THE LTVING AGE. Sixth Series. No 2791 loflo From BegiDubeg, XVII. January 1, 1O~O~ Vol. ccxvi CONTENTS. I. IN EASTERN AMERICA: N~w YoRK BALTIMOREBRYN MAWR. By Ferdi- nand Bruneti~re. Translated for The Living Age II. Moscow. By Arthur Synsons, III. WITH ALL HER HEART. By Rend Bazin. Chapters XII. and XIII. Translated for The Living Age IV. TIGER MAJESTY. By Edward A. Irving, V. MRS. OLIPHANT AND HER RIVALS. By an old Personal Friend, VI. LOULY. By Christian Burke, VII. THE UNREST OF THE NATIONS, Revue des Deox Mondes, Cosoeopolis, Revue des Deux Mondes, Blackivoods Magazine, Scottish Retiew, Temple Bar, Spectator, POETRY. THE BIRD AND THE BEACON, . 2 THE NOON SPELL, OLD LOVERS 2 A VIEW, 3 Ii) 27 34 44 00 (31 .2 PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY THE LIVING AGE COMPANY, BOSTON. TERMS OF SUBSCRiPTION. FOE Six DOLLARS remitted directly to the Publishers, THE LIVIEG AGE will be punctually for- warded for a year, free p postage. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, er by post-office money order, if possible. If neither of these can be procnred, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are ooliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks, and money-orders should be made payable to the order of THE Lsviue AGE Co. Single copies of THE 1.iviun AcE. 15 cents. The Bird and the Beacon, etc. THE BIRD AND THE BEACON. Poor bird that battiest with the storm To gain the beacon-light, Then fallst a wounded woeful form Into the gulfs of night! A thousand lips that light may bless: To thee tis the last bitterness. A light was given to the earth, Wearing a womans name; A thousand tongues have told her worth And deathless is her fame. But I was the spent bird, that there Salvation sought, and found despair. F. W. Bou1~D1LI~oN. OLD LOVERS. Heart of my heart, when the day was young, Hope sang to life with a silver tongue; Hope beckoned Love down a flowery way, Where twas always morning and always May, And two true lovers need never part Do you remember, heart of my heart? Heart of my heart, when the noon was high, Work showed the way we must travel by; Duty spoke cold and stern in our ears, Bidding us bear all the toil and tears, Partings and losses, sorrow and smart Have you forgotten, heart of my heart? Heart of my heart, in the setting sun, We sit at peace, with our days work done; In the cool of the evening we two look back On the winding pathway, the noons rough track, And the morns green pleasance, where roses twine, Heart of my heartwith your hand in mine. Heart of my heart, when the night is here, Love will sing songs of life in our ear; We shall sleep awhile neath the daisied grass, Till we put on the glory and rise and pass To walk where eternal splendors shine, Heart of my heartwith your hand in mine. THE NOON SPELL. Windless the World; no softest whisper- ing Doth thrill the poppies sleep. But from the corn, Over the rose and elder hedge upborne, Lone leaps the lark, his passions chant to fling Into the blue. On Natures lyre, one string One only stringis neath the noon-spell found. Vibrant with song. And wben along the ground The sunset breezes steal, clearer the lark will sing. Peaceful my heart; its last uncertainty Quivered to calm. For, with you mounting bird, Soars, soars alone, one thought grown strong and free One, from stilled depths, where thou- sands faintly stirred This: Love, your face holds all Lifes joy for me! And through each thought till Death it will be heard. Speaker. E. H. A VIEW. Here is the hill-top. Look! Not moor or fen, Not wood or pasture, circles round the steep: But houses upon houses, thousand-deep, The merchants palace and the paupers den. We are alone,beyond all mortal ken: Only the birds are with us and the sheep. We are alone: and yet one giants leap Would land us in the flood of hurrying men. If eer I step from out that turbid stream To spend an hour in thought, I pass it here: For good it is across our idlest dream To see the light of manhood shining clear: And solitude is sweetest, as I deem, ~\Then half-a-million hearts are beating near. Argosy. E. NESBIT. EDwARD CRACROFT LEFROY. 9 From the Revue des Deux Mondes. IN EASTERN AMERICA. NEW Y0RKBALTIMOEEBRXN MAWR. I. New York, March 22d. To the some- what impatient reporter who asked me this morning, before our trunks were Gut of the Custom-House, how I found America, I replied that 1 would tell him when I had found it; and for the last two or three hours, I have been consci- entiously seeking America upon the streets of New York. It must be there, and I shall eventually discover it, but, the fact is, I have not yet done so. These houses are certainly not unlike many others which I have seen where? In the new quarters of Ant- werp, or, possibly, Cologne. These streets are no livelier than the Parisian streets, and they are lively in no dif- ferent way. These faces are no more feverish, nor even any more anxious, than our own; and in the rare atmo- sphere and brilliant sunshine there is nothing to remind me that I have changed my skies. Moreover, I am so constituted as to my eyes and my mind, that wherever I have been, I have found men more alike than it suited their vanity to ad- mit. It is an unfortunate disposition, doubtless, for an observer, but who knows that it will not enable one to see more in the end? How many travel- lers there are whose tales have im- pressed me with mere amazement at their own ingenuity! They were al- ways discovering differenceswhich were no differences at all to me. Have we not all, or almost all of us, within ourselvesEuropeans and Americans, Anglo-Saxons and Latins, yellow men and Whitesamples of all the vices? Granted, of course, that we have also our share of all the virtues, and let us say with the poet: Humani generis mores tibi nOsse volanti Sufficit una domus I am promenading the sidewalk of Fifth Avenue, as I make these reflec- tionswherein I fear there may enter a grain of spite, because I have so lit- 0 tie of the travelling spiritand I sud- denly perceive that it is a very long avenue, very long indeed. I notice, too, that all the other streets cross it at right angles, and that, though the crowd that fills them may be motley and the cable-cars which thread them innumerable, the general effect is, none the less, rather monotonous. A few tall buildings, at intervals, afford a certain relief: excessively tall build- ings of twelve or fifteen stories, cubical, with fiat roofs and countless windows; built of a kind of stone whose crude whiteness lightens the general effect, where everything else is of brick. I proceed to make a careful note of the fact that in New York there are buildings fourteen stories high, and truth compels me to add that they are no uglier than if they had only five. Where have I seen others, not quite so tall, and even less beautiful, but in the same styleif it is a style!or at least. on the same lines, recalling not so much the art of Bramante or Palladio~ as the science of Eiffel the great en- gineer? The most amazing and inex- plicable thing of all is, that these enor- mous buildings (10 not appear to have any underground foundations, but look as though they were merely set up on the surface of the ground. I turn off to the right and there is an abrupt change in the look of things: the ties of an elevated railway, supported by enormous cast-iron pillars, have cut off my sunlight, and the trains which pass from minute to minute make a deafening rumble over my head. Now I come to second-rate shops of unattrac- tive appearance, to bars, and oyster- houses; while the sidewalks are lined with dime shows and bootblacks. Ped- lars, who have an Italian look about them, and who evidently recognize me. for they address me in French, offer me bananas, oranges, apples, and some- thing which I take to be Turkish de- light; also strips of marshmallow. The odors are no longer those of Paris, but of Marseilles or Genoa, and, all at once, I remember that I am in a sea- board town. Town, did I say? I should have said island; and I find it In Las tern America. 4 natural ihat the manners and customs here should fluctuate, as it were (to use the expression of one of the men of old who never saw America) and that the bulldin,,s should have as yet no firm foundations. A great seaport almost always looks as though it dated from yesterday; its sights are soon despatched, and how many times have I not wondered that the oldest of all our French cities, the one which existed before there was a France, before Gaul vven had a nameI mean of course Marseillesshould also be one of the most modern, one of those where you find least visible history, and breathe least of the atmosphere of the past. But let us not tire of making com- parisons; for it is the true way to under- stand, and in any case it is the only one I know whereby I can assure myself of the freshness of my own impressions. There are seventy or eighty thousand Italians in Marseilles, and there used to be a large number of Greeks and Le- vantines. Here, in New York, there are four or five hundred thousand Germans and how many Irish ?not to speak of the thousands of Italians, French- men, and Greekswhich last are emi- grating now, by hundreds, preceded, to their steamers, by a band, and fol- lowed by huzzahs and good wishes nor of the Chinese, the Japanese and the negroes. Must I confess that of these last I do not think I have caught a single glimpse, even in my hotel? But the fact that there are negroes is enough for me, and I am not surprised that all these elements together pro- (luce a mixture, an amalgam from which it is hard to pick out anything very American. The business streets Twenty-third, Fourteenth, Broadway are filled with a nameless and charac- terless crowd, neither very noisy nor very busy. There are many loungers on the benches in the squares. A big vosmopolitan city, a very big city, an enormous city, where I seem to see again the familiar features of Paris and Marseilles, of Genoa, of Antwerp and Amsterdam; a city where certain very slight differences, suspected rather than felt, supposed rather than demon- strated, and undefinabte #or the mo- ment, are effaced and suibmerged in a multiplicity of resemblances or analo- giessuch are my first impressions of New York; and I also feel that it is an amusing city, for I have been walking almost four hours without either my curiosity or my pace flagging. March 23d. I have no time to-day for verifyin~ my impressions of yesterday, and, at bottom, I am glad of it, for in my role of conscientious traveller, 1 ought to be acquirin~ fresh ones, capa- ble of being immediately turned into literature. Now the best impres- sions, the most just, those which alone perhaps are true, are those which enter insidiously by the senses, without our realizing the fact, and which we find again later, much later, in the depths of our inner consciousness when we try, as in a dream, to re-live the old days again. Meanwhile, I am to start, almost im- mediately, for Baltimore, where I de- liver my first lecture the day after to-morrow. So I take my way to the Pennsylvania railway-station and we cross a branch of the Hudson in one of those ferry-boats which really bear a striking resemblance to gigantic turtles. We land: we set off once more, this time in a Pullman car, and I see my first negro. Why should the cir- cumstance afford me so keen a delight? If It be true that of all the signs by which we recognize a great city, there is none more infallible than the miser- able aspect of its environs, the new world and the old have no occasion for mutual jealousy in this respect; and I should say that never in my life have I seen anything rawer, more squalid, more pitiable, than the suburbs of New York, if I did not remember those of Paris, and especially those of Mar- seilles and Genoa. Without doubt, this is the price we pay for our mechanical and scientific civilization. How many fools does it take to make a public? asked Chamfort insolently. On my part, I ask myself, How many suffer- ing men and women does it take, in the nineteenth century, to make a great city like London. Paris or New York? In Eastern America. In. Lastern Am rtca. The inner courts are like wells or en- trances to mines, and the sickly trees lean forth, following the direction of the sun. On cords stretched from house to house, rags of all colors float in the morning breeze; haggard beings appear at the windows. If you get a glimpse of an interior, the evidences of misery there make you blush for hu- inanity. How, and on what, do all these people live? At what cost, and why? With what hope or expectation? I may be wrong, I will try not to ~,en- eralize hastily; but the poverty here seems to me exactly as deep and irre- mediable as in the old countries of Europe, and it is not the Americans who will solve the social question. We are now in the open country, and so far the distinctive feature of this trans-Atlantic landscape seems to be the advertisements. There is nothing else to be seen, in the fields, on the fences, on the roofs of the houses. Cycles, oats, pills, delicious teas, soaps, tooth-powders, mineral waters without end, aperients and tonics. On every side the eye is assailed by vast, varie- gated, showy advertisements in letters three feet high, hygienic advertise- ments, and, if the reader will excuse me, digestive advertisements. Are all the Americans afflicted with stomach- ache, and can it be that the most opti- mistic of peoples, or what passes for such, is also the most dyspeptic? Our average speed is about forty-five miles an hourthe average speed of the express from Parts to Nice or Calaisand I naturally have no diffi- culty in coming to the conclusion that the American railways are not faster than ours. The Pennsylvania R. R. has, in fact, the reputation of being one of the best lines in the United States. The food is distinctly bad, and however inferior the cooking in our wagons-res- taurants, I prefer it to that of the Pull- man car. On the other hand, the ac- commodation is better than with us. It is pleasant to travel in these large armchairs, and to realize that, if one chooses to take a nap by the way, one does not disturb his fellow-travellers. But smoking is forbiddenas it is in those other cars on the Elevated rail- way in New Yorkand this reminds me that I have never known a country where it was more difficult for a smoker to indulge his weakness. Shall I also complain that the con- ductor of the train, to say nothing of the special officer of the Pullman car, so often wakes you up to look at your ticket? No supervision in America, I had been told; the traveller is treated like a man, not a trunk; there is no watch kept on you either when you take or leave a train; you get on and off or change your seat, without any- bodys interfering. For my part, if I am to speak frankly, I did not care for so much liberty; I like well enough to be treated like a piece of bag~age when I travel. Luckily my informants exaggerated. In the Pullman cars as in our wagons, you can move about, it is true, when there is no one else in your compartment; but the seats are numberedwhich is indeed a better plan, than putting them at the dis- posal of the first cornerand a good enough way of avoiding disputes and elbowing. Another act of despotism which seems to me paternal is that no more tickets are sold than there are seats in the car. Nor can you get on as you please; the conductor and the negro are there to exa mine your ticket, and they look at it again as soon as the train starts. Then comes the turn of the regular conductor, whom you see reappear, four or five minutes before each stop, and who, unless your physi- ognomy becomes imprinted on his brain, will always ask to see your ticket. Perhaps he wants to spare you the annoyance of being carried past your station! Shall I mention that he is as obliging as he is exact? Once more I arrive at the conclusion that all the world is made like our family, and I wonder if it would not be more sensible to take my stand on this fact rather than to wear myself out in the search for differences which I do not find. But at the very moment when I am forming this resolution, an indolent one and slightly premature, perhaps, con- 5 6 sidering that it is just twenty-six hours since I landed in America, we cross a river with flat shores, muddy waters, a slow and melancholy current, and since it is my misfortune to be steeped in literature of all descriptions, memories of Chftteaubriand, of Fenimore Cooper and even of Gustave Aymard!arise in my mind. It may be the Delaware but I do not need to know. It affords me an inexpressible pleasure to see, at last, something which I have not seen before. Truly, nothing could be less like the Rh5ne or the Rhine, our Loire or our Garonne. The sluggishness of the Loire is that of an old river, a very old river, a civilized river, a river tired with seeing so mudh history reflected in its waters. The deep Rhine with its greenish current and precipitous banks, seems, as it flows, to murmur romantic legends. But these great rivers of America have an air of youth, or, more properly speaking, of primeval times, and the sensation they produce is that of something belonging to a vague, re- mote, and singularly vacant past. Great forests line these rivers, as far as the eye can see; the solitude about us appears constantly to expand, and the whole scale of things insensibly to change. Another river, two rivers which are really arms of the sea, some buildings, more advertisements, a city in the distance, and we arrive at Balti- more. Tue president, we should call him ,ecteur, of Johns Hopkins University, Mr. D. C. Gilman, with whom I have been corresponding for six months past, has kindly taken the trouble of coming to meet me at the station. We get into a carriage and drive the entire length of an exceedingly handsome street, very broad and well-built, to the hotel where rooms have been engaged for me. To-morrow I shall make some duty visits, and the next day, in the great hall of the university, I shall de- liver what will be, so far as I know, the first lecture on French Literature ever given, in French, to the students of an American university. Baltimore, March 24th. Ask any well-instructed little schoolboy or girl, says an American writer, !what is the distinguishing feature of Baltimore, and he will answer: Baltimore is called the City of Monuments.~ But neither have words the same signification in French as in Englishsince I have al- ready had time to learn from the news- papers here that the qualities most ad- mired in a public ~speaker are cynicism and emphasisnor have terms in Amer- ica the same value, or as our logicians would say, the same comprehen~Sion as in France. The City of Monuments, as Baltimore has been denominated for more than a century, means merely that this was the first city to erect a monument to Christopher Columbus; a commemorative obelisk, a very tiny lit- tle obelisk, which was long thought to have been set up by the proprietor of the ground on which it stood, to the memory of a favorite horse! Other monuments have doubtless contributed since then to make Baltimore more worthy of her name; the monument commemorating the battle of North Point (September, 1814), and, in the centre of the fashionable quarter, a stone column some hundred and fifty feet high, surmounted by a statue of George Washington. It was close to this that I descended, only to ascend again forthwith to the sixth or seventh floor of a very fine hotel, quite new, having nothing American about it, any more than any other hotel, unless it be that it is particularly well kept. I no- tice that here, too, in a city whose col- ored population cannot be less than seventy or eighty thousand, the hotel service is perfommed entirely by whites. Strange fatality! All previous travel- lers have stayed at extraordinary hotels. They were flooded with electric light and deluged with ice-water. They could not turn their hands with- out setting in motion all sorts of com- plicated machinery, nor take a step without bringing into the field a legion of negroes. My negroes are all in the kitchen, and none of these thrilling ex- periences have, as yet, fallen to my lot. Other hotels, it is true, In the lower part of the town, have a more Amer- ican look; with their halls, their bars, In Eastern America. In Eastern A merica. their stalls of papers, books, and to- bacco, their barbers, and dressing- rooms, and that perpetual coming and going which makes your stay in them, in some sort, a mode of motion. The city itself, however, with the ex- ception of five or six big streets, looks neither very animated nor even very busy. I shall have to go presently and consult my guide-book (my B~ideker; there is no French guide to the United States) to make sure that the place con- tains more than half a million inhab- itants. Can it be that, misled by trav- ellers tales, I have made a mistake about the activity of the American peo- ple? What sort of a dilettante or epi- curean existence can those persons have led in Europe, who find life so fast and feverish in Baltimore, or even in New York? Orand this is perhaps the more probable hypothesisare there two, three, four Americas, only one of which travellers are willing to recognize? I shall see neither Chicago, St. Louis, San Francisco, nor New Orleans; but here, in eastern America, I have no sensation of being in a for- eign country, and the reason is very simple. The customs of European civ- ilization are day by day becoming the basis of those of this people, and, on the other hand, if America makes any im- provement upon these customs, as she is doing continually, we make haste in Europe to adopt it from her. For example, there is a terrible monotony about these interminable streets, always crossing at right an- gles. Variety of perspective, the pic- turesque, the unexpected, are entirely wanting. But for the last fifty years, has not this rectilinear ideal become our own in the name of science and hy- giene? It is mostly in engravings that old streets are poetic! In point of fact, it is almost impossible to see, in such streets, and quite impossible to breathe; and their odor is foul. Here, too, much more than in New York, where almost all the houses in the same quarter are alike, the variety of archi- tecture imparts an element of gaiety to the sameness of the avenues; a little of every style is mingled in a confusion which diverts and amuses the eye even the brick appears less sombre here; the red brighter and younger. Luxuriant creepers and the whiteness of marble steps, soften the crudity. Stone alternates with brick. Here is a group of houses colonial or creole in aspect, such as were to be found, I have been told, in Gandeloupe and Mar- tinique forty years ago. One, in partic- ular, which is always pointed out to Frenchmen, is the family mansion of the Pattersons, where Jerome Bona- parte, that young prodigal, as his great brother used to call him, first asked Elizabeth Patterson to dance. It is a pity that these streets are so ill-paved, and I cannot refrain from saying as much to the amiable Mr. Gil- man, but he assents so politely that I am at once ashamed of my remark. I also refrain from making any allusion to certain structures whose miserable appearance is completely out of keep- ing with the air of ease and comfort which pervades the upper town. This contrast meets one everywhere, and it is not new to me. The impression is exactly that conveyed by an American novelist, Mr. George Cable, well known to our readers, when he said of Balti- more that its aspect was entirely south- ern. and, when requested to explain a little more fully he dwelt on this same air of ease, and the pleasantly noncha- lant face of those who walked the streets of Baltimore; a city of leisure, a residential city, where even the negroes, and still more the pickanin- ales, look happy! But I must think of my first lecture. Baltimore, March 25th. I am very greatly and very pleasantly surprised to find myself in the presence of six or seven hundred listeners. In the first row is Cardinal Gibbons, and by his side, M. Patem5tre, our ambassador. The rear of the hail is adorned by a trophy of French and American flags. Mr. Gilman makes a speech, and while listening, with ears less intelli- gent, alas! than attentive, I run my eyes over the audience. The students of Johns Hopkins, more courteous than ours, have not excluded women from 7 In Eastern America. these lectures. They probably do not believe, in Baltimore, that the words of a professor or lecturer are the per- sonal property of the students, nor that they must of necessity be empty or superficial provided they are intel- ligible to women. Nor do they believe, and I am very glad to see it, that in- struction given in a Protestant Uni- versity should be viewed with suspi- cion and carefully avoided by Catholic students. My lecture is finished. I kept a strict watch over my phraseology, and took care to express myself in those general terms which are pretty much the same in French as in English. There is a vocabulary of criticism to which I added the smallest possible number of gallicisms all borrowed from familiar conversation. I had fancied I ought to speak more slowly than usual. But my audience noticed this, and I perceived that I could dispense with the precaution. They understood everything I said and would have done so had I spoken even more rapidly. It only remains for me to maintain the interest which my first lecture seems to have aroused, and I am only disturbed by the reflection that my second is and must be the least interesting gf all. What can I say to-morrow of the Roman de la Lose and all that poetry of chivalry which is rendered so weari- some even to ourselves, by insignifi- cance of sentiment, abuse of allegory, and inadequacy of expression? Baltimore, March 31st. Never did traveller or tourist, I fancy, have less time than I, and, above all, less leisure for observing. I open my eyes and my ears: I open them all the wider, be- cause, by certain of those trifling signs, whereby self-conceit or vanity is rarely deluded, I am made to feel that I am everywhere received and welcomed with more cordiality, more simplicity, more openness, or, at all events, less reserved than is usually shown a pass- ing guest. No one is on the defensive; above all, no one poses before me. But while I try to respond to this wel- come, and all the while that I am talk- ing, and tasting, oysters and terrapin (a species of turtle) and the wild ducks of the Chesapeake, which are re- nowned all over the United States, and justly, as I can testify, my thoughts are hovering about to-morrows lecture, if not to-days; and I am asking myself whether it might net have been made more interesting. Fragments of verse go floating through my memory, and I search the little I know of English lit- erature, for comparisons or contrasts which may serve to illuminate my sub- ject. And since it is already difficult enough to do three things at the same time, namelydine, keep up a conver- sation on French customs, and make my choice, for to-morrow, between the Revue du Jaquar and the Sommeit du Condor I naturally fear lest my impres- sions of America should get crowded out entirely. Happily in all that con- cerns the organization of their univer- sities, which I have undertaken to study on my own account, I find the Amer- ican professors always ready, and un- failingly kind in their willingness to supplement or correct, wherever my obser.vations have been superficial or incorrect. Relying on the information derived from their conversation and their publi- cations I now wish to say a few words on a subject whose interest is, in my opinion, not pedagogical merely, but social as well. II. Note first: by way of assisting the Americans themselves, as well as the Germans to comprehend the situation, that our institutions for advanced edu- cation in France are not all of the same type. We have two or threeno more, but still, two or threeconse- crated to the worship of pure science: such are the CoTh~ge dv France, and the Afus6um d.lzistoire naturelle. For these, there are no entrance examinations, they confer no degrees or diplomas. and they lead to nothingI mean, to nothing but learning. Our universities are somewhat more utilitarian. They confer degrees, and these degrees, whether of Bachelor, Licenciate or 8 In Eastern America. 9 Doctor (B.A., MA., and Ph. D)of which the last alone has sometimes, though not always! a certain scientific valueare chiefly prized as assuring to a man a certain position in the state. They constitute at the same timeand this is the great mistakea certificate of past study and of the graduates fit- ness for a future career. Our universi- ties turn out lawyers, doctors, pro- fessors. If they happen also to be scholars and sages, it is all the better; but as now organized, they are nol adapted, whatever they themselves think, nor were they designed for, the purpose of training sage or scholar. Moreover great schools, like the Ecolc polytechnique and the Ecote normale superieure, are really only professional schools of a superior class, of which the first, the principal, the essential object is to recruit certain important branches of the public service; so that, were one rashly to modify their curriculum, as is periodically threatened, the quality of these recruits would be endangered and the service of a whole class of depart- ments impaired. It is curious and in- teresting to note in passing that, of all these institutions, the most disinter- ested are the oldest, those which date from the ancien regime. The govern- ment of the Restoration added to these the Gonservatoire des Arts et M6tiers, and M. Victor Durny, some thirty years since, founded the Ecole pratique des hautes ~tudes. The Ecoies dAth~nes et de Rome, where young professors and stu- dents of ancient archives are left free to perfect themselves in the studies ne- cessitated by their future occupation, are mere Ecotes d~appUcatiofl (schools of applied learning) like the Ecole des pouts et chauss~es and the Ecole du genie maritime. In the same way there are different types of American universities. There are the State UniversitIes (the Univer- vity of Virginia for example, or that of Michigan at Ann Arbor) which are in- dependent, unquestionably, in the sense that they govern themselves auto- cratically, but the independence of which is to a certain extent limited by the appropriations which they receive from the states of Michigan or Virginia. The two chief obligations which they incur, are that of admitting to the ben- efit of a university education, without any entrance examination or students fees, all graduates of the high schools of Michigan or Virginia, and that of providing, alongside of their liberal education, for technical instruction Thus it happens that tne University of Wisconsin, with an income of some- thing over $400,000, of which $280,000 are supplied by the state, devotes $78.- 000 to its Agricultural College, $38,000 to its School of Engineers, $14,000 to its Law School, and $7,500 to its Phar- maceutical Institute. Other universities, the older ones. for the most part (as Harvard, 1655, Yale, 1701, Columbia, 1754, Princeton, 1757, or the University of Pennsylvania) are, on the other hand, free from any oliga- tion of this kind. They began by beiug simple colleges, like those we used to have, at Paris, or in the provinces (Col- loge des Grassins, CoiU~ge dHarcourt, Cot- loge des Godrans at Dijon, where Bos- suet and the great Cond~ began their education) and if I make these com- parisons it is because here, as formerly with us, a sectarian bias, if I may us~ the expression, was the main element in the foundation of these great estab- lishments. Episcopalians, Presbyteri- ans, Baptists or Quakers as such, un- dertook the first expense; and some traces of this origin are still to be dis- cerned. But, in time, new needs, the increase of the student class, the prog- ress of science, enriched them with new departments. Institutes of Technology have been added to them in our own day; the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale, for example. The character of instruction has also changed, and the little college has become a great univer- sity like Harvard, which counts no less than eighty-five full professors, thirty assistant-professors, twenty-seven in- structors, and has a fortune of more than $12,000,000, which is constantly on the increase. But the other and newer universities are perhaps most interesting of all Cornell, Johns Hopkins, Leland Stan- it) In Eastern America. ford, and the University of Chicago. They owe their existence to the gener- osity of some founder, whose name they usually bear; and. subject to the super- vision of a board of trustees, consti- tuted by the terms of the will or deed of gift aforesaid, they control their own income, arrange their own curriculum, and appoint their own professors. Why should I hesitate to own that. in dwelling upon these three points I have in mind our own universities, which are anything you please, but which will never, to my thinking, be worthy of their name, so long as their professors are chosen, nominated, appointed by the government; above all, so long as the examinations they require are gov- ernment examinations; that is to say, so long as their programme is arranged by the state, and the diplomas given are, in some sort, government certifi- cates. Johns Hopkins University, which is the only one I have really seen, is but twenty-one years old, but it attained its majority a good while ago. When the venerable Johns Hopkins died in 1873 (he was a Quaker and a railway king) and bequeathed to Baltimore $7,000,000 to found a hospital and a university, his executors indulged in no long discussions about the manner in which the university ought to be organized. They brought from far California where he was then employed as college president, a former professor of politics and physical geography at YaleMr. Daniel C. Gilman, who had 1on~ enjoyed a high reputation in America as an administrator and or- ganizer, and they put themselves en- tirely in his hands. With the clearness of view and rapid- ity of decision which characterize him, and make him an eminent man even in America where those qualities are not less common than in Europe, hut rather, perhaps, more so, Mr. D. C. Gil- man realized that the occasion was a unique one. He perceived that, in a city Like Baltimore, if only they could have the good sense to waste nothing on the vain pomp of buildings, and the vain dream of imitating Yale or Har yardat a distance!thcv might create a type of university such as America had not yet had; and he resolutely set about his task. They had not the means to organize schools of medicine, law or theology, and they dispensed with them; and at the outset Johns Hopkins University consisted merely of a Philosophical Faculty. This is the name under which in the United States are grouped together what we divide into letters and sciences. On the one hand, Ancient Languages, Hebrew, Sanscrit, Greek and Latin; Modern Languages, comprising English, Ger- man, French, Italian, Spanish; History, Political Economy, and Philosophy; and on the other, Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Geology, Natural History, Biology and Pathologysuch was the programme of the infant university. Laboratories and seminaries were its organs. The diffusion of methods speedily became its principal object. And there was no delay in obtaining results, for, during the twenty-one years of its existence, Johns Hopkins has given not less than a hundred pro- fessors to the other universities of America. It has become a sort of sub- limated Normal School which provides the instructors required for the higher education. And it is a proof, if one were needed, that diplomas, titles and degrees, under the regime of freedom, are worth exactly as much as the com- mittees which confer them, and the reputation which these have acquired. The seal of the state of Maryland, or the official patronage of the government at Washington, would add nothing to the prestige of Johns Hopkins Univer- sity, and were it not unfair to Mr. D. C. Gilman, I should say that its glory is all its own.