RHYL, NORTH WALES. MY DEAR FATHER, Dr. Drysdale thought we needed another change of air, and so we came south this time. . . . The sun sinks just beside Great Orme's Head, after turning the sea into living gold, and the heights into heaps of amethyst. On the right is only sea, sea, sea. ... I intended to go to the Queen's Hotel, and knew nothing about the manner of living in the lodging fashion. So we have to submit to German silver and the most ordinary table service. . . . Ever since our marriage we have always eaten off the finest French china, and had all things pretty and tasteful; because, you know, I would never have second-best services, considering my husband to be my most illustrious guest. But now! It is really laughable to think of the appointments of the table at which the Ambassador to Lisbon and the American Consul sat down last Saturday, when they honored me with their presence. And we did laugh, for it was of no consequence, and the great bow-window of our parlor looked out upon the sea. We did not come here to see French china and pure silver forks and spoons, but to walk on the beach, bathe in the ocean, and drive to magnificent old castles, and get rid of whooping-cough. I had the enterprise to take all the children and Mary, and come without Mr. Hawthorne; for he was in a great hurry to get me off, fearing the good weather would not last. He followed on Saturday with Mr. O'Sullivan, who arrived from Lisbon just an hour before they both started for Rhyl. . . . Julian's worship of nature and natural objects meets with satisfaction here.

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still and higher, pressing upwards, and pouring out such rich, delicious music that I wanted to close my eyes and shut out the world, and listen to nothing but that. Not even Shelley's or Wordsworth's words can convey an adequate idea of this song. It seems as if its little throat were the outlet of all the joy that had been experienced on the earth since creation; and that with all its power it were besieging heaven with gratitude and love for the infinite bliss of life. Life, joy, love. The blessed, darling little bird, quivering, warbling, urging its way farther and farther; and finally swooning with excess of delight, and sinking back to earth! You see I am vainly trying to help you to an idea of it, but I cannot do it. I do not understand why the skylark should not rise from our meadows as well, and the nightingale sing to our roses."

Society and the sternness of life were, however, but a hair's-breadth away:

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Monday evening Mr. Hawthorne went to Richmond Hill to meet Mr. Buchanan. The service was entirely silver, plates and all, and in a high state of sheen. The Queen's autograph letter was spoken of (which you will see in the Northern Times that goes with this); and as it happens to be very clumsily expressed, Mr. Hawthorne was much perplexed by Mr. Buchanan's asking him, before the whole company at dinner, 'what he thought of the Queen's letter.' Mr. Hawthorne replied that it showed very kind feeling. No,' persisted the wicked Ambassador; but what do you think of the style?' Mr. Hawthorne was equal to him, or rather, conquered him, however, for he said, 'The Queen has a perfect right to do what she pleases with her own English.' Mr. Hawthorne thought Miss Lane, Mr. Buchanan's niece, a very elegant person, and far superior to any English lady present. The next evening Mr. Hawthorne went to another dinner at Everton; so that on

Wednesday, when we again sat down together, I felt as if he had been gone a month. This second dinner was not remarkable in any way, except that when the ladies took leave they all went to him and requested to shake hands with him!

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No act of the British people in behalf of the soldiers has struck me as so noble and touching as that of the reformed criminals at an institution in London. They wished to contribute some-' thing to the Patriotic Fund. The only way they could do it was by fasting. So from Sunday night till Tuesday morning they ate nothing, and the money saved (three pounds and over) was sent to the Fund! Precious money is this."

There is an English region, stately. with a grand outline of sea and sandhills, of hard-bosomed endless beach and vast sky, where my father stands forth very distinctly in my memory. This is Redcar, to which we fared on our return from Italy. When he went out, at fixed hours of the day, between the hours for writing, he walked over the long, long beach, very often, with my brother and myself; stopping now and then in his firm, regal tread to look at what nature could do in far-stretching color and beckoning horizon-line. Along the sand-hills, frolicking in the breeze or faithfully clinging in the strong wind to their native thimbleful of earth, hung the cerulean harebells, to which I ardently clambered, listening for their chimes. In the preface to Monte Beni, the compliment paid to Redcar is well hidden. My father speaks of reproducing the book (sketched out among the dreamy interests of Florence)" on the broad and dreary sands of Redcar, with the gray German Ocean tumbling in upon me, and the northern blast always howling in my ears." Nothing could have pleased him better as an atmosphere for his work; all that the atmosphere included he did not mean to admit, just then. And London was not so very far away.

On September 9, 1859, my mother says in her diary, "My husband gave me his manuscript to read." There are no other entries on that day or the next, except, "Reading manuscript." On the 11th she says, "Reading manuscript for the second time." The diary refers to reading the story on the next day, but on the two following days, in which she was to finish as much of the manuscript as was ready, there are wholly blank spaces. These mean more than words to me, who know so well how she never set aside daily rules, and how unbrokenly her little diaries flow on. In October, at Leamington, she mentions again "reading Monte Beni," and a few days later says, "I read the manuscript of Monte Beni again;" continuing for two days more. About a month later, on November 8, is recorded, in very large script, "My husband to-day finished his book, The Romance of Monte Beni."

