The young Mozart was, from the age of four, undeniably a born musician. The young Millais, or Leonardo, or Landseer, or West, was, from early boyhood, undeniably a born painter. But the boyish poems of Scott, Keats, Byron, Shelley, Coleridge, and Tennyson were not a whit better, and were often a good deal worse, than those of boys who were not to be poets at all.

As most children have many of the imaginative qualities of genius, the gift of vivid dreams, and as most children who are to be men of genius display little special power-except in music, arithmetic, and drawing-it is not an easy thing for parents to know whether they have a genius in the family or not!

As far as I have studied the childhood of genius, it commonly shows itself less in performance than in character, and, alas, not agreeably! The future genius is often violent, ferocious, fond of solitude, disagreeable in society.

The great Du Guesclin, the scourge of the English invaders of France, was a most odious boy. His parents had to make him dine at a table apart. He was rude, furious, a bully; he beat every boy he could lay hands on; he ran away from home; he led companies of peasant children against other companies; he was the terror of the neighborhood, and the ugliest page, as he became "the ugliest knight in France." This was the boyhood of a great military genius; the boyhood it was of a little savage.

Scott's childhood was noisy. He yelled old poems at the top of his voice. He loved the lonely hills. He read forever, when he was not wandering alone, and he remembered everything that he read. He was a dreamer, a teller of romances to himself. He delighted in fighting, as did Keats. He studied everything except his books. His enthusiasm for poetry made a lady recognize him for a genius at the age of six, but his father thought he would end as a strolling fiddler.

Napoleon, again, was sullen, lonely, a dreamer, and always "spoiling for a fight," like Du Guesclin.

Unluckily, sullen, dreamy, pugnacious boys are not at all uncommon. They do not become Scotts (not that he was sullen), nor Du Guesclins, nor Napoleons, nor Byrons--for Byron, too, was a passionate, lonely, morbid kind of boy, with terrible fits of temper. His early poems were trash.

Shelley's early poems were trash; Scott's were such as almost

any cleverish schoolboy can write, and there is no promise at all in the Tennysons' " Poems by Two Brothers."

Shelley, indeed, was rather "mad" at school, where he cursed his father and the King, and wrote the silliest of all schoolboy novels. He, also, was dreamy and solitary, but by no manner of means fond of fighting.

In all these cases eccentricity was marked, but whether eccentricity in boyhood can be taken as promise of character and genius is another question. At school in Scotland, a few boys, like "Mad Shelley," were called "dafty." None of them has amazed the world by displaying genius! The great men named were all "dafties" in boyhood, but all "dafties" do not become great men.

Coleridge was a "dafty." "I took no pleasure in boyish sports, but read incessantly." The other boys drove him from among them. He was always a dreamer, and saw so many ghosts that he did not believe in them. "Before I was eight years old I was a character," he says-and not an agreeable character! He was vain, lazy, he dreamed, and he despised everybody. He ran away from home, and stayed out all night in the rain. His son, Hartley, was the same child over again, and a metaphysical philosopher from his cradle.

In most of these cases, in addition to mooning, solitary ways, and moody tempers, there was conspicuous intellect in the young genius. He could read early and, as it were, untaught, and he did read a great deal. Scott, Byron, Keats, were also athletes and very fond of boxing, ot sport, and of games, Byron bowling at cricket for Harrow. These geniuses were not such "dafties" as their rivals.

For my part, genius or no genius, I do hate a boy who "shuns boyish sports," as you so often read in biographies. But, on a general survey of genius in childhood, I think that we ought to try to put up with it, and not bully it at school, "at least as far as we are able."

If the genius is a born artist, he is likely to be popular for drawing dogs, horses, and the schoolmaster. If he is going to be a poet-why one rather pities him, in his schooldays. A Scott, a Keats, may make himself respected at school, by a genial readiness to fight all challengers, to take part in every dangerous diversion. A Cowper, or a Shelley, should probably not be sent to

school at all, and genius rarely passes through the University without what Coleridge calls "a row."

These troubles and sorrows come, because, whatever else genius may be, it is certainly a thing apart, self centred, and ill to govern. A genius" varies from the kindly race of men," hence the tendency, even in childhood, to a love of solitary places, that passion so marked in Wordsworth from his boyhood.