~~ It is, in truth, what Mr. D. C. Gilman wished it to be; and it is not enough to say that he is the president of this great body, he is in truth its soul. It were impossiblehow shall I say it? not to conceal, and still less to dissimu- late, but to clothe in a more engaging affability of manner, a firmness of rarer quality, nor to put readier resources at the service of clearer and more assured in Eastern America. convictions, and broader views. I should like to be able to quote in full the opening address which he delivered four years ago in Chicago before the Congress of Higher Education. The first function of a university, he said, on that occasion, is the conservation of knowledge; and it would be impossible to state more briefly the fact that the one indispensable condition of scientific progress is respect for tradition. The second function of a university, Mr. Gilman went on, is to enlarge the bounds of human knowledge ; and it is this generous ambition which has, from the first, distinguished the Johns Hopkins University from all other American universities. And the third function, he added, is to disseminate knowledge. The truth is, indeed, that it is not for ourselves, but that we may hand them on to others that we have inherited the treasures of tradition and the fruit of experience, and this is what they are attempting to do here. By publications, by lectures, by articles in reviews and magazines, by letters to the daily press Mr. D. C. Gilman has endeavored to keep this university al- ways in touch with public opinion, and he appears to have met with complete success. Our ideas of knowledge in France are at once more mystical and more practical; more practical, in that many of our young men only see in it a matter for examinations or a chance for 4iplomas, more mystical when we pre- tend to fear lest in diffusing, we vul- garize it. One detail of the organization at Johns Hopkins made an especial im- pression on me; all the more that I believe the idea to have been taken from our Eeole pratique des hautes ~tu4es. It is that there are not here as in our nuiversities (let us give them the name because it flatters them!) four or five professors of, say Latin or English lit- erature, equal in title, equal in rights, and hardly accountable even to their dean; but a single one, the responsible head of his department, who apportions the common task, among his associates, assistants, instructors, and readers, whose number varies according to the needs of the departmcnt and the re- sources of the university. I cannot imagine a better, simpler or more effica- cious method of imparting to any branch of study the unity ot direction which alone can render it fruitful. While with us, at the Sorbonne, for in- stance, one professor teaches French Poetry, another French Eloquence, and a third, for some years now, Dramatic Literaturewhich might lead to their cutting into three parts and dividing between them the author of Le Cid or Tartuffe, and which leads of necessity to a division of energyhere no effort is wasted because there is no repetition of work nor clashing and still less division. The president of the univer- sity chooses his fellow-workers, with the assistance of his Faculty; he indi- cates to these in general terms the pro- posed character of the department which is given into their charge, and it then becomes their affair and they take the sole responsibility of its organiza- tion. All the new American universi- ties have adopted this system, the older ones are beginning to follow it, and since it was borrowed, in the first in- stance, not from Germany but our- selves, why should we not resume possession?1 The principal objection would seem to be that it is a method better adapted to the teaching of PhilologY than to that of Literature. It is easy to see that one man, while making a specialty of Proven~ial or Portuguese, might be no less strong in the other branches of Romanic Philology. There are doubt- less men in America, and even in France, who have an equally thorough acquaintance with all the three great Romanic literaturescall them four, Proveual, French, Italian and Span- It is worthy of notice that at the (olhqe de France and the Ecole Normale SuJ)erieltre the same mistake his not been committed aiid at either of these places a professor who wished to take up French Literature in the l7rh century as a whole, would not be withheld by the considera- tion that pascaibelomiged to one of his colleagues and Racine to another. At tile Sorbonne he would have left for himself Chapelain and Scar- ron, the authcrof La Pucelle and that of Vir- gile travesid. 11 In Eastern America. ish. However, the danger was fore- seen, at Johns Hopkins, and the head of the department of Romance Languages, Mr. A. Marshall Elliott, laid down the principle that there should be three main divisions in his department, a purely linguistic, a purely literary, and a composite group which is intended in nnite the first two. If, so far, there has been a leaning to the side of Philol- ogy. the literary side has not been en- tirely neglected. My own presence here is a good proof of that. And, apropos I remember, a little tardily, perhaps, that I have not yet stated nader what conditions I entered upon this cam- paign. I must, however, state them clearly, were it only to enlighten those of our journalists who have repre- sented me as rushing from city to city at the bidding of a manager, like an actress on tour, which really does me too great honor; and in the second place to make clear the nature of the endow- ments, which complete the organization of a university in America. It was to perpetuate the memory of a son whom they had lost in his boyhood, that Mr. and Mrs. L. Turnbull offered to Johns Hopkins University a consid- erable sum of which the income was to be devoted to an annual series of lec- tures. These lectures were always to be on Poetry. Subject to their ap- proval (f6r they are still alive, and have four living children, a fact well worth mention with regard to these generous donors) the Administrative Council, or rather its president, decides each year upon a lecturer. The latter is, however, entirely free in the choice of a subject. Thus in 1892 Mr. R. C. Jebb, Greek Professor at the Univer- sity of Cambridge, England. delivered eight lectures on Greek Classic Poetry; and Mr. C. E. Norton, a Harvard Pro- fessor six in 1894 on Dante. Had I chosen to deliver six or eight on Yictor lingo, instead of nine on French Poetry in general, nobody would have objected. And next year, or some year, some professor from a German univer- sity will deliver, if it seems good to him, six or eight in German on Goethe, or German Romanticism. The one con- dition, very American an~l yet very simple, is not to uphold materialism, and not to dissociate art and morality. The reader may well believe that both as a pronounced adversary of the doc- trine of art for art, and as a theoretic and ideal, but personal and convinced enemy of Baudelaire and Verlaine, I found no difficulty in accepting this limitation. Shall we not draw a lesson or, at least, an inference from this? For some years now- we have been trying to induce individuals to found similar icc- tureships in our universities, and peo- ple seem to think that it is going to be done for the mere love of glory! This shows at once an exaggerated idea of French variety, and an imperfect knowledge of human nature. A founder must have some motive for founding, and have I not already rer- mitted myself to say that the Univer- sity of Chicago would never have ex- isted, but for the desire to establish a. centre of Baptist propaganda? Prince- ton is, before all things, a Presbyterian university, and the intention is obvious which must have presided at the foun- dation of the Catholic university at Washington. But, with us, such an enterprise would meet with insur- mountable difficulties. It would be op- posed in the nanie of that liberty of conscience which nsists, as we all know, in stifling the voice of those who do not think as we do. And I recall in this connection how much bother there was last year about authorizing the French Academy to receive a legacy. destined by the testator as a prize for an ethical essay of which the conclu- sions, it was expressly stipulated, should be spiritualistic, and, if my memory serves me, catholic. The Conseil dEtat was near crossing itself with horror! We should also recognize that though variety may extort its pourboire, the real sacrifices we make are either to our ideas or to our interests. Offer, then, as they do in this country, or merely allow to the donors and testators whom you invite to share the glory of support- ing your universities, the hope that tho 12 In Eastern America. ideas which they cherished, will be de- fended for their sakes when they are no more, and I have no doubt that yea would see donors and testators multi- ply as fast as they do in America. Who would object to seeing founded at the Sorbonne a lectureship in Apolo- getics which would be justified by dif- fusing a better acquaintance with Pascal, Bossuet, F~nelon, Bcurdaloue, and even Voltaire himself? Who would find it any more absurd than a chair of French Revolutionary History? I shall be neither so imprudent nor so impertinent as to attempt to gauge the exact value of the instruction given in the American universities. I can see the danger that state universities may become mere technical schools like our Institut Agronomique or even our Ecole dA?-ts et Mitier8. They were ap- parently not founded, nor do the sev- eral states support them, that the disin- terested cult of knowledge may be maintained in them, as in a sanctuary, but for the development of useful citizens. I suspect also that, in spite of their two, three, or four thousand students those universities wVich were formerly mere colleges still preserve a vestige of their origin. In Ame~a the average level of secondaryjei!ucation is di tinctly lower than i~h Franceas it is in several other cou~tries. I remember noticing even in Switzerland, and in the French cantons, that many subjects are reserved for the university, which with us are taught in preparatory schools; such as Higher Mathematics, Rhetoric, Philosophy. So, also, if I am to believe the registers which I have at hand, the two first years of study at Yale, or at Harvard even, would appear to correspond to our classes in rh~to- rique suplrieure and phiiosophie. Properly speaking, therefore, only the universities of recent foundation In America are true, and ample institu- tions of higher education. Admission to these is quite difficult, and here, at .Iohns Hopkins, the candidate is obliged to pass an examination of which the subjects are: Mathematics (Arithmetic, Algebra. Solid and Analytical Geom I :~ etry and Trigonometry), Latin, Greek, French, German and English; Greek, Roman, English and United States His- tory, the elements of Physical Geog- raphy, Botany and Chemistry. One may also substitute in the examination Greek for Mathematics or vice versa. I can say no more, and, I repeat, it would be an impertinence on my part to attempt to estimate the solidity of the information displayed by students, even in this preliminary examination. Now should I, when I find it very hard to judge even of that of our own bach- eliers, though I have turned out, God knows how many of them, in my day. Moreover, if I have thought it worth while to discuss at some length this question of the American universities, it is because I have known no better way of expressing my gratitude for their welcome of me, than by helping to make them better known and under- stood, and because from all I see, and hear, and read, I deduce another lesson. May I be permitted to employ a bar- barism in order to make my meaning clear? It seems to me that, thanks to these great universities a whole large section of America is in a fair way to become aristocratized. While in France, what with our modern educa- tion, our restricted degrees, and the passion for specialization which we en- deavor to cultivate in our schools, we are reducing the part played by general instruction; in America they are trying by every means in their power to in- crease and consolidate it. While we are insensibly breaking away from tradition, the Americans who cannot be consoled for not having a history sev- eral centuries old, are trying to form precisely those traditions which we are abandoning. With their chairs in the History of Greek Institutions and Old Testament Criticism, they make, as it were, an intellectual past of all that we affect to regard as useless or superannuated. And if perhaps the programmes of their universities fail to fulfil all the pledges they give, this is not only often the case with our own, l)ut it really makes no difference, since In Eastern America. it is the general tendency which is to be considered. University tendencies in America are going to found within this great democ- racy an aristocracy of intelligence, and, ironical though it sounds, that form of intelligence which we are so mistaken or rather so idiotic (thrice Bouvards and P~cuchets that we are!) as to hold in suspicion as peculiarly hostile to the progress of democracy. III. Baltimore, April 4th. Before enter- ing upon my great week, during which I am to perform on alternate days at Baltimore and at Bryn Mawr, which is about forty miles away, I would like to jot down a few reflec- tions. The difficulty is, that here, as in New York, whenever I see, or fancy that I see, any peculiarity of look or gesture. which strikes me as odd or local, I always find it mixed with an appearance of cosmopolitanism. If I attempt to hit off Professor A whom I at first took for an American, or at least an Englishman, I discover that he is a German; and it is not Germany I have come to see in America. I was impressed by some- thing clear, decided; and energetic, in the countenance language, and ways of Mrs. B , but she, it seems, is of French extraction. And why should I insist on the Americanism of Mr. C when he passes more than half of every year in Europe, either at Paris, or in Switzerland? A gentleman asks me what I think of Baltimore. I tell him. We chat and become confidential; I put questions, and he answers themand behold, he is a Russian! There are Italians too, and Greeks, with beards of Assyrian proportions and deafening voices; and there are Jews among whom I find, to my extreme embarrass- ment, one who is a genuine American, born of American parents. It has been calculated that not more than one in threeat the outsideof the seventeen or eighteen million inhabitants of Chi- cago was born on American soil; and by this I do not mean the soil of Chicago or Illinois. or the west even, but of America in the largest sense. I nuuc go to, now !and talk no more of race- characteristics. Not to mention the fact that all of themor almost all have travelled, been all over the world. They know France; they know Paris, having passed months and even years there. They knoW Rome and Florence. No, it is very evident that here, as in Europe, too much is attributed to race; or rather it is history, civiliza- tion, customs which constitup race. In our modern life, on the one side of the Atlantic, as on the other, if the economists are right in saying that there is a tendency everywhere toward the equalization of fortunes, it is yet more certainly true that there is a ten- dency toward the effacement of all save personal peculiarities. There is no physiological or moral difference be- tween an Englishman or an American. and a Frenchman or a German. There is only the historic difference which comes from the inheritance of a differ- eat civilization~ andthanl-s to the present ease of communication and ex- change, the development of industry. the internationalism of science and the solidarity of im~ terestseven these minor variations ire referable to differ- ences of date, and time. The Amer- icans are younger~~ an we. as instantly appears from the I curiosity to know what we think about them. They also impress me as less compli- cated than we are; I do not say less subtle. They are what they are. more simply, frankly, boldly, than we. One is what one is, in this country, by ones own personal choice and decision, and one realizes that it is so. Mrs. T naturally cold and clever, has made up her mind to be a pretty woman. and she is so. She plays her part of pro- fessional beauty with conscientious care; and it is not at all, as might be supposed in Paris, that of attracting admiration to herself; It is that of dis- playing the splendor of her charms. for the joy of her compatriots and the~ honor of her native town. Therefore if she says to me, in excellent French. that my lectures will take Baltimore back to the best days of the Pr~eienses, 14 In Eastern America. 15 it is not merely because she herself takes no interest in the Chansoa de Roland or the Ligende des Siicles, but because polite irony suits her style of beauty. Another lady of literary pro- clivitiesa writer herself and a poet- ess, and a contributor to young reviews has made books and art the main ob- jects of her life, and has done it quite consciously and deliberately, and no- body thinks it strange. It was her taste, and she had a perfect right to consult it. As a natural consequence, women, like men, have their clubs where they meet to lunch, and discuss the subjects which interest themclothes, house- keeping, cookeryand also to exchange ideas upon loftier matters, as, for ex- ample, if they chance to be of a philo- sophical turn: The book of Job consid- ered as an epitome of human misery. Miss K is justly proud of having reminded the ladies of Baltimore of the importance of a good cuisinea fact which they were, apparently, in danger of forgettingand also of having vindi- cated their right to institute a thorough inspection of school buildings, the first result of which has been that class- rooms are now swept more than three times a year! She is of course a fem- inist, and it would not surprise me to learn that she dreams of holding polit- ical office. Miss G is also, in her way, an advocate of womans rights, and she has rendered that way a most effective one, by the use which she has made of her great fortune. It is through the generosity of this lady that the Johns Hopkins University has been enabled thoroughly to organize its med- ical department, her only stipulation being that women should be allowed to take their degrees there. She has also given largely to the great female col- lege at Bryn Mawrwhere I am to speak on the day after to-morrow; and she has founded, at Baltimore, a pre- paratory school for Bryn Mawr. More- over, she has a thousand other affairs on handbig affairs, tooand she man- ages them all with a lucidity of mind, a tenacity of will, and a strength of character truly admirable. It all seems quite natural here. A woman belongs to herself, and no one thinks of requir- ing, as we do, that she should be the tie that binds four or five other people together. She is not compelled by prejudice either to dissimulate her apti- tudes, or to disguise her tastes. She has the right to be herself, and, as we have seen, she uses it. There is doubtless a certain connec- tion between the freedom to be oneself, and a sort of personal independence of local and climatic conditions, as well as of those habits which become so many bonds to us in Europe; a sort of moral and physical excursiveness, as one may say. Omnia mecum porto, said a sage of antiquity, and the American resembles that sage. Baltimore, is, as I have said before, a residential city, whose in- habitants are already less easily mo- bilized, more anchored and attached, than those of New York. People do not camp; they really live here; and the foundations of their dwellings appear to be laid deeper in the soil. Yet one is quite convinced that the Baltimorean would removeshall I say his home? his domicile, at all events, and the rou- tine of his life, to Chicago or St. Louis, with more ease than one of us would undertake a journey from Paris to St. Petersburg. And the reason is not a craving for change, an impatience of monotony, the nervousness and unrest which make it impossible for a man to settle, so much as the belief an Amer- ican cherishes that he will always be himself, in one place as well as another. The personality of a true American is a very private thing. Not only is he at home everywhere, but he is everywhere at home with himself. The change of place which helps us to forget our- selves, only intensifies his feeling of identity. It is merely one more proof of his youthfulness and strength. He will grow old in his turn; while if I were to travel farther west, I am quite sure that every revolution of the wheels would be taking me farther from an older, and nearer to a yet newer world. Meanwhile even here, where one per- ceives a trace of history, it is what dis-- tinguishes the Americans from our- In Eastern America. selves. They are younger; and it is the sion of ability which he can produce. sum and substance of what many ob- The result is that every man feels him- servers dislike in them. self to be the sole architect of his own I would not abuse a metaphor, and fortunes and master of his own fate, I am on my guard against referring all and if he sustains a reverse, he usually my impressions to this juvenility of the American people. That would be only too easy, and, as is usual with easy methods, more obvious than true. An Irishman or a German brings to Amer- ica a temperament which is the out- come of a long heredity. But the very circumstances amid which they find themselves are such as to compel a prompt adaptation to the environment; and by a somewhat brutal law of nat- ural selection, those who are not elim- inated are speedily Americanized. This explains why they are at once very proud, and not at all vain. They are not only what they are, but they are nothing except what they are. A (ierman priest whom I did not know stopped me in the street the other day to bewail the condition of American workingmen, and to say emphatically that liberty had not solved the social question in America, any more than in Europe. I was not in the least disposed to dispute the statement, but he forgot two things: first that competition is here, so to speak, the rule of the game, the agreement which one signs when lie embarks for AmericaI might al- most say at birth; and also that there are alleviations to the bitterness of com- petition here, which are not found else- where. The distinctions between man and man in America are very definite and real, but they do not depend, or they depend less than in Europe, upon arbitrary caprice. There are many colonial dames but there is no old aristocracy. There are enormous for- tunes, but no ruling class. There are professors, doctors, lawyers, but there are no liberal professions. A physician is a man who takes care of others when they are ill, just as an upholsterer is a man who furnishes their houses. A rich man is a rich man, who can do many things, as a rich man can every- where, but who can do no more than his money can do. A learned man is rated exactly according to the impres blames no one but himself. Yet these observations have the disadvantage of being toogeneral; theelementof truth in them fluctuates from day to day, and in a month, or a fortni~ht, I may be ready to disavow them. Yet though I record others which may seem to contradict them, I have a notion they will all come back to this: that America being youngerher civilization, her soil, her very climate newerman breathes and moves more freely, lives, in short, more independently here than elsewhere. It is now a privilege of adolescence, and the future only can determine whether it will develop into a race character- istic; and how much of gain or loss will have resulted to ancient humanity from the American experiment. From Baltimore to Bryn Mawr, April 6th. When that very amiable and ener- getic personin America the two are not incompatibleMiss Carey Thomas, the principal of the Womans College at Bryn Mawr, came to request that I would deliver a few lectures there, my first (reprehensible) impulse was to re- fuse, and my second not to accept. I have an invincible repugnance to deliv- ering the same lecture twice, and I was doubtless a little anxious as to what I could find to say, on the spur of the moment, to so many tall girls. I was much pressed for time, moreover, and hampered by the lack of books. But in the course of my conversation with Miss Thomas it appeared that many of her pupils were keenly interested in l)iology. It struck me at once that here was an opening for an evolutionary propaganda, and I made my plans ac- cordingly. If there is any one highly character- istic feature in French literary history, if there is, so to speak, a Fren,ch species, impossible to confound with any other, and if this species made its appearance at one precise moment of history, ac- complished its historic evolution, and then, to continue the figure, died and 16 In Eastern America. bequeathed to us masterpieces which are recognized all over the world as monuments of French geniusthere would be the subject for me to treat. But of course there is such a species, and it is French tragedy. I will there- fore speak at Bryn Mawr on The Evo- lution of French Tragedy. I need not say that it will be impos- sible, in three conferences, to exhaust or even fully to develop, the possibili- ties of such a subject. But they may be indicated, if I can but illustrate the law of that evolution: and I think I can, for it is, in reality, very simple. They study Greek at Bryn Mawr there are actually two professorships I may therefore permit myself to quote the remarks of Aristotle on Greek trag- edy: After many attempts in different directions, tragedy discovered its own true nature, and its form became fixed. I may add that Greek tragedy died of the discoveryand the history of French tragedy is almost identical. Its true nature was discovered in the work of Corneille, in the Old, and in Polyeucte, and this is what I shall undertake to show, in my first lesson. Before Corneille, tragedy had been ro- mantic and lyric, that is to say, the poet represented less the events of legend or history, than the emotional effect produced upon himself by those events; and when I say romantic, I mean that the events did not follow any neces- sary sequence. In other words: it is in the masterpieces of Corneille that trag- edy is first differentiated as a species distinguished from others which more or less resemble it, while all which does not tend to the realization of its own peculiar object is excluded from its definition. It became dramatic by conforming to the great law of the stage, which is to exhibit the conflict of different wills with one another or with circumstances; it became tragic, by taking the human heart as the theatre of this conflict, and it became poetic by placing before human will in conflict the alternative of victory or death. In the Old, Horace, Poly- eucte and Dodogue we have strik- ing and beautiful examples of this. It will not be difficult to point out the same characteristics in Andromaque, Britannicus, and Iphig~nie. But since the type is not perfectly differen- tiated, even in the great works of Corneille, and since Corneille himself went astray in his latest productions, confounding the proper characteristics of tragedy with those or historic melo- drama, I shall insist upon what I have often called the naturalism of Racine s tragedy, and shall point out the fact that herein is contained, not merely the reason of his profundity, but the secret of his power, and the certainty that his fame will be everlasting. The eternal Hermione will evermore be betrayed by the eternal Pyrrhus, whom she will not cease to love, but whom she will kill rather than let him seek the embraces of another woman. The eternal Iphig~nie will be sacrificed by her father, the eternal Agamemnon, to his own fatal greed of fortune, honors, and renown. But since this is the absolute perfection of tragedy, its very triumph may be said to be a sign of its ap- proaching decadence. It will die of the very exaggeration of its own distinctive principle, because generalization has been carried too far, until beauty itself is conceived as that pure water, which should never have any particular flavor. The remark is Winckelmann5, made, I think, apropos of the Apollo Belvedere, and he will permit me to draw an instructive parallel between the fate of tragic poetry and that of Greek sculpture and of Italian paint- ing. By a singular coincidence, moreover, the disorganization of our tragedy was completed by the fact that the very element which had been excluded, in order to make it what it is, was re-ad- mitted by force of circumstances. This will be the subject of my third lesson, and since I cannot imagine that much is known at Bryn Mawr about the elder Cr~billon, nor any reason why there should be, nor why I should introduce him there, I shall confine myself to Voltaire; his cEdipe, his Zaire, and his American Aizire. Nothing can be more noble, or more colorless, than LIVING AGE. VOL. ~tVII. 862 17 In Eastern America. these dramas. They are full of decla- mation Grand Dieu, jai cornbattre soixante ans pour ta gloire and consequently of false eloquence and sliam lyrisni. It is luck and chance that play the principal parts in these pieces, that is to say the arbitrary and the romantic. It so happens that Orosmane admires Zaire above all other women, unam ex multis. It so happens that the father of Zaire has been for years the captive of Orosmane. It so happens that his ransom arrives at the moment when Orosmane is about to wed Zaire. It so happens that the lib- erator is the son of the captive and the brother of Zaire, and finally it so hap- pens that Orosmane mistakes the brother for a lover, and kills Zaire. This is what is called romance: and as Corneille himself says: The lapse of tragedy into romance is the touch-stone which marks the difference between inevitable actions, and merely probable ones. There is not a single inevitable action in all Voltaires tragedy; one might go so far as to say that there is not a probable one. Thus tragedy re- turns to its source; a kind or a species which endured but for a time; that is to say so long as the conditions of en- vironment were favorable. And the final proof of my theory is, that tragedy does not actually die, but is merely transformed. What we have now is excessively like what we had before tragedy proper came into existence, while it was only tragi-comedy; and as a just observation is always broader than the facts which it attempts to explain, this one may help us to under- stand not merely what there is in com- mon between the drama of Hugo and the tragedy of Voltaire; but also what there is, in common, between the ro- mantic drama and the tragi-comedy of the time of Louis XIII.: that of Mairet and Rotrou. Bryn Mawr, April 8th. It would be impossible to imagine a college better situated than that of Bryn Mawr, in the open country, on the slope of a green hillof several hills in factand com manding a most attractire landscape. The immense buildings give me a stronger impression of solidity than I have yet received. It is a college for advanced study; a bona fide university for women. There are courses in Latin,. Greek, Sanscrit, Hebrew, Comparative Physiology, the Higher Mathematics and Biology. The number of students this year is two hundred and eighty- fiveof whom not more than a hun- dred, I am told, expect to be teachers. That means that in this one establish- ment there are more than two hundred: young misses who love learning for its own sake, and while I am no fem- mist, I certainly have no objection.. Learn your Latin, young ladies, and in spite of one Moli~re, learn your Greek V Do it for your own sakes, and also for the sake of the boys in Europe, who are unlearning these things as fast as they can. But I intend to enlarge upon this point when I am more at leisure. For the moment, I have duties to dis- charge. I am the hero of a reception, in the American style. This consists~ in having presented to one as I shall this evening, two or three hundred per- sons, to whose kind compliments one replies as best one can, while shaking them all energetically by the hand. I have been practising this kind of thing for a fortnight now, and it must be, I think, not merely that I acquit myself pretty well, but that I rather like it; since, on one occasion, while the proces- sion was passing, a gentleman leaned forward and whispered in my ear: They do this no worse than they do other things, eh? He was right; and I thank him for having so wittily ex- pressed my very idea. They do it no worse. The perusal of Greek and even of Hebrew texts seems n& t to have spoiled their eyes, which lack none of the mocking light which one likes to see sparkle in the eyes of a young girl. Their cheeks are not pale; their figures are shapely. I miss nothing of that light gaiety which was best0wed upon women, as Bernardin de Saint-Pierre observes, to dissipate the sadness of men. I must remember this next week 18 Moscow. in Cambridge, where I am to speak of Moli~re. Baltimore, April 10th. I am just about to leave Baltimore, and I must confess to feeling a little melancholy. Eigh- teen days is a short time; but public speaking creates so many tiesand that so quicklybetween a lecturer and his audience, that I feel as if I were quit- ting a familiar and favorite city; and I said as much yesterday at the close of my last conference: I shall come back soon. I have promised Cardinal Gib- bons to attend High Mass in the Cathe- dral on Easter Sunday, but it will be but a flying visit, and this is my real farewell. To-morrow I shall wake up in Boston. FERDINAND BRUNETIEBE. Translated for THE LIVING AGE. MOSCOW. From Cosmopolis. I. The road to Moscow, if you enter Russia at the Polish frontier, lies for nearly a thousand miles through the midst of a great desert, which has at once the vast, level extent and the deli- cately changing color of the sea; with a sense of loneliness almost as absolute as that of the sea, to the voyager in a ship. Resembling, at moments, the Roman Campagna, these steppes have their own very personal kind of beauty, in which the monotony of their appar- ent endlessness is after all only that monotony which is an element of all fine style, in nature as well as in art. Looking out of the windows of the train, as it goes slowly on, day and night, you see on both sides an inter- minable plain of short grass, unbroken by hedges; at intervals a forest, a plan- tation, or a few pines or birches; here and there a little wooden hut in the midst of a pine wood, like the cabin of some Thoreau; here and there a thatched village, with sunflowers be- fore its doors, or a small town, with blue and gold domes; and between 19 house and house utter loneliness, not a human being, not an animal, not a breath of smoke, visible. Everywhere the landscape makes pictures, but not in the manner of most landscapes; deli- cate pictures, full of rest, and still trees, and with perhaps a single human figure, faintly indicated, such as Corot painted; with something of his favorite coloring, something also of his charm of composition, for once absolutely natural in nature. Where, at times, a cornfield would rise up, brown and gold, out of the green plain, a few men and women reaping, it was with a noble gesture, reminding one of atti- tude as it is refined and preserved for us in pictures, that a woman, perhaps7 would pause, the sickle curved for a moment above her head. Finally monotonous, sensitive, full of subdued color, with all the charm of natural refinement in what is for the most part uncultivated, unspoilt, not yet turned to useful ends by the impatient absorp- tion of civilization, this sea of land, flowing gradually up to the vague out- skirts of Moscow, prepared me, in my slow journey through it, for a not too sudden entrance upon the bewilder.