three straws about the policy of ideas; with Bright, whose somewhat Puritanical mind draws back with a kind of dread from anything that savors of free-thinking; with Auberon Herbert, the mild young aristocrat, converted from Toryism by pure sentimentalism and philanthropy; with Connolly, the eloquent Irish plasterer, whose vigorous stump oratory aroused the warm admiration of Louis Blanc. It would be impossible that such a knot of men, so gifted and so fearless, so independent and so unresting, so keen of pen, and so unsparing of logic, should be without a clear and marked influence on the politics of England. It is quite a curious phenomenon that such a group of men should be found in close and constant co-operation with the English artisan, his trades' union organizations, and his political cause. Frederick Harrison represented the working men in the Parliamentary commission lately held to inquire into the whole operation of the trades' unions. Professor Beesly writes continually in the "Beehive," the newspaper which is the organ of George Potter and the trades' societies. I cannot see how the cause of Democracy can fail to derive strength and help from this sort of alliance, and I therefore welcome the influence upon English politics of the little group of Positivist penmen, believing that it will have a deeper reach than most people now imagine, and that where it operates effectively at all, it will be for good. ENGLISH TORYISM AND ITS LEADERS. Sir John Mandeville tells a story of a man who set out on a voyage of discovery, and sailing on and on in a westerly direction, at last touched a land where he was surprised to find a climate the same as his own; animals like those he had left behind; men and women not only having the same dress and complexion, but actually speaking the same language as the people of his own country. He was so struck with this unexpected and wonderful discovery, that he took to his ship again without delay, and sailed back eastward to impart to his own people the news that in a far-off, strange, western sea he had found a race identical with themselves. The truth was that the simple voyager had gone round the world, reached his own country without recognizing it, and then went round the world again to get home.