.

We turn now from the dual problem of Lancelot and Guinevere, to that of Arthur and Guinevere. To the former, she is bound by every tie of natural instinct, spiritual selection, intellectual judgment and a heart preoccupied by his image before she had so much as seen the King-the heart's affection based upon the mind's approval. Lancelot is what she likes, no less than whom she likes. She yields to him the supreme love of her heart, and knows that he has endowed her with a like great gift. So much for her bond to Lancelot.

To Arthur, there is but the legal bond-the shell from which the kernel has been given to another. Granting the value and obligation of this bond, must we concede it to be all, and the other nothing? This, unquestionably, is Tennyson's conclusion. The whole trend and teaching of these poems is to the effect that the legal bond-the marriage ceremony-constitutes marriage, ` and, further yet, marriage which holds good for the world to come as well as for this world, even though, as in the present case, the mind, the soul, the will, the affections, all turn the other way. Arthur undoubtedly takes this position, but there again we may make large concessions to the influences of the times. Also though with far less reason-we are willing to concede something, on the same lines, to Tennyson. But what we do not feel warranted in conceding is, that this ideal of marriage should hold with the men and women of to-day.

Much is said and written now upon the subject of divorce, and much there is to say, on the side of the state, against the man or woman who seeks to break the legal bond of marriage. Perhaps, of all these arguments, the strongest is that of necessity. The law must hold a man and woman together, for the reason that love will not. But for this fact-the impermanence of human affection-which every day confronts us, Love and not Law might be conceded to constitute the marriage bond. But stern necessity compels us to recognize the fact that this obligation too rarely holds to be established as a precedent. Therefore in the present age of man, at least, we are compelled to respect the legal bond.

The legal bond, yes-but the mere legal bond, no!-and when Tennyson pushes it to the point of assuring, without doubt or hesitation, that this will be the one which will prevail in the 、 eternal hereafter, even his beautiful poetry does not save the situation from an element of the ridiculous. Remember that

Arthur is speaking to a woman who, by his own admission, had never loved him ("I cannot touch thy lips, they are not mine but Lancelot's-nay, they never were the King's"), when, in taking his last farewell of Guinevere, he holds out to her this remote, but glorious, possibility:

"Perchance and so thou purify thy soul,

And so thou lean on our fair father, Christ,
Hereafter, in that world where all are pure,
We two may meet before high God, and thou
Wilt spring to me, and claim me thine, and know
I am thy husband-not a smaller soul-

Nor Lancelot, nor another."

And what, we are led to ask, is the ground on which Arthur declares Lancelot to be a smaller soul than he? And what the ground on which Tennyson accepts, and would have us accept, this dictum? Does the mere fact of chastity overbalance and outweigh the proofs of the soul's greatness which Lancelot continually gives in his fealty to Guinevere? And, even so, what of the evidences of this same virtue given by Lancelot, in the following passage (but one of many proofs) which describes a scene between "Lancelot and the exquisite Elaine "?

"Then suddenly and passionately she spoke,
'I have gone mad. I love you. Let me die!'
'Ah, sister,' answered Lancelot, 'what is this?'
'Your love,' she said, 'your love-to be your wife!'
And Lancelot answered, 'Had I chosen to wed,
I had been wedded earlier, sweet Elaine,
But now there never will be wife of mine.'

'No, no,' she cried, 'I care not to be wife,

But to be with you still, to see your face,

To serve you and to follow you through the world.''

Lancelot's firm denial to Elaine is only one more proof of his loyalty to the Queen and to his highest self-indeed, legal or illegal, it would be hard to find an example of a more unselfish, delicate and faithful lover. He was "love-loyal to the least wish of the Queen," even when she decreed that he should leave her. And even when he said: "I needs must break these bonds that so defame me," he added, instantly: "Not without she wills it." The poem ends with the words:

"So groaned Sir Lancelot, in remorseful pain,

Not knowing he should die a holy man."