~ ments of the city. Of Moscow itself not much was vis- ible from the train, and I went, like all the world, to that traditional eminence, Vorobievy Gory, the Sparrow Hills, where the terrace of a restaurant marks the place from which Napoleon and his army came suddenly within sight of Moscow. Seen at sunset, across deep woods and wide green fields, through which the Moskva curved gently, as if embracing it, the city seemed to lie stretched at full length. A trail of black smoke from a factory, and a column of brownish smoke going up from a fire, darkened a space of clear sky above the glitter- ing of innumerable white spires and turrets, which shone with a brightness far beyond that of the golden and many-colored domes which glowed be- tween them. The twisted lines of the Kremlin stood out sharply above their battlements, the white outer wall seem- ing to rise out of the river; beyond, 20 .Moscow. pinnacled roofs wandered indefinitely, their colors, and the colors of many walls, repeating the exact greens of the fields which lay about them, as if a fierce sun had flashed up an actual re- flection upon them. Gradually tne light faded out, until the city looked like a long, dim, thin line, ridging the plain. Coming back in the dark, ou the little steamer, to drift over those bright, visibly rippling waters, be- tween the lights and deep wooded shadows of ~he banks, was at one moment almost like being on the Vene- ~tian lagoons, at another, like being on ~tn Irish lake. Just before landing, as We came into the midst of the city, I saw the modern, not very interesting church of the Saviour for once effect- ive, rising hugely into the sky, as if carved solidly out of grey cloud. II. Charming, for all its strangeness, when seen at night, or from a distance, Moscow is without charm, in spite of its strangeness, when seen clearly and by day. Built, like Rome, on seven hills, it radiates outwards, circle be- yond circle, from the central height of the Kremlin; the old, or Chinese town, heaped within its white wall, cut off sharply from the white town of shops and public buildings and large houses, which dwindles into the first ring of dusty boulevards; and from this the earthen town stretches to the outer ring of boulevards; and then the suburbs begin, vague, interminable, and seeming, long before they have reached the ramparts which close in the thirty-six miles of the citys circum- ference, to have passed into the open country. Like everything in Russia, it is by its size that it first impresses you. Vast, vaguely defined, so casual in its division of time, of day and night, of the hours in the day, full of heavy leisure, finoccupied space, this city, next to the largest city in Europe, has much of the aspect of some extraor- dinary village, which has sprung up, and widened gradually, about a cita- del. Its seven hills have done some- thing to leave more than usual of the open air about it, in wide, win4fess spaces, brooded over by the wings of innumerable pigeons. Everywhert are vast, unpaved squares, surrounded b~ a rope of twisted wire, stretched from post to post, or by temporary wooden railings, propped up at vague intervals. Cross the river by the bridge which lies between the Kremlin and the church of the Saviour, and you will see, between weir and weir, ducks floating on the water, a ferry-boat waiting to take people over, red figures paddling by the banks, or wading across with tucked up trousers or petticoats; clothes being beaten on a row of planks which stretch from the dusty shore to the queer little sailing boats moored in mid-stream. Every- where you will find village scenes, the trees and water and width, the fields even, of the real country. And the life of the people, the arrangement of the houses, have the characteristics of village life; these houses, often only one story high, rarely higher than two stories, built often of wood, like log- huts, and with a wooden palisade in front of their strip of garden, or wide, dusty court, in which one hears the flutter of fowls and the gabble of white turkeys. Outside, on the irregular pavement, village carts jolt by, an un- ending procession, with a sound like the sound of an army marching; the cabs, laboring slowly at full speed, are Vke the primitive vehicles of old-fash- ioned folk in the country. The markets. which on so many days of the weei~ (over with stalls, and stacked carts, and heaped baskets, the vacant squares and open spaces of boulevarus, are like village markets; and the peo- ple themselves, with their red shirts and top-boots, have the air of people who till the soil. But of the repose, the freshness, which we associate with life in villages, there is nothing. Deafening in sum- mer, with its streets and squares paved irregularly with cobbles, and surging up and down in waves and hollows, over which the wheels go rocking and clattering all day long; silent in winter. w-hea the sledges glide over the white Moscow. and even snow; there there is always the oppression of noise or of silence, some not quite natural suspense of nature. At Moscow everything is in extremes; the weather halves the year between the two burdens of sun and ice, and the whole aspect of the city is one of prep- aration for those extremes. The iron- bound pavements slope down gradually to the street, in order to assist the toiler through snow in passing from one level to another; gutters run across the pavement at every water-pipe to make natural channels for the water; the costume, even in summer, of the likhatchi drivers is an immense padded overcoat, falling like a petticoat to the feet, and swathing the body as if it enclosed a Falstaff; the top-boots, worn even in summer by three-fourths of the population, suggest the heavy walking of the winter. And in nothing are these extremes more emphatic than in the colors which clash against each other everywhere in the streets, colors which absorb and fatigue the eye, leaving it without a cool shadow to rest upon. Nothing in Moscow is quite like any- thing one has seen anywhere else; and no two houses, all of which are so un- like the houses in any other country, are quite like one another. Their roofs are almost invariably painted green, and the water-pipes make a sort of green edging round the house-front. But the colors of the houses are end- less: green, pink, blue, brown, red, chocolate, lilac, black even, rarely two of the same color side by side, and rarely two of so much as the same general shape. Every shop has its walls painted over with rude pictures of the goods to be found inside; the draper has his rows of clothed duni- mies, the hatter his pyramid of hats, the greengrocer his vegetables, the wine-seller his many-colored bottles. Fruit-stalls meet one everywhere, and from the flower-like bouquet of fruits under their cool awnings there is a con- stant, shifting glow, the yellows and reds of apples, the purple of plums, the green and yellow of melons, and the crisp, black-spotted pink of melons 21 sliced. And in these colored streets, which in summer flame with the dry heat of a furnace, walk a multitude of colored figures, brighter than the peas- ants of a comic opera; and the colors of their shirts and petticoats and hand- kerchiefs and bodices flame against the sunlight. III. Set in such a frame, itself at all points so strange in shape and color, the Kremlin and the churches, with their glittering domes, on which the symbolical Russian cross has made a footstool of the crescent, are but the last in a series of shocks with which this inexhaustible city greets one. All Moscow is distorted by eccentricity; the hand of a madman is visibly upon it. Not only the unfortunate architect, but, I doubt not, the incalculable brain of Ivan the Terrible, gave its insane discordancy to the church of Yassily Blajenny; and that church, with its vegetable nightmare, its frantic false- ness, its rapt disequilibrium, as of a dancing dervish whirled at last into fixity, is but the extreme symbol of all that attempts to be elaborate or ornate in Moscow. The Kremlin is like the evocation of an Arabian sorcerer, called up out of the mists and snows of the North; and the bells hung in these pagan, pagoda-like belfries seem to swing there in a last paradox, as if to drive away the very demons that have fixed them in mid-air. The church of Yassily Blajenny, in which few styles of architecture are not seen in some calculated or unconscious parody, Is like the work of a child playing with colored squares and cubes and tri- angles; its originality is that of a cari- cature; nowhere does it approach beauty, except in the corner porches to the doors, and in a certain conven- tional pattern, Turkish in design, which runs round a portion of the base. False windows are set to break the order of any surface left plain; not a line is allowed to flow, but every line must be tortured, broken as if on the wheel. The domes, of copper and painted lead and three-cornered tiles, 22 Moscow. are made to suggest the distortion of natural, growing things, pineapples, pears, lemons, artichokes; they bristle with knobs, they bulge into excres- cences; twisting upwards into a knot, for the most part in coils of alternate colors. The whole structure is a series of additions, and every addition is a fresh start, carried out without rela- tion to any other portion; with an ac- tual care, indeed, that there may be no repetition, no balance, of window or gable or dome or platform or turret. Within, there is a like confusion of little chapels, eleven in number, their walls cut into brief lengths, set at odd angles, painted in bright gold, and covered with the pictures of saints; a narrow passage, like the secret passage in a Gothic castle, leads from chapel to chapel, running round the outer edge of the building; so narrow that you can only just walk in it, so low that the roof is almost upon your head; and these walls are painted in heavy lines and patterns of green and red, with squares and knobs roughen- ing the surface. The chapels, you would think, were themselves low, till, looking up, you see a shaft rising to a great height, from which a large painted face, seeming to lean over from the midst of the dome, looks down at you with outspread hands. Russian architecture, the architec- ture which has set up for the worship of God these monstrous shrines, which might seem to have been built for Vishnu and Krishna, has its origin, certainly, in the East; but it has pre- served only the eccentricity of the East, without its symmetry, its obe- dience to its own laws. The art of the East is like Eastern music, obeying laws to which our eyes and our ears have no response. But it has its origin in real nature closely observed and deliberately conventionalized; while Russian architecture, which seems to proceed from an imaginary assumption to an impossible conclusion, has no standard of beauty to which its ca- prices of line can appeal, but presents itself rather as a wildly inhuman gro- tesque. without root in nature or limi tation in art. All the violence of the yellow, Mongolian East is in these temples, which break out into bulbs, and flower into gigantic fruits and vegetables of copper and tiles and carved stone; which are full of crawl- ing and wriggling lines, of a kind of cruelty in form; in which the gold of the sun, the green of the earths grass, and a blue which is to the blue of the sky what hell is to heaven, mock and deform the visible world in a kind of infernal parody. When, even, these lines run into finer shapes, and these colors melt into more delicate har- monies, they are still too full of mere curiosity, too odd, to be really beauti- ful. Ornament is heaped up with the profusion of the barbarian, to whom wealth means display; color must decorate color in one unending series, as sauce sharpens sauce in Russian cookery; line must envelop line until arabesque has become entanglement; height and breadth must alike extend themselves, for their own sake, and not for the emphasis which they may givc~, the elaboration they may permit, to a great central idea. Structure is but a series of accretions, whose aim is to be unexpected. Yet, abandoning oneself to their fan- tasy, what pictures these domed and turreted walls, these zigzags of sharp color, make against the sky, glowing with heat, dashing off the rays of the sun as from many shields and helmets, coming up like strange growths from among the trees, pointing into the sky with lifted hands and outspread fingers! There are certain old Bur- mese-looking towers on the walls of the Kremlin where the green of the spires is made by an incrustation of small green tiles, shaped like leaves, and with slightly crinkled edges: one might fancy almost an actual coating of leaves. The crenellated outer walls of the Kremlin, with their winglike and open battlements, just room enough to fall through in the space be- tween wing and wing, might hold all the Arabian Knights in their midst; and their many gates, which might have been built by Crusaders who had Moscow. come from among the Saracens, seem to await strange pilgrims, who have crossed the green desert in cavalcades, with their horses and mules laden with treasures. Moscow, indeed, seems to have been consciously arranged for at- mospheric effects by some cunning artist in stage scenery. Against cer- tain dull skies, seen even in summer, the gaudy blue of domes softens to a real fineness of tint; and how effect- ively that blue must be set off by the leaden skies of winter, thick with snow! From the Krasnaia Square at night the little dingy row of trees set- tles like hanging foliage upon the red wall of the Kremlin, draping its un- shaded brightness with a veil of deli- cate green. Green roofs and walls, against the soft green sky which some- times hangs over Moscow after sunset, harmonize daintily; and on certain late afternoons I have admired the new, lowered color of white towers, turret above turret, their angles outlined with green, which in that light looks like green moss on an old ruin, or upon actual crumbling rock. Iv. The worship of painted images, on which so much emphasis is laid by the Russian Church, has led, in the adorn- inent of their churches, to a heighten- ing of that natural Russian tendency to add detail to detail, without assim lation, and without spacing. The older churches are filled with paintings of saints, and Scriptural and legendary scenes, set side by side with no more than a thin gold frame between them; all on gold backgrounds, all in missal painters colors; most in the same tra- ditional enlargement of life-size, and with the same vague sense of reality. They have nothing of the fine, primi- tive angularity of Byzantine work, which they seem to imitate; they are at once cold and incorrect; without either scattering or convergence of color, ntterly without design; and they fill every inch of wall, and every corner and circle of the ceiling, climbing up into the domes out of the cellar-like narrowness of small chapels. About 23 this childish plastering of pictures upon the walls, a multitude of gilded pillars, shrines, tombs, relics, banners, slabs, balustrades, and the glittering doors of the iconostase itself, builds up a house of gold, which weighs upon one like a burden. The priests, with their long hair and Christ-like presence, wearing heavy vestments (in which one sees the hieratic significance of the blue of domes), blue and red velvet and gold-embroidered stuff, pass through the concealing door from the presence of the people to the presence of God, the door which, at the most sacred mo- ment, shuts them in upon that pres- ence; and a choir of sad, deep Russian voices, the voices of young men, chants antiphonally and in chorus, weaving, in a sort of instrumental piece, in which the voices are the instruments, a heavy veil of music, which trembles like a curtain before the shrine. And it is in another house of gold, heaped with all the colored things of the world, that the Russian has set his earthly rulers. The Palace of the Kremlin is the most sumptuous, the most spacious, of royal palaces; and its treasury is one vast, visible symbol of all that is barbaric and conquering in the power of Russia. Thrones and do- minions, principalities and powers, all the nations of the earth are seen bring- ing tribute, and their tribute is heaped there like the spoils of a victorious army. Here are crowns, globes, seep- tres, constellated with jewels, which flash fire from one to another as the light outlines their fantastic and elab- orate patterns: the crown of Siberia, the crown of Kazan, the crown of As- trakhan. Here is the carved ivory throne of the last emperor of Constan- tinople; the throne of Boris Godounov, the gift of a Shah of Iersia, in which every inch of framework is covered with slabs of solid gold, and the gold is thickly inlaid with turquoises and garnets, pearls and rubies; the throne of Ivan the Terrible, the gift of another Shah of Persia, incrusted with nine thousand precious stones, b.ordered with turquoises, framed on front and sides with worked silver, on which dc 24 Moscow. phants walk and hares run, in the midst of silver meadows and forests. wrought so delicately that they seem to be embroidered. It is the East which one sees heaped here, in this orgy of jewels and gold, heaped like toys of which children do not know the value. It is the East in tribute, be- coming the master of those who have come near enough to take its treasures; and one sees Russia taking them bar- barously, greedy of colored baubles, in- satiable, gorging itself with pomp and brilliance, which the wiser Persians had known how to subordinate, com- posing them into harmonies of their own. And, in the very heart of this royal palace, after you have passed through its vast azure and gold spaces, in which the pomp of to-day can be so effective, you find also that cruelty, in- sanity, distortion, which flaunt them- selves in the church of Yassily Bla- jenny. In the Terem, the seventeenth century belvedere, with its five stories built one out of another, the roofs are low, the ceilings vaulted and squared into odd angles; walls and ceilings ar~ painted in red, blue, green, and gold, and a network of broad lines, twisted into all kinds of arabesques, coils about doors and walls and corners, and swarms across the ceilings; not an incn of surface is left plain, color seems to be embroidered upon color, all is orna- ment, and bright ornament, like the web of an Eastern carpet; the barred windows are of painted glass, and the sunlight sets their colors moving on the floor, like living patterns. Little low room opens out of little low room, the red out of the blue, and the green out of the red; here, under an obscure ceil- ing of painted saints, the patriarchs have assembled; here, generations of emperors have slept. To be in one of these hot and many-colored rooms is like being shut into the heart of a great tulip. Only fantastic and barbarous thoughts could reign here; life lived here could but be unreal, as if all the cobwebs of ones brain had external- ized themselves, arching overhead and draping the four walls with a tissue of such stuff as dreams are made of. And it could easily seem as if unhuman faces grinned from among the iron trellis of doors, as if ropes and chains twisted themselves about doorways and ceil- ings, as if the floor crawled with strange scales, and the windows broke into living flan~ies, and every wail burned inwards. The brain, driven in upon itself from such sombre bewilder- ments imprisoning it, could but find Yt- self at home in some kind of tyrannical folly, perhaps in actual madness. V. To live in Moscow is to undergo the most interesting, the most absorbing fatigue, without escape from the cease- less energy of color, the ceaseless ap- peal of novelty. Mere existence there is a constant strain on the attention, in which shock after shock bewilders the eyes, hurrying the mind from point to point of restless wonder, of unsatisfy- ing admiration. To the dweller in Western cities, where an old, slow civ- ilization has had time to cover many stones with moss, bringing leisure into mens minds, and the quiet of ancient things about their houses, Moscow has all the barbarism of a civilization which is but two centuries old. It is a barbarism, certainly, that has seized many of the delightful things which other nations have left for its fresh in- stinct to lay a new value upon. The Russians have all the luxuries of civil- ized barbarians; their cookery and their baths are the most elaborate in the world. The saying that Russia is rotten before it is ripe has but little significance at Moscow, though its meaning may perhaps be divined at St. Petersburg, where we find a great, uninteresting, modern city, hastening to compete on their own terms with capitals that have grown slowly, and losing, certainly, all that gives its char- acter to Moscow. More significant, though not meaning precisely what it is generally taken to mean, is that other saying: Scratch the Russian, and you find the Tartar. It is in no savage or violent sense that the Russian is still a Moscow. civilized barbarian, but in a sense cer- tainly more profound. Walking in the streets of Moscow, your first impression is of something extraordinarily primitive. The carts which pass you are like the earliest carts of which you have seen pictures; by the side of quite modern trains run omnibuses, shaped like the coaches in the museum at St. Petersburg; the yokes of the horses are made of an im- mense hoop of painted wood, unvary- ing in shape, varying only in color. A man passes silently with a wire-cov- ered basket on his head, in which he offers live fowls for sale; a workman passes, carrying a wooden spade, and you will notice that his legs are swathed in rags, his feet covered with sandals of osier. Look through the window of a shop, a bank, and you will see that the reckoning is being done with Chinese counters. The very ani- mals, the dogs and cats, are different from ours. The dogs, certainly, are nearer to their wild cousin the wolf, and gambol with a sort of fierce awk- wardness; while the vast cats walk and lie like tigers. And the peasants or laborers whom you see in the streets, in their red and purple and mauve shirts, with their shaggy beards and tawny hair, cut neither short nor long, in a straight line all round, parted in the middle, and standing out wildly on either side; these large-limbed people. with their boyish, frank, good-humored, but untamed faces, have the faces ot~ beings for whom civilization does not exist. The Russian peasant is still the Scythian, his ancestor. In the Kertch room of the Hermitage at St. Peters- burg, in that admirable collection of Greek remains dating from the fourth and fifth centuries before Christ, there is a beautiful silver vase, with griffins, geese, reeds, and conventional ara- besque on its sides; near it are gold ornaments, thin plaques of gold, worn on dresses, and a smaller gilt vase. On these you see the Scythians, riding on horseback, sword in hand; standing back to back with drawn how, embrac- ing over a drinking-horn, pulling out a tooth and bandaging the foot of a coin- 25 panion; with, on the Nicopol1~ vase, a whole series of the episodes of horse- taming. These Scythian faces are pre- cisely the faces that you will see in the Russian peasant of to-day, grave, seri- ous, kindly, with a sort of homely dig- nity; and, precisely as in the Russian peasant of to-day, you will see, in these lively representations of his ancestor, two thousand years ago, the long shirt, girt at the waist and falling half-way to the knees, loose trousers, often tucked into a kind of top-boots; the thick beard, the long hair combed over the forehead. To see the Muscovite, that is to say, the typical Russian, as he really is, ob- serve him on Sunday, and observe him from morning to evening. Sunday in Moscow is a sort of village feast. The shops are shut, but the street markets (beside which the Good Friday fair at the Rialto would seem but pale) are ablaze with buyers and sellers, all in their best clothes; the women looking like big babies in their high-waisted dresses, bright in color, shapeless In form. AU the morning the bells sound overhead, in their loud, muffled buzz, as of a cloud of bronze insects hovering over the city; and the churches are full of devout worshippers, who kiss the sacred ikons, cross themselves in the elaborate manner of the Russian ritual, kneel, and bow till their foreheads touch the ground. As the day goes on an irresponsible animation seems to be in the air; the traktirs are full of tea- drinkers, and by evening vodka has taken the place of tea. The great me-~ chanical organs in the traktirs roll out their set of tunes, voices are heard, joining in the music; and outside the streets are full of gay noise, a song, a quarrel, the slipping of heavy boots over the uncertain pavement; a sort of drunkenness without brutality, a drunk- enness which is in the natural course of things, at the natural end of the feast. The Russian has two devotions: his religion, which is at once an abasement before God and the czar, those two omnipotences being more or less iden- tical to him; and his eating and drink- 26 Moscow. ing, to which the actual rigors of his climate lend so much importance, and about which he has elaborated a sort of ritual. Between these two devotions ~-ery much of his time is taken up. He cannot walk for five minutes along any frequented street without coming upon .a church, an ikon, some holy image, a street chapel, an archway under which :a sacred lamp burns; and before each of these he must take off his hat, pause, cross himself three times, and make at least two genuflexions. His eating and drinking make scarcely less demands upon him. Meals have no definitely fixed hours; tea (the too seductive tcha~ ~8 lirnon, tea with lemon) is always wait- ing. And it is with the solemnity of an act of religion that he is served by the sacristan-like doorkeeper in black and the hieratic waiters in whIte; silent, at- tentive ministrants, who incline before him as they hand him his soup or his wine, or collect the coppers which he has left for them on the plate. Religion, in the unspoilt Russian, the Russian of Moscow or the villages, is not merely an attendance upon strict forms, but a profound sentiment, which in him is the sentiment of duty. it is the simplicity, the completeness, with which he obeys the idea of duty, that has caused officialism and Nihilism, with all the cruelties and disasters and ignorant heroisms which are properly the disease of his over-scrupulous con- science. You see it in his grave, pa- tient, sensitive face, in which the soul seems always to look out on some pathetic inquiry. In the faces of rail- way porters and of barefooted peasants who have thronged the railway stations in remote quarters of Russia, I have seen the making of martyrs and fanat- ics. And they have the gentleness of those who suffer, whom nature has made for suffering; with a strength which for the most part is without bru- tality. Endurance and indifference, apathy and resignation, are perhaps the natural qualities called out in the Rus- sian by his struggle with the elements; heat is his enemy in summer, cold his enemy in winter. Stirred up by outside influences, he sometimes fancies that his rulers are also his ~ne1nies; and then he can but devote himself blindly to the species of new religion which has possessed itself of his capacity for worship. VI. The summer of 1897, they told me in Moscow, was the hottest summer known there for thirty-seven years. I have never sufferca so much from heat in any country of Europe; and Russia, certainly, in spite of the tempestuous skies, rain, and icy winds of St. Peters- burg, will remain in my mind as a synonym for much that I have imag- ined of the tropics. And Moscow is almost without shadow, open to all the oppressions of the sky. Its parks, the Sokolniky, for instance, miles on miles of woods, through which long, dusty roads pierce like higlhroads, are with- out restful corners, are themselves an oppression; you do not see people enjoy- ing the mere fact of being there, as people in Warsaw are seen visibly en- joying the grace and repose of their Watteau-like Saxe Garden, Polish women, with their pale faces and soft hair, their languid activity, coming and going with so constant an appeal to ones sense of delightful things. Here and there, indeed, one finds a corner of the city in which, for a moment, things fall into the attitudes of a picture; and one such space of subdued color I re- member in the Krasny Proud, a great pool near the Iaroslav Station. It was dim grey when I saw it, under morning sunlight, and at the further edge it was bordered with curdling green, which showed at that distance as a line of delicate, clear green; and the people passing on the hank, their red shirts, the tints of bright wagons, of wooden houses, were reflected in the water. In this harmony, which composed itself naturally, the carts and timber and houses and people all seeming to exist only to be an effect in pale watery col- ors, I found almost every element of the typical Russian landscape, as I had seen it on my way to Moscow. But Moscows most elaborate escape from itself is, to me at least, in the for- tified convents, surrounded with high With all her Heart. walls, with embrasures and loop-holes for cannon, warlike towers at every corner, in which the monks and nuns used to hold their own against robbers and Tatars: you still see the cannon, lying rusty under the porches. The old- est of these convents is the Novospasky, far off in the east end of Moscow, near the river and the timber yards; built originally in the fifteenth century, it holds a bell-tower and five churches within its walls, among the trees and garden paths; and some of its mural paintings are the most tolerable I have seen in Moscow. But it was the smaller, more central Strastuol Con- vent which gave me the most delight- ful sensation, as I found my way into it by chance, one burning afternoon, as the bell was calling from the pink ehurch in the midst of the garden, in- side the high pink walls, Which enclose that little world. The garden, full of trees and paths, was bordered by white, one-storied houses, out of which nuns and novices came stealing, in their black habits with hanging sleeves, the veil tightened around the thin, under the tall, black, almost Saracen head- dress. Lay sisters were working in the garden-beds, carts passed slowly along the narrow paths between the trees, birds sang, grey cats moved quietly about, and as I sat there, among these placid people, leaning back against a tree, with a shadow of sunny leaves above my head, Moscow, its noise and heat, seemed shut off as by a veil of quiet, the deep buzz of the bell over- head being but like the sound which is nearest to silence in a summer forest; and the world seemed once more a place of possible rest, in which it was not needful to hurry through the sunshine ARTHUR Sv~loNs. From the Revue des Deux Mondes. WITH ALL HER HEART.1 BY RENE BAZIN. Translated for the Living Age. CHAPTER XLI. When ilenriette put up her hair the ~iext morning she was struck by her 1 Copyright by The Living Age Company. own beauty, and something seemed to say to her, as she looked out, alone, into the sunshine: The lilacs are in bloom, dear heart! Can you not smell their perfume? But no, lilac-time is past, and there is no other odor like theirs. Then it must be the laburnums, whose golden clusters hang like bells in the tall towers of leafage! Not these either, for the laburnum is a wayward flower, and awakens troubled thoughts. What then? The Spanish broom, perhaps? Not so, for the meadow-grasses are all mown, and the wind is still. Dear heart, tis the perfume of your own fair hair, sweet as that of a field of daisies in full flower. Breathe deep, dear heart, and be happy, and drink the draught of life! You wiii turn heads, my dear! You will have lovers who will tell you many things! The pretty creature speeds away to her shop, to make hats for her mistress to sell. The day is no more hers than anothers, and yet, while she was in the street, she felt herself a sort of queen. CHAPTER XLII. Two days later, in the early morning, when little shreds of fog were straying like white shavings over the water, a flat boat put off from the Mauves mead- ows and crossed the Loire. The mous- tache of the man who wielded the pole was wet with mist, but there was a merry light in his eyes. Grasping with both hands the iron-shod shaft, whose extremity touched the sand of the river- bed and then travelled along the side of the steadily advancing craft, the tall, supple boatman in his dark blue Jersey took a slantwise course toward the opposite bank, where the small islets of ll6ron and Pinette are separated both from one another and from the river-bank by slender streams of water. It was Etienne starting on his daily round. Profound silence everywhere. Barely the note of a solitary snipe, spreading his wings and beginning to feed among the water-grasses. Tne flood was a thing of the past. The blue water, streaked here and there with bands of 27 With all her Heart. a darker hue, glittered no more, except around the sandbanks, where the slen- der line of light was curved like a sickle. As the boat glided on and the day brightened apace, the boatman was thinking: I love her too much. I shall have to tell her. Presently he entered a narrow channel where the current was hardly perceptible. There, in the mud, and protected by an island on either side, the reeds grew luxuriantly. The bow-nets had been set in the clear parts of the stream, opening in the direction of the current, and Etienne worked diligently for half an hour, lift- ing with his iron hook the osier traps in which the eels had been snared, pull- ing out the hung of grass, and empty- ing the fish into the receptacle ar- ranged in the bow of his boat, then flinging the grass away. It was an excellent catch. Skirting thus the lit- tle island of Heron, Etienne arrived at its extremity and at the mouth of the broader tributary of Pirmil, having on its left the main land with all the farms and houses of the suburb of St. Sebas- tien, still enveloped in fog. He then sprang upright, let his pole trail along the water, threw back his head and expanded his chest, and called out with the voice of a trumpet: Holloa! you folk in Gibraye! hoiloa! He was answered by a muffled cry from the river-bank, for the folk in Gibraye had heard him. They were on the lookout for the fisherman from Mauves, and the Whole forepart of the craft was presently heaped with bas- kets. Cabbages, leeks and turnips pro- jected from the boat on either side, and all but dipped in the water; above were hampers of lettuce and sorrel, bunched carrots formed the apex of the pyramid, and there were three nosegays of nas- turtiums which Etienne caught and stuck in the band of his green hat, where they glowed like a flame. The top of the heap was on a level with his eyes, when he took his place once more in the stern, pushed off with three turns of the sculls, and let himself drift with the main current. Yes, Etienne was saying to himself, I will speak to her this morning. I cant put it off~ any longer. The Loire was waking up. The beating of a paddle became audible in a willow-Inlet. Boats of salmon-fishers began to streak the surface of the stream, which turned gold-color where they passed. The vast profile of the town emerged at various points from the mist which still clung to the surface of the water, while Etienne, motion- less, with beating heart, and the words he dared not utter trembling upon hi:~ lips, awaited the moment when a tiny white dwelling, set aloft like a light- house, should disengage itself from the fog, and the network of masts, and the tips of the poplar-trees on the Isle of Sainte-Anne, at the mouth of the main Loire. Henriettewas at her chamberwindow fastening the last hooks of the black bodice which she wore every day. She hoped she should see him, but did not much expect it. The poor are always so hurried! Etienne had not mentioned the exact hour at which his boat would pass, and the girl was thinking, I cam wait such a very little while. Her eyes explored the landscape from the Dukes Meadows to Trentemoult, and suddenly, midway of the Loire, and rounding the point of Sainte-Anne, she discovered the fiat boat, the three bouquets of nasturtiums, the green baskets, and Etieime who had sprung to his full height. He had let fall his paddle and was no longer steering. His boat was drifting with the stream, no other being in sight, and his face was turned toward the white house. Suddenly he discov- ered Henriette at the open window, sprang upon the back seat that he might himself be the better seen, and with both hands flung her two kisses. Thats rather audacious of Etienne, said Henriette, blushing deeply, and she drew back from the window, but returned almost immediately, to find that he had turned the boat, with a single stroke of his pole, and was al- ready lost among the skiffs and pleas- ure-yachts of the little port of Trente- moult. 