humiliating admission that the proper medicine for Ireland's disorders is not to be found in the pharmacopoeia of British statesmanship, the responsibility and the duty are plainer than ever. More than ever is it desirable that the right and adequate remedy should be speedily applied, lest a fresh confession of failure evoke that final and deeper sigh of despair which may betoken an irrevocable repudiation of a great Imperial task. Within the lifetime of the present Parliament, if it runs, as may well be hoped, its full course, we shall reach the hundredth anniversary of the passing of the Act of Union. It is highly improbable, even in this age of centenaries, that the centenary of the Union will be celebrated with enthusiasm by either party to that great national bargain. But at least it should not be beyond the rational hopes of the Three Kingdoms, or more than their statesmen can contrive to accomplish, that the second century of the Union shall open with a fairer promise than the first has yet offered that the legal union between the two countries may in time become one of mutual affection and prosperity. It is not, however, as we have hinted, quite so clear as we should like it to be, that the public opinion of Great Britain, though it expects the Government to preserve the tranquillity and promote the permanent prosperity of Ireland more effectually than its predecessors, recognises the conditions under which alone such expectations can be realised. Nothing can be more futile than the attempt to reduce to its strict arithmetical value the proportionate force exercised by the Home Rule question in influencing the verdict by which Lord Rosebery's Administration was condemned. But this at least may be safely asserted, that the chief source of the satisfaction which the prevailing political calm affords to the average citizen is the belief that owing to the decisive character of the Unionist triumph the Irish question, from a parliamentary point of view at all events, has ceased to be urgent. No doubt the man in the street is quite justified in coming to this conclusion. The Irish problem, in the unsightly shapes it has assumed for the last sixteen years, is no longer with us. Ireland, Mr. Healy and his rivalries notwithstanding, is at peace. Within the island there prevails a sense of security unknown for twenty years, joined to a general optimism, a hopefulness happily coupled with helpfulness, to which the present century scarcely affords a parallel. It is no part of our present purpose to analyse the sources of this unwonted quietude, upon which, as upon all political phenomena, opinions differ widely. We merely note the fact with satisfaction. But our satisfaction is modified by the reflection that John Bull is not unlikely to find in it a justification for the confidence with which he evidently contemplates the immediate future, and may forget that duties as well as advantages follow from the decision to which he came in 1895. This easy attitude of English opinion is not without its dangers. It certainly places a preliminary obstacle in the path of those who are responsible not alone for the present peace, but for the future welfare of Ireland; and it tends to retard our statesmen in their endeavour to take full advantage of such an opportunity as in the long history of the relations between the two countries has rarely presented itself. For it makes it possible that England may forget that which it is her duty to remember. If the possession of a majority of 152 has conferred upon Lord Salisbury and his colleagues advantages for which their predecessors sighed in vain, if it has reduced to relative insignificance those who were for a time the arbiters of the fate of English Parliaments, the same circumstances impose on the Administration a duty and an obligation in regard to Ireland greater than the responsibilities of any less powerful Government. The recognition of this fact is the more desirable, because Ministers are neither able nor willing to ignore it. Whatever the intentions of the people in placing it in power, the Unionist party unquestionably appealed to the people for an explicit negation of the Home Rule demand. has through its responsible leaders proclaimed its belief in the competence of an English Government, under the existing institutions of the Three Kingdoms, to satisfy the just claims of Ireland and to establish the material welfare of the country on the basis best suited to its character and resources. Its policy, as it has not unfairly been described by a Nationalist leader, is founded on the belief that without Home Rule the Imperial Parliament has the will, the time, and the capacity to govern Ireland Vol. 183.-No. 365. properly.' S It |