solute, but should require to be ratified by the Civil Service Commissioners. We say this to anticipate an objection which may not improbably be offered to this suggestion, to the effect that the result would be to secure all the ablest men for certain favourite offices. There would not, under such a system, it may be alleged, be a fair distribution of talent over the different departments. But, after all, we are inclined to think that the objection, though a reasonable one, exists rather in theory than in practice. Young men would not elect to enter this or that office on the ground of its real or imagined general advantages, so much as upon the score of the peculiar advantages which it may present to each of them individually. If, for example, his father, or any other near relatives of the young clerk, holds an influential appointment in the War Office, the youth will elect that department in preference to the Treasury or the Foreign Office, though, in the abstract, those departments may be more tempting than the one elected. In the Indian military service, young men, passing out of college for the engineers and artillery, were allowed to make choice of a presidency, according to their rank; but no practical disadvantage resulted from the system; for though the intrinsic advantages of the Bengal presidency were undeniably supreme, the peculiar personal inducements which often invited a youth to enter the service of the inferior presidency, preserved a just equilibrium. On the benefit of offering a strong inducement to young men during their probationary period to qualify themselves for the public service, we need not enlarge. There can hardly be any stronger inducement than that suggested; and if a veto were given to the Civil Service Commissioners, there would be no fear of unsuitable appointments.* The risk, indeed, would be far less than under the present system.

The young civil servant having now passed from the state of a pro

bationer to that of an established clerk-a regular member of the Civil Service-the next thing to be considered is, how we may best continue to stimulate his zeal and keep alive his activity. We do not, in this paper, pretend to offer any general scheme for the reorganisation of the Civil Service; but we may observe here, that something of classification beyond that of junior and senior clerks is required; but whatever may be the different grades, we are of opinion that no clerk should be promoted to a higher rank by dint of mere seniority. We have incidentally alluded to this in reply to the Committee's remark, that although no high qualifications may be demanded from the Government clerk on his first entrance into the service, he rises to higher office in course of time, and is invested with important duties and responsibilities. Now, we repeat that we would have no such rising as a mere matter of course. When a vacancy occurs in a higher class, the senior qualified member of the class next below it should be promoted; but that qualification should be severely tested. No clerk should be promoted without a certificate of industry, regularity, and general good conduct, from his immediate departmental, or, more properly, sub-departmental chief; and he should be examined in his office, not as to his general attainments, which are presumed to have been already tested, but as to his official acquirements. We believe that this practice is already in force in some Government offices; but whether it is a substantial reality or a mere form, we do not pretend to know. Under any circumstances, however, it must have an advantageous effect upon the zeal and industry of the candidate for promotion. Making every allowance for the natural unwillingness of the higher class of Government servants to blast, by unfavourable recommendations, the prospects of the junior members of the service, we still feel assured that the mere knowledge of

the fact that the clerk must make a formal display of his proficiency before he can be promoted to a higher grade, must stimulate him to greater exertions than, in ordinary cases, he would be inclined to make, if his qualifications were subjected to no such test, and promotion were to be granted as a mere matter of course.

The junior clerk having risen to the rank of senior clerk, or having passed from one class to another, until he has reached the highest attainable in the ordinary course of departmental promotion, he either contents himself with the certainty of a gradual increase of pay until he reaches the maximum salary of clerkship, and, after a few years, subsides into superannuation; or he aims at higher employment, as chief of a sub-department in the office to which he belongs, or in any other more responsible and more lucrative post, the attainment of which is ordinarily the result not of official seniority, but of ministerial selection. And here we find ourselves in something like a dilemma. It is held to be advantageous to the interests of the State that, with reference to these higher and more responsible posts, her Majesty's Government should have the widest possible field of selection that they should seek competent men, wheresoever they are to be found, without regard to any question of official antecedents; and in order to facilitate this, an Act has been passed sanctioning the grant of superannuation allowances to such members of the service on a most liberal and encouraging scale. Now, this, however advantageous it may be to the service, is detrimental in the extreme to the servants of the State; and we cannot doubt that a great diminution of zeal and activity is the result of a feeling of uncertainty with respect to the chances of attaining one of the higher offices of a department, when those offices are open to all the world. It may be said, that if, in the department, there is an officer qualified to advance beyond the point of clerkship, or, having already advanced beyond it, to succeed to any still higher post that may be vacant, the minister will not go out of it in

search of a competent man. We believe, indeed, that this is the recognised rule; but we doubt whether practically such is the case, or whether it is ever likely to be so whilst the parliamentary chief of a department has entire control over all its official arrangements. It may be true that it will sometimes happen, under the existing system, that there is no officer in a department qualified to succeed to its higher posts; but it is worthy of consideration whether this deficiency may not be the result of the very want of stimulus engendered by the insecurity of which we have spoken. Men will qualify themselves for higher office, when they feel that they are tolerably safe to attain it. But assuming the absence of the necessary qualifications in a particular department, it still remains to be considered whether, before going out into the world at large in search of a qualified functionary, it should not be incumbent on the minister to seek for one throughout the whole range of the service. If the "fragmentary character of the service" is to cease to exist, proficiency testified in one department should establish a claim to promotion in another-never to the supersession of any qualified candidate in that department, but in preference to all outsiders. If this were to be the case, men of good promise would not be discouraged by the fact of there being few openings for advancement in their own department; they would look to the service generally rather than to the particular section of it in which they have graduated as clerks. There can be no practical difficulty in the way of such an arrangement as this. If there were, the intermediate agency of the Civil Service Commissioners would remove it. But the permanent heads of departments, under such a system, would be continually in communication with each other, and would report, in the probable event of any approaching vacancy, upon the qualifications of the functionaries serving under them, for the post vacant in the other department. It may be said that these transfers would occasion jealousies and heartburnings; but we do not see why an