28 With all her Heart. The girl finished putting her room in order with a smile upon her lips, and promising herself the pleasure of scolding Etienne. Her cheeks were still pink, and as she crossed the kitchen on her way to her work, Uncle Madiot called out: What ails you this morning, mL-s~ You look as lively as a minnow! And the fact was that she found it rather difficult this morning to put on the serious and slightly cold expression which she habitually wore in the street. She tripped down-stairs, closing the door behind her, and exactly opposite it, leaning against one of the acacias, she beheld big Etienne. Her heart began to beat strongly; she felt disturbed, almost vexed, while Etienne came forward with a face half smiling, and half anxious. He had put on a black vest over his blue jersey, and his Sunday hat. I hoped I should see you, he said. She gave him her hand rather timidly, while every house on the steep slope of the Hermitage hill seemed to have women at the windows, and a crowd of children round the door. Can we have a bit of talk? Etienne inquired, and she answered that if he would walk with her as far as the Posse, they might talk by the way. For several minutes, however, neither spoke. He gazed at the intricate net- work of yards behind which the sun was rising; she at the familiar succes- sion of low doorways, stairways and windows, whence issued more than one Good-morning, Henriette; and Good- morning, Vivien, was the answer, Good-morning, Dame Esnault, Good- morning, Marcelle. Presently they emerged from the Misery quarter, and came out upon the quay, and were speedily involved in a crowd of laborers and loafers about the port, strangers all, whose very num- ber gave the young people a sense of solitude. Etienne now took courage to glance at the rosy face of the graceful creature who tripped beside him; and when they had dodged, by a simultane- ous impulse, a troop of porters engaged in unloading a wheat-vessel, they found, a little farther on, a huge pile of bags of gypsum, which seemed to afford a convenient shelter. There they paused, and he planted himself In front of her, and one more was added to the pairs of lovers, who faced one another in the awakening town, speaking low and without gestures, for fear of attracting attention. You see, began Etienne, I could not go on like this any longer What is it you want to say? He waited, warily, for a custom-house officer to pass before he continued: No, Mile. Henriette, I could not go on forever with a feeling for you of which I never spoke. He saw her shrink a little and grow pale steadying herself against the pile of sacks, and he cried out more vehe- mently Oh, dont go away! Hear me! Father thinks i bring vegetables to Trentemoult just for the sake of get- ting a little more money. And Im glad to do that, of course, but the main thing is that I want to see you. Every blessed day for three months now, I have been on the lookout He wanted to say more, but could not. A. distressing sob rose in his throat, for youth is as prompt to despair as to love. He stiffened himself against his fate, but no other word would come, and he felt utterly humiliated. Then it was that he felt two small gloved hands clasping his own, and heard a troubled voice saying: My poor Etienne, do you mean it? I am so surprised! I never imaginedI only thought you were my friend. We have been such good friends, ever since we were children! And I was so pleased to have it thus, that if you got a bit flattering, I used to think: Oh, that is all right! My friend is growing up! What did compliments signify between two comrades like us? But nowI want to cry! Ah, you shouldnt have said it! I liked you so much, as you were before. Etienne lifted his head, and the haughty spirit within him hardened his face and his voice. Youll have nothing to say to me, 29 With all her Heart. then, Mile. Henriette. You dont think me good enough for you She lifted her eyes, glittering with tears, but infinitely sincere: Oh, I never said that! Please dont make it harder for me! No, no, look at me! I dont look down upon you! There is no one I begin to like so well as you, Etienne, and I am telling you the whole truth. But I cant give you an answer just now. I must think about it, for it is all so strange. Please give me time! How much? I dont quite know! My brother is going into the army, and I must earn money for him; because he will never like itdont you know?if he has no money to spend. And then, by the end of the year. I shall know better about my own position; whether or no I am to be head-milliner in our house. Everything depends on that with me. Please wait until I can make up my mind quite clearly! She tried to smile upon him as she added: Ill see you again. Dont look so sad! Now I must go, for tis half past eight, and I shall be behind time. She turned and hurried awaya slim figure in the broad daylight. But she left with Etienne the image of her eyes alone which, he thought, were like those of a very, very tender sister. He stood for a long while motionless, gazing along the quay, and down the street after the slender figure in black, as it grew smaller and finally disappeared. It was only the eyeswhich he could no longer seewhich had entered into his heart. That night, after a day during which she had gone over and over again, in her mind, the incident of the morning, as well as sundry others of a more or less disquieting nature, Henriette came home so tired as to be utterly indiffer- ent to the sweetness of the June even- ing. Yet this had sufficed to lure even the invalids into the open air; and all about the poor quartei~, on a level with the sills of the open windows, were to be seen the tangled heads, supported upon pillows, of young mothers, who were still too weak to rise. But Henri- ette was too exhausted even to think~ she did not so much as hear the chil-~ dren who called out to her; while they, missing the familiar look and smile, and divining her preoccupation, waited only an instant and then resumed their play. Henriette actually forgot even to lift her skirts, which displayed a white border of dust. But as she passed the entrance to the Herv~ Court, she perceived lying by the sidewalk, in an unpainted wooden- cart with solid wheels, a poor little in- firm creature of ten or thereabouts. Marcelle Esnault had been bed-ridden for three years. She lived on, almost incapable of motion, lying fiat upon her back, and looking at the sky. Her eyes were so weak that it was only by a great effort she observed anything in the street. They dragged her round from one sheltered spot to another, fol- lowing the moving shadow of the house-gables, or the acacias. She had the tranquillity of those whose hold on life is very weak, and Henriette, in her absorption, would have passed her to- night without a thought, but for the beseeching cry which arose from the pavement: Oh, mademoiselle! And pausing, she discovered at her very feet, on the right of the sidewalk, the little cart, and the seaweed mat- tress, and the white face encircled by short hair, which had not vigor enough to grow. Bending down, as she so often did, to caress the child, she found her checks wet with tears, and her ex- pression so fraught with distress, that Henriette exclaimed: What is it, Marcelle? Is the pain so very bad? The child only shook her head. Has anybody been unkind to you? Stoop down close, and I will tell you.~~ And as the girl bent low above the wretched little couch, while all the women in the street observed her over their knitting, a piteous whisper said: Please, Mile. Henriette, dont get married! Dont go away from here! I should never see you again! My poor darling. whatever put that 30 TYith all her Heart. into your head? cried Henriette, strok- ing the pallid cheeks of the infant. Youre silly! But make yourself quite easy! I havent the least thought of marrying, and she passed on, feeling sadder than ever. She could not help remembering that that morning, when she had gone down the steep street with Etienne, the little cart had already been stationed at an angle of the court. What an agitating day it had been, and sleep, she foresaw, would not come early. She excused herself, on the plea of a headache, from the supper which Uncle Madiot had prepared, and going into her own room, looked up a certain notebook, bound in grey linen, which she had not seen for months, but where she had once undertaken to set down her half-formed thoughts, as girls often do, when their hearts are awakening, and they can never tell all to any con- fidante, thoug~h all be only their own hunger for love. And this is what she wrote: I have no one to confide in, no one to encourage or advise me, yet people are always appealing to me, as though I were strong. Oh, you! said Irma the other day, as if I belonged to a differ- ent species. Alas, I am just like the rest. I like quantities of things and people, and shall go on doing so, until I fix all my affections, one of these days, on the one who shall be worthy. All the same, I am troubled and perplexed. It is because I am weak that I cry so easily, and suffer when any one treats me unkindly, and have such wandering thoughts. Just because I am an honest girl, the others in the shop think I am strong enough for them to lean on. It is a great mistake. This morning, after being quite up- set by my talk with Etienne, I hurried to the shop, where Irma noticed my red eyes, and said: Oh, your turn has come, has it? I had to keep back my tears, keep back my heart and my thoughts for the sake of those young girls who will soon, perhaps, be under my direc- tion. I was ashamed of myself, while all those who always give way to every passing feeling exulted over me, as I could see. Luckily Mine. Ol6mence was not there, for I hadnt theleast in- spiration about my work, not an idea. At ten oclock we had leave to go to Mile. du Muels weddingMile. Augus- tine, Irma, Mathilde and I. I got leave for Marie Schwartz to go too, and the poor thing came up to me, on the stairs, and said: Something worries you! Is it about me? Am I to be dismissed? I said, No, indeed. She has had so much trouble that she cannot believe other people have any. In another half hour, we were all in the church of Sainte-Croix, in the poor seats at the end of the nave, where the smart bridesmaids who take the contri- butions never come. I recognized some of the girls from Mine. Louises establishment, and from a haberdashery shop where they have begun to keep a few hats. The church was magnificent; flowers, carpets, velvet-cushioned seats, and such a long procession of real ladies and gentlemennot mere rich folks, but the sort of women who know how to wear their clothes, and the sort of gen- tlemen who can give a lady their arm! I could not help enjoying it all. Ever since I was at the Sisters school, I have had to think about What is elegant and fashionable; I have been employed about such things. I keep in my mind the shape of a ribbon-bow, or the exact shade of a bunch of flowers, just as other people remember the fine things they have read. Mile. de Muel came down the middle aisle on her fathers arm, while we all stood up. Some even mounted upon their chairs, full of ex- citement and curiosity, and a little envy too, because we are women. And then I observed that Marie Schwartz whom I had kept close beside me, was not looking at the procession at all. While all the rest of us were following with our eyes the different groups of guests, as they came in, she leaned back, as though she were listening for some- thing. That little black cape which she almost always wears, poor child, was pressed against the back of her chair, and oh, I had such an unpleasant shock. for my brother Antoine was talk~ lug to her! 3t With all her Heart. I said nothing to Marie, but I asked Antoine how he came to be there, and why he had not spoken to me. He said he was waiting until 1 should be at lib- erty. He complained of the slackness of work, and said he was not employed more than three days in the week. Finally I gave him five francs to get rid of him, and he went off. The great organ was playing a march just then, and Marie never once glanced in his direction. I do not think she saw him go. She had that sombre look in her beautiful, big, black eyes, and I felt very anxious. I know so little about her, after all, and I know Antoine so well! I did not know how to warn her, and yet it was impossible to leave her quite unsuspecting and exposed to my brothers advances. For I am perfectly sure that he means to pursue her. I feel it, as though I were the mother or the. sister of the unhappy girl. And I am so made that I cannot see such a thing without anguish. I think I must have imbibed such ideas from my own mother when I was very small. On our way home, I tried to make Marie describe the hats and bonnets she had seen. Mathilde also asked her some questions. But Im afraid my re- cruit will never make a fashionable milliner, or at any rate a trimmer. She seemed to have had no eye except for the types of people, whom she mim- icked to amuse us. I felt very sad. At five oclock Mine. CWinmence came in and dismissed us all except Mile. Augustine, Reine and the apprentice. A good many of the girls were disturbed at being let out so early. It is a symptom of the dead season, and their approaching discharge. I said to Marie that we would go to her place; I wanted to see her room. And so we set off together, like a couple of old friends, and climbed up to the Rue St. Similien. I thought of my own pretty room, as I entered hers. It is in a court, on the right hand side of the street, and about half-way down. Through the en- trance you get a glimpse of the cathe- dral. Marie had found a furnished room here for eight francs, but it made me shudder to think of the sort of peo- ple who had lived there before her, and were living all about her now. There must be about two hundred poor people living in the main body, and the two wings of one old mansion. We went up five slate-stone steps, mended with bricks, and Marie pushed open the door, and said in her droll way: Here you are in paradise! Exetise me for going before you! Four whitewashed wallswhite- washed more than ten years ago !a folding bed, two chairs and a table, and a looking-glass about the size of my hand, hung near the window. I began to joke, for fear of crying. Luckily there were two chairs, and I said: Mightnt we have some supper? She pointed at the empty fireplace, without fire or so much as a saucepan, and I immediately ran out and bought some provisionsrather more bread, and so forth, than we really needed and we had our supper together, at the xVhitewood table. We were quite gay, just as the trees are gay and shine after a little fall of snow, which xviii imme- diately melt away. I was thankful that I had gone there, for Marie opened her heart, and thanked me, and suffered me to say, cautiously, as one must with a comrade, that she ought to beware of Antoine. But I was terrified by her moral ignorance. What she said was: Just now I want neithQr him nor anybody else. I think the men are all base. They dont love us as we love one another; they leave us, and the women who make a regular business of that sort of thing are the most unhappy of all. But I know myself and I dont wish to deceive you. If I fall, it will be the fault of my bad adviser Whom do you mean? Oh, the same man! I pay eight francs a month here. I get fifteen. I must eat, and dress, and keep warm, and wash my two chemises and my three pocket-handkerchiefs. I am al- ready more than fifteen francs in debt. How do you expect me to live? One of these days I shall be hungry, and then I shall give in. 32 With all her Heart. felt cut to the heart. I could not say a word. As we sat there side by side, at the little supper-table, we both cried. Marie has ~o faith; she has quite forgotten the few prayers she ever knew. And yet she is so tender and impulsive! But it is as if all her impulses were toward evil and dark- ness, and death. I felt as though I were tending a sick sister; but we suf- fered together, and the fears I have for her, and the way in which she had thrown herself on my mercy, seemed to draw us closer together. We talked a long while, and I tried to cheer her up. I made out a scheme of expenses for her, but we both burst out lau~hing over it, for it wouldnt do. I said I would do my best for her with Mine. CW~mence, try to get her wages raised a little, and her supper thrown in. She hugged me so tight, when I came away! The sky was all full of stars, but I never saw them, until just as I reached our own door. I could think only of her. I had forgotten all about myself, but oh, my God! how I wanted to be of use to Marie! And yet what have I of all the things she needs? They call me good, but I have only a vague desire to be so. I feel weak, and, somehow, to blame. To-night, too, in the stillness of my own room, of which I am so fond, I know that I have done a wrong to Etienne Loutrel. I am like all the rest of themI want to be loved. So I have let him pay court to me, for the mere luxury of being enveloped in his tender- ness. I never dreamed he would so soon think that he had a right to my love. The friendship there has always been between us seemed to excuse my familiarity, and especially his; and I was always falling back upon that, to explain the eager look in Etiennes eyes and all his compliments and attentions. I wanted to deceive myself. The joy of hearing those first avowals was so great, that I listened and refused to understand them. But now that lie has spoken out, it would be base in me to see him again and give him the opportunity to say: -You are pretty! You are just to my LIVING AGE. vor. x~vrr. 868 taste! You are the one I haye chosen! all those things, in fact, that we be- gin to dream about as soon as we are grown up. Yet he wrings my heart, poor Etienne! because he is so good and honorable, and loves me, and I have a suspicion that I have not treated him quite fairly. But I could see perfectly well, the other day, that lie understands nothing about my business, about what has constituted the interest of my life. Would not that be very serious, sup- posing we were to marry? Would the mere fact of loving him make it pos- sible for me to go back and become again what I was when I came out of the convent school, and had read noth- ing and knew nothing beyond our own suburb, and hadnt an idea beyond the marriage of a housewife to an artisan? I have handled velvet too much, and silk, and lace. I have worked in too tine materials, and invented too many 1)eautiful things for other people. I have acquired a taste for what is ele- gant and artistic which he could never share. Even if I were to give up my trade, and go and live in the Mauves meadow, turning my back upon Uncle Ehol in his old age, shonid I be entirely happy? Could I be so, as Etiennes wife? I dont know what to say. When I see highbred young people, I know, of course, that one of that class would never marry me, and several of them have made it pretty clear What they thought of me; and yet there is something in their manners and way of talking that I likethat I wish I might find in a lover. How silly I am! Im afraid my training as a milliner has made me too (lifficult. I have friends of my child- hood, whose lives have been very dif- ferent from mine. They are married. They have their husbands and their housekeeping, their little two-room houses along the Rue de Chantenay or dIndret. When I go by and see them w-ith their babies in their arms, I envy them. And yet, the moment the same kind of happiness is offered to me, I am distressedI feel that I am not like them. 33 34 Who will tell me what to do? Who will come to my help? And I am the adviser-generalthe one to whom everybody applies! What would they think of me, if they knew? It was late that night before Henri- ette slept. The midnight chill had al- ready covered the windows with moist- ure, and not a footstep was audible upon the quays; nothing but far-off country sounds, like the croaking of frogs, or the noise of some great ships chain lifted regularly by the tide. Henriette, whose soul was full of the words and images of love, dreamed that she was being married, in a white bro- cade and a white veil, to a man who resembled Etienne in face only, but who was very rich and very refined, and who murmured as he bent over her: ~Your troubles are all over, sweetheart! I love you. At the same time, in her miserable room in the Rue St. Similien, Marie Schwartz was dreaming that she had curtains to her bed, and mirrors with a sort of rainbow border where she could see herself full-length. She thought that it was winter and she was dis- pensing tea in flowered porcelain cups, to her mother who had come back from Paris, and was reconciled to her, and as affectionate as ever, and that she spread out her languid hands to the fire, which flamed high as it does in the houses of the rich. And far away in another direction in the ward beside the Erdre, the little ap- prentice Louisa, with eyelids swollen by fatigue, dreamed that she was a first-class milliner, a shaper or trimmer who was no longer obliged to scour the streets, and the shop-girls called her Mile. Louisa, and said: If you please! At which modest thought of a better future the childs lips began to smile in the dark. So, for one and another, the night re- paired the damage of the daynight which releases the soul from the slumbering body and gives it free course. [TO BE CONTINUED.] From Blackwoods Magazine. TIGER MAJESTY. There were once three Chinamen on their trial at Singapore for piracy and murder on the high seas. The jury l~ad found them guilty, and the judge pro- ceeded to pass sentence. This he did in a speech of some length, in the course of which he spoke of alibis and onus pro- baudi, now alluding to this araument, now referring to that piece of evidence, with a word here as to the heinous na- ture of the offence, and somethin.~ to say on British justice. And in the end: The sentence of the court is . . . And now, Mr. Interpreter, I will have you tell the prisoners what I have said. In those days the court interpreter had but small English and no Latin at all; however, being put to it to make ~ome sort of translation, he laid his hands on the dock and bawled thus into the mouths of the terror-stricken prisoners: Hi! you wretches! Ho! you scoun- drels! To-morrow he will chop off your heads ! Naturally the anger of the learned judge was great; and indeed the procedure did not altogether accord with our ideas of decorum. But very different was the impression made on the Chinese in the body of tee court. True justice: Tiger Majesty! was their opinion. At a time when our policy with the native races under our rule seems put, in a manner, on its trial; when the En- gush democracy seems wavering in its belief that freedom of speech should be accorded to races by whom truth is not considered a virtue, and trial by jury to people who regard perjury as an ac- complishment,it seems to me to be an apt moment to look at the question or our administration from a native point of view. I propose in this article to speak of our rule in the Straits Settle- ments, the colony I know best, as it ap- pears to a Chinese immigrant; and then I shall try to show what are the con- ditions whidh prevail in his own land, and with which he is quite satisfied. As my type of the thousands of ad- venturers who pour annually from South China into the Malay Peninsula, Tiger Majesty. Tiaer Majesty. I select a young peasant living with his father and a host of kinsfolk on a plot of land within forty or fifty miles of Swatow. Living at the best on the verge of starvation, this family finds ever greater difficulty in winning enough rice for its increasing numbers; and so the next time the agent appears who recruits coolies for the Myriad Joys sugar estate in the Four Settle- ments, as tney call the Malay Penin- sula, then our respected friend is to go with him. But first it must be clearly understood what manner of man he is. Physically a thick-set, sturdy little man, he has a very complete knowledge of the culture of the sugar-cane; beyond this his ignorance is phenomenal. He can neither read nor write; in history, perhaps, he knows that the Tshin dynasty upset the Mings two hundred odd years ago; his religion consists of a knowledge of ancestor-worship as performed in his fathers household; with a tag or two he has heard of the wisdom of Confucius, such as ~To worship at anothers altar is called flat- tery, or some text equally inspiring. As for geography, should his mind ever dwell on such a subject (which I doubt), he would believe the world to be China, bounded by the four seas, over which seas are strewn the barbarous islands he has heard of from his travelled friends to wit, the New and Old Gold Hills (Australia and California), Hong-Kong, the Red-haired country (England), the Tin hills, Luzon, or Penang. With such mental equipment he bows to his father, kisses his son, and sets out on his travels; and eventually steams out of Swatow harbor in a little native- owned steamboat, he and fifty com- panions in fortune. Small as she is, the steamer bulks very huge by his own boat alongside her, and it might be thought that here is an impressive object-lesson for him of a new civilization at the very outset of his travel. Unfortunately his sur- prise and admiration are but feelings of the moment. Nothing of the discon- tent with inferiority that is big with progress comes into his mind. Like a child, indifferent in a world of wonder, he stares for a minute or t~o at the bright convolutions or the machhinery. and listens in bewilderment to the rat- tle of the donkey-engine; after Which he will turn aside to matters touching him more nearly, and reserve his fac- ulty of wonder for the spasms of sea- sickness or the plague of weevils in his rice. In venturing so far from his native land our friend the coohie thinks no small thing of his courage. And we who talk of the unsettled state of China, and go as secure in a British colony as in Bond Street, must not be too ready to laugh at him. There may be dangers for him from which we are exempt. I hold in my hand a netition addressed to the Protector of Chinese at Singapore from oi.ie Chang Tc~k Ham beginning thus: A petition concerning a kidnapper who entraps and ensnares men and sells them as slaves. He im- plores that examination may be made and schemes devised to safeguard poor travellers and as a warning to siy rogues. And to show how such dangers may be not altogether imag- inary, I am almost tempted to have our immigrant crimped from the coolie depot in Penang and carried away into a three years bondage on a tobacco estate in Dutch territory, to his infinite discomfort. But spared from this, he passes quietly to his temporary home on the Myriad Joys estate. First, though, he must go through an ordeal to Which we English attach great im- portance. He is told by the agent who brought him from China that he must come before the Red-haired mandarin and say Yes to all questions put to him. His Whole experience of our methods hitherto has been gained from an irate Aberdonian engineer who knocked him down for experimenting with the steam-gauge; and he enters the presence with trembling. There are a crowd of Chinese stand- ing before a desk where a Red-hair devil is sitting. Is that a mandarin! He is dressed in a short coat, and has not so much as a hat, much less a but- ton. His hair is black, though,~and be appears to be trying to talk language 35 30 (that is, to talk the only language Chinese, to wit). Perhaps he is only a devil oa the father s side. Well, he finds himself pushed up to the desk and plied with a string of questions. Are you willing to ? et cwtera. No! I dont understand. I mean yes, yes, yes, and the interview is over. His new master takes him away and ex- plains that he need not trouble about these ceremonies; only whenever he is ~sked by any Red-hair Whether he is v~ontented, he must declare that he is. So this poor ignorant fellow is taken away to the sugar estate; and if a few months later a magistrate on inspection duty shall find the mans back striped with weals and demand an explanation, he will take his cue from his master and his fellow-laborers and swear that the weals were due to bad water, or a snake-bite, or anything else except a popular castigation. Equipped with Chinese powers and a few joints of bamboo, the magistrate would soon be getting at the truth: as it is, ne is con- strained to pass on with a shrug of his shouluers. If we pursue the further adventures of this typical colonist, we are likely to find that the duration of his stay in the country brings no proportionate In- crease to his comprehension of its insti- tutions. After he has worked off, by a years labor, the cost of his passage from China, we may suppose him to join a gang of wood-cutters or charcoal- burners; or perhaps he will squat on a corner of land and grow vegetables for the local market. In any case, he will probably be induced by his associates to join in some illegal society, the os- tensible motive of which may be a revolution in ChinaUpset the Tshins, Recall the Mings; but which has none the less for its practical end to shelter and defend its members from the clumsy fingers of our criminal law. From his new friends he will learn of the thousand and one offences under our legal codescutting a stick here, driving your bullock-cart there; gam- bling with your friend, or fighting with your enemy: which offences, as they are innumerable and not to be kept in Tiger Majesty. the memory, so it is adVisable to run at the bare sight of a Sikh policeman, and if caught, to offer the Mata-devil ten cents, or it may be half a dollar, without more ado. Or if that will not serve, and he comes before the court and eventually into prison, why, even so things will not be so bad but that they might be worse. The prison fare is wholesome, and the prison labor no harder than what he is accustomed to. After working out a sentence or two, he becomes more familiar with our meth- ods. He scrapes an acquaintance with the law of evidence; and when he quai- rels, lays an information against his enemy, whose liberty he and his friends are prepared to swearawayen any plaus- ible charge from murder to chicken- stealing. If a conviction is obtained so much for Red-hair justice! If the case breaks down, no worse harm can befall the bearers of false witness than a possible loss of countenance.~~ But with ordinary luck our friend contrives to keep clear of the courts, in which case his intercourse with Euro- peans will be still less extensive. After many years of industry, it may be that lie contrives to amass a small fortune of 30 or 40, sufficient to buy another rice-field to add to the family domain. With these savings it is to be hoped he will run the gauntlet of the swarms of thieves and desperadoes that our tin- fields and busy ports attract, and make his way safely to the treaty port he lef~ a dozen years before. Men may come and men may go, but China changes not. The returned wan- derer shoulders his bundle aud tread~ the tangled mountain tracks as if it was but yesterday he traversed them on his journey forth. There is the way- side shrine; there the pine-tree; there the water-wheel. And now the home- stead comes into sight, its he has seen it in his dreams a thousand times, deep set in the golden sugar-cane. An old man is sitting at the porch, with a sun- burned boy of sixteen by his side, and the third figure is his old wife. You dont remember me, says our exile, grinning as he kicks a new generation of curs from the threshold. There we Ttyer Majesty. will leave him, older certainly and richer, and possibly a little wiser than on his setting out. I have spoken with many Chinese who have returned home from abroad with the mark of our civilization on them In the shape of a pair of leather shoes. Skill in the mechanical arts it is admitted that we possess; and if only those home-comers would but be dis- contented with the toil of the weary journey on foot or the slow passage by barge after experience of our railways ;ind steamers,if only, I say, they would but wish for such appliances even for a moment, then China would have moved a point on the dial nearer to her awakening. But no! Ask in the first house where you see a Straits-made easy-chair, ask the travelled owner, Why have you no railways here? and he will make unhesitating reply, Be- cause, sir, in China there are no rail- ways. Let us see in what fresh light he can set our ways for the instruction of his family. We are clever workmen. (That they knew.) We are stupid and gullible, of course; and we have no ac- quaintance with the principles of pro- priety or of right and wrong. And as for our mandarins, so-called, they are like those of China, venal and corrupt. (It is hardly to be hoped that any dis- tinction will be drawn between the gov- ernment tax collected by the magistrate and the squeeze which sticks to the fingers of his clerk.) Lastly, to our mis- rule are attributed such lawless acts as are found inevitably among the un- trammelled and adventurous popula- tion of a newly opened country, but which are scarce known in the quiet country districts of China. Lest I overstate my case, I must not forget to tell of one instance, at any rate, in which I found that the benefi- cence of our administration was recog- nized. A man I knew had been cured of dysentery in a Straits hospital, and his son, who afterwards became my servant, begged of me, in his filial grati- tude, a photograph of the Red-haired Great Queen, which, when I gave it. he set up in his room, and I have seen sticks of incense burning before it. But such instances, I fear, must be re- garded as very exceptional. It is little gratitude our hospitals bring us, as a rule. I have seen too many men lying in the wards, incurable cases of oph- thalmia or of that disease whose rav- ages we are forbidden to circumscribe men who, though treated with every con- ceivable kindness and attention, have had nothing better to say to me, when asked how they did, than, The great doctor poured acid on my eyes and blinded them. He smeared us with bad ointment and rotted away our flesh. Whether they believe what they say in the beginning, or whether the lie gains plausibility by repetition, is beside the mark. It is clear that let- ters sent home by men like these will not endear us in the affections of their countrymen. As for the belief so com- monly heard, that the emigrants re- turning home will bring with them a leaven that will leaven the Chinese lump, that, I fear, is visionary in- deed. I have tried to show that the Chinese of our colonies have not that respect for our rule which we might have hoped for from the reputed defects of their own. My next object will be to give a brief description of a Chinese court of law, its powers and its limit; - tions; and lastly, I shall attempt to trace hoxv far its influence extends over the districts which are, nominally at any rate, under its jurisdiction. And I shall continue to deal in illustra- tion rather than in argument, prefer- ring that the reader should draw his own conclusions from the facts thus laid before him. The court I have in my minds eye is that of a district magistracy in South China. The magistrate, a man named Chong, was connected by marriage with the brother of Li Hung Chang, then viceroy of the provinces of Kwang- tung and liwang-si. He had no great reputation for learning, and it was common gossip of the tea-houses that the money or influence of his great rela- tions had weighed with the high exam- iner who qualified him for his appoint- 37 Tiger Majesty. ment. For the rest he was a man of about forty years, tall for a Chinaman, with high cheek-bones and a long pointed chin, and the grey unwhole- some skin of a slave to opium. His judgment-seat was in a flagged courtyard, the main portion of which was open to the sky, with rude frescoes in color done on its whitewashed walls. A covered pathway ran the length of it on each side, and terminated in a kind of pent-house roof which sheltered that end of the enclosure; and the space under this roof (some thirty feet in width and fifteen or twenty deep) was raised above the level of the rest of the courtyard, and was approached from it by two or three steps. On this raised platform or dais sat the magistrate in his blue robe and biretta with the but- ton, having in front of him a large table covered and valanced with red cloth, on which were placed a Chinese inkstand, a lead pen-rack, an imposing pile of law books, and a pot, made out of a section of the giant bamboo, filled with slips of wood bearing various numberstwenty, fifty, or a hundred. A tablet (green, if I remember) to Con- fucius adorned the wall behind, as also sundry scriptures from the classics writ large in black and red. One of these sticks in my memory which runs thus: Learning without Thought, Time lost; Thought without Learning, Perdi- tion. There used to stand behind the magistrate two sorry-looking rogues with silk banners in their hands, and along with them grouped about the l)endh were a throng of satellitescon- stables and runners, and jailors, with their chainsall very ragged and slov- enly and dirty. The dais itself was usually very foul and unswept, the plaster from the walls lying for days where it had flaked off and fallen. The courtyard below the dais would be thronged with the friends of the par- ties to the causes on trial; with whom also you would find a large collection of the lowest classesprofessional gam- blers, paid bullies from the houses of ill repute, vagabond beggars, and so on all attracted by the fascination of the rod at play. The foreigner who frequents these courts is early struck by the absence of any form of crown prosecution. There are none of those cases