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At a Park Gate

"Tis closed!-lest trampling footsteps mar

the glory of the green.

Time after time we knock and knock:

no janitor is seen.

Yet bolts and bars can't quite shut in
the Spring-time's beauteous pall.

A pink-flowered almond-spray peeps out
athwart the envious wall!

I subjoin a few more stanzas on various topics:

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Carpe Diem

I would not have thee grudge those robes
which gleam in rich array,

But I would have thee grudge the hours
of youth which glide away.

Go, pluck the blooming flower betimes,
lest when thou com'st again

Alas, upon the withered stem

no blooming flowers remain!

TU CH'IU-NIANG (a Nanking lady).

The Harvest Moon

Bright in the void the mirror moon appears,
To the hushed music of the heavenly spheres,
Full orbed, while autumn wealth beneath her lies,
On her eternal journey through the skies.
Oh, may we ever walk within the light,
Nor lose the true path in the eclipse of night !
Oh, let us mount where rays of glory beam,
And purge our grossness in the Silver Stream!

CHI P'o.

It is impossible, of course, in a desultory sketch of this kind to give any very clear idea of the scope and value of Chinese poetry. The few specimens here presented are taken from a collection of pieces which I have chosen at random, and translated from time to time. For the purposes of this article I have eliminated all such as contain allusions to history or mythology, though it is precisely amongst these that many of the greatest efforts of the Chinese poet are to be found. I have not drawn upon the venerable Book of Odes, that work being already accessible to English readers. The poems given belong to what we may call the Augustan age of Chinese literature; roughly, from 600 to 900 A.D. They are one and all familiar enough to the ordinary Chinese schoolboy, who commits them to memory as models of style upon which to form his own.

He is notably a weak advocate who begins with extenuations. I strove, therefore, to avoid at the beginning of this paper any reference to the difficulties which beset the translator of a Chinese poem. Rémusat said, 'La langue poétique des Chinois est véritablement intraduisible.' Père Cibot more aptly speaks of translating Chinese poetry as 'copying a miniature in chalk,' in allusion to the delicate finish which it is always so impossible to transfer from one language to another. Nothing, indeed, is more highly appreciated by the Chinese than that subtlety of expression by which the maximum area of thought is covered with the minimum expenditure of vocabulary, in fact, what Tennyson has described as

All the wealth of all the Muses

often flowering in a lonely word.

Again, the Chinese have declared boldly and openly for obscurity in poetical compositions. One well-known writer says, 'The men of old reckoned it to be the highest excellence in their poetry that the meaning should lie beyond the words, so that their readers would have to think it out.'

Such being the case, it is obviously no light task to make Chinese poetry even intelligible to English readers. Something has to go by the board. Meanwhile, it is consoling to reflect that Homer and Horace must still be read in the original, and that the lilt of one of Burns' simplest verses cannot be imparted through the medium of the purest French. Look on this picture:

Had we never loved so kindly,
Had we never loved so blindly,
Never met, or never parted,

We had ne'er been broken-hearted!

And now on that (latest rendering):

Si nous n'avions jamais aimé si passionnément,

Si nous n'avions jamais aimé si aveuglément,

Si nous ne nous étions jamais vus ou jamais quittés,
Nous n'aurions jamais eu nos cœurs brisés !

Would any Frenchman be likely to believe from the above that Burns was a poet? Yet the English people have no doubts on the point. With changed names the same fable may be told of Chinese poetry in English verse.

HERBERT A. GILES.

CHARTERED GOVERNMENT IN AFRICA

THE principle of government by and through chartered companies in Africa is frequently assailed by those who believe that her Majesty's Government, by relegating its administrative powers over territories and peoples only nominally within the sphere of British influence, have adopted a retrogressive or, at least, an equivocal policy. The upholders of this policy, on the other hand, maintain that the circumstances of colonial acquisition and expansion in Africa not only condone, but imperatively demand, its adoption or re-adaptation at the present day.

It is my purpose in this paper to show that, although the system of chartered government is at the best a compromise, nevertheless it is the only possible substitute for responsible government in the unsettled and remote regions of Africa.

For the continent of Africa, as students of geography are aware, is differentiated from the other continents of the world in all that concerns its physical and political adaptability to European occupation and settlement. As a continent it is the home of a vigorous race of mankind which, whilst resisting assimilation with European civilisation, defies permanent conquest. It views with equanimity, or at least is powerless to resent, the occupation of its coasts and the more healthy contiguous regions; but the heart of the continent remains, and must ever remain, the home of the African. Allied races, and peoples who have for centuries undergone the scarcely perceptible process of acclimatisation, may, it is true, effect a lodgment in the heart of Africa; but, if they remain there, they themselves eventually undergo absorption into the primitive elements of the population or suffer total extinction.

Nature has, in short, marked off Tropical Africa as the abiding home of the Black races. European travellers, traders, missionaries, conquerors, may at their will, and at their peril, penetrate into this dark sanctuary; but their sojourn is for a day, and on the morrow the faint traces of their passage are obliterated by the exuberant growths of barbarism. Grudgingly as it is sometimes conceded, it is nevertheless a fact that the bulk of the continent of Africa is still untouched by Western civilisation. I, for one, cannot believe that Africa will ever be Europeanised or brought within the pale of

Western progress. For, in order that Africa may progress, it is absolutely essential that it be developed along natural lines; but as yet the inherent powers of native genius have neither been discovered, nor, in the absence of any cohesion among native tribes, and in view of European rapacity, are they, even if discovered, ever likely to be encouraged or fostered. No; Africa is a continent fated to be conquered and exploited by the heirs of civilisation, to whom it may pay tribute, but homage never.

In dealing with African affairs, it is absolutely essential to bear in mind the following unassailable premisses. The Mediterranean States of Africa are absolutely cut off from any close participation in the destiny of the continent by the pitiless desert zone of the Sahara; they, moreover, by reason of their geographical position, fall under the direct control of Europe, wherever and whenever such control can be exercised. The sub-Tropical and Temperate portions of Southern Africa are, on account of favourable climatic conditions, also subject to European influence. But the remainder of the continent-strictly speaking, Tropical Africa-with the exception of a narrow coastal belt, more or less occupied by European colonists, is, and must remain, the cradle of the Bantu races and the last sanctuary of Islam.

Tropical Africa itself is divided into two natural regions: in the north there is the Sudan, under the domination of Islam; in the south is the home of the pagan Bantu tribes under the fitful domination of Europe. The former offers almost irresistible obstacles against European influence; the latter is more impressionable, but is cut off climatically from any permanent occupation or control by and through European agencies. Oases here and there occur in the latter reserve where European agents can impose their will on the indigenous peoples; but, except in South-east Africa, these oases are too far removed, in the absence of railways, from the European settlements to afford any considerable advantage as piedsà-terre for the advancement of civilisation.

Nevertheless, in spite of these limitations, the entire continent has been partitioned among the European Powers-on paper. That, even by the most liberal interpretation, their effective occupation of Tropical Africa is still restricted to the narrowest possible coastal zone is a fact not sufficiently appreciated by Europeans themselves. Europe has, for good or ill, taken possession of Africa in the name of Mrs. Grundy, Civilisation & Company; and the question therefore arises, How is this vast continent to be exploited and administered?

That Africa has great natural resources is an undeniable fact. But these resources are valuable only when they are accessible to the markets of the world: their mere existence counts for nothing unless they can be turned into hard cash or its equivalent. The moon may be rich in mineral wealth, but her value on the Stock Exchange would, assuredly, count for little.

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