served in South Africa; and this monument is a beautiful example of the sculptor's art.

Of Stock Exchange charity there is little need to speak, because it is so well known as to be a cause of some embarrassment to members of the House, who are considered lawful victims by all sorts and conditions of applicants. In the fortnight before Christmas it is no uncommon thing, when times are good, for members of the House to get on an average half-a-dozen different appeals per diem. Most of the big London hospitals have at one time or another enjoyed substantial support of a special nature from the House; and Stock Exchange names abound in the lists of subscriptions to almost any charity that can be mentioned. The House is a strong supporter of the Salvation Army through an annual Christmas collection; and it also maintains a Home for Working Lads in South Lambeth, in which some fifty boys are encouraged to become good citizens through their own exertions, supplemented materially by those of their Stock Exchange friends. In times of national gravity it is usual to look-and not in vain-to Throgmorton Street for financial aid, which may take the shape of anything from fitting out a squadron of horse to the supply of tobacco for men in some particular company. Members say that the only excuse for this reputation of generosity is the old maxim, 'Easy come, easy go.' When money is being made, it comes in so rapidly that lavish expenditure is stimulated; and in times of stress nobody cares to economise in this direction unless positively compelled to do so. The Stock Exchange Benevolent Fund plays an important part in the domestic life of the House. It has a huge capital fund, and also owns several freehold cottages which are reserved, of course, for the use of those whom the Fund is designed to benefit. During the past ten years, the number of annuitants has increased from 243 to 363.

The Stock Exchange has been truly described as the nerve-centre of the world, the hub of the financial universe. Few events of importance, indeed, can happen in either of the two hemispheres without their having some effect upon the quotations in Throgmorton' Street. San Francisco and Valparaiso are burned down; and

there follows immediately a sharp fall in the shares of insurance companies in the London Stock Exchange. Later comes depression in Consols, owing to rumours that some of those same insurance companies are realising securities in order to pay fire losses. On the other hand, shares in cement companies begin to rise, on the assumption or the hope that the commodity will be required for the rebuilding of the cities. An outbreak of rebellion in China brings down the prices, not only of Chinese Government bonds, but also of shares in industrial companies operating many miles from the area of disturbance. An important war may have the effect of advancing the prices for shares in telegraph and cable companies whose traffics are expected to improve as a direct result of the thirst for information on the part of the public. Does the Seine overflow its banks, shares in South African mines may be affected unfavourably, in case the Parisian proprietor should be forced to sell his holdings in order to pay for damage incurred on his premises. A dry summer may prove well-nigh disastrous to root crops, and therefore exercise an influence upon the profits of provision and catering companies, the shares in which must bear the brunt of such decrease. A failure in Amsterdam may start a slump in oil shares because the latter are favourite holdings of Dutch people, and the defaulting firm may have oil shares amongst its assets that have to be realised.

All the country exchanges, all the continental bourses, all the United States stock exchanges, act and react upon London. Spasmodically the boast is revived by New York that the Wall Street Stock Exchange is the centre of the world's finance, and that this powerful organisation, which came into being about a hundred years ago under a sycamore tree in Wall Street, dominates the financial interests of the universe. Every now and then, one of the British provincial exchanges will try to throw off its allegiance to London and declare that it can do just as well on its own account as it can with the support of its mother exchange. These claims, however, it is hardly necessary to discuss. They are disproved by the most casual examination of the actual condition of affairs. Berlin buys Canadian Pacifics in London as well as in New York. Paris will come to London to deal in

De Beers and Kaffir shares rather than go direct to the market in Johannesburg, with which London is in constant communication. The rubber planters of Ceylon and the Middle East, when they want a ready market for the shares in their estates, send the rupee companies to London to be converted into sterling, and arrange for a market to be made from that centre.