which with us occupy so large a proportion of the time of a police magistratesuch as va- grancy, drunkenness, public nuisances, or adulteration. These do not appear to be indictable offences. If offenders in this kind inflict injury on a large number of persons, they will shortly be suppressed without need of any trial; but if only an individual suffers, he will either be strong enough to redress his own wrong himself, or else too weak to gain anything by an appeal to Oa~sar. In fact, it seems hardly too much to say that the law is not called upon unless th~ object of the complaining party is either revenge or else a wish to re-es- tablish a weakened prestige among his neighbors. The scene I am about to describe will serve as well as one of greater consequence to explain my meaning. One day While we in the body of the court were hearing some endless land case drag its slow length along, on a sudden the quiet was broken by shrill cries of Grant justice, and a dishev- elled female pushed her way through us up to the dais, a crowd after her drag- ging among them a frightened angry man. Screaming, she flung herself down before the bench, and beat her head on the ground till the blood ran from her forehead, while the man was forced down on his knees beside her. It seemed as if she were trying to artic- ulate her complaint, but again and again her rage, feigned or real, ap- peared to overcome her. All that I could distinguish was, Great old father! extend compassion! For a minute the great old father sits patient: suddenly his bland expression vanishes, and a network of frowns and wrinkles distorts his countenance. Ta! (Strike!) he cries, and at the word one of the attendants whips his shoe off and belabors her with it, over neck and face, till she is half stunned. But this brings her to her senses as it seems, and she launches forth into a turbid story, above the eddies and torrent of 38 Tiger Majesty. Which one fact alone floats clearthe defendant wished to steal her duck. He, on the other hand, denies it all will admit nothing. Ka, ka! (False! false!) he cries, like an indignant crow, to each fresh evolution of the charge before it has fairly left her lips. The interpreter translates as much as he considers relevant from the local dialect into Pekinese; and the mandarin sits motionless with that blank face a Chinaman assumes so naturally. But presently, in the twinkling of an eye, the breath of the true Tiger Majesty is again upon him: the pleadings may uow be hushed: sentence is about to pass. Ha! he shouts. Ha! ha! roar the constables, the bannermen, the flagellist, the jailors, as they stamp and clank their chains. The mandarin draws a slip from the bamboo jar and flings it down on the table. The flagel- list picks it up. It bears the number twenty. They hold the head of the de- fendant, he nowise resisting, upon the ground, and bare his thighs, while the flagellist administers the twenty strokes with a flat bamboo cricket-bat. It seems he has not been bribed; he cer- tainly does not strain the quality of mercy, but lays on with a will. The sound of the blowsclap, claprings back from the walls; and by the time lie has finished, the victims flesh is bruised and swollen well-nigh to bleed- rig-point. Then accuser and accused rise up and make their bow and vanish in the crowd. I never heard anything more about these people, but of one thing I am surea duck was not the subject of the quarrel. It must not be supposed that every cause can be disposed of in this sum- mary fashion. On the contrary, there are complex law-suits, which are handed down through the tenure of half-a-dozen mandarins, where all the parties are bribing the Yamen and its whole establishment, from the magis- trate to the man with the bamboo bat. But in such cases as these, too, the real motive of the suit will generally be found to lie deeper than its ostensible cause. It will have been, not the bit of land in dispute, but some local ascend- 39 ancy to be won or retained, -that has brought the parties into court. What, then, shall we say Is the mental attitude of the average China- man towards the courts? It is cer- tainly one of acquiescence; but the mix- ture of feelings that underlies this acquiescence is not easy to analyze. That the popular mistrust of the courts is deep-rooted is beyond a doubt. Every child in Canton province has this stanza by heart: Like figure eight gapes Yamen gate. Beware, ye poor! Right sans Mights a woeful wight Once past this door. And it cannot be said that a corrupt officialdom seems to them a natural or Inevitable state of things. Such aphor- isms as this, Promote righteousness, discard obliquity; then will the people be loyal, are commonplaces of polite conversation. But the mandarin, how- ever venal and brutal he may be, is careful, as a rule, not to outrage pop- ular prejudices. He will not beat an old man, for example, though if his son were present he would not scruple to transfer the punishment to him, to the huge delight, probably, of the public. For your average peasant seems to find a sort of pleasure in those beatings and buffetings; perhaps, like the hideous deities he sets up and worships, they titillate his jaded nerves with a delight- ful horror. But, after all, these are mere matters of sentiment; and sentiment alone would hardly sanctify a tyranny, in China least of all countries, where the authority of the law rests on such a weak foundation of physical power. The real cause of this general acquies- cence in bad government, and of such outward shows of respect as are paid to it, lies, I think, in thisthe weight of the injustice may crush an individual here and there, but it presses far from heavily on the community as a Whole. I remember hearing of one village 1 The chinese character for eight (pat) is fomni I of two strokes sloping inwards, like folding-doors partly opened A. Ingress is easy, but the way out is hard to find. 40 whose common right ever a certain piece of moorland was invaded by their magistrate. The villagers took counsel together and sulked, shut up their shops and their market, and behaved as if they were mourning over a public calamity. Such a state of things might have quickly reached the ears of the viceroy, attentive as the high authori- ties are to hear anything uiat resembles a popular uprising. A commission might have been sent to report, whose good graces the magistrate could hardly purchase with less than a years income of the office. The mandarin saw that he had gone too far, and gave in. Indeed I will venture to go further and assert that in no country in the world is there more actual freedom, less of the meddlesomeness of government, than in China. What do the myriad villages and the unnumbered country homesteads know either of mandarin or central government, beyond the more or less spasmodic exaction of a land-tax? There is a true local auton- omy, of the laissez-faire sdhool, in each small community. In the country homesteads, that account, I dare say, for one-half of the population, questions of right and wrong go by the will of the head of the family. Should one of these homesteads fall out with another over a diverted watercourse or a violated grave, then the greybeards on either side discuss the quarrel, and the house- hold found to be in the wrong must make amends. Very often justice is satisfied with a formal admission of wrong-doing, the offending party giv- ing expression of this by the purchase of several thousands of firecrackers, which, let off in the spirit of good fel- lowship, will clear the moral atmo- sphere of all bad feeling. Or perhaps the offenders may be ordered to pro- vide a feast, at which the seniors on both sides will sit down with the as- sessors (if any friends to both parties have rendered this good office) and drink in glasses of rice-brandy to a better understanding for the future. But at all costs reconciliation must be come at. No thought is more repug nant to a Chinaman than that of an unappease(i enemy marking his goings, and on the lookout for a false step. Should a quarrel wax serious, and fail to be adjusted by such pacific measures as I have described, the ag- grieved party will send a representa- tive, who calls politely on the other side, and who on leaving will deposit a few betel-nuts on the table by way of challenge. Whereupon a collision be- tween the younger men of the two fac- tions may well ensue, and the bad blood find vent through broken cocks- combs. But unless both parties are ex- ceedingly powerful or in deadly ear- nest, they will keep their enthusiasm in check; which if they do not, the man- darin will be sending his clerks and a dozen ragged constables to billet them- selves on the warring houses, devour- ing Their substance, and making them- selves an abomination, until an enforced reconciliation is arrived at. As regards such matters as the adul- teration of food and other forms of fraud, or such nuisances as result, for example, from vagrancy or mendicancy, it is enough to say that these offences, as we should call them, are not in China held to be misdemeanors at all, but merely inconveniences against which people are expected to guard themselves. Caveat emptar is the advice to the purchaser. Beware the dog is the w-arning to the tramp. Of real crime, according to Chinese notions, I remem- l)er seeing very little. But two cases of detected theft I do remember, which, as they were dealt with in very charac- teristic wise, it will be worth while to relate somewhat fully. Fl Chu Eu, on the east branch of the Canton river, is the headquarters of the Tao-toi or Intendant of Circuit, which may account for its being the nest of a very pestilential swarm of rascals. One of these, a fellow named Leung Ah Kim (as I see from my diary), hap- pened about December, 1893, to have made the town too hot to hold him; and so he strayed away to the country vil- lages to the southward for what he could beg or steal, arriving, as it hap- pened, at a little town, Newmarket by name, on the same day as I did, mak Tiger Majesty. Tiger Majesty. ing my way north from Kow Loon. It was about midday when I saw him first. I came in by way of the market- place, which was crowded, it being market-day. I had resigned myself, hot and tired as I was, to the inevitable stir at the sight of a foreignerthe laughter, the crowding, and the endless questions. But to my surprise no no- tice was taken of my entrance. The assembled people were standing with their backs to me and their faces to the opposite walla low buzz of conversa- tion running through them, differing in tone somehow from the busy chatter of a fair-day. Presently through a fissure in the crowd we saw a man half naked with his face to the wall, sprawling up against it with hands and feet, as if he were trying to climb it. I remember my Perak servant laughing, as a China- man does at a thing in pain, and saying to me in Malay, Like a cockchafer in a finger-glass. I wondered a little, but glad to escape observation quickly, I made my way to an inn, where I passed the afternoon in a secluded hay-loft, and did not come down till the winter (lay was drawing to a close. When I joined my servant, I found him talking in the kitchen with a couple of decent middle-aged men who, it seemed, had heard of my advent and wished to see me, thinking I must be my friend Herr , a German mission- ary doctor of the neighborhood. I asked what was the matter; they re- plied, A man with sore eyes! So when they had finished their tea they went out, and I with them. We passed along the narrow alley into the open market-place, to where I had seen the man scrambling along the wall six hours before. That side of the market- place was then quite deserted and quite dark; and before I noticed that the man was still there, I had almost stepped upon him. He was squatting on his hannehes, native fashion, silent, or it may be moaning a little. I took him by the forearm (he was naked but for a pair of blue cotton drawers, and the evening was clear and cold, as I re- member), and I raised him up and led him across the market-place into the 41 moonlight. There I saw what ailed him. From where his eyebrows may once have grown to his lips and his chin his face was nothing but one blister. It remains very vividly in my mind; but it is a memory so ghastly that I prefer not to dwell upon it. A glance was sufficient to show that his eyesight had been utterly destroyed. The two worthy fellows who accom- panied me led him between them to their house, xvhile I went back to my inn and got a clean handkerchief and some vaseline. They made him some skilly, and he drank it with eagerness. Then I heard the story, Leung Ah Kim himself corroborating it, and adding a detail here and there. He had wandered south to New- market, as I have said, arriving there about ten in the forenoon. He had slunk about the market-stalls for a while, and finally had stolen from a butchers table a little pile of cash (sev- enty, I think they said, worth about a penny farthing), which he slipped up his sleeve. Unfortunately for him, he was caught in the act. Unfortunately, too, there had been recently a recur- rence of such thefts. One can hear the cry, Thief, old thief! raised by the witness and caught up by the bystand- ers as they fell on him tooth and nail, while the elder men were devising a suitable punishment. Presently his undercoat is torn loose and a sheath- knife concealed beneath it lay exposed to view. Then bis fate was sealed. They sent to the oil merchant and bought bean oil for five or six cash, with which, having boiled it, they de- liberately l)urned the eyes out of his head. The man gave his share of the story with little display of emotion. He was probably too exhausted for that; and after all, nothing could be done. And observe, the question of an appeal to the mandarin, either to punish the theft or to avengo the atrocious act that fol- lowed on it, never entered into the mind of any one of the actors in this wayside tragedy. So I left the victim for the night in the care of my fellow Samaritans, who~ Tiger Majesty. refused any payment, preferring, as the phrase runs. to accumulate vir- tue. I like to dwell on their charity. as such sensibility is far to seek and hard to find in their dull-nerved and cold-blooded nation. My servant was very indignant when he heard of my doings. He declared I should have all the beggars in the vil- lage at my heelsas, indeed, I had. However, I visited the blind man next day. and gave him a letter to the mis- sionary doctor. He never delivered it. and 1 cannot say what became of him. Perhaps he died; perhaps at this min- ute he is feeling his way along the pur- liens of Fi Chu Fu. begging from door to door with a little tin pot in one hand and a staff to guide his footsteps in the other. Whining Charity! charity! professionally filthy and diseased, I can see him, entering shop after shop, and hanging about till the shopman. seeing that he drives away custom. or is soil- ing the goods with his pestiferous hands, gives him a few cash to be gone. In the evening he will disappear into some unspeakable lair, having laid out his days earnings in rice enough to sustain life, and as much opium as the balance will buy. You may see such blind beggars any evening at Canton finding their way home. Ragged, dirty, and diseased beyond description, they feel their way along in queues of eight or ten, each holding to the coat of the other, like a vision of nightmare children playing some grim travesty of oranges and lemons. Earlier in this article I have sug- gested the contempt that a Chinaman is likely to feel at our nerveless ways of dealing with a recalcitrant witness or stubborn prisoner. He is familiar with sterner methods, as the following story, for the truth of which I can vouch, may serve to illustrate. It may be objected that because the injured party, judge, ~nd avenger was in this instance a Europeana French priest, in factthe case may be exceptional. But so inti- mate a knowledge had this gentleman of Chinese characteristics, acquired by residence in the country during many years; so well was he aivare of the scant justice likely to be obtained by any injured person (and a French mis- sionary least of all), at the mandarins Yamen; in a word, so thoroughly had he caught the Chinese habit of mind in regard to such mattersthat we may accept his actionas typical without any reserve whatever. That this action should have passed without in the smallest degree exciting his neighbors indignation, seems alone sufficient to stamp it as being in nowise extraor- dinary. As for me, I was a mere looker- on, and stood entirely dissociated from what was passing. The French priests chapel was open all day long, and frequently some one or other of his converts would go in to pray or to rest for a few minutes on the benches, or would bring in a friend. perhaps one of tes pajensto look at the carving or the pictures. This chapel was the object of the priests deepest pride and affection; and most gladly would he have continued to welcome all such chance visitors if the successive disappearance of the poor fittings and ornaments of the building had not ex- cited his misgivings, and finally driven him into a perfect rage of annoyance and distress. One day a candlestick would disappear; next week the em- broidered altar-cloth was missing. But the climax was reached when one even- ing I strolled into his house to find him on his knees, the tears running down his cheeks. The people, he said, had been in and out of the chapel that after- noon, as usual, and some one of them Ces animaux, cette canaillehad stolen the gem of all its gems, the sil- ver-gilt chalice that stood on the altar. After several days of wretchedness and universal mistrust, suspicion seemed to condense about the person of the son of my landlord, one Chan the Virtuousa lukewarm Christian and a surly ill-conditioned dog. I knew him ~vell. This fellow was reported to have bought recently a new and handsome pair of shoes, though the village could not imagine where the money came from. And when to the shoes was added a new fonr-seamed coat, and 42 Tiger Majesty. it became known also that the Virtuous was smoking surreptitious opium, then suspicion seemed to ripen into cer- tainty. The evidence may not have been sufficient, according to our ideas, to justify so much as a remand; but with his acquired Chinese notions, the priest felt justified in much stronger measures. Taking the young man on some pretext or other into his garden, he opened the case for the prosecution by beating him with his slipper. Ah Hon, my boy-of-all-work, came running into my house all aglow with the intelli- gence, Our soul-father beats Chan the Virtuous! I ran out, but when I ar- rived oh the battle-field the soul-father was in the hen-house, too busy to at- tend to me, being at hand-gripes with the VirtuOus in a whirl of dust and feathers. At length he emerged trium- phant, and locking the door, he passed, with a hurried greeting to me, into the house, and quick returned with a coil of rope. By thiS time the spirit of the Virtuous had evaporated, and he pas- sively submitted to be tied to the hinge of the door; so that he had dogs liberty, and could sit down as he liked inside his kennel or outside. At this point in the proceedings prisoner was charged with theft and entered a plea of Not guilty, whereupon his case was re- manded, and he was left till the mor- row to- meditate on his~ position over a cupful of rice and half a cup of water. Next morning I saw him again, and a sorrowful figure he made after a nights exposure to the mosqnitoes of the rice- plain; but still he declined to cenfess. His father caine and threw himself on his knees before the priest, but the l)riest was inexorable; and having, in- deed, a pretty skill in carpentry, he busied himself through the rest of the day in the manufacture of a machinO which is the Chinese equivalent for the thumb-screw, and by night-fall a rude but serviceable instrnment had been constructed. He was kind enough to bring it across to my house first, and I accompanied him to the hen-house to see the end. Whether this argument would actu- Ally have been employed or no must re 43 main amon~ the things thai are hid. Because, after a hasty glance at the screws and strings. Chan the Virtuous demanded to know whether he was to - be left for another night among the mosquitoes, and on receiving an em- phatic assurance that he would be so left, without more ado he burst into tears and said, Very well, everything I (lare confess! And gradually the story ~s-as told. He had taken the chalice and had sold it in a neighboring town. It was decided that his father, who was now elaborately shocked and scan- dalized, should go with the Chinese catechist and buy it back. So off they went. And now comes the weak part of my story. There is no doubt that the unpun- ished lies we get from native witnesses in our courts, and the acquittal of the manifestly guilty by the favor of some legal quibble, do serve to bring our jus- tice into contempt among the Chinese. So I wish that I could lend a more com- plete justification to the means of my friend the priest, by crowning the end with complete success. But I must ad- mit that when the two men returned from the town, it was with empty hands. They declared that the man who bought the chalice had sold it away again for eleven dollars. The chalice was not worth much more; and if the whole story of the selling and re- selling was a fabrication, backed up by the catechist with the laudable idea of getting the matter set at rest, still it was strong evidence that either the Virtuous or his father, or some one of the family, had committed or con- nived at the theft. But a jury would have liked to see the chalice. At any rate, that was the way it ended. The old man, groaning heavily, t)roduced eleven dollars wrapped in red paper and paid them to the priest, and Chan the Virtuous regained his liberty. shaking the dust of the fowl-house ftom his feet, he limped away, and a feW days afterwards disappeared from the neighborhood. I believe he was sent abroad by his family. I have tried to give my reader in peep- 44 show fashion some glimpses of the life and thought of the poorer sort of Clii- nese. He will recognize in my rough - pictures a hard-worked man, who would sooner have a bowl of salt cabbage with his rice than a vote, even if he could understand what that meant. Being used to guard his own interests, he will sometimes misunderstand and fail to appreciate the bristling array of orders, codes, and prohibitions Which prevent him and his neighbor from do- ing that which seems good in their eyes. His idea of justice is something as far removed from this as it is from the cor- ruption of the courts of his own coun- try. A stern suppression of all overt bicaches of the peace would best sat- isfy his ideal, with perhaps a frilling of Tiger Majesty to comfort his ~sthetic longings. Given this true Queens Peace, he would ask no more from us than he asks of his ~odsa fair field, and thento be let alone. EDwARD A. IRVING. From The Scottish Review. MRS. OLIPHANT AND HER RIVALS A sufficient time has elapsed since the death of the writer who was, per- liaps, the most industrious of British literary workwomen during two gen- erations, to permit, if not of such a critical judgment upon her labors as will fix her permanent position, at least of such an appraisement as will detect the element of immortality in her al- most infinite variety. Many have been the judgments passed upon Mrs. Oh- phant, but it may be doubted if any has come nearer the mark than the dictum that, had circumstances per- mitted her to devote herself exclusively to fiction and to perform even in that department only one-tenth of the labor she actually achieved, she could hav~ produced, if not the best novel of our time, certainly the novel that is most typical of modern British society as a whole. This may seem at first sight what is vulgarly known as a large order. But when one recalls the d if- ferent lines of fiction in which she ex- celled all but the greatest of her rivals. when one remembers that the patient delineator of clericalized English rural life in The Chronicles of Carlingfordt was also capable of the better than Kailyard pathos of Katie Stewart, and of the Hardyesque passion o~ Kirsteen, when one thinks of the energy expendedit would be unjust to say wastedon such works outside the field of fiction as her biographies of Edward Irving, Principal Tulloch, and Montalembert, her Royal Edinburgh. and her Makers of Florence, above all, when one tries to realize what might have been had the extraordinary imaginative power displayed in Two Stories of the Seen and the Unseen been diffused over a lifes work, and from being a wandering voice become a pervading presence like Mr. Marion Crawfords diableric, or the fatalism which ennobles the peasantry of Wes- sex with the tragedy of the ~schylean (irama, who can say that she might not have produced what would have been to British life in the second half of ~he nineteenth century what Mid- dlemarch aimed at being, but some- how is not? It may be said that the comparison involved in this suggestion, the making of which somehow seems inevitable, is unfortunate. It is quite true that Mrs. Oliphant had neither the piercing imagination, nor the almost too pro- found culture, of George Eliot. She could never have written that noble passage in which are embodied Doro- thea Casaubons first impressions of Rome. It is hardly possible to con- ceive of her representing Maggie Tulliver as relating the story of the earwigs domestic troubles to her- cousin Lucy. Nor, had it come within her province to describe the appear- ance of Lawyer Dempster while mixing- his third glass of brandy and water in the bar of the Red Lion at Melby, would it have occurred to her to have represented the front part of his~ large surface as so well dredged with snuff that the eat, having mad- Mirs. Oliphant and her Rivals. Mrs. Oliphant and her Rivals. vertently come near him, was seized with a severe fit of sneezingan acci- (lent which, being cruelly misunder- stood, caused her to be driven con- tumeliously from the bar. Her warm- est admirers will allow that her slight efforts in the direction of historical romance were failures; she ~ould never have given us a flesh-and-blood Savo- narola. The question, however, is, could Mrs. Oliphant, had circumstances allowed her as much time to produce a novel as they allowed George Eliot, the only one of her female contemporaries, with the exception of Mrs. Humphrey Ward, who can be named in the same breath with her, have given the world a book more realistic in the sense of being truer to life and society than her rivals most finished and elaborate performance? This question can best be answered by comparing the works of the two writers which are similar in scope and range of characterThe Scenes of Clerical Life on the one side and The Chronicles of Carliugford on the other. It is a fashion with Eliot- olaters to warmly praise the book by which their divinity made her first rep- utation; some go so far as to place it above Adam Bede and even above Silas Marner and The Mill on the Floss. And yet the careful reader and impartial critic of The Scenes, who will probably place it as a work of art immeasurably above books of the Kail- yard school, will admit that its chief strength is the same as theirs, that it is to be found in the power of moving to tears. Everybody that is superla- tively good in The Scenes, dies pre- cisely as does everybody that is super- latively good in Beside the Bonnie Brier BushMrs. Amos Barton, Mr. (4ilfils Tina, Mrs. Dempsteis saviour, Mr. Tryon. Over the graves of the two first, at least, as many have wept as have found an abundance if not a sur- feit of the luxury of woe in the return of Mr. Barries Son of London and ihe death of Ian Maclarens Lad o l~airts. Sunt lachrymw reruni is the Register, Register, Register of the novelist who seeks a large public. It is a quite legitimate tilek of art, but it is a trick all the same. Another trick of George Eliots art is exemplified in The Scenesthat of getting into a e~~rner or sitting down in an armchah, and making essentially masculine re- flections on the changes effected, some- times for the better but oftener for the worse, by the magic of time. I say es- sentially masculine, for while it is quite impossible to conceive of the author of Daniel Deronda smaking a churchwardcn and drinking gin and watereven Mr. Gilfils modest dilu- tionin the orators chair of a village inn, or at the bar of a country-town hostelry, the philosophy to give ex- pression to which she so often steps aside from the straight road of her plot. as when she discourses on leisure in the beginning of Adani Bede, is quite that of the male laudatoi temapori.s aeti who looks at life through Thack- erayan spectacles. Take, for example. this passage, which forms part of the overture to the Sad Fortunes of tlw 11ev. Amos Barton: Immense improvement! says the well- regulated mind, which unintermittingly rejoices in the New Police, the Tithe Com- mutation Act, the Penny Post, and all guarantees of human advancement, and has no moments when Conservative-re- forming intellect takes a nap, while imag- ination does a little Toryism by the sly, revelling in regret that dear, old, brown, crumbling picturesque inefficiency is everywhere giving way to spick-and-span new-painted new-varnished efficiency, which will yield endless diagrams, plans, elevations, and sections, but alas! no pic- ture. Mine, I fear, is not a well-regu- lated mind; it has an occasional tender- ness for 01(1 abuses; it hungers with a certain fondness over the days of nasal clerks and top-booted parsons, and has a sigh for the departed shades of vulgar errors. So it is not surprising that I recall with a fond sadness Shepperton Church as it was in the old days, with its outer coat of rough stucco, its red-tiled roof, its heterogeneous windows patched with des- ultory bits of l)amted glass, and its little fli~ht of steps with their wooden rail run- ning up the outer wall, and leading to the school-childrens gallery. Then inside what dear old qunintnesses! which I be- Airs. Oliphant and her Rivals. gan to look at with delight, even when I was so crude a member of the congrega- tion that my nurse found it necessary to provide for the reinforcement of my devo- tional patience by smuggling bread-and- butter into the sacred edifice. There was the chancel, guarded by two little cheru- bim, looking uncomfortably squeezed between arch and wall, and adorned with the escutcheons of the Oldinport family, which showed me inexhaustible possibili- ties of meaning in their blood-red hands, their deaths-heads and cross-bones, their leopards paws and Maltese crosses. There were inscriptions on the panels of the swinging-gallery telling of benefac- tions to the poor of Shepperton, with an involuted elegance of capitals and final flourishes, which my alphabetic erudition traced with ever-new delight. No benches in those days; but huge roomy pews round which devout church-goers sat dur- ing lessons trying to look anywhere else than into each others eyes. No low par- titions allowing you, with a dreary ab- sence of contrast and mystery, to see everything at all moments; hut tall dark panels, under whose shadow I sank with a sense of retirement through the Litany, only to feel with more intensity my burst into the conspicuousness of public life when I was made to stand up on the seat during the psalms or the singin~. There is no denying the cleverness and restfulness of this sort of writing. But it is essentially masculine, or at fhe best suggests a highly cultured woman playing very prettily with all her head, but not quite with all her heart, the part of the male lover of the past. Let it freely be allowed that Mrs. Oliphant. though she too can indulge in reflection and even preach a very good Scotch sermon, was incapable of this style of literary reverie, as inca- pable as was George Eliot herself of what a competent critic has termed the delicate monotone of Jane Aus- tens novels with their smoothness of movement, their subtle delicacy of description, their avoidance of any touch of tragedy. Nor will the warm- est admirer of Mrs. Oliphant deny that she was not steeped in the life of the country as was her great contemporary, and that she could not have written the incomparable passage in which Mrs. Poyser and life at her farmhouse are introduced to us. Plenty of life there! though this is the drowsiest time of the year, just before the hay-harvest; and it is the drowsiest time of the day too, for it is close upon three by th~e sun, and it is half past three by Mrs. Poysers handsome eigbt-day clock. But theres always a stronger sense of life when the sun is brilliant after rain; and now he is pouring down his beams and making sparks among the wet straw, and lighting up every patch of vivid green moss on the red tiles of the cow-shed, and turning even the muddy water that is hurrying along the channel to the drain into a mirror for the yellow- billed ducks, who are seizing the oppor- tunity of getting a drink with as much body in it as possible. There is quite a concert of noises; the great bull-dog, chained abainst the stables, is thrown into furious exasperation by the unwary approach of a cock too near the mouth of his kennel, and sends forth a thundering hark which is answered by two fox- hounds shut up in the opposite cow-house; the old top-knotted hens, scratchinb with Iheir chicks among the straw, set up a sympathetic croaking as ~he discomfited cock joins them; a sow with her brood all very muddy at the legs, ~tnd curled as to the tail, throws in some deep staccato notes; our friends the calves are bleating from the same home croft; and, under all, a fine ear discerns the continuous hum of human voices Everything was looking at its bri~htest at this mo- ment, for the sun shone right on the pew- ter dishes, and from their reflecting sur- faces pleasant jets of light were thrown on mellow oak and bri~,ht brass; and on a still pleasanter object than these; for some of the rays fell on Dinahs finely nioulded cheek, and lit up her pale red hair to auburn, as she bent over the heavy household linen which ~he was mendin~ for her aunt. No scene could have been more peaceful; if Mrs. Poyser, who was ironing a few things that still remained from the Mondays wash, had not been making frequent clinkin,~ with her iron. and moving to and fro whenever she wanted it to cool; carrying the keen ~lance of her blue-grey eye from the kitchen to the dairy. where Hetty was making up the butter, and from tbe dairy 46 Mrs. Oli~phant and her Rivals. to the back-kitchen, where Nancy was taking the pies out of the oven. Do not suppose, however, that Mrs. Poyser was elderly or shrewish in her appearance; she was a good-looking woman, not more than eight-and-thirty, of fair complexion and sandy hair, well-shapen, light-footed; the most conspicuous article in her attire was an ample, checkered linen apron, which al- most covered her skirt; and nothing could be plainer or less noticeable than her cap and gown, for there was no weakness of which she was less tolerant than feminine vanity, and the preference of ornament to utility. The family likeness between her and her niece, Dinah Morris, with the contrast between her keenness and Dinahs seraphic gentleness of expression, might have served a painter as an excel- lent suggestion for a Martha and Mary. No apology is needed for quoting this passage. It is the high-water mark of George Eliots literary work; it is, per- haps, the high-water mark of the graphic in British prose fiction. Mrs. Oliphant could not have written such a passage, or even come near it. And vet, for the purposes of comparison I quote the opening sentences of The Perpetual Curate: Carlingford is, as is well known, essen- tially a quiet place. There is no trade in the town, properly so called. To be sure, there are two or three small counting- houses at the other end of George Street, in that ambitious pile called Gresham Chambers; but the owners of these places live, as a general rule, in villas either de- tached or semi-detached in the North-end, the new quarter, which, as everybody knows, is a region totally unrepresented in society. In Carlingford proper, there is 110 trade, no manufactures, not anything in particular, except very pleasant parties and a superior class of peoplea very su- perior class of people, indeed, to anything one expects to meet with in a country town, which is not even a county town, nor the seat of any particular interest. It is the boast of the place that it has no particular interestnot even a public school. For no reason in the world but because they like it, have so many nice people collected together in those pretty houses in Grange Lane, which is of course a very much higher tribute to the town 47 than if any special inducement had led them there. But in every community some centre of life is necessary. This point, round which everything centres, is, in Carlingford, found in the clergy. They are the administrators of the common- wealth, the only people who have defined and compulsory duties to give a sharp out- line to life. Somehow this touch of neces- sity and business seems needful even in the most refined society; a man who is obliged to be somewhere at a certain time, and whose public duties are not volunteer proceedings but indispensable work, has a certain position of command among a leis- urely and unoccupied community, not to say that it is a public boon to have some one whom everybody knows and can talk of. The minister in Salem Chapol was everything to his little world. That re- spectable connection would not have hung together half so closely but for this per- petual subject of discussion, criticism, and patronage; and to compare great things with small, society in Carlingford recog- nized in some degree the same human want. An enterprising or non-enterpris- ing rector made all the difference in the world in Grange Lane; and in the absence of a rector that counted for anything (and poor Mr. Proctor was of no earthly use, as everybody knows), it followed, as a natural consequence, that a great deal of the interest and influence of the posi- tion fell into the hands of the curate of St. Roques. The dissimilarity between these two passages is ~almost painfully obvious The one is instinctwith the freedom and largeness of the country, which con- demns to the simplest of lives, but pet- mits of the richest of dreams. The other is full of the pettiness of the small townthat pettiness which crushes the soul, paralyzes the imagi- nation, and dwarfs ambition. That George Eliot realized this pettiness is clear enough from her Middlemarch, but she so shrank from it that she was incapable of doing justice to it; her characters soar above it. Mrs. Oil- phant grasped the realities of Caning- ford as George Eliot never grasped the realities of Middlemarch. But she was something more than a realistor per- haps it would be more accurate to say 48 Mrs. Oliph ant that she was a realist in the larger and truer sense. In the matter of fact the boldly matter of factpassage that I have quoted, she brings these ideals on the scene at once. They are concen- trated in the clergy, whose mission, of course, it is to keep the flag of simple yet eternal truth flying aboveyet not too much abovethe heads of their flocks. In this lie the supreme charm and the true historical value of Salem Chapel, which, if not the most read- able of The Chroniclesthat distinc- tion belongs to Miss Marjoribanks is the truest to life. The vitality of this social sketch is to be found not in that delightful but not perfectly satisfactory vision, Lady Western, in the myste- rious and too melodramatic Mrs. ill- yard, or in Adelaide Tufton, pale spec- tator of a life with which she had noth- ing to do, but in the Tozers. They are idain to vulgarity in their lives arid their ideals. The blushing Phoebe is a trifle too willing to fall into the arms of Mr. Vincent; Mrs. Tozer is a trific too ready to throw her there. Then look at the deacon himself, as he sits in his little parlor on an October night looking over his greasy books, one of which lay open upon a little writing- desk, where a bundle of smaller ones, Li red leather, with Tozer, Cheese- monger, stamped upon them in gilt hAters, lay waiting Phoebes arrival to be made up. Trollope, or even Thackeray, could not have made a more complete exposure of what Mat- thew Arnold has termed The hideous- ness and immense ennui of dissent, than in this dialogue between Tozer and poor Vincent: Three more pews applied for this morningfifteen shillings in all, said Mr. Tozer, thats what I call satisfactory, that is. We mustnt let the steam go downnot on no account. You keep well at them of Sundays, Mr. Vincent, and trust to the managers, sir, to keep em up to their dooty. Me and Mr. Tufton was consulting the other day. He says as we oughtnt to spare you, and you oughtnt to spare yourself. There hasnt been such and her Rivals. and you keep up as youre doing, I see no reason why we shouldnt be able to put another fifty to the salary next year.