Tennyson's reasoning in all this—making Arthur a holy man, because, per se, he was a chaste one, and Lancelot an unholy man because he had not the chastity which consists in fidelity to the legal bond-seems to elevate the latter so far above the spirit that all sense of due proportion is lost. There is little doubt that the world needs teaching as to the responsibility of the marriage bond; but, when Tennyson delivers this lesson of eliminating from the question all consideration of the obligations of love, respect, affection, and the behests of mind and soul, he goes so far to the other extreme as to class himself with those who regard the marriage ceremony as marriage.

In conclusion, it seems not inappropriate to quote two verses, read somewhere in a magazine, years ago, and, for some reason, never forgotten:

"Two ghastly shapes, in veils of mist,

For longer years than both could tell,
Bound by a stern gyve, wrist to wrist,
Have roamed the ranks of Hell.

"Their sad eyes know each other not,

Their cold hearts hate the bond so drear:
Yet one poor ghost was Lancelot,

And one was Guinevere."

This poem would, no doubt, have been regarded by Tennyson as entirely serious and just; but, for the men and women of to-day, is not its chief effect to revive childish and shivery impressions of "the bad place and the bogey-man"?

JULIA MAGRUDER.

THE INTERNATIONAL ASPECT OF OUR
TARIFF SITUATION.

BY N. I. STONE, TARIFF EXPERT IN THE BUREAU OF STATISTICS.

WITHOUT going into a discussion of the respective merits of high and low duties, we may state without fear of contradiction that the chief impulse to the present demand for tariff revision has come from that section of our business community, both manufacturers and merchants, who are interested in foreign trade. The speech delivered by the late President McKinley at the PanAmerican Exhibition in Buffalo, which may be said to mark the formal opening of the campaign for tariff revision, emphasized this point. "What we produce beyond our domestic consumption," he said, "must have a vent abroad. The excess must be relieved through a foreign outlet, and we should sell everywhere we can and buy wherever the buying will enlarge our sales and productions, and thereby make a greater demand for home labor."

It is this state of affairs-namely, that our industry, as a result of the giant strides made by it in the last two decades of the nineteenth century, has reached the stage where the foreign market is a necessary part of its normal outlet-that constitutes the pivotal point of our present tariff situation. In shaping our tariff policy heretofore, the problem our statesmen had to solve was how to secure to our own manufacturers our great home market. The problem henceforward will be how to insure to American industry and commerce the greatest possible share of the world's markets, while surrendering as little as possible of the home market to foreign exploitation.

Hardly any one will question that the McKinley and Dingley tariffs helped the American manufacturing industry to reach the high degree of perfection with which it is credited by the consensus of opinion among the leading engineers of the world. It

will also be admitted by the advocates of lower duties, as well as by those of a high tariff, that by securing to the American manufacturer perfect immunity from foreign competition at home, as the two tariffs have done, they enabled him to reach out with success for a share of that very foreign trade for the sake of which our government is now asked to modify the tariff. Here we touch the very heart of the problem as it now confronts, not only the business interests, but the greater part of the American people.

I.

While we were busy putting up high walls around our national frontiers to keep out the foreign invader, the latter, for similar reasons, has been engaged in the same work at home; and the entire continent of Europe, with the exception of Holland, has been fenced off in the last fifteen years with higher walls than ever before separated the different nations of that continent in the history of modern trade. France, Germany, Russia, Italy, Switzerland, Spain and Portugal-each has introduced a high protective system, which has been raised higher and higher as one country tried to meet the repeated assaults of the other against one or other of her own industries.

In the course of that development, which has brought with it a new species of international conflict, the so-called "tariff-war," the commercial nations of the civilized world have worked out new or perfected old methods of regulating international trade. All of these methods are merely different adaptations of the best means available to a nation for protecting her economic interests against her neighbors.

As each nation succeeded in mastering the policy of tariff-protection, effects of its action were felt more and more by the rest. As a result, tariff matters have become conspicuous elements in diplomatic negotiations among nations. The once simple tariff, in the form in which we still have it, consisting of one set of duties levied on various articles of commerce, has, in most countries, given way to more complex forms, such as maximum and minimum tariffs, general and conventional tariffs, supplemented by such accessories as surtax, retaliatory duty, countervailing duty, etc.

So far, the United States has managed, on the whole, to hold aloof from the entangling meshes of those European innovations,