I thought that the petty lodging in which we were established was an odd nook for my father to be in. I liked to get out with him upon the martial plain of sand and tremendous waves, where folly was not, by law of wind and light of Titan power, and where the most insignificant ornament was far from insignificant: the whorl of an exquisite shell, beautiful and still, as if just dead; or the seaweeds, that are so like pictures of other growths. I felt that this scene was a worthy one for the kind but never familiar man who walked and reflected there. We enjoyed a constant outdoor life. But in those uninspired hours when there was no father in sight, and my mother was resting in seclusion, I played at grocer's shop on the sands with a little girl called Hannah, whom I then despised for her name, her homely neat clothes, her sweetness and silence, and in retrospect learned to love. As we pounded brick, secured sugary-looking sands of different tints, and heaped up minute pebbles, a darkly clad, tastefully picturesque form would approach, -a

THE field of the greatest political activity in America the last twenty years has been the administration of cities, and the cardinal point in political thought has been the divorce of city government from politics. Here is an apparent contradiction which indicates the elasticity of the term "politics." Like "religion," which is made to do service for visiting the fatherless and widows in their affliction and for increasing the number of orphans, "politics" in the mouth of one man may mean the conduct of the state in honesty and sobriety, in that of another a job at the city hall. The fact remains that attention is centred on the problems which confront us in the administration of cities, and the drift of political thought has been steadily in the direction of concentrating power and responsibility in the hands of the mayor. Mr. Shepard's article upon The Mayor and the City clearly shows that the several great cities of the country, in attempting to solve the problem of administration, have diminished the legislative and strengthened the executive function. And behind all the contrivances of organization stands always the need of a man in whom the city may have confidence. It may be said with almost equal certainty that the elevation of the mayoralty in power and responsibility is attracting toward the office a high type of citizenship.

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It does not follow that this application of political principle extends to the offices of governor and President. One of the most important discriminations is that which holds the city to be a corporation, the State an organism; and though the functions of the mayor and of the governor are sometimes nearly identical, it is very clear that the qualifications for the one office are not necessarily the same 1 The Atlantic for July, 1894.

as those for the other. To put it broadly, a man with a first-rate business training may make a most efficient mayor; he might make an incompetent governor. Nevertheless, those qualities which make a man a good administrator in the government of a great city do constitute an admirable reason for supposing he would make a good governor; and we have had in recent political history more than one capital illustration of the natural progress of a political career along these lines. Governors Greenhalge and Russell of Massachusetts are instances of men who have been tested in municipal office, and have owed their governorship largely to their success in city government. President Cleveland is an instance of a public man who has passed by successive steps of administrative office from the lowest to the highest, without entering the legislative service at all. It is not unreasonable to suppose that in the specialization which is all the while going on a sharper distinction will take place in public life, and those men who have aptitude and training in legislative or judicial practice will less frequently pass over into the domain of executive work, while the men clearly gifted with powers of administration will find their training in offices which bring those powers into exercise. The probability of such a general law is increased when it is considered how the operations of a political organism like our own, where the several functions of legislative, judicial, and executive authority are defined not only in the written law, but by an increasing body of precedents, tend toward a discrimination and a jealousy of encroachment one on the other.

Meanwhile, the scope of the executive function is steadily enlarging, not by the assumption of powers belonging to the other departments of government, but

by the natural enlargement of the field of normal activity. A familiar illustration of this may be found in the extension of the Cabinet of the President. Theoretically, the Cabinet is the division of the presidential function; and whereas at first it consisted of four officers, it now consists of eight. The PostmasterGeneral was not, at the beginning of the government, a member of the Cabinet. The Department of the Navy was a bureau of the War Department. The Department of the Interior was not created till 1849, and the Department of Agriculture, the latest of all, was erected in 1889. This process of subdivision is still going on. The Department of the Interior, especially, has several very active bureaus, and when we take into account the several commissions, as well as the Department of Labor, and consider how frequently, of late, there has been a demand for a Department of Transportation into which the Interstate Commerce Commission shall pass, it is evident that the central administration at Washington is assuming a greater significance with each decade.

Now, all these departments, with their increase of organization, are amplifications of the presidential office, and with the extension of the merit system in the civil service there is a tendency toward stability and the routine order of business. Moreover, with the release of the Cabinet officers from the vexatious task of paying political debts incurred by the party, there will be a more constant application of energy in administrative work, a larger field for the public man of ability, and, it may be added, a greater freedom for the exercise of the higher political functions. In a word, the expansion of the President's office gives greater opportunity for statesmanship, and there are many signs that in the future the President's Cabinet will have larger importance and dignity. A significant step was taken after the death of VicePresident Hendricks in 1885, when the

presidential succession bill was passed, providing for the advancement to the presidency, in case of the death of the incumbent of that office and of the vicepresidency, of members of the Cabinet in a designated order.

The influence of the several members in public policy is undoubtedly dependent in some degree upon the temperament and disposition of the President himself. His specific action is not legally controlled by the council which he calls about him, and there have been instances in our recent history where the Cabinet has not been influential with the President. Nevertheless, besides that each member has very large control in his own department, the tendency is toward the greater weight of the Cabinet. The increase of power and responsibility in the separate offices calls for abler men, and nine men cannot confer on public questions month in and month out without attaining a certain community of judgment. of judgment. Discord, under these conditions, is more likely to be followed by rupture than by subjection.

We have dwelt at some length on these considerations, because, aside from the intrigues of political managers, there is a natural association of ideas between the office of a Cabinet secretary and the presidency. Supposing the President himself not a candidate for reelection, there is no unreasonableness in looking to his closest political and administrative associates for the man to be his successor, if his party is in the ascendency. Such a man will have had the experience which comes from having had an active part in the exercise of presidential functions and from having been in the administrative council. Whatever other training he may have had or may have missed, this will have been significant. Moreover, his position will have tested somewhat his capacity for filling the more comprehensive rôle of the President, and his conduct in office will have disclosed, with more or less publicity, the