up the emotions and might pass for exquisite art. But when a true and artistic effort is made to move us, and succeeds in moving us, then surely-though we need not be blind to the short-comings of the attempt-it is better to dwell more on its successful than on its insufficient results. This, it seems to me, is much the case with Dumas père. We have seen that he has been constantly accused of immoral writing, but it is not too much to say that not one of his books could be the cause of immorality to any reasonable grown-up person. As to whether Dumas succeeded in moving his readers, that of course must be a matter of individual opinion and experience. We live in a free country, and no one is forced to admire or like Dumas' writing. But those who do not are, I think, deprived of a considerable pleasure. As to the literary sins which have been before referred to, it may not be amiss to say a few words about them.

Dumas was born in 1802 at Villers-Cotterets, a small country town between Paris and Rheims, and he died in 1870. Consequently, as he himself would have said, he lived for sixty-eight years. He began writing when he was between twenty and thirty, and in the course of his life he produced rather more than three hundred romances and eighty dramas, besides ephemeral articles. One of his detractors went through an elaborate calculation to prove that no one man could have written every word that appeared with Dumas' name attached to it. It would be absurd to argue that he did write every such word, and his admirers would perhaps be sorry to think, from a literary point of view, that he was the author of everything that was put forth under his name. The third volume of Les Quarante-Cinq, for instance, is most obviously by an alien hand. From a moral point of view it is not perhaps desirable to defend the practice of adopting other people's work as one's own. Only let it be observed that the work which Dumas did so adopt is never equal to his own, and can be recognised as not being his own just as the pupils' work in what are called the studio-pictures of the old masters can be recognised.

As to his being merely an arranger of other people's ideas, that is a charge which might as easily and as justly be brought against many writers of genius and fame. He never concealed the sources of his inspiration; he has recorded how his first successful drama was founded on a passage in an old French chronicler and on a chapter in Walter Scott. Is there anything more disgraceful in thus putting two and two together than in Shakespeare's going for his plots to Holinshed? If taking suggestions from history and fiction is criminal, then almost every writer of mark is worthy of the hulks. But the fact is that the meanest reptile, if it has a sting, is capable of doing damage out of all proportion to its apparent power. The artfully concocted slanders of Jacquot-self-styled De Mirecourthave left their mark. They have been eagerly seized on by all the

tribe of writers to whose nature the key-note is envy; and they have spread so far that unhappily one cannot say of them what Pierre Clément said of a libellous pamphlet on Colbert, published just after the great minister's death, History takes no notice of these anonymous insults.' All one can do is to raise up one's voice against them.

6

To sum up, Dumas was born, as has been said, in 1802, and died in 1870. When as a very young man he occupied a somewhat dreary position as a clerk in a public office, he was fired by a noble ambition which. first assumed a definite shape under the influence of Shakespeare. He rose-and quickly—to the very height of success. It was his fault that he bore himself with less dignity after than before he had attained success, and that he adopted the system of unacknowledged collaboration. But even if the greater part of the charges brought against him in this respect were admitted, it would still be seen that his industry was no less extraordinary than his imagination. He acquired and kept a position in the first rank as a playwriter, as a novelist, and as a writer of that kind of discursive essay of which Mr. Sala is in England at the present day the master. He had immense wit, not a little poetical feeling, a perfect command of dramatic resource, and unflagging gaiety. If his writing is not intended for boys and maidens, that is one quality which he has in common with such playwriters as, for instance, Shakespeare, Racine, and Molière, and such novelists as Goethe, Fielding, and Le Sage. His method was at any rate like that of the playwriter quoted by Hamlet, an honest method' he did not palter, as the modern French school of playwriting does, with vice and virtue, keeping one foot in the domain of each, and casting a false glamour of splendour around corruption. He made immense sums, and unhappily spent them more easily than he got them. He was openhanded to a fault. He had a childlike vanity and a childlike simplicity mixed with a curious astuteness. His name, I think, will live, and his work be rated at its proper value, long after the efforts of his detractors are forgotten.

WALTER HERRIES POLLOCK.

THE object of this article is to comply with the request of some persons who desire a clear and concise account of the system of management on Lord Portsmouth's (agricultural holdings) estates in the county of Wexford.

Attention has been directed to this system, when at different times in Parliament, or in the newspapers, Irish land questions have been brought forward. This therefore must be regarded as a supplement to such occasional notices, rather to explain and throw light upon them than to enlarge them.

It would be unwise as it would be fruitless to pretend that any system is faultless in itself, or is in all cases certain of success. In Ireland there are conscientious landlords, who consult the interests of their tenants, and heartily wish for the welfare of those who live upon their property. There are tenants in Ireland who do not forget what is fair to their landlords, and who appreciate generous treatment as keenly as any Englishman can do. There are agents in Ireland who have sympathy for the tenant as well as fidelity to the landlord, and to pretend that any one system must be adopted by all such landlords, tenants, and agents would reasonably appear an act of presumption which this sketch of a plan successfully tried for fifty-eight years (on an estate in the county of Wexford) must not be supposed to meditate.

