more bent on the common interest than on our private one.

We hope, gentlemen, that if you do not follow our advice, you will examine it with attention, if ten years of our administration inspire you with sufficient confidence.

O renowned financiers, skilful in the art of grasping figures, O prosperous and much-testimonialised railway directors, who know so well how to make things pleasant to the shareholders, what a foreign language must be to you that of these Parisian builders, who in their often ungrammatical and ill-spelt French actually declare that to divide 4000l. amongst ninety-two men does not make up to them for the pain of not dividing it among ninety-five! And these not enthusiasts of yesterday, but men who for ten years have had in hand the management of a business! Surely there rings out from the report of the

Paris builders a tone which has not been heard before in such things-a tone of workmen masters of their labour and no longer slaves to it; and masters of it, not because they have so much capital, materials, credit, but because they have learned to place themselves, their labour, and their resources at the service of a principle.

To look back from these ninety-two Paris builders, doing their 50,000l. a year business and making their nearly 10,000l. a year profits, to our six-months building strike, spending 20,000l. to keep men out of work, seems in one point of view a grievous fall. Yet let us not be unjust to the idea of the trade society. That idea will never be looked upon with much favour by the bulk of the community. Inasmuch as the trade society is based on the class-interest of the worker, and seeks continually to obtain for him more pay and less work; inasmuch as every gain to the producer is prima facie a loss to the consumer, and we are all consumers; inasmuch as the equivalent of every sixpence extra wages, every quarter-hour less work, is sure to be taken, whenever the wages-payer can do so, out of the pockets of his customers, it is perfectly natural that the consuming public should be ready to frown down such an organisation; and it is all the more necessary, to judge it fairly, that we should look upon it from the worker's point of view. And, seen in this light, we may perceive reasons why even the idea of cooperation in production, in itself so favourable to the working man, should meet with a less willing and general assent amongst his class than the trade society. The coöperative association benefits immediately only the few; the trade society seeks to benefit the many. We deal with a few picked men among the associated builders of Paris; we deal with the bulk of a whole class among the society men of the London building

trades. So far there is no doubt a democratic breadth about the trade society which no coöperative aristocracy (using that word in its best sense), even the most devoted, can attain to. The question of an hour's labour is one of immense value to the thousands; the coöperative association can only approach it within the limited sphere of its own operations, checked even there by competition; whilst, however generous may be its provisions for relief amongst its own associates or those employed by it, it never can reach the scale on which most of our trade societies dispense their benefit funds in cases of accident, distress, death, old age, relief to men on tramp or casually thrown out of work, among the thousands of their members, nor yet those opportunities which they afford for the distribution of labour throughout the country. It is this daily working of the trade society, together with the field which it affords for mutual communication, self-government, and a really political education, which has rooted it hitherto in the hearts and habits of our working men;-not those strikes, which are in fact only an interruption to its daily working, and which are not unfrequently in great measure occasioned by law-made impediments to the profitable investment of its funds.

But having said thus much from the working man's point of view, something must also be said from the point of view of third parties. The repeal of the combination laws has been, in fact, but a licensing of private war in the sphere of trade. With our English taste for a good "mill," when masters and men fall out in a given trade, and one or the other stops work, Government and public have hitherto mainly confined themselves to making a ring round the combatants and seeing fair play whilst the match is fought out. But the more frequent these contests become, the more we are reminded that nostra res agitur. The combatants are not prize-fighters pummelling each other for a hat or a purse full of gold, but hundreds of capitalists and thousands of skilled artisans debating the point of an hour's work, more or less, at the price of our shelter, our comfort, as well as their own. "It is nothing but the haggling of the market on a large scale," say the plutonomists. But when that haggling takes the shape of half-built walls and roofless houses, and a stoppage of works of public utility, what does society profit by it?

To go back to the old system of forbidding combination is impossible. The mere power exhibited on either side in this battle of the building trades forbids us to entertain the thought of doing so. To allow these contests to go on is to deliver over the whole trade of the country to anarchy. Is there no other course? Will the debate on trade societies at the Social Science Association's meeting at Glasgow have shadowed any forth to us?

ART. IV.-RUSSIAN LITERATURE: MICHAEL

LERMONTOFF.

Otcherk Istorii russkoi Poesii. A. Milukoff. (Outline of the History of Russian Poetry. By A. Milukoff.) St. Petersburg, 1858. Michael Lermontoff"s Poetischer Nachlass, übersetzt von Fr. Bodenstedt. (M. Lermontoff's Poetical Remains. Translated by Herr Bodenstedt.) Berlin, 1852.

Du Développement des Idées révolutionnaires en Russie. Par A. Herzen. Deuxième édition. Londres, 1853.

In a previous Number* of this Review we gave our readers some general notice of the development of modern Russian literature, and a more detailed account of the great poet, with whom, in fact, the era of original and really national Russian poetry begins. When we consider how recent this era is, we cannot wonder that we have but few distinguished poets to enumerate; since true poetic genius has, of course, at all times and in all countries, been confined to a chosen few. Even the political influence of the Russian empire in European politics is itself but of recent growth. Fostering its helpless infancy is seen the gigantic figure of one who was at once a tyrannical barbarian and the arbitrary patron of the arts. Peter I., whose imperious will imposed upon Russia the first restraints of civilisation, was the first to direct the national mind towards Europe, and to introduce those European forms and ideas under whose influence a national literature at length developed itself.