interloper from another department should be more unwelcome than one from the outside world. The system once established and recognised, indeed, we are inclined to think that it would be acceptable to the service generally. It could only be distasteful to the drones. At present, men have come to regard a department as a sort of close borough, maintained for their own especial convenience, and they may, therefore, look with jealousy and dislike upon the intrusion of a stranger. But if such transfers were a recognised part of the system, and every man on entering the service felt that he had a fair chance of profiting by them, there could be no sense of intrusion in the case. The system would be that, to borrow the phraseology of the army, of regimental promotion up to the rank of fieldofficer, after which the practice of line-selection takes effect. We are convinced that such a system would be advantageous alike to the service and the servants of the State. At present, a man entering the public service, and feeling himself bound to a department for the rest of his life, is chilled and discouraged by the feeling that there are very few prizes within his reach, and that those prizes may be given to a stranger, just as he is in a position to grasp them.

We repeat, that what is really required to supply the Civil Service of the country with young men of mark

and likelihood, and to keep up the general efficiency of the service, is not a phalanx of cramming tutors, a board of erudite examiners, or a system of competition, open or limited, but sufficient attractions into the service itself to induce young men of promising abilities to enter it in preference to all other professions. There can hardly be a more important subject of parliamentary inquiry, but it appears to us that our investigations have hitherto begun at the wrong end. When a man strips himself to fight a battle, or girds himself to run a race, you may be sure that he has ascertained beforehand that the prize for which he is to contend is worthy of his prowess. If he has really any good stuff in him he will not contend for an ignoble prize. Let us make the Civil Service of the country worthy of the best intelligence in it, and we may be sure that the best intelligence will enter its ranks. We trust that, in the course of the ensuing session of Parliament, the whole subject will be submitted to inquiry. The question of initial appointment is really a small, and, as we think, a comparatively unimportant part of it. There is no more fear of our not getting good men for a good service, than of our not seeing good horses entered for the Derby, so long as to win that race is to win "the blue riband of the Turf," with a rich pecuniary accompaniment.

Two new and startling trains of thought were thus brought into exciting and tumultuous existence by the revelation of Mariuccia, and two young lives disturbed beyond any possibility of immediate pacification. There was no longer any rest for Francisco in his lofty nest in the Piazza of Trajan. He worked languidly and by fits when he could not help himself; for the severest savage Spartan existence demands still something to answer the claims of nature, and it was perfectly necessary, in the first place, that he should live. Except for this sharp spur of necessity, he would have done nothing but muse over the miraculous prospects which had opened before him, and make long dreamy excursions into that future, which-all but one initiatory step, which was very dark indeed, and obscured with a perpetual fog-blazed with the splendours of a fairy tale. His imagination, much confused and baffled when it endeavoured to penetrate into the darkness of that gloomy and uncertain interval which lay between him and his glory, at last learned to leap over the clouded threshold, and enjoy the unquestionable delights beyond; for, to be sure, if the young painter were but once proved to be the Duke Agostini, there was an end to all possible troubles and distresses. What had he further to fear? The young man mazed himself night and day with these dreams. He loitered upon his little loggia leaning over the railing, revelling in imagination in all the splendours of his new position. He avoided his old acquaintance, and found no more pleasure in the theatre or the café. He had not even the pleasant distraction of a sitting from the Signorina Inglese to disturb the solitude which he peopled with such dreams. He had lost an unspeakable amount of youthful comfort and amusement to start with. He was very lonely, very poor -lost in a world of indolent but exciting visions-by no means happy.

VOL. LXXXVIII.—NO. DXLI.

For Francisco it was as yet anything but good news.

It was not much better news to the English Lucy. But for this the two would inevitably have forgotten each other; parted shyly, with their mutual shy liking undeveloped; with a little pang at the heart of each, and a soft recollection lasting perhaps throughout their lives. For was it not inevitable-a thing beyond resistance ? How dared they so much as think of each other-these two, between whom fortune had drawn a line so rigid? But things were changed now. Francisco had ventured to speak and Lucy to hear. That which might have died away inarticulately had been spoken and could no longer be ignored; and a little money, a little more money, would make the young painter the equal, and more than the equal, of the little Englishwoman. Lucy could not save herself from the thrill of that intruding thought-“Some time I shall be rich"-any more than she could from the compunction rising immediately after it, which reminded her that ere she could be rich her grandfather must die. How wicked she thought herself!-how unnatural, how ungrateful, sometimes even how miserable she felt, like a traitor in the old man's house. But still she could not help the recurrence of that thought. Some time she too would be rich; and if Francisco was still Francisco, and wanted that money then to gain his rights, the money should be his. But Lucy too grew dreamy and loved solitude - her imagination was captivated perhaps even more than her heart.

It was still beautiful, warm, idlers' weather, and the life of an idler flourishes nowhere better than in Rome. Francisco did nothing that he could help except dream, living imaginary glorious years as Duke Agostini, and forgetting the necessary days which the painter Francisco had to live through in the mean time. For what could he do? No exertion

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