The different points of resemblance and dissimilarity from Ulster tenant right need not be dwelt upon here, because this system was started independently in a county and province where tenant right was untried, and is not now the general custom. The mass of the population in Wexford consists of Catholics, while there is a considerable portion among the richer classes of Protestants, members of the Irish Church, Presbyterians, Methodists, and Quakers.

The Portsmouth tenant right was introduced in the year 1822 by the late Lord Portsmouth, with the able assistance of Mr. Nicholas Ellis, who was at that time agent, and whose thorough acquaintance with Irish character and requirements enabled him to co-operate with success in the establishment of a new form of administration considerably in advance of public opinion.

From that time up to the present mutual confidence, respect, and kindliness have steadily grown in the relationship between landlord and tenant.

No doubt a large allowance must be made for special advantages.

The first and greatest is in the person of the resident agent at Enniscorthy. He has found it possible while serving faithfully an English landlord to remember that he is an Irishman, and to combine in a remarkable degree the Irish qualities of shrewdness and amiability.

His willing and intelligent co-operation as a Protestant, with the agent, who occasionally visits the estates during the year, an English Catholic gentleman, has largely increased the sense of union among a tenantry of divers creeds, and succeeded in eliminating the differences of religious faith from all business transactions. Further, it is a happy incident that this experiment has been tried in a county that illustrates generally the existence of good relations between landlord and tenant.

These advantages cannot be overlooked when estimating the prosperity or welfare of the estate. They are greatly to be accounted

But when these happy coincidences are duly weighed I believe there will be found in this system one preponderating principle of excellence in which is contained the secret of its success. I think it may be said to exist in the acknowledgment by different means, and especially by the free right of sale, of a proprietorship in the farm by the occupier--an acknowledgment that encourages him to take a substantial interest in the improvements on a farm of which he thereby becomes an owner as well as a holder.

The agricultural property (for the town property is managed differently in some respects) consists of about 11,000 statute acres, held by farmers whose holdings vary from twenty to two hundred acres. The tenure is for whichever lasts longest, a lease for a life or thirty-one years. The landlord has the raw material on which he has spent nothing. The tenant or his predecessors have alone expended money and energy upon it.

The landlord's interest is consulted on a reletting at the expiration of the lease, when from one eighth to one fourth is added to Griffith's valuation of the land only-treating Griffith's valuations of the building as the valuation of the tenant's property only. The variations in the valuation from one eighth to one fourth are decided by the nature of the soil, and by the contiguity of the farm in question to the town of Enniscorthy, which in spite of the higher rates increases its value.

The tenant's right is to the improvement on the raw material-the house-the farm buildings-the fences-and trees planted and registered by him. Therefore if a tenant wishes to renew a lease on the VOL. VIII. No. 44. Ꮓ Ꮓ

expiration of an old one, all such improvements are treated as absolutely his own.

It is quite possible for a landlord to regret that he could not under this system introduce newer, better, or a more convenient style of building, that he could not carry out for his tenants such reforms as he might deem advantageous and useful; but, on the other hand, this plan benefits him largely, as it assures an unanswerable security for the contentment and satisfaction of the tenant. At his own convenience, in his own manner, consulting his own fancy, be can execute improvements, which, whatever their character, are the result of his own personal wishes, thoughts, and energy. We all know how very far this goes to make a home, its surroundings, and all its associations endeared to us. It has gone very far to make the tenantry of which I write conscious of a just pride themselves, and of the respect of others. This however is but the first instalment of success which a system based on this principle obtains.

The second, the right of free sale by the tenant of all his own improvements, is even a larger and a more important benefit to both landlord and tenant. Let us suppose a tenant wishes to dispose of his holding before the expiration of his lease. By private treaty or public auction he offers for sale the goodwill or interest of his farm, asking of the incoming tenant or purchaser a price in proportion to his expenditure on improvements, and the length of the unexpired time of the lease; for which he may get from ten to fourteen years' purchase of his annual rent. The tenant thus obtains all the advantage of his own industry and enterprise, and can gauge the worth of all the additions and improvements he has made by the success of his sale, and the prices it realises.

As a rule the outgoing tenant nominates the incoming one. Το prevent fraud the landlord has the right of veto, but it is hardly necessary to add that such a right would be exercised only for very rare and special reasons, for it is obvious that this system, by procuring a ready successor to a vacant farm, signifies the new man's approval of what he finds upon it, and his power to satisfy the outgoing man who is unwilling or unable to continue in the place.

Of this free right of sale' an advanced Liberal politician on the estate once remarked that it was sufficient to enable a tenant to make, as well as to compensate him for, his outlay.' By this right of sale also a tenant can by private treaty get rid of debt, while a public auction is a fair test to him and others of the state of the farm; and as it is the outgoing tenant himself who thus treats with his successor, it may be easily understood how many subjects of discomfort and questions of petty annoyance are entirely removed from the common ground occupied by landlord and tenant. In a very material manner we find the landlord a gainer also by this practice-for if an outgoing tenant be in arrear for rent, that arrear is paid to him as a first charge out