~~ Oh! said poor Vincent, with a miser- able face. He had been rather pleased to hear about the opening, but this matter- of-fact encouragement and stimulus threw him back into dismay and disgust. Yes, said the deacon, though I wouldnt advise you, as a young man set- tin out in life, to calculate upon it, yet we all think it more than likely; but if you was to ask my advice, Id say to give it em a little more plainmeaning the church folks. Its expected of a new man. Id touch em up in the State Church line, Mr. Vincent, if I was you. Give us a coorse upon the anomalies and that sort of thingthe bishops in their palaces, and the fisherman as was the start of it all; theres a deal to be done in that way. It always tells; and my opin- ion is as you might secure the most part of the young men and thinkers, and them as can see whats what, if you lay it on pretty strong. Not, added the deacon, remembering in time to add that neces- sary salve to the conscience, not as I would have you neglect whats more un- portant; hut after all, what is more important, Mr. Vincent, than freedom of opinion and choosing your own religious teacher? You cant put Gospel truth in a man s mind till youve freed him out of them bonds. It stands to reason, as long as he believes just what hes told, and has it all made out for h liii the very words hes to pray, there may be feelin, sir, but there cant be no spiritual understandin in that man. And again: I am very partial to your style, Mr. Vincent; theres just one thing Id like to observe, sir, if youll excuse inc. Id give em a coorse; theres nothing takes like a coorse in our connection. Whether its on a chapter or a book of Scripture, or on a pertikiar doctrine, Id make a pint of giving em a coorse if it was me. There was Mr. Bailey of Parsons Green, as was so l)ol)ular before he married, he had a historical coorse in the evenings, and a coorse upon the eighth of Romans in the morning; and it was astonishing to see how they took. an opening not in our connection for fif- teen years. We all look to you to go into There is no question whatever as to it, Mr. ~mcent. If all goes as I expect, the relentless cleverness of all this. Mrs. Oliphant and her Rivals. Had Mrs. Oliphants object been not to draw a picture of a particular phase of life in Carlingford, but to present whot would have been regarded as a clever caricature of the more ignoble features of nonconformity, she. could not have succeeded better. But she would have been untrue to life and disloyal to her art, had she not reproduced the simple goodness that shines through and re- deems the vulgaritywhich is on the whole objective rather than subjective of the Tozers. Phcebe thinks none the worse of Mr. Vincent because her charms fail to adequately impress him. and even her mother bears no malice. As for Tozer. he transcends himself in that truly masterly oration in which be not only defends Mr. Vincent against the foes of his own household who have gossipped about and watched and suspected him until he finds his position intolerable, but reveals him self as the most sarcastic critic ot chapel weaknesses. Its the way of some folks in our con- nection, ladies and gentlemen; a minister ala t to be allowed to go on building up a chapel and making hisseif useful in the world. He aint to be left alone to do his dooty as his best friends approve. Hes to be took down out of his pulpit, and took to pieces behind his back, and made a talk and a scandal of to the whole con- nection. Its not his preaching as hes judged by, nor his dooty to the sick and dyl a, nor any of them things as he was called to be pastor for; but its if hes seen going to one house more nor another, or if he calls often enough on this one or tother, and goes to all the tea-drinkings. Mrs. Oliphant here reveals herself as a realist in a true and complete sense. She does ample justice to the weak- nesses of Dissent in Salem Chapel, just as she does ample justice to the po~- sibly less angular and obtrusive, but equally indubitable weaknesses of An- glicanism. But she also reproduces without unduly emphasizing the un- questionable if conventional goodness which atones for and redeems these weaknesses. The sore-tried Went- worth, the perplexed Morgan, and the embarrassed Proctor, are invariably LIVING AGE. VOL. XVII. 564 equal to the duty, even to the duty of self-effacement, that lies nearest to them, and are as real, if not quite as cnjoyable, as Tozer. Beyond all question, the best, or at all events most emphatically classical work of Mrs. Oliphant, is to he found in her Chronicles of Carlingford. They give the best pictures of English clericalized society that have ever been drawn. For although Bishop and Mrs. Prowdie in the rival Chronicles of Barset are as good photographs, and in every way as real as tile Tozers, a tire of genuine religious conviction is to he found in the best of Mrs. Oil- phants characters which was foreign to Trollopes purpose and decidedly alien to his art. But there is also in them a fire of a totally different kind the fire of youth, of strong will, of honest indignation, of what we rather helplessly style character. Mr. Wentworth in The Perpetual Curate and Mr. Vincent in Salem Chapelj are quite as capable of ~,etting into healthy temper as Mr. Tozer. Take Nettle, the pretty, piquant Australian who figures in The Doctors Family, which is perhaps the most finished of all the Carlingford Chronicles. She is in a flame all over the stage, and It is impossible not to sympathize alike with her contempt for her weak and grumbling sister and with her anger at that sisters hopelessly indolent and self-indulgent husband. it is her spirit which makes her a better wife for Ed- ward Rider than Lucy Wodehouse, or even the incomparable Lucilla Marjori- banks herself. I say incomparable advisedly, for I am quite certain that in the whole range not only of Mrs. Oliphants works but of the British fic- tion of two generations, there is not a closer approach to the perfect woman nobly planned than Miss Marjori- banks. In some of her qualities, and in certain even of the possibilities open to her, she recalls Mrs. Humphrey Wards Marcella. But how pale and unsatisfactory and in every way in- effectual is the creation of the younger artist beside that of the elder and earlier! No doubt Lulias most ardent 49 .50 male admirers must feel some disav- pointment that in the end it is to be Tom after all, and that she who might have done ever so much better, should not only be in the end married to. but be in a sense dependent on her cousin. But there is at least poetic justice in the final arran~ements of her life which take her from Carlingford to Marchbank:- It was but the natural culmiaation of her career that transferred her from the town to the couatry, and held out to her the glorious task of serving her genera- tion in a twofold way, among the poor and among the rich. If a momentary sigh for Grange Lane, which was about to lose her, breathed from her lips, it was sweetened by a smile of satisfaction for the country which was about to gain her. The lighter preface of life was past, and Lucilla had the comfort of feeling that its course had been full of benefit to her fellow-creatures; and now a larger sphere opened hefore her feet, and Miss Marjori- b~inks felt that the arrangements of Providence were on the whole full of dis- criinination, and all was best, and she had not lived in vain. The time is not far distant, if indeed it has not already arrived, when the historian of this country who takes a uenuine and not a merely superficial interest in the sociological department of his subject, will seek in novels as in newspapersand novels and news- papers between them constitute litera- ture in the eyes of more than a moiety of the British populationfor a picture of the times of which he treats. In he eyes of such a historian books like the Chronicles of Carlingford series are of greater value than those of Thomas Hardy and George Meredith. Boili the world of Thomas Hardy and the world of George Meredith are brighter and fairer than Mrs. Oliphants; they are inhabited by diviner women and more capable, or at least (to use a now hopelessly vulgarized phrase) more Napoleonic men. She has not given us a Bathsheba Everdene or a Lue~ Feverel, a Clym Yeohright or the con- queror of Diana of the Crossways. But her world is peopled with real men and women, those folk whose hearts may be in Philistia, and who may be got-- erned not by ideas but by traditions to which time has given a certain conse- cration, but who perform nine-tenths of the work of the world. Re~arded from the standpoint of reality and com- prehensiveness, Mrs. Oliphants works will constitute a valuable mine to the sociologist in search of genuinely hti- man documents, a mine to whivii nothing, not even the stories of An- thony Trollope, one of her earlier con- temporaries, can he compared. Her mantle seems to have fallen on Mr. Norris, in whose best work~ modern seaside and holiday life is presented with a fidelity to truth that is not diminished by its association with gently Thackerayan satire. But Mr. Norris has not yet migrated from Toe quay to Carlingford; lie has yet pro- duced a Tozer. But Mrs. Oliphant was a Scots- woman, and an intensely patriotic Scotswoman of that old fashioned con servativein regards religious and moral questions eminently conservative type which is generally associated less with the moist and fervid West than with the bracing and biting East, and above all with the Kinbdom of Fife. Many of her best storiestoo many indeed to be mentioneddeal with various phases of Scot~h life. What then is her position among Scotch novelists? In this case, as in that of her position among delineators of English life, it is necessary to indi- cate her limitations by contrasting her with those writers who will naturally be mentioned in the same breath with her. Some of her best Scotch types are suggestive of Gait. Her Margaret Maitland, which many critics regard as the greatest of her purely Scotch stories, is admittedly an imitation of the work and method of the author of The Ayrshire Le~.atees and The En- tail, and, as a represent~ tion of the period when Non-Intrusion feeling ran high, it is admirable. But neither Mrs. Oliphant nor any other writer of Scotch ficton, not even Sir Walter him- self, has immortalized certain out- Mrs. Oli~phant and her Rivah.. Mrs. Oliphant and her Rivals. standing features in our national char- actor as Gait has done, has given us such a portrait of the worldly, but neither indolent nor ungenial Scotch minister of the old school as Mr. Bal- whidder, or has reproduced municinal selfishness tempered by good nature SO well as in Provost Pawkie, or has so effectually represented the bright silo of Sir Pertinax Macsycophancy as in Sir Andrew Wyllie. Mrs. Oliphant has drawn many delightful Scotch gentle- women, although I agree with a writer in Blaclcwoods Magazine that her Scorch servants are conventional; but she had not Miss Ferriers perfect knowledge of the old Scotsnot merely Scottish much less Scotchlady of quality and character. Her world is a much larger one than Mr. Blacks; but she never wrote such an exquisite idyll in the true sense, as A Daughter of Iledi. She has not what Mrs. Ward ha termed the golden art of Mr. Steven- son. As Sir Walter was often slov- enly, she was often dowdy, in style. She has not Mr. Barries miraculous insight into that hereditary saintliness which is to be found in the descendants of those on whom Calvinism has held the strong hand of its purity; she has neither the humor nor the pathos of A Window in Thrums. It must be al- lowed also that some of her most am- bitious Scotch stories are but ambiticu~ failures. A number of her books, of which The Railway Man and his Children is perhaps the latest, but is not quite the worst, are simply to be regarded as conclusive evidence that Mrs. Oliphant perceived that middle Scotch life as it is lived in those crowded modern cities of which Glas- gow is at once the model and flagrant example, is a field that has yet to be worked by the novelist, and that she was incapable of working it. But when all this has been conceded, it must also be said of Mrs. Oliphant, if regard be had at once to the range of her subjects, to the reality of her char- acters, and to her artistic loyalty to the ideas which she found underlying the mere moral weaknesses of the men and women she has introduced the pub- lic to, that she is the greatest Scotti~Ii novelist that has appeared since the death of Scott. She may not have added an Alan Breck or a Master of Ballantrac, a Tammas I1ag~art or a Hendry MQuhumpha, or even a Whaup to the gallery of Scottish char- acter in fiction. But her lairds, he~ ministersthough she has never oro- duced quite so good and finished a sketch as Ian Maclarens Dr. Davidson of Drumtochtyher self-made men, her wives and mothers quite as devoted as George Eliots Mrs. Amos Barton, but endowed with a healthy amount of ftemper, her innumerable girls, at once sweet and spirited, who are in training to take the places of these wives and mothers, represent Scottish life in its breadth and character in its depth with a completeness which cannot be claimed for any other writer during the last fifty years. Mrs. Oliphant had none of the cower possessed both by Mr. Barrie and Mr. Stevenson, of realizing an episode or a character in a phrase. She required elbow-room. But when she perlnitte(t herself scope she could reproduce the angularities, the contradictions, above all the almost Pagan thrawuness ol the best Scottish characters in all their perfection. Take the following- -it is impossible to do justice to Mrs. Oil- phant except by quotationfrom one of her shorter and least pretentious stories. Young John Rintoul brings tbe news of the drowning of his father to his home circle: The sioops gone down atween this and St. Minans; theyve never been heaid tell of in Anster. I found a bit of the wreck on the shoreye a mind it; and theres no anither token of them, man or boat, except at the bottom o the sea! Johns hoarse breathless whisper was broken by a screamit was but Euphie, who had in this intimation only a great shock, but scarcely any bereavement; and on his disengaged arm Ailie Rintoul laid a savage grasp, gripping him like a tiger Say its a leesay its a story youve made-and Ill no curse ye, John Rin- toni! But Kirsteen Beatoun said not a word. 51 52 Viler eyes turned upon her son with a vacant stare, and her fingers kept open- ing and shutting with a strange idiotic motion; then, suddenly starting, she lifted up her hands, and bent her cower- ing head under their shadow, pressing her finders over the eyes which would not close. John made no answer to the fierce question of his nuntsaid nothing to soothe the terror of Euphie; his whole attention was given to his mother. There was a solemn pausefor even Ailie did not venture to speak now, till the wife and mother, doubly bereaved, had wakened from her stuporand noth- ing but the low moans and sobs of Euphie disturbed the silence. It was but mo- mentary, for they woke the stunned heart of Kirsteen, and roused her to know her grief. Comfort the bit poor thing, John comfort her, said his mother, suddenly; for she has her prop and her staff left to her, and has never heard the foot of deadly sorrow a her days. The auld man and Patiebaith ganea ganeI ken its trueIm assured in my mind its true; but Ive nae feeling ot, mannae feeling otna mair than cauld iron or stane. And with a pitiful smile quivering upon her lips, and her eye gleaming dry and tearless, Kirsteen turned to pace up and down the little apartment. Strangely different in the first effort of her scarcely less intense grief, Ailie Rintoul turned now fiercely upon John: Have ye nae mair proof but this? A wave might wrench away a companion- door that wouldna founder a sloopare ye gaun to be content with this, John Rintoul? Hes gane through as mony storms as theres grey hairs on his head and ilka ane of them is numbered. Am I to believe the Lord would forsake His am? I tell ye yere wrangyere a wrangIll never believe it. He may be driven out a hundred mile, or stranded on a desolate place, or tnen refuge, or fechtin on the sea; but ye needna tell me I kenI kenIll believe ye the Judg- inents to be the morn, afore I believe my brothers lost. Hot tears blinded Ailies eyes, and all the stiff sedateness of her mien had van- ished in the wild gestures with which these words hurried from her lips; she ~paused at length, worn out and trembling with feverish excitement. and turne(l to the window to look out on the sea. John, still more completely exhausted, and lost in the deep hopeless despondency which had now succeeded to the first impatience of grief, stood at the table silent and unre- sponsive still; and the slow, heavy foot- steps of Kirsteen Beatoun sounded through the room like a knell. And it was for this ye minded of the balms! Oh, John, my man, my man! and it was for this the Lord warned ye with a sight of them, and put dark words in your mouth, that I kent nae meaning to! No, Ailie; no lost: blessings on him where he is, where nae blessings fail! I never had dread nor doubt before, but put him freely in the Lords hand to come and gang at His good pleasureand he came like the day, and gaed like the night, as constant, serving his Maker. Hes won hame at lastand the Lord help me for a puir desolate creature, that am past ken- ning what my trouble is. Patie, too:, bairnsbairns, ye needna think me hard- hearted because I canna greetbut its a cauld, cauld, like the blast that cast our boat away.~~ And the poor widow leaned upon the wall, and struggled with some hard, dry, gasping sobs; but no tears came to soften the misery in her eyes. Agnes was cowering in a corner, like one who shrinks from a great blow; Euphie wept and lamented passionately and aloudshe felt the stroke so much the least of all. Here, as in the tragedy of the Mucklebackits, and what Arnold would have termed the intolerable pathos of the Kailyard, we have a revelation of Scotch humble life in its complexity, its strength, its inipo- tent resistance and final submission to the Divine will. Take, again, the fol- lowing very different passage from Kirsteen. Kirsteen Douglas, the daughter of Drumcarro, the savage West 1-lighiand laird who has been a slave-driver in the West Indies, an(1 who, in a moment of rage, has killed the young patrician Don Juan, whom he has found trying to persuade his youngest daughter to elope with bun, is sent for by him on his death-bed. to help him to buy a property adjoining his own, although she has dis~raied Mrs. Oliphant and her Rivals. him by becoming a mantua maker in London: Well, he said, with a slight appear- ance of embarrassment and a wave of his head, heres just an opportunity. I have ]LOt the means of my own self. I would just have to sit and grin in this corner, where a severe Providence has thrown me, and see it goto another of those damned Campbells, little doubt of that. What is it? she said. Kirsteen had lifted her head too, like a horse scenting the battle from afar. She had not her fathers hatred of his hereditary foes, but there was a fine strain of tradition in Kirsteens veins. Its just Rosscraigour own land, thats been in the Douglas name for hun- dreds of years, and out of it since at- tainder. I would be ready to depart in peace if I had it back. Kirsteens eyes flashed in response. If its possiblebut they will want a great sum for IRosscraig. Possible! he cried with furious im- patience. How dare ye beguile me with your offer, if its only to think of whats possible? I can do that mysel. Does one of your name condescend to a dirty trade, and serve women that are not fit to tie a Douglass shoe, and then come to me and talk of whats possible? If thats all, give up your mantua-making and your trad- ing thats a disgrace to your family, and come back and look after the house, which will set you better. Possible! he cried, the fire flying from his eyes and the foam from his mouth. For what do you de- mean yourselfand me to permit itif its no possible? He came to the end on a high note, with the sharpness of indig- nant passion in his voice. Kirsteen had followed every word with a kindling countenance, with responsive flame in her eyes. Ye speak justly, she said, with a little heaving of her breast. For them to whom its natural a little may suffice. But I that do it against na- ture am bound to a different end. She paused a little, thinking; then raised her head. It shall be possible, she said. He held out his thin and trembling fingers, which were like eagles claws. Your hand upon it, he cried. The hot clutch made Kirsteen start and shiver. He dropped her hand with an excited laugh. Thats the first bargain, he said, was ever made between father and 53 child to the fathers advantage~at least, in this house. And a lassand all my fine lads that I sent out for honor and for gain. He leant back on his pillows with feeble sobs of sound, the penalty of his excitement. Not for me, he said, not for me, though I would be the firstbut for the auld name, that was once so ,,reat. Kirsteen unfolded the paper tremu- lously, with tears lingering on her eye- lashes. Father, if ye will look here So away with your news and your fol- lies, he said roughly. You think much of your London town and your great world, as ye call it, but I think more of my forbears name and the lands they had, and to brin~ to confusion a false race, Kirsteen, he put out his hand again, and drew her close to the bedside, clutching her arm. Ill tell you a thing Ive told nobody. It was me that did it. I just took and threw him down the hun. Me an old man, him a young one, and as false as hell. He was like the serpent at that bairns lug; and I Just took him by the scruff of the neck. My hands never got the better of it, he added, thrusting her away suddenly, and looking at his right hand, blowing upon it as if to re- move the stiffness of the strain. Father! Kirsteen cried, with subdued horror, what was it you did? He chuckled with sounds of laughter that seemed to dislocate his throat. I took him by the scruff of the neckI never thought I would have had the strength. It w-as just passion. The Douglases have that in them; theyre wild when theyre roused. I took him by the scruff of the neck. He never made a stru~,gle. I know nothing more about it, if he was livin~ or dead. Ye killed him! cried Kirsteen with terror. Oh, its no possible! There ye are with your possibles again. Its just very possible when a mans bloods up. Hes not the first, he said, in a low tone, turning his face to the wall. He lay muttering there for some time words of which Kirsteen could only hear, the scruff of the neck, no strug- gle, its hurt my hand, though, till in the recoil from his excitement Drumcarro fell fast asleep and remembered no more. Here we have elemental passion~ - and elemental Scottish passionw;th a vengeance. That Mrs. Oliphant, so JJ~1,s. Ouiphant and her Rivals. Airs. Otiphant and her Rivals. fond of good-natured fathers and gentle hard-worked mothers as often as not with a tear in the eye should have given two such pictures of Scottish diabolism and moral decaden~ as Drumcarrowho is more real than Stevensons Master of Ballantrn~- an(I Lord Lindores, whose moral ruin it effected by his accession to an estate, is one of the most notable of her achievements, another evidence of what she might have done, had circum- stances allowed her to write but one- tenth of what she has written. Even as a Scotch novelist Mrs. Oliphant bad her limitations. One of these has been indicated by a critic who has written of her with personal knowledge and who says: That the whole bent of her opinion was Conservative is manifest enough, and her code of ethics was as old-fashioned as the Ten Command- ments. She was too wise to believe in panaceas for the distemperature of mankind, or to suppose that human nature could be revolutionized by the invention of a taking formula or the turning of a felicitous phrase. Mrs. Oliphants conservatism gi -es strength to a great number of her characters: the best of them are those she herself liked best, because they are in favor of the old order in morals and the con- di~ct of private life, if not in politics and the government of society. But it has also limited her range. A.s I have already said, she has not suc- (ceded in enteriug into the life of the Scottish bourgeoisie as it is to he found in the commercial cities. Probably she detested the vulgarity so commonly associated with that pursuit of wealth which is the leading aim of the wealth- ier section of such bourgeoisie. It is quite certain that for ~sthetic reasons she shrunk from entering into and re- producing the moral and physical squalor of the slums that are the pui- liens of wealth in cities. And although she admired and defended Burns. it may be doubted whether her attitude towards the Scottish peasantry was not to some extent that of kindly patrorn. age rather than of thorough-going sym- pathy. Such of them as respect and follow their betters, as walk in the old paths of decorum and devoutness, she admires and has drawn with a loving as well as artistic hand. But she could not understand, much less approve, of latter-day democratic aspi- rations. She had an impatient horror of that unlovely~ aspect of Scottish vil- lage life which is best known to mem- bers of Kirk Sessions. She was a real- ist, but there are depths of reality which she refused even to attempt to fathom, to her own loss and her pub- lics. For she thus failed to discover that soul of goodness which is to be found in the most squalid environment. The leading defects of Mrs. Oliphant as a novelist flow very readily indeed off tongue and pen. She was not a great stylist in any sense of that much abused word. She could not write like Stevenson, or even like Mrs. Humphrey Ward at her best, as in Robert Elsmere. She was not a puissant genius like Dickens. She had not Thackerays insight into the seamy side of character. As a contriver of plots and strong situations she was hopelessly behind many even among her second-rate contemporaries, like Miss Braddon and Wilkie Collins; in- deed, it is so much to the credit of Mrs. Oliphant that she is popular in spite of her inability to make a plot. To her was not entrusted, as to Mr. Hardy and Mr. Meredith, the divine Shakes- pearian mission of portraying bein~s that never lived on earth, but will live forever. Yet when this is conceded, it must also be conceded that for variety of character and within certain limits clearly defined by the range both of her experiences and her sym- pathies, for fidelity to fact, she is sur- passed by none of her contemporaries. She is the first of Scottish romancists since Scott. Among British novelisis of the Victorian era, she occupies the first place in the second rank; or, if some one must be bracketed equal with her, it is Anthony Trollope. Above all things she appears in her life, as in her work, a good and infi- nitely industrious woman, performing hard work unrepiningly under very 54 Louey. unfavorable circumstances, and trying to make the world around her brighter and better because bri~hter. AN OLD PERSONAL FRIEND. LOUFY. From Temple Bar. (A SKETCh.) A soul tliat was starving in darkness. Up and down the steep monotonous road, three times a day, summer and winter, through storm and sunlight, from the distant mine to the coal-yard in the towntramping sulkily along by the side of the stumbling, panting, over- laden donkeyand this is life!life, or at least the existence by that name, as it fell to the lot of Louisa BlackBlack Louey, as she was commonly called, even in the dingy, disreputable quarter where she made her home. She might have been seventeen or eighteen years of age, her figure prema- turely bent with stooping to load the ramshackled old cart, her gait a sort of slouching swing, her face, to which the mere sightliness of youth seemed wanting, at once stony and defiant, bold and expressionless. Not a charm- ing portrait by any means, and yet true to the life. And every inch of her was grimed with coal-dust, from the bat- teree old hat that was flung on the tan- gled, unsightly mat of hair, to the shambling old boots, at least three sizes too big for her, revealing through their cracks glimpses of stockings whhz~h had once been white, but which were now a fashionable black of the deepest dye. Black the tattered shawl round her neck, black the ragged gown that seemed to perpetuate its existence from year to year, never any different in shape, or color, or general dilapidation. It was only in the coarse dirty aprons, that for some strange reason she al- ways wore (though the dress beneath them was invariably in too hopeless a state to need any protection), that Louey ever made any change in her attire. Sometimes it was a rough can- vas that she pinned round her, some- 55 times a striped calico or print, but whatever it was it was always dimmed to the same hue as everything else about her. No one had ever seen her with anything clean on, not even on Sundays. The coal-dust had got into everything into her hair, into her skin, so that it was hopeless to conjecture what the original complexion of either might have been. Into her eyes, darkening their expression to a dull yet sullen vacancy. Nay, into the girls very soul it seemed, to judge from the rough lan- guage with which she greeted the world in general, and her four-footed companion in particular. In the winter months, as she trudged along through the mud and snow, an old pilot coat wrapped round her, and a boys cloth cap on her head, it was difficult to tell whether she were man or woman; and it needed only the short clay pipe, without Which your true Black Countryman cannot endure ex- istence, to match her with the roughest of the lads and men that frequented the mine. Indeed, in some respects, some of them might have contrasted favor- ably with her for gentleness, when she was in one of her worst moods. There was something much more human about Peter the donkey. Years of hard work, short commons, and ill- treatment had not altogether broken his spirit. His patient eyes still looked out on the world with a wistful appeal for kindness; and a rough caress from one of the children, an unexpected car- rot, or the joy of a specially juicy thistle, were quite enough to make him in high spirits, and he would rattle along with the empty cart quite gaily, in spite of his owners tugs and remon- strances at his general pig-headed- aess for running when there was no need, and lagging behind when there was work to be done. It was one of the dark features in this dark and stunted nature that, although they had run in harness together year after year, the girl never softened to her furry companion. She fed him, indeed, but that was that he might do his work, but she never gave him a word of kind- 56 Louey. ness. Any pat or stroke he got was never from her, and if by chance he would put his soft nose and rub against her hand, he might think himself lucky if it was not struck aside with an angry blow. Such was our heroine; a problem, a sorrow, to every thoughtful soul that crossed her path. A puzzle, even, to the rough crew among whom her lot was castso greatly did her life exaggerate the sordid, narrow, joyless gloom that marked so much of their own existence. Who, or what she was, or where she came from, no one exactly knew. She had come among them a child of about twelve years old, and had hired herself out to one of the smaller coal-dealers of the town, for whom she still worked, though now on more equal terms, for the donkey was her own, bought with her earnings, and it was even rumored that some day she meant to set up in business for herself. With these people she lodged, but Joseph Maloney and his wife could have told you nothing more about her than their neighbors. Of her past life she never spoke, and invariably an- swered to any inquiry in the same formula: Dont remember. Child- hood? Never was a child that I recol- lect; guess I was born old. And, in- deed, those who were curious enough to question her closely, generally came to the conclusion that the girls mind was really as blank as her face, and that, as she said, she had never known nothing different, or else that the dull round of the years had effaced all mem- ory of it. Except for her language, which was rather the current coin of the place in which she lived than any conscious acquisition of evil, there was nothing that could be called positively bad in Black Louey. She was honest, her employer said, and she was cer- tainly hardworking, but apart from these qualities she seemed a mere au- tomaton. She made no friends, talked but little, laughed less, and went about her duties in apathetic indifference to all that went on around her. The big lads of Street never thoug~ht of courting Black Loney. Not that she was worse looking, scarcely un- tidier than her girl companions, but there was something about her that kept them at arms length, and made them feel that, in her own phrase, she must be let to go her own road. And her own road she went, unshared by any for love or hate. No tired mother ever asked her to catch hold of the baby, while she rested for a mo- inent, and none of the little children hun~ round her, or came to her to be comforted or played with. The girls about her never asked Loueys advice as to some bit of finery, or to settle the knotty point as to whether it was luck- ier to be married at Easter or Whit- sun. The roug~h men and women gave her a wide berth, though she never quarrelled with any of them. She never gossipped, never grumbled, asked and gave sympathy to none, and lived through her days, as it seemed, a merely mechanical existence, without a thought or a hope beyond, without a wish or an emotion of any kind, until one could not but wonder whether, even in the matter of soul, Peter the donkey had not the best of it. Had she a soul at all? or had it some- how been mysteriously left out of her? Had she a hearta mindanything to be worked on? Had she ever been young?would she ever grow old? With such questions as these the fair- haired young curate of St. Nicholass found himself assailed as he sat on the edge of a vegetable barrow one summer evening in Street, and attempted the difficult, nay, almost impossible, task of getting into conversation with Black Loney, who, her days work over, was lounging outside Maloneys door, staring vacantly into space, and paying no heed to the youn,~ man Whatever. He was new to his work and very much in earnest. He had seen this girl toiling about the roads, and she had given him a severe mental shock, al- though he was ~rowing but too sadly used to be brought face to face with sorrow, and poverty, and sin. It was the non-livingness of the girl that so appalled him, and the more he saw of her the more be realized it. Could she Louey. feel? Had she ever felt anything, mental or otherwise? Could that stolid face ever change in expression? Surely no mask ever so completely concealed the maskers features as those stony eyes of hers the soul within. But was there a soul within? He was trying his hardest to-night to draw her out, but it seemed as hopeless as ever. Yours must be a hard life in winter, he said, by way of saying something. Happen it is! she rejoined curtly. But in summer days like this its better. And then feeling he was not progressing brilliantly, he added hastily: Dont you enjoy the sunshine? Have you ever thought what a clean thing sunshine is, even in this black place ? No. For he paused as if expecting an answer. Havent you? I should have thought in work like yours And then, afraid of touching on too delicate ground, he changed the subject, hur- riedly observing: Thats a nice donkey of yours. It is your own, isnt it? Yes. And I suppose youre quite fond of him? No. W~ell, I should have thought you would be, as he belongs to you; shares all your work, and all that sort of thing. Fond of a beast! A vague sense of surprise and contempt crossed the girls mind, but the face revealed nothing, so he tried again. Hes a nice little fellow, too, isnt he? ~Hes not worse than the rest, was the dull rejoinder. Perhaps you dont care for animals ? continued the young man politely. You are fonder, no doubt, of people? How he did harp on the same string, this strange young parson! What did he want sitting there and jawing about fondness and such rubbish? Louey felt as if she must finish him off somehow. I never was fond of nothing nor no one, she said conclusively. 