So far as we can trace back the history of Russian literature to earlier periods, we find, as yet unmixed, those elements which were afterwards blended in the matured national character. The spirit of the Norse invaders, who about the year 862 conquered, and founded constitutions among, the scattered branches of the Slavic races, entirely pervades the historical tales referring to the heathen period of Russian history, which were written by the monk Nestor in the eleventh century. He was, however, imbued with the spirit of the Byzantine literature, and thus could not fully appreciate a poetry which sprang up in the heroic age of Scandinavian enterprise. He regarded the events which he recorded partly in the prosaic spirit of a mere chronicler, partly in the hostile spirit of a zealous opponent of heathenism. But notwithstanding his antipathy to his subject, and in spite of the dryness and pedantry of his style, his tales contain passages which undeniably prove the existence of an ancient though rude poetry, beginning to develop itself in Russia under the influ

No. XIV. for October 1858; Article V.

ence of the Norsemen, celebrating deeds which extended over a century and a half, and whose theatre stretched from the Baltic to the Black Sea. We discern here clearly enough traces of the same spirit which pervades the tales and legends of the Icelandic chroniclers. Several of the latter are undoubtedly of common origin with those of Nestor. For example, the “Life and Death of Swatopolk," related by Nestor, forms part, and that the most important, of an Icelandic literary collection of the thirteenth century. But though the common origin is undeniable, the Russian historian, in this instance, much surpasses the Icelandic in his style, his narrative being full of life and poetry. How finely has he painted this Swatopolk, the son of a Greek nun, who, from the day of his unlawful birth, seems doomed to sin and ruin; who climbs to his throne through fratricide, who is punished on the very scene of his crimes by the hand of an avenging brother, and finally expires in the desert! It is difficult to say how far historic truth has been respected in this tale; but as a literary production it is of great dramatic interest.

The stories of Nestor give us a partial glimpse of those times when martial honour and glory were the moving springs of life in the Russian people; when before going to war they would proudly warn their enemies; and when they would doom those who should break their word "to be slaves for life," considering this to be the greatest of all curses.

Indeed, when we observe in the simple tales of the monk what germs of poetry there were in the early history of Russia, it is sad to think of the rich fruit they might have borne, had they not been blighted while yet in their first development, and choked by parasitic plants of foreign origin. The Norse chiefs themselves sought and inaugurated an intercourse with the Byzantine empire, and about A.D. 1000 the Christian faith in the doctrines of the Greek Church was adopted by Russia. But this approximation to Byzantium, instead of throwing open to the Russian people the treasures of the Greek classic world, merely led to an acquaintance with Byzantine literature, consisting of dry chronicles, scholastic discussions on dogmatic questions, and empty rhetoric, and inculcating a profound contempt for every thing connected with heathen antiquity, and consequently even the Greek classic poetry.

Then came the invasion of the Mongols, about 1236, and the establishment of Mongol rule, diffusing new and oriental ingredients through the nation. We trace the influence of the new conquerors mainly in the popular poetry; we mean, in the rich collection of Russian songs and tales. There are perhaps few nations whose primitive poetry presents so true a mirror of the

people's life and feelings as that of the Russians. In it we find reflected their whole existence up to the time of Peter the Great, and every boon which nature has bestowed upon them: "the broad fields with the silken grass and the blue flowers;" "the thick woods in which the stormy wind rattles;" "the_boundless plains of snow," on which nothing but the "black fir or the silver birch" is to be seen detaching itself from the white ground; again, when the snow is melting, "the song of the lark, the blushing roses of summer, the swift falcon, the dove-coloured pigeon;" and once more, "winter with its dull deathlike silence, broken only by the shriek of the ravens" and "the howling of the snowstorm." In these songs, too, we have plenty of allusions to special Russian scenery" the shining Duna," "the limpid Don," "the benefactress Wolga," "the princely Great Novgorod," " the stone-built Moscow." We behold the wandering life of "the Wolga robbers," and the bold enterprises of the Kossacks. We see the customs, the sympathies, and the antipathies of the people, their faith, their hopes and sufferings; and we are made acquainted with the favourite heroes of their history.

But at the same time, as we have already said, we distinctly trace in the popular songs and tales the decline of those beneficial influences which, under the Norsemen, fostered the national development. Not only political activity and independence declined under their successors, but likewise the purity of homelife. Women were entirely subjected to the despotic power of men, and the Terem,* borrowed from the Byzantine Greeks, deprived them of social importance, reducing them to an oriental slavery. The customs of Norse life had accorded to them a far nobler position; and this change was therefore in every way for the worse. Moreover, the estrangement from Europe caused by the Mongol influence, prevented the chivalrous reverence for women,-which at this time pervaded European society, from penetrating into Russia. The Asiatic notion that women are the ruin of the world was imported by the Mongols, and completed the subjugation of the weaker sex. We no longer find women like those spoken of by Nestor in his tales of the Scandinavian times; but now begin to hear of the beautiful Russian girl who sits lonely in "the silver cage," making "the golden net," leading a monotonous life far from society and civilisation, and expecting with awe the day when, amidst tears and songs, her fair hair will be unbraided, and she will be led, "according to God's will" (that is to say, her father's), to a marriage to which her own sanction was never asked. And often this change is only for the worse; she leaves

The women's place.