Even in childhood, also, it is a mistake to try to drive genius, a mistake which naturally flows from Dr. Johnson's theory, that the spiritual force can be turned into any chosen direction. Following the Doctor, parents will endeavor to make a boy with a genius for literature take to law or to civil engineering. The effort was made with Mr. R. L. Stevenson, and, of course, failed.

Mr. Stevenson was the only genius whom I ever knew moderately well; in boyhood I did not know him. But he has described, in his own case, the day and night dreams, the love of lonely wanderings, the ungovernableness, the dislike of boyish sports, and the other symptoms of genius in the bud. The character was there; the boyish performances were not remarkable. You cannot recognize literary genius, in boyhood, "by results." Musical, mathematical, mechanical, and artistic excellence are, for some reason, much more easily recognized, almost from the first.

Perhaps these remarks may console parents of lonely, dreamy, moody, ungovernable sons. Perhaps they may modify the contempt of schoolboys for "dafties." Don't bully such lads; don't thwart them needlessly. They may be children of promise, though the odds, unluckily, are against any future performance.

At all events, do not drive them too hard into uncongenial industries. An instinct wiser than experience may be guiding them into the way appointed. They must and will go their own way. Still, had I a sou, who displayed, like Mr. D. D. Home, a genius for being a medium, I certainly should thwart him to the full extent of "the resources of civilization."

ANDREW LANG.

PENDING PROBLEMS.

BY THE HON. ALBION W. TOURGÉE.

THREE problems present themselves with which the incoming administration will have to deal without delay, that are unique in our political experience. First, it will have to provide means to meet an actual and serious deficit in revenue which cannot wait for the slow remedy of an uncertain tariff law; second, it must provide some means by which the Treasury will be secured from any special demand for gold that may arise on account of financial conditions either at home or abroad; and, third, it must find some way of relieving our currency from the anomaly of the so-called "silver certificates," which are really promises to pay the holders silver dollars which are worth something less than fifty cents apiece. These three things are tasks of such emergent character that no one professes to believe that they can be avoided or even delayed for any considerable time with safety to our national finances or the interests of the Republican party.

The actual deficit at the date of Mr. McKinley's inauguration will probably amount to 840,000,000, or thereabouts. It is difficult to ascertain its exact amount because of the policy which has been adopted of holding back the payment of appropriations made and the stoppage of work provided for by law, in order to apply the sums which would be required for them to other and more exigent needs. No objection can be made to such a course -it is, in fact, inevitable when an actual deficiency of revenue exists; but it is admitted that the deficiency now amounts to about $36,000,000, and there is no probability of its being reduced in the interim between the present and the fourth of March next. On the contrary, it is almost certain to be increased. Two remedies have been proposed for this condition of affairs:

The one is the passage of the tariff measure now pending before the Senate, known as the Dingley bill, by the present session of Congress, in order to save the delay and the tendency to hasty and incomplete tariff legislation at a special session. As a remedy for the present deficiency, this plan is wholly defective. The Dingley bill at the best could only stop the increase of the deficiency and would of necessity leave the existing deficit unprovided for. The other plan consists merely of leaving the whole matter to be provided for in a tariff law to be enacted at a special session. This view is objectionable to those who realize the necessity of retaining the support of the gold Democrats and understand that this would naturally be imperilled by hasty and extreme action in regard to the tariff.

A similar difficulty presents itself in connection with the currency. No one questions the fact that the present situation is intolerable. In effect, the government is likely to be called upon at any time to pay gold for all the United States notes and all the coin treasury-notes, that may be outstanding at any particular time. These amount to about $480,000,000, or more than four times the gold reserve. Of course, any considerable rise in the price of gold, resulting either from commercial conditions in this country or political conditions abroad which might increase the rate of exchange, would at once cause a repetition of the process by which the gold reserve in the Treasury was lately reduced perilously near the vanishing point and the bonded debt increased $262,000,000 to prevent such result. While it is true that a part of the gold received through the sale of bonds was undoubtedly used to make good a deficiency of revenue, it was made evident to every thinking man that no financial skill can keep gold in the Treasury while the demand-notes of the government remain in circulation, and while for any reason whatever people happen to prefer gold to such notes. Under present conditions, greenbacks and treasury-notes are sure to be presented for redemption, whenever gold is worth a premium, either for domestic use or for export; and there being no legal means of replenishing the gold in the Treasury except by borrowing, new loans must be made and new bonds issued. Everyone is agreed that the government should not be left exposed to such a contingency a moment longer than is absolutely necessary to enact preventive measures.