57 What! not even of your mother ? ex- claimed her hearer. Never had one that I knows on. nor father neither. But you must have loved someone, sometime. Not I! Look here, parson, bow dye do it? Was there just a ~leam of inquiry in the dull eyes? A ~reat rush of com- passion filled the young fellows heart, he left off making conversation, and began to speak of deeper things, trying to put into simple words what was to him the meaning of lifethe loving and being lovedthe Divine and human love, the one deathless thing in a dying world. God, Christ, heavenwhat were they but meaningless phrases! Of what pos- sible concern were they of hers! I dont drink, master, she remarke(l, as the young man paused, out of breath. He stared in amazement, as well be might. Yo talk like the Salvation folk, when they wants to keep the men from the public-house. They be the same words, but yo neednt talk so to me, I want none of it. Francis Clifford stared again, still more sick at heart. Was it only to this the Sacred Name had comea thing to scare men with! But, Louey, he said pleadingly, you do know something about God ? Ive heard on Him, but I never see Him nowhere. But you know that He made you.~ Twant much to do! Again there was an awkward silence, and then the street being by this time nearly deserted, save for a child or two crawling in the gutter, the young man began again. This time he told the marvellous Old, old Story,painting with such simple skill as he might the great mystery of Divine lovethe story of the Cross and Resurrectionthe Love that loved us unto death. Not a quiver of emotion, not a glance of interest even, passed over the gloomy face opposite to him. Only when he had finished the girl said sullenly: Yes, Ive heard it before; maybe its Louey. true, maybe it isnt, but I didnt want Him to go for to do it. I dont seek to be obliged to no one. Yo mean it well, master, and I suppose its parsons work, as coals is mine. Tis well enough for the likes of you, and it makes a pretty talebut it isnt nothing to me. And then, as if determined to have no more preaching that night, she rose quickly and went into the house, and the curate too rose an0 went his way sadly discouraged. Is it nothing to you, all ye who pass by? A drunken man reeled across his path as he went, a little child picked up a heavy stone and flung it at another, a crowd was gathering at the end of the street where two women were fighting. He had seen it all before fifty times, but to-night it struck him with a fresh pain and horror. It was nothing to them, this brawling half-savage crew was it any wonder it was nothing to her, this girl who had never caught a glimpse of anything beyond! There were decent people here and there among them, he knew, here and there instances of courage and patience and devotion that struck the darkness like shafts of sunlight, redeeming and puri- fying the wilderness of these close courts and alleys; but to-night it was the blackest side of things that pressed upon him. Born and bred in it, home- less, kinless, untaught, after all was it any marvel that to this girl all the mys- tery of being, all Gods work in her cre- ation, preservation, and redemption. should seem but as an idle tale that didnt amount to much? And then, as he could do nothing elsc tor her, had been able to do nothing. he said a prayer for her as he went his way, more than ever eager to be about his Masters business, and more than ever humbled and burdened wno a sense of his own inefficiency. So that if he had done nothing fo~ her, she had done something for him, .nnd his prayer returned with blessing into his own bosom. But was it nothing? Nothing that he or she knew; yet it was the first time that any one that she could rcmembei had ever shown a person~.l interest in her. Sunday-schools, clergy-folk, mis- sion-teachers, she had given them a wide berth even as a child. But this man had begun with herself, not her soul, and she had a vague sense [Pat he had spoken just as courteously as he would to any of the fine ladies who went to hear him of a Sunday. She found herself thinking of him as she trudged along by her cart next dayif the vague, shadowy images flitting dis- connectedly through her brain can be called thought. What a lot of nonsense he had talked, to be sure, and yet he seemed to think it had as much to do with her as with him! A fine sight she would be in the heavenly streets with her black face and grimy clothes, fit to scare the angels, if there were any! Twas well enough for the likes of him, with his white hands and fine manners and soft voice, but how would he like it if he had to sit next to her in the sing- ing rows that the Army man talked of. And a very grim smile passed across her face at the utter folly of it. Yet there was a sense of pain, a dawn- ing rebellion at the incongruity, under her mirth, that was in itself a hopeful sign. The first faint quiver of a life that might grow and strengthen, or go out again, leaving the deadness more complete than before. But it was life. Another time she found herself pon- dering in the same confused way over what he had said of the nobleness of living and the beauty of love. To eat, to sleep, to work, to live out so many days and months and years, and then to die and be buried out of sight, and the whole thing over and done with. What was there so very fine in all this; and as for love, who had ever loved her, and what was there that was worth loving? The man was clean daft, for he had talked of being fond of the donkey! An obstinate, ill-mannered, slip-footed. senseless beast of a donkey! it was cer- tain he must be haif-witted to think of such a thing! Yet more by an instinct, as it were, than by any conscious process of logic. she began about this time to soften somewhat towards the offending Peter Louey. to use her heavy stick less frequently; and if she made up for it by a double amount of forcible language, hard words, as that sagacious animal joy- fully remarked to himself, break no bones! Surely the leaven was working, if as yet there was little to show for it. And although, perhaps, it was the kind tone, the gentle manner of the young preacher rather than the mighty truth he tried to teach that had had the effect on her. yet there was a difference some- where; something in that frozen nature was stirring, for good or ill. The neighbors saw no alteration in Black Loueyshe was just as black, as rough in manner, and surly of speech as ever. The curate himself, as he came across her from time to time and had his little one-sided talk, could not see that he was making the least headway, and always returned foiled and baffled and blaming himself for his own impo- tence, for this strange, anomalous, stunted life seemed to appeal to him unconsciously with a great cry for help help he knew not how to give. And the girl herself knew nothing of dny change; how should she know that this vague unrest, these dim floating thoughts, this odd pain that would come into her heart when the day was unusu- ally bright or unusuahy wretched, this strange sense of dissatisfactionhow should she guess that the Spirit was striving with her spiritthat under- neath these guises a soul was struggling to be born, to fight its way through the closed-up avenues clogged with disuse and grimed with the dust and soil of life! Only Peter the donkey could have told something; Peter and a miserable little cripple child about the mine. not all there, so people said, with whoni about this time Loney began to share her midday meal, and otherwise in her rough way to befriend. It was a sultry August afternoon, and the girl as she tramped along by the laden cart felt unusually dull and heavy, and, to use her own expression, in the dumps. It was a new thing to her to be in either good or bad spirits, hnd it made her feel cross. As she drew 59 near the busy High Street her eyes were mechanically attracted by a little child of four or tire who was trying to cross the crowded thoroughfare. She knew it well l)y sight, for it belonged to one of the few decent couples in Street. It had evidently strayed far from home, and was getting frightened and bewildered in the strange surround- ings. It went a few steps, and then hesitated and drew back. How it do dawdle! thought the girl, as she marked it from a distance; if one of them plagney steam-cars come along it would be a near thing if it got over! As the thought crossed her mind she heard the shrill sharp whistle, and then she saw the great iron monster come tearing down the sharp incline. The child had got into the middle of the road, and then it stopped paralyzed with fright. The conductor evidently did not see it, for the machine caine sweeping on at full speed. Run, run! screamed a woman from an upper win- dow, but the little thing was too terri- fied to hear. And the mother loved it! She had lost two children lately, and Louey had heard her say that she should have gofle mad but for this little one! A good runner might catch it up in time, but at an awful risk! Quick as a lightning flash the thought rushed through her brain. Just as well as not, she cried half aloud, and then she sprang forward. A moment more and it would have been too late for both; even as it was, as with one strong hand she flung the child clear of the rails and leapt aside herself, her gown got en- tangled in the heavy wheels, and she was thrown violently down and dragged along the ground for some dis- tance before the engine could be stopped. Just one moment of swift aw- ful agony, and then a great cloud of unconsciousness swept over and cov- ered her, and she knew no more. Slowly, painfully, uncertainly, now floating as it were on the waves of consciousness, now struggling against the overwhelming billows, the soul of Louisa Black fought its way back into the shattered body, and looked out once more for a little space upon the world. 60 When she came to herself she was ly- ing in a clean white bed in a stran~e narrow room, and with an awful sense of helplessness in all her strong young limbs. Everything around her was very cool and still and clean. A gentle, friendly-looking woman in a spotless cap and apron was smoothing her pil- lows, and a ,,roup of gentlemen were standing at the foot of the bed. Then she knew that she was in the hospital, and with the quick instinct of the dying she read in those grave faces her sen- teace. They could do nothing for her, those clever, busy men. All their skill would not avail to set the fatal mischief to spine and brain aright. They could but give her this clean still place to die in, smooth perhaps a little the passage through the silent valley, and secure for her in her hour of need the tender care that would not be the less sympa- thetic that it was business-like and practical. This and no more could they do for her, and as she looked at them with startled eyes, she understood it, and turned her face wearily away. Well, after all, what did it matter? Who would care ?and therein came the sting of death. Suddenly she roused a little: the doc- tors were speaking of her. But she saved the child, they said; it was a brave thing, bravely done; she has not lived her life in vain. One of them was feelin~ her pulse with skilful fin- gers; the girl looked up at him wonder- ingly. Were they speaking of her? and was it only pity that shone in those kind eyes? was it notcould it bead- miration, nay even reverence, and for such a one as she? It was bravely done; she has not lived her life in vain. Was it the doctors who spoke, or was it a voice coming to her from that un- known world which was drawing so very near? And then the darkness crept upon her once more, and when she came to again she was alone with Nurse Alice in the ward. For forty-eight hours she lingered, suffering apparently little, and wan- dering at times, yet lapped in a deli- cious calm and contentment, so that the Louey. nurse hardly knew whether to be most sad or ~lad to hear her say these were the happiest hours of her life. Dying alone in a hospital bed with not a friend at hand to comfort or to grieve; if this was the best, what could all the rest have been? They had placed her in a tiny ward that happened to be empty, and where she could be alone, for they knew it was hopeless from the first, and no one even expected she would live so long. The stillness, the cleanness of her white bed, nay, the very change that had come upon herself, were full of wondering refreshment to her. I never thought it would come off like that, she said to the nurse as she was bathing her face and hands. It seems to go all through me. Ill hardly know myself; yove made me over again She did not talk munch, but her grate- ful eyes said so much for her, that her nurse, used as she was to such scenes. often turned away with a sense of sharp pain at heartso thankful, and for so little; ~rhat could her life have been? - Will it hurt muchthis dying? she asked once, and when she was told that the doctors thought that she would pass away in her sleep, she asked no more. She came of a class that does not deal in nerves and tremors. If it was pain- ful, well, it had to be borne, but just to sleep was pleasant, and she was so tired. Thus, without a fear or longing, she was slipping out of the world. The old past troubled her not: neither its fail- ures nor its incompleteness rose up to vex her. The unknown future caused her no speculation. She had no theo- logical doubts to solve or fears to dis- pel. It was simply that a power might- ier than herself was drawing her hemice, and she was quite willing to go. She could not have put it into words, but she had a dim sense of gladness that she would not go quite empty-handed she had not lived her life quite in vain she had that one act of self-sacrifice to carry with her, and to offer as the fruit of the days workher one realized op The Unrest of the Nations. portunity to lay at the feet of the Divine Love. For the rest there was nothing to regret, nothing to leave. She was going away from it all, the narrow, sordid, toilsome past, knowing neither the why nor the whither, nor in what manner of place the journey would cad, but content like a child to trust the unseen hand that was draw- ing her hence with such irresistible force. A broken, troubled, joyless life, that had known aothing of earths noblest and best. A helpless, half-awakened, nay, if you will, rudimentary soul, yet capable of who shall say what infinite possibilities of growth and perfection in the land where all things are made new. She was very near her end when Francis Clifford, having heard of the accident, came to see her. It was with almost a sense of awe that he ap- proached her. This was the girl that he had striven to teach, prayed for, almost despaired over, and she had done this splendid thing which made his heart beat with a thrill of generous pride as he heard it told. They had cut away the rough matted hair, and she looked so clean and peaceful lying among the snowy linen with that white clean face which was as strange as everything else, and he felt as if he hardly knew her again. It was a rough face still, but pain had bleached from it its coarseness, and Death was already placing on brow and lip his seal of mys- terious nobility. She smiled as her eyes fell upon him he had never seen her smile before but she gave him no other greeting, and showed no special emotion; such things were hardly in her line. She said a few words from time to time, and seemed vaguely pleased when he knelt by her bed to pray. Once she asked him to find a home for Peter, adding, I havent been not to say kind to the l)east myself, but somehow it hurts me to think others will be hard on him. and when he promised that he would, she seemed at rest, and let the subject go. (He kept his word, for Peter found himself transported to country inca d 61 ows, where he grew sleek and fat and young again, and quite forgot his earlier troubles. Indeed, sometimes as the children play with him, he can hardly l)elieve that he once dragged along that wearisome load of coals and knew what it was to hunger for carrots and this- ties, instead of cropping away in the peaceful fields, and literally as well as metaphorically living in clover.) An- other time she said painfully, Yove been good to me; I never mind any one that was till I came here. And again, spreading out her hand on the counter- pane, she said, Theyve getten the coal- grime out, yo see; perhaps theyll not mind me so much nowup there. lie could not know, he would never know till the books are set and the seals opened, all he had done for her, and how but for him her story might have had some black and disastrous ending. She did not realize it herself, and could not have told him so if she had; but that his words had done something for her, he was given the comfort of knowing a comfort which would return to him when all the days work seemed in vain for as he rose to go she turned her wistful eyes, in which the light was failing fast, towards him as sh said: I think I can understand now how He came to do it. I think I might have learnt to love Him if Id known Him betterperhaps Hell let me come to know Himthere She never spoke again. After that she closed her eyes and seemed to fall into a deep sleep; and when the sunset was paling in the west, and the balmy summer night was drawing on, Nurse Alice, watching, saw the shadow fall across that peaceful face, and knew that the girls soul had arisen and gone forth beyond the stars. CHRISTIAN BURKE. From The Spectator THE UNREST OF THE NATIONS. Lord Salisburys speech at the Gulidhall about the Concert of Europe was very dreamy, and to many minds, among which we reckon our own, very 62 charming; but we fear it does not ac- cord very closely with the facts of life. The premier thought we were seeing at least a be,inning of federation among the European peoples, and that federation, we all know, and he pre- dicted, is to secure universal peace; but we never remember the unrest of the nations to have been more visible, or the powers to have been more in- clined to isolated action. We ourselves are fighting two wars at once, and in one of them planting ourselves upon the Nile in a way which may benay, isfor the general interest of mankind, because the Mahdists are the common enemies of civilization, but which is intended first of all to strengthen our own power and enlarge our own do- minion. The French are struggling with us in West Africa avowedly in their own special interest, and without a thought of the remaining nations ot Europe, whom they will, if they can, keel) out even of ordinary trade. The Germans are endeavoring to make of themselves a world-wide power; they are at this moment threatening Hayti, which but for the United States they would conquer and hold; and they have actually seized the Bay of Kiao- chou, on the Chinese coast, in order to secure for themselves redress for a wrong, and, if they can, to obtain a good base for a great position in the Far East. The Russians, in pursuance of their ancient policy of treating the Turkish Empire as their reversion, have just si~nified to the sultan that he must not reorganize his Fleet, or rebuild his forts on the Bosphorus, so as to forbid the possibility, when the hour arrives, of a Russian descent upon his capital, the pretext for the order being that if he has money to spare he must at once pay up all arrears of the Indemnity of 1878. Even Austria, quietest and most conservative of pow- ers, which has kept out of the scramble for colonial dominion, has recently been threatening to fire shells into a Turkish port, not, indeed, in order to seize that port, but to protect her own honor and her own prestige, both seri- ously threatened by Ottoman violence The Unrest of the Nations. and carelessness of international claims.. On the other side of the Atlantic the scene is just the same. The American Republic says it is all for peace, but it protects all states within the two Amer- icas, even the black Republic of Hayti and the many-colored Republic of Bra- zil, by what is practically a permanent threat of war, and is itself seizing Hawaii, which is not in America, and deliberating in an oddly public way whether it shall or shall not seize Cuba, which by a tenure of three hundred years belongs legally to Spain. In all these instances, be it observed, the powers are not merely putting forward academic claims, but are defending their own real or imaginary, interests either with shells or by threats which. if they mean anything, mean that if those interests are not consulted they xviii throw shells. It is an addition to the importance of these movements, as showing the irresistibleness of selfish, or shall we say isolated, impulse, that all these bovernments, except possibly the American, are acting in the teeth of a certain sense of strain. The Freoch know well that if they get more depen- dencies they will have more money to pay and more trouble with the fathers of their conscripts. The (~ ~riu.t i~ aware that the mass of their Deolle look askance upon the whole weild- wide policy as involving in the elid unendurable taxation. The Austria as hate disturbance, and profess to believe that a shot fired by a European Dower in Turkey may bring the while fabiKe upon which peace rests down with a mighty crash. The Russians are most loth to give up their attitude as the truest friends of Ttirkey; while in Great Britain, with her endless experi- ence of expeditions, there is an uneasy feelin~ that, though our naval means are adequate, our military resources are strained almost to a point of dan- ger. Even the Americans are not quite easy, and press their views to the verge of war, in spite of a lingcrin~ wish that their naval department might have two years more in which to perfect the re- building of their fi~hting fleet. From these facts, which are all patent The Unrest of the Nations. and undeniable, what deductions? There are, we think, two, each of which is of some pressing importance. In .the first place, the Concert neither is, nor can be, as Lord Salisbury hopes, the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world. That it is not is evident without discussion; each power, when- ever irritated or excited by greed, obvi- ously and avowedly seeks its own ends even at the risk of war; and we fail, we confess, to perceive, after much thought, how it can be. The only method would be to insist that any power, before it resorted either to vio- lence or threats of violence, must lay its ease before the great Tribunal; but would any one of the powers agree to that in any emergent or very serious case? Would Great Britain, for in- stance, agree that Europe should settle whether she should have any more for- eign territory, or France submit to be told that she wanted too much in west Africa, or Russia agree to surrender her claims to the Turkish reversion, or even Austria bear to refrain from avenging her diplomatic honor, which appears to have been really insulted, at the bidding of any committee whatso- ever? As to Germany submitting to Europe her claim to a naval station in China, she would suspect from the first that it would be rejected, all other powers being content, and would there- fore never agree to plead. As for Amer- ica, the statesmen of Washington would simply reject such a pretension, seeing clearly that if it were allowed Europe must discuss the validity of the Monroe doctrine, and would, in all human probability, decide that it had in international law no place. And if any power were so recalcitrant, what is the Concert to do? Is it to light up the flame of war in order that Germany in China, or France in West Africa, or the United States in the Pacific, may be compelled to abstain from an acquisi- tion which to half the world is of no importance whatever? The suggestion is not reasonable, and the Concert therefore must as an instrument for compelling the continuance of peace be pronounced almost powerless. It may 63 become powerful when the world is satisfactorily distributed, and it may be possible to decree that there shall be no territorial alteration; but until that happy stage in human progress has been reached it must, except as regards east- ern Europe, be in the position of a court before which no one is compelled to plead, and which, if it does issue a de- cree, has no power with which, if any one resists, to compel obedience. It is, therefore, necessary that every power should be armed to the teeth, because it may be compelled to act alone; and in that necessity is, as it seems to us, the final condemnation of the Concert. It not only cannot ensure peace, but it cannot relieve that strain under which 11 the civilized nations are suffering more loss than they have ever suffered except from war. If the Concert really meant an approach of the n~ tions towards mutual confidence it would render pai~tial disarmament safe; but it does not mean this. On the contrary, durin~ the whole time that it has ex- isted every nation has been furbishing its arms, and spending millions more than usual in order to be ready against a catastrophe which can only occur if the jealousies of the nations, always smouldering, should be suddenly fanned to fever~heat. The Concert has ~iven them no new sense of security, and no confidence that, as justice is sure to be done in the end, it is needless to be always prepared to defend yourself with your own weapons. But then supposing all dreamy hopes are false, the Concert has at least pre- served the European peace. Has it? That peace has, happily, been pre- served; but whether the historian of the future will attribute the preservation to the Concert, or to the new alliances, or to the still newer dread which has sprung up among the kings and states- men of the frightful consequences which a modern war might entail, re- mains a quesition to be settled. To our mind the second seems the stronger reason, not only because it involves the third, but because the alliances have de- stroyed a certain sense of hope which formerly inspirited the great govern- 64 ments. They were always looking for, and usually finding, allies, who in the nick of time either reversed the conclu- sions of battle, or protected the de- feated from suffering too much. Now that Europe is distributed into two camps there ~are no allies to be hoped for, except, indeed, Great Britain, which, as the whole continent believes, wfll stand aside in magnificent selfish- The Unrest of the Nations. ness taking no part, but when the com- batants are exhausted, seizing all the possessions far away which she thinks would increase her profits or her pres- tige. The world expects the war, if it occurs, to be a war 4 outrance, and therefore avoids it, and expects it to be avoided. Duels are very rare when the duellists must fight across a handker- chief. A Dervish Mimic.Among the men who now leaped off the railway trucks and hurried off to their breakfasts was one black ex-Dervish worthy of men- tion. This was Somid, the Sudanese jester of the camp, who can always raise a roar of laughter in the working gangs, and is of distinct service, keep- ing up the mens spirits as he does by his clever mimicry and queer tricks. A bugler in Hicks Pashas ill-fated army, he was captured by the Der- vishes and taken to the Mahdis camp at Omdurman. There he discovered that he could make his life easier by playing the buffoon, and he became the jester of Wad ci Bishara, the famous Emir who commanded the Dervish forces that were opposed to us last year. He used to be called up to amuse his masters friends by giving imitations of the British officers with whom he had beenbroughtintocontact. Recaptured by us last year at the battle of Hafir, he now, when not em- ployed in rail-laying, keeps the camp in ~i roar by his close imitations of his former master Bishara and other Dervish notables. Seeing strangers in camp, he approached us with a comical waddle, and then proceeded, sur- rounded by a crowd of his appreciative countrymen, to favor us with what was certainly a very extraordinary en- tertainment. First he impersonated the great Emir Yunes; sword over shoulder, he swaggered up and down as through a Dervish camp, boasting of his prowess and declaring that he would destroy the enemies of God, and drive the English into the sea. Then he suddenly became Wad ci Bishara, the truer soldier, with graver mien than before; speaking calmly and deliber- ately, he walked with slow dignity, a leader of men, giving orders to his officers In precise terms. The different characters of the two Emirs were so clearly brought out by this close ob- server and marvellous mimic that one felt one would almost be able to recog- nize the two men with certainty if one ever met them. From the grave he passed to the ludicrous; he took off the mannerisms of a native clerk on the railway works, of an impatient birn- bashi carrying on a conversation through the telephone with an indis- tinct but imperturbable Egyptian at the other end of the wire. Next, with a most ghastly realism, he gave us a representation of a hanging man. It was true to life and to death, for Somid must have witnessed many an execution by hanging in the Dervish camp. Then he became Wad ci Bishara again at the battle of ilafir, encourag- lag his men and laughing scornfully at the shells which burst around him, the sound of which Somid faithfully repro- duced. A variety of other tricks were performed by this versatile black. Later in the day we caine across him again, at work on the railway. He had just laid down a rail, and, seeing us, proceeded to imitate the action of one sketching a portrait. In a moment we recognized every turn of the head and hand, the pose, even the expres- sion of face of one of the war artists with us; it was a wonderful piece of pantomime and mimicry. Wady Haifa Correspondence London Times.