It would, however, be as easy to magnify the London Stock Exchange as it would be to wax pessimistic over the parlous state into which its business dwindles when, in the words of the Stock Exchange member, there is nothing doing. He comes, that member, into a proud heritage which seems to him the apex of his ambition until he has spent a few years on the floor of the House, when his voice will most probably swell the chorus of his fellows in wishing that there were no such place. Occasionally there are alarms of fire in Throgmorton Street; and hundreds of men crowd to the spot whence the rumour rises. In nine cases out of ten the reply to the eager enquiry, 'Is the House on fire?' is the gloomy answer, 'No such luck.' But this, it may be, is only a part of the gentle cynicism for which the Stock Exchange is noted, and which finds its expression in a caustic wit that is illustrated every day in the newspapers. From the very nature of the business, it is manifest that the member of the Stock Exchange must come into contact with many hundreds of financial propositions which tend to shake his faith in the innate rectitude of human integrity. He is in the midst of a business where it is considered essential that one man should get a little bit the better of the other man; and the most popular stories in the Stock Exchange are those which illuminate this touching trait in the profession. One morning a broker strode into the House before the market had opened, and asked a dealer to make him a price in a large quantity of North Western stock. The dealer was reluctant to transact business so early, and asked the reason for such apparent haste on the part of the broker. It is nothing, my dear fellow,' replied the other. Eventually, however, he made a price and the broker sold the stock. Booking the bargain, the dealer enquired if the broker had any special information. Oh, no,' was the airy reply, 'merely a deceased account.' Immediately afterwards

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arrived the news of a bad smash on the line, and the price of the stock fell five points. The broker kept away from the market, but came in at the end of the day, and happened to be noticed by the dealer to whom he had sold the stock early in the morning. The dealer looked at him for a second without speaking and then, turning on his heel, remarked over his shoulder: That was a knowing old corpse of yours this morning, wasn't he?'

Yet, for all the pessimism which the pursuit of stockbroking must necessarily create, the members of the House, on the whole, are an optimistic and hopeful body of men. If it were not so, they would lose their business, for human nature is an irrepressible 'bull.' People will buy for speculation readily enough, but to sell with the same object is a much rarer thing. Eradicate hope, and the Stock Exchange would drift into the realm of the unwanted. It would be a mere excrescence upon the land doomed to rapid extinction. But, so long as human nature remains bullish,' that is to say, hopeful, so long will the Stock Exchange remain and flourish; for even a Socialist has been known to buy shares for the rise. In all seriousness, the Stock Exchange performs a function in the life of the community which quickens enterprise and encourages adventure, while at the same time it offers the readiest range of facilities for the investment of capital from the smallest amount to the largest. That it may ever uphold its fine standard of business honour, that it may ever seek to raise still higher its ideals of usefulness and protection to the public, that it may ever continue in this manner to progress and flourish these must be the cordial aspirations not only of the member of the House, but of everyone who has at heart the cause of high commercial morality, which not even its bitterest enemies deny to be the goal aimed at by the London Stock Exchange.

WALTER LANDELLS.

Art. 6. MAURICE BARRÈS.

Sous l'œil des Barbares (1888), Un homme libre (1889), Le Jardin de Bérénice (1891), L'Ennemi des Lois (1892), Les Déracinés (1897), L'Appel au Soldat (1900), Les Amitiés françaises (1903), Le Voyage de Sparte (1905), Au Service de l'Allemagne (1905), Colette Baudoche (1909), L'Angoisse de Pascal (1910), Il Greco (1912), and other works by M. Barrès.

AMONG the living writers of French books Barrès appears as a Romantic in the ranks of the Classics, or rather as a free-lance fighting the battles of Idealism. He is not an idealist in that deeper sense which admits, beyond our varying truths, one truth absolute, in which they all are fused, as all our colours merge in white; he is no prophet of notions and verities; he is rather a sceptic, with the sceptic's care for purely human interests; he tacitly rejects every form of supernaturalism. And if he consider the soul, it is as a musical concord resulting from the harmony of all our parts; and doubtless he believes that, with death, the music of our consciousness will pass away for ever, unless, indeed, in some child of our race, there revive some strain of the melody we were. Yes, Barrès is a sceptic! But he loathes the dogmatic materialism of positive philosophy; and in his subtle and subjective mind the suspense of the sceptic appears as a transition towards some spiritual outlook. We might apply to him what he says himself in another connexion, in his 'Discours pour nos Églises': 'Je sais à quelle monstre de souplesse j'ai affaire.' A natural chivalry of disposition, and the sceptic's inclination to make custom and tradition rather than any reasoned principle the standard of morality, alike persuade him to espouse, in these troubled times, the quarrel of the persecuted Church. Barrès is a formidable Catholic champion, 'jusqu'à la foi, exclusivement.' We may compare his position with that occupied in the primitive Church by those pious improfessi, those God-fearing metuentes, who, though neither Jews nor Christians, ran the risks and fought the battles of Paul and Peter, and yet remained unbaptised, uncircumcised, entitled to no celestial rewards.

It is interesting to follow the course of such a man's