THE LIVING AGE. ~ Sixth Series. ,~ ~ 1898, ~ peginniiig, Volume XVII. ~ ~ -1 Vol. CCXVI. ~ 8 CONTENTS. 1. MODERN EDUCATION. By J. P. Mahaffy, II. THE GOOSEHERD. By Ilerrnann Suder- mann. Translated for The Living Age by isabella Ogden Oakey, III. IDEXLS OF ROMANCE IV. WITH ALL IJEE HEART. By Rend Bazin. Chapters XIV. and XV. Translated for The Living Age V Is PHOTOGRAPHY AMONG THE FINE ARTS? By .Joseph Bennell, VI. RAMAZAN. By Hugh Clifford, VII. MATERFAMILIAS. By Jessie Mansergh, VIII. BLACKWOODIANA. By Herbert Max- well, IX. THE YELLOW PERiL X. THE VEGRTAWIAN CREED, Nineteenth Century, Edinburgh Review, Revue des Deux Mondes, Contemporary Review, 3facmiUans Magazine, Cornhill Magazine, Longrnans Magazine, Spectator, Speaker, POETRY. AN ENGLISH EDEN. Ix THE TWILIGHT. 66 SONG 66 To ONE WiIO BIDS ME SING, SUP P L E MEN T. READINGS FROM AMERICAN MAGAZINES: EDWIN BOOTH, MAN AND ACTOR, 129 NEROZUMIM, . . . . 131 PATERNAL GOVERNMENT IN BOSTON, 132 WAGNERISB, . . . . 134 MARRIAGES IN FRANCE, . . 130 PROFESSOR DRISLER, . . . 136 DOWN IN THE VALLEY OF PAIN,. 138 READINGS FROM NEW BOOKS. IN OLD VIRGINIA. By Thomas Nelson Page 139 AN IMPERIAL INQUISITOR. By M. Imlay Taylor 141 REMINISCENCES OF MRS. STOWE. By Annie Fields, . . . 145 IF THINE ENEMY IIuN(;ER. By William E. Barton, . . . 147 THE WITCHERY OF WINTER. By Chas. C. Abbott, . . . 150 BOOKS OF THE MONTH, . . 152 PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY THE LIVING AGE COMPANY, BOSTON. I 67 78 83 95 99 108 114 116 124 126 66 66 An English Eden, etc. AN ENGLISH EDEN. Roses drop their petals all around In that enchanted giound, And all the air is murmurous with sound From the white-tumbling weir; So that all lesser roices heard anea.r Do half unreal al)pear. As one half waking from a dreaialess sleep Is fain his thoughts to keep, Thus floating over twixt the nights black deep And the blank glare of day; So in that Eden pauses life half-way, Twixt dawning and full (lay. F. W. BOULDILLOY. IN THE TWILIGHT. The wind sighs softly now, The clouds are dull and low, All nature darkens into quiet night; Shall I still wakeful lie, As the slow hours creep by, Until the panes grow slowly grey with light? I have so long been ill. My heart is sad and still, And hope is ~rowing fainter day by day; Month after month goes by, Summer is drawing nigh, Oh, help me, Lord, along my weary way! Teach me to do Thy will, Teach me to trust Thee still, Never to doubt that Thou dost all things well; Although the way seem long, Thou still canst make me strong, And cause my troubled heart with joy to swell. Oh, Saviour dear, draw nigh, And if I am to die, Receive my fainting soul and give me rest! Sometimes I long to go, More of Thy love to know, But do Thy will, 0 Lord; Thou knowest best. Sunday Magazine. E. S. S. W. SONG. Marked ye the coining oer the dull chill main Of that enchanted purple green and red, Heard ye a murmur on the skys vast plain When the stars camp along the dark was spread; Know ye the very birthday of the spring,. Tue sacred moment when the day began Nonor the hour of passions flowering, Nonor Loves coming to the heart of man. Know ye the time when first decay is bred In the exceeding riches of the flower, When the first stain upon the leaves is shed Like Summers blood upon her woods in shower; 1-lear ye the footsteps of departing Eve When the night closes fast on her retreat? Nonor ilie stir of Love that turns to leave, Nonor the sound of his departing feet.. Speaker. WALTER Hoao. TO ONE WHO BiDS ME SING. You ask a many-winterd bard Where hides his old vocation? Ill givethe answer is not hard A classic explanation. Immortal though he be, he still, Tithonuslike, grows older, While she, his Muse of Pindus Hill, Still bares a youthful shoulder. Could that too-sprightly nymph but leave~ Her ageless grace and beauty, They might, betwixt them both, achieve A hymn de Senectute; But sheshe cant grow grey; and so Her slave, whose hairs are falling, Must een his Doris flute forego, And seek some graver calling Not ill-content to stand aside, To yield to minstrels fitter, His singing-robes, his singing-pride, His fancies sweetand bitter! AUsTIN DoBsoN.. 66 \ Littells Living Age Volume 216 Page 67 This page was not available at the time of scanning. The image file will be included when a replacement page has been located. Littells Living Age Volume 216 Page 68 This page was not available at the time of scanning. The image file will be included when a replacement page has been located. Littells Living Age Volume 216 Page 69 This page was not available at the time of scanning. The image file will be included when a replacement page has been located. Littells Living Age Volume 216 Page 70 This page was not available at the time of scanning. The image file will be included when a replacement page has been located. Littells Living Age Volume 216 Page 71 This page was not available at the time of scanning. The image file will be included when a replacement page has been located. Littells Living Age Volume 216 Page 72 This page was not available at the time of scanning. The image file will be included when a replacement page has been located. Littells Living Age Volume 216 Page 73 This page was not available at the time of scanning. The image file will be included when a replacement page has been located. Littells Living Age Volume 216 Page 74 This page was not available at the time of scanning. The image file will be included when a replacement page has been located. Littells Living Age Volume 216 Page 75 This page was not available at the time of scanning. The image file will be included when a replacement page has been located. Littells Living Age Volume 216 Page 76 This page was not available at the time of scanning. The image file will be included when a replacement page has been located. Littells Living Age Volume 216 Page 77 This page was not available at the time of scanning. The image file will be included when a replacement page has been located. Littells Living Age Volume 216 Page 78 This page was not available at the time of scanning. The image file will be included when a replacement page has been located. The Gooselterd. Do you know who my first love was? A gooseherd, a real gooseherd. I am not joking. Long after I was a highly respectable young lady I wept bitter tears over the sorrow he had caused me. To be sure, at the time when lie first set my heart afire I was still in that period of my life when my highest ideal of happiness was to go barefoot. I was eight, he about ten years old; I was the daughter of the manor, he the son of our smith. In the morning, as I was drinking coffee upon the balcony with mamma and my older brother, he used to go by with his geese and vanish in the direc- tion of the heath. At first he stared at us with naive wonder, without thinking to remove his cap; but after my brother had admonished him that it would be suitable for him to offer a morning greeting to the quality, he would swing his cap in ~,reat circles in the air and call up to us Good-morning, all, ex- aetly as though he had learned it by heart. If my brother happened to be in a good humor I would receive permission to take a roll down to him, as a recog- nition of his urbanity. This he always snatched out of my hand with a certain greedy anxiety, as though there were danger of my taking it back again. How did he look? I can see him now: his sleek blonde hair hung in a yellow thatch over his sunburned cheeks; from under it his blue eyes peeped slyly and merrily out; his tattered trousers he had rolled up above his knees, and in his hand he held a slender willow switch, in the green bark of which his skilful hand had cut a spiral row of white rings. My childish desire first fastened itself upon this switch. I thought it would be charming to hold in my hand such a marvel, so different from all my play- things, and when I completed the pic- ture by imagining myself driving geese with it and going barefoot, I had reached the pinnacle of earthly bliss. Naturally, it was this same switch which drew us tog ther. One morning as I was at the breakfast table, I saw him again passing gaily by and I could no longer subdue my longing. I secretly clapped to~ether the roll spread with honey which I was eating, and hastily excused myself, that I might run after him. When he saw me coming he stopped and looked at me in astonishment, but as soon as he spied the roll in my hand his eye beamed with intelligence. Will you give me your switch ? I asked. Naw, why ? he returned, standing on one leg and rubbing its calf with his other foot. Because I want it, I replied haugh- tily, adding more mildly, and I will give you my roll. His glance rested longingly upon the dainty morsel, but finally he said, Naw, I mus herd the geese with it; but Ill make you one jus like it. Can you do that yourself? I asked,. filled with admiration. Oh, thats nothin, at all, he laughed scornfully, I cn make4 flutes and dancin men, too. I was so completely carried away by this that I handed him my roll without further ceremony. He bit bravely into it, and without vouchsafing me another glance drove his feathered flock on- ward. I gazed after him with an envious heart. He could herd geese, while I must go up to Mademoiselle and learn French vocables. Yes, I thought, hap- piness is unjustly distributed in this world. That evening he brought me the prom- ised switch, which was even more beau- tiful than my boldest dreams had painted it. It exhibited not only the white rings which had so charmed me in its prototype, but bore upon its thick end a round knob, on which by means of two lines, one longitudinal, the other transverse, a human face was depicted ~whether his or mine, I could not deter- mine. What a happy creature I was After that we were friends. r divided with him the dainties which were showered from all sides upon me,. the darling of the household. In return he dedicated to me the creations of his agile fingers; flutes, little boxes, houses,, 79 The Gooseherd. dolls furniture and above all his cele- brated dancing men, through which I presently became the terror of the en- tire family. Behind the goose-coop we held our nightly rendezvous and exchanged our gifts. I looked forward all day with joy to this occasion, my thoughts busied with my young hero. I saw him lying in the grass on the sunny heath, play- ing his flute, while I was being tor- mented with abominable French verbs, and my desire to share that happiness called gooseherding grew ever stronger and stronger. When I confided my feeling to him, he laughed aloud and said: Why dont you come along? That was enough, and without further deliberation I replied: I will go to-morrow. But dont forget to bring something to eat, my friend reminded me. Fortune favored me. Mademoiselle had a headache at exactly the right time and put off our lesson. Half beside my- self with joy and fear I sat at the coffee-table and waited until he came by. My pockets were stuffed full of all sorts of dainties, which I had beg,~ed from Mamselle and beside me lay the switch, which I thought to-day to brandish in loyal fulfilment of my duty. There he came marching along, lie glanced at me with a sly twinkle in his eye as he roared his Good-morning. all, at us. As soon as I could escape without being observed, I ran after him. What have you brought? was his first remark. Two spice cakes, two pieces of bread- and-butter with brain sausage, a sar dine sandwich and a piece of goose- berry tart, I said, displaying my riches. He immediately began to eat, while I, scarcely able to restrain my joy, proudly drove the geese before us. Beyond the fir wood, with part of which I was somewhat familiar, we advanced into regions to me quite un- known. The way was bordered on both sides with stunted underwood forming a gloomy thicket, until all at once the wide, boundless heath opened before my gaze. Ah, but that was beautiSul, but that was beautiful! As far as the eye could reach, a sea of grass and many-colored flowers. Long rows of molehills stretched like frozen waves into the dis- tance. The hot air vibrated and danced upon the gay heath. The music was furnished by humming bees, and high in the deep blue heaven stood the golden sun. A marsh, in which shim- inered little poois of greyish-yellow, stagnant water, lay at the edge of the wood. Scum swam upon its surface and all around in the earth, which was so damp that great bubbles arose among the grasses, were the marks of thousands of goose-feet, so that the whole resem- bled a carpet adorned with facet-shaped figures. This was the paradise of the flock. We halted here, and while the geese made themselves comfortable in the pools, we chased each other joyously over the heath, caught yellow bntter- flies and picked blueberries. Then we played husband and wife. Elise, the tamest of the geese, was our child. We had almost kissed and thrashed the poor animal to death be- fore it succeeded by unheard of exer- tions in freeing itself from our hands. After this I prepared dinner for my hus- band. I took off my white apron, laid it upon the grass for a table cloth and grouped the remainder of our food upon it. He seated himself gravely down before it and I, for my part, was so happy to see with what dispatch he consumed one thing after another, that our little house was almost too small to contain me. The hours passed as in a dream. The sun mounted higher and higher, until its glowing rays shone straight down upon us. I began to feel tired and stupid. I was also hungry, but my hus- band had eaten everything up. My mouth was dry, my lips feverish. To cool them, I picked the damp grasses and pressed them to my mouth. Suddenly the sound of ringing bells floated from afar across the wood. I know well what that implied. It was the noon signal calling me to dinner. 80 iY~e Goosekerd. And when I was missedoh, what would become of me! 1 threw myself upon the grass and began to sob bitterly, while my com- panion tried to comfort me by strok- ing my face and neck with his rough hands. I sprang up and ran as though pur- sued by furies towards the wood. For two hours I wandered crying in the thicket. Then I heard voices calling my name, and two minutes later I lay in my brothers arms. The next morning my poor friend appeared in the rOle of kidnapper and abductor before the high court of inqui- sition. He seemed to regard it as a matter of course that he should figure as whipping-boy, made not the slightest attempt to shift any of the blame from his own shoulders, and took the chas- tisement administered by my brother with the utmost peace of mind. Pensively smiling, he rubbed his smarting back on the posts of the veranda and then hastily took his de- parture, while I rolled on the ground sobbing bitterly. After that, I loved him. I devised a thousand expedients to meet him secretly. I purloined like a magpie, in order that he might refresh himself upon the fruits of my thefts. I almost overwhelmed him with tenderness in my efforts to undo that dreadful whip- ping. He allowed my love to pass quietly over him, and repaid me with touching attachment and a healthy appetite. Half a year later fate separated us. My poor mamma, who had long been ailing, was recommended by her physi- cians to go south. She left our estate entirely in my brothers hands and moved to the Riviera. I accompanied her. Nine years passed away before I saw my home again. My return was sadder than I had ever anticipated. In I$er- un, where I had lived since my mothers death, a severe nervous fever attacked me, which confined me for many weeks to my bed. Medical skill had indeed wrested me from death, but the bloom- ing young maiden had become a pale, weak shadow. My doctor prescribed as a tonic country air and pine-needle baths, so I was bundled on the cars and transported to my brothers estate. I must have presented a pitiful enough aspect, for as I was lifted from the carriage upon my arrival, I saw the bright tears stand in the eyes of our old retainers. It gives one a peculiar feeling to be at home again after long wandering, par- ticularly when one has passed through so much sorrow. An unusually tender feeling takes possession of ones heart, and one seeks to blot out forever the desires and sorrows brought from the strange world, to be a child again and summon long forgotten enchantments from the grave. As I lay in an easy-chair and let my tired glance roam over the fields of my home, one shadow after another re- turned to life, and the first in the motley throng was my dear, flaxen-haired gooseherd. What has become of him? I asked my brother, and received the pleasant information that he had grown into a spruce, clever lad, and was already the efficient assistant of his father, the smith. I felt how my heart beat. I tried to reason myself out of such foolishness, hut was only partially successful. The dear old memories would not be driven away. Finally I fought them no longer, hut painted the picture of our meeting with all the gorgeous coloring of fairy- land. A few days after my arrival I was able to take my first drive, that is to say, I was lifted into the carriage and driven to a peaceful little spot in the ~voods, where I was laid on the soft moss. I had selected the place with great care. It offered a view of the smithy, where the playfellow of my youth was at work. My brother wished to remain with me, but I besought him earnestly not to let me interfere with his customary oc- cupations, for the little maid who at- tended me quite sufficed to protect me LIYJ~G AGE. VOL. XVII. 866 81 82 from surprises. And what harm could come to me in the peaceful home wood? So he drove back home, promising to return for me within two hours. Then I sent my little companion off to pick strawberries, cautioning her, how- ever, to remain near at hand, and away she sprang with a gleeful shout. I was alone. Thank goodness, now I could dream to my hearts content. The firs rustled above me, and from the smithy the muffled sound of the ham- mer rang out on the summer air. The fire upon the forge was blazing brightly, and now and again a dark figure passed in front of it. That must be he. I never tired of following his move- ments. I admired his strength and trembled for his safety when the glow- ing sparks flew about him. The moments slrpped by. My brother surprised me in the midst of my dreamy observation. Well, has the time seemed long to you? he asked jokingly. I shook my head smilingly and tried to raise myself a little, but was obliged to sink back exhausted upon my cush- ions. Hm, hm, he said, meditatively, I left the coachman at home, because I thought I could lift you into the car- riage by myself, but the seat is high, and I fear I shall hardly be able to ac- complish it without hurting you. Grete, turning to the little maid, who had quickly put in an appearance upon the return of the edrriage, run to the smiththe young one, you knowand ask him to come and help me. He threw a copper on the ground, which the little one, beaming with joy, picked up before running away. I felt the blood mount hotly to my cheeks. I should see him again. He would perform the part of a good Samaritan towards me. Pressing my hand to my fluttering heart, I sat and waited untiluntil Yes, that is he. How strong and handsome he has grown! Clustering fair hair waves around his smoke- blackened countenance, and a soft down covers his powerful chin. Thus must young Siegfried hav~ looked when he was apprenticed to the wicked Mime. He awkwardly lifts the little cap which sits so saucily on the back of his head, but, smilingly, I reach him my hand and ask, How are you ? How should I be? Very ~vell, he answers with an embarrassed laugh, carefully wiping his sooty fingers upon his leathern apron before accepting my proffered hand. Help me lift my sister into the car- riage, says my brother. He wipes his hands again and seizes menot very gentlyby the shoulders; my brother lifts my feet and in a mo- ment I lie safely upon the carriage cushions. Thank you, thank you, I cry, nod- ding at him smilingly. He stands at the carriage door, turn- ing his cap in his hands in a confused manner, and glancing first at me and then at my brother. He has something on his mind, say I to myself. The sight of me has re- called old memorieshe wishes to talk with me of the happy day~s when we, in childish innocence, herded geese to- gether; but he does not dare in the pres- ence of my brother. I must help him a little. Well, of what are you thinking? I inquire, looking at him in a most friendly and encouraging manner. My brother, who has been attending to the horses, turns around and glances at him. Ah, so, you want your pourboire, he says, reaching in his pocket. I feel as though I had been struck. For pitys sake, Max, I stammer, turning hot and cold. My brother does not hear me, how- ever, and hands himreally, he dare! and hands him a mark. I imagine I see the friend of my youth throwing the coin in my brothers face. I struggle up and stretch out my hands to prevent troubleBut what do I see? No, it is not possible and yetwith my own eyes I see him take the moneyHe says, Thank you kindly,he bowshe is gone. And I? I stare after him as though The Gooseherd. Ideals of Romance. he were an evil spirit and then, with a sigh, sink feebly back upon the cushions. Thus, my friend, I took leave of my childhoods dream. Translated from the German of Hermaun Suder- mann by Isabelle Ogden Oakey. From The Edinburgh Review. IDEALS OF ROMANCE.1 It is possibly in accordance with some of those undefined laws which regulate phases of literary invention that as with the lapse of centuries the genuine romance readers become fewer, the romance critics increase and multiply. The audiences who read for pleasure the long and tangled narra- tives of the ages of chivalry are past and gone. In their stead a new au- dience has arisen, and in place of the idler, to whom the romance represented a story, we have the scholar, to whom it offers a problem. The pastime of tue old world has become the study of the new. Questions historical, geograpil- ical, and criticalquestions of the spe- cialisthave gathered themselves to- gether around volumes whose intrinsic charm, despite artificialities of narra- tion, formalities of rhetoric and orna~ ment, despite all the accumulated pedantries of a gradually developed literary method, was their simplicity of motive and the direct sincerity of their imaginative sentiment. And these investigations and discussions have be- come so involved that few men who are not familiarly conversant with all romance, with the root-germs of all legends, and their later accretions as tiley travelled from land to land and from race to race; few, that is to say, who are not masters of all would ven- ture a conjecture with regard to any. Nor have the most learned of critics yet said their last word even upon such 1 1. Epic and Romance. By W. P. Ker. Lon- don: 1897. 2. Flourishing of Romance and Rise of Alle- gory. By George Saintabury, M.A. Edinburgh and London: 1897. popular debating grounds as .the origin of the Charlemagne traditions, the branches of the Volsung tragedy, the historical accuracy of the Cid, the de- rivates of the Graal legend, or the pre- cise nationalities of the Arthurian group. It would indeed appear as if the legend of criticism might become as interminable as the legends of ro- mance, and olltrival in length the one hundred and ten Chansons de G~este of early France, ranging, we are told, from four thousand to sixty thousand lines, or surpass in bulk the yet lengthier narratives of the prose chroi~l- ides of later years. Notwithstanding, however, the ex- haustive research of recent authors, the assertion volunteered by Mr. Saintsbury concerning the Morte may possibly be accepted in a wider appli- cation, and it may well be true that, setting aside details of texts, dates, origins, and nationalities, the beauty and the genius of the romance too often escapes attention altogether, and scarcely in one instance receives full recognition. Yet it is distinctly from the iesthetic, as apart from the critical, point of view that medialval romance can attract to itself the sympathy of the ignorant majorityhappily ignorant or happily indifferent to the scientific analyses 9ff the commentator. The simple pleasure- seeker amongst readers is in his own waythe wisdom of the foola philos- opher. I-us concern is with what he possesses, not with what he has lost, not with the whence and wherefore of romances, but with the romances them- selves. He occupies himself not with original models, but with the pictures drawn by poets in verse and poets in prose, and handed down to us, of Cuchullin, the preux chevalier of Ire- land, of Grettir and Nyal and Kiartan the Icelanders, of Roland and Tristram and Launcelot and Amadis, and all those other heroes of, according to Mr. Kers jealous definition, post-heroic generations. Did such men live, lea seigneurs du temps jadis ? did their lives, nobler than the lives of their fel- lows, bear in them the germ of their 83 84 own legend? It is a question of but small account to the laity of literature. Den plus parler je me desiste: Ce nest que toute abusion, II nest qui contre mort resiste, Ne qul trouve provision. Encore fais une question: Lancelot, le roy de Behaigne, Oft esJ-il? Oil est son tayon? Mais oft est le preux Charlemaigne? Where indeed! But we have what we have. We have the legends themselves of North and South, of eastern and western Europe, and we have the ro- mances embroidered around them em- bodying, if not the realities, at least the ideals des temps jadis. We have, too, the imaginative figures of men and of women as distinct and personal as tucy are ideal, heroes and heroines of whom the individuality was still unob- scured by that secondary development of mediteval fancy, the allegory. These figures Mr. Ker is careful to distinguish from the figures of epic heroism. The distinction he draws may not be too broad, but if he attains justness of fact is it without justness of sympathy. His attitude is clear from the first. Romance was the deg- radation of the epic mood. What- ever epic may mean, it implies some weight and solidity, he says. Ro- mance means nothing if it does not convey some notion of mystery and fantasy. The epic age may be full of nonsense and superstition, but its mo- tives of action are mainly positive and sensiblecattle, sheep, piracy, abduc- tion, merchandise, recovery of stolen goods, revenge. . . . It cannot dress up ideas or sentiments to play the part of characters. If its characters are not men they are nothing, not even thoughts or allegories. And although he allows that some of the old English poems on subjects such as Beowuif, Finnesburh, Maldon, and the Icelandic sagas, adhere to the old order, medite- valism gradually superseded the heroic tradition, and there came in its stead not the old-fashioned romance of taneous romance of the Irish legend or the Icelandic stories of gods and giants, but the composite far-Letched romance of the age of chivalry, imported from all countries and literatures to satisfy the mediteval appetite for novel and wonderful things. His is undoubtedly rational, vigorous, authoritative, and orthodox criticism. Yet in the matter of romance, so far as the book deals with it, we are conscious of a blank. Is it that Mr. Ker has, all too forcibly, applied the criticism of thought and reason to a subject which rather demands the criticism of emo- tion and sentiment? Or is it, more probably, that the very essence of our delight in that old romance-world is primai-ily lodged in its most shadowy regions of imaginationregions eluding definition, evading reason, defying au- thority, and refusing to be indexed in the shorthand of the critics pen? however this may be, there is an- other point of view from which med- h~val romance may claim to be re- garded. And with all its faults and failings, its extravagancies and senti- mentalism, it bears, so viewed, an as- pect which in part accounts for the tenacity of its hold upon the minds of poetsthe greatestof later ages. And accounts likewise for the contemptuous aversion of minds of a contrary order who, to their own loss, hold no open sesame to the doorclosed to them of romantic imagination. Quant aux Amadis et telles sortes descrits, said Montaigne, us nont pas eu le credit darrester seulement mon Montaigne, however, and those who echo his sentiments, may well remem- ber that there are minds that have never had a childhood, as, converselj, there are minds whose eternal youth old age has no power to obliterate. This aspect is one a diligent and un- prejudiced study of Mr. Saintsburys volume-text-book though to a certain extent it iscannot fail to suggest. His sketches of the various schools of romance from the twelfth century on- wards to the close of the thirteenth, no less than the bare abstracts of Dun- native mythology, not the natural spoYi- 1 Essais de Montaigne, Livre IL., Chap. x. Ideals of Romance. Ideals of Romance. lops History of Fiction, or of Elliss Specimens of Metrical Romances, would serve to evidence that three leading instincts of mankind were con- tinually present and predominant in the minds of the romance-writers, and that upon the basis of these instincts, taken severally or simultaneously, they had erected a scheme of idealization in the main both consistent and complete. The three great legends of the worlds life, war, love, and religion, incarnated in the person of the warrior, the lover, and that spiritual adventurer whose quest was God, were by them inscribed and glorified. The war-legend took shape in such traditions as the Charle- magne cycle, or the semi-historical, semi-biographical sagas of the north; the love-legend in such records as the Tristram and Launcelot, or the elder stories of the Volsunga Saga. The legend of religion embodied itself in the romance of the Holy Graal, and in the primary conception of the Merlin ro- mance; while in the North the corre- sponding instinct for the supernatural gave birth and perpetuation to a whole world of ghostly visitants whose dimly defined presences give a curious and disquieting touch to the annalsstormy and riotousof the lives of Norseman and Icelander. Nevertheless, supernaturalists and idealists as they stand confessed, they did not invent a new world of men and of women. Life had passed the term of its infancy, and while childhood de- mands its fairy-tale equal the impos- sible, youth contents itself with its romance equal the ideal. The one asks for what cannot be, the other for what might be. And, although much of the fairy-tale still clings around the ro- mance, it was this latter demand the mediawal chronicles of chivalry strove to satisfy. They endeavored, however crudely, to give imaginative literary expression to the desire and struggle of man to be what he is not, and to do what he cannot. 1 But they did not attempt to eradicate from their pages the savage barbarities of their times, or to disguise the coarse passions of 1 Hazlitt On Ancient and Modern Literature. humanity as they knew~ and ex- perienced them. Idealists they were. Upon the common clay of human na- ture they erected a fair spiritual edi- fice. They superimposed the heroisms of courage upon the barbarisms of the mere fighting instinct; from the baser desires of earth they exacted the grace of fidelity, laid on them the obligatious of sacrifice, and not seldom exacted the atonements of suffering. They evoked from the common herd of passions the single-hearted love of a Launcelot, tue self-immolating revenge of a Brynhild, the stern dying of a Roland. But re- formers they emphatically were not. They accepted the good and condoned the bad around them, and in the main treated both the one and the other as equally inevitable and equally irrepa- i-able. Fateconstantly symbolized in the magic invincibility of charmed weapons, in Conors shield, the sheath of Exealibur, the sword of Amadis, In Iseults resistless love-potion, in And- vans accursed gold, in Viga Glums spear and cloakis strong in their eyes, and mens lives, fierce and ruth- less, or gentle and wise, ring out un- blamed their changes of passion and hate and love and prayerless agony, as best they may, against her invulnerable skies. In the romances of which war, in one form or another, is the central theme, the scheme of idealization manifests itself under its simplest conditions. Broadly considered, the spirit of com- bat, divested of any special motive, does not present the most idealizable of instincts. It is base as a purely egois- tical desire for mastery, and brutal in the means it employs for the gratifica- tion of its desire. But good and evil have relative values. There are irre- proachable virtues which seem con- sonant with, If not allied to the most sordid dispositions of man; contrari- wise there are evils, reprehensible enough to the moralist, which would yet seem to preclude or counteract the more ignoble of our inclinations. This silver side of the moral shield was quickly grasped, consciously or uncon- sciously, by the authors of the war- 85 86 romance. Out of the raw material of such fighters as Grettir, who in peace- time thought it very ill that he might nowhere try his strength; out of the savage ferocities of the trials of phys- ical strength, they created the gener- ous chivairies of knighthood. Pity it is, said Olaf the Saint, addressing two fierce robber soldiers of Norway, pity it is such fine slaughtering fellows should not believe in Christ. The Southern romance-writer iiad not in- deed to convert his heroes on the plea of their fighting capacities to Chris- tianity, but to what Walter Scott desig- nates as the fanaticism of valor. He exaggerated the two highest quali- ties the spirit of combat might induce courage and the mutual faith of sol- dier to soldier. He reprobated by every anathema in his vocabulary the contrary vices, cowardice and betrayal. For the traitor there abides no mercy in his justice. Whoso believeth him shall him false find, like as a broken spear, and like a faulty weapon he must be cast awayfrom the companyof the brave and true. Thus if the bare instinct of war had little to commend it, the legend-maker sought its justifi- cation in supplying a motive and an aim and a standard, and dignified the endeavors to achieve the aim by every means in his power. This affords in some measure the key to that demand for novel and wonder- ful things which Mr. Ker asserts is characteristic of the age. To attain the utmost idealization of courage, danger must be crowded upon dangei, the last farthing must be exacted from valor. Perils of dragons, perils of giants, perils of the misty horrors of troll and warlock, must be unflinch- ingly encountered to show hardihood at its climax, and fidelity tested :~1- most beyond its extremest point of en- durance. Grettir must twice wrestle with the dead before he could be ad mitted into the highest ranks of heroic fellowship; Amile, in the name of Christ, who hast commanded men to keep faith on the earth, must shed the blood of his own two children to Essay on Chivalry. Ideals of Romance. cleanse the leprosy of hia brother in arms, before he could satisfy the claims of the true fidelity of knight- hood. It is, in especial, in this glorification of valor that the romance of the South and the romance of the North are at one. And it is a feature of both to have apprehended to an extent, rivalled, but never surpassed in earlier or later times, that the representation of supreme courage necessitates a background of disaster and overthrow; disaster often suspended, but in the end inevitable. It is true the celebra- tion of successof prowess victorious- fills a conspicuous place in Southern tradition. Walter of Acquitaine, hide- gunds lover, who in the narrow green place, with overhanging cliffs, slays thirteen of those great warriors who had sought to take him sleeping; Ogler le Danois and Huon de Bordeaux over whom, however outnumbered, no arms might prevail, are forerunners to a vast army of minor conquerors. But the crown of worldwide fame does not lie with these. The magic gifts of victory belonging to Morgan le Pays two champions are banished, with victory itself, from the pages recording the two great deaths of defeatViviens, f ail- ing, En lcd jor que Ia dolor fu grans Et in bataille orible en Aliscans. and Rolands, overcome in that mortal contest at Roncesvalles, beginning when the dawn broke windlessly over the dark mountain pass, where the flowers were still dim with dew, and the birds singing their sunrise love songs (as the old verse is careful to tell us), and ending when the red cloud drifting over the presaging darkness of the day betokened ii granz dulors por Ia mort de Rollant. But the Northern Sagas, albeit the formulas of chivalry are absent, found a means, alike beyond victory and be- yond defeat, for enhancing the effect of undaunted heroism. In them valor reaches the culminating point which knows no further summit, for the sense of certain doom is added to the antici Ideals of Romance. pations of possible disaster. From the very beginning the gods themselves, in the myths of Asgard, are enclosed in the iron web of fate. Over Odin, the all-wise, Thor, the all-strong, Tyr, the brave, hung the decree of that grey twilight of uncertain eternity, Rag- narok, the final dusk beyond which, as the old Saga says quietly, few may see. And in the greatest of tragic cycles, the Volsunga Saga, this per- vasive sense of fatality is perpetuated. It lay on Sigurd, wise to know things yet undone, as he wooed Brynhild. It lay on Brynhild. who, with eyes open to the misery of the far-off days, took him for her well-beloved. It lay on Gudrun, who, forewarned alike of her coming joy and her coming agony, cried, Grief to know such things shall be. And there is no loophole in the sequence of events by which we ever feel that Brynhild can evade revenging her wrong upon the only man she loves, by which Sigurd can evade the betrayal of the woman he has won, or Gunnar his foul treachery to his sworn brother in arms. And in that foreknowledge lay the Sagas secret for the manifesta- tion of the invincibility of heroism. For one and all lifes battle was lost, and for them hope was not. Yet, as ilagen in the Nibelungenliedin Car- lyles phraseoffers to Ruin his sullen welcome, so do they all, men and women alike, pass before us on what the Gaelic death-proverb calls the journey of truth, glorified with daunt- less courage and indomitable fortitude. Fierce and ruthless they may be in the loves and hates and sorrows of lost joys, but, when life has ceased to be desirable, nobly instinct with an in- finite and royal disdain of death. We have fought; if we die to-day, if we die to-morrow, there is little to choose. No man may speak when once the Fates have spoken, said Sorli, the sou of Gudrun, in the lay of Hamdir. He got his death, being minded to go home to Odin, a thing much desired by many folk in those days. I grow weary with my wound, and will go see our kin that are passed before, were the last words of Sigmund to Hjordis, hi 87 well-beloved, as she sat beside him where he lay, with broken sword, upon the battlefield. The gods will wel- come me; there is nothing to bewail in death. I am ready to go. They are calling me home, the maidens whom Odin has sent to call me. The hours of life are gone over, laughing will I die, was the song of Ragnar Lodhrok, as the fangs of the serpent stung him to death. Sentences such as these, con- tinually recurring, sum up the mental attitude, the serene indifference to death, the triumphant acquiescence in fate, of those who held in very truth that no man may flee from that which is wrought for him. Nor in the semi-Christianized Sagas is this spirit wholly lost. The last sea- fight of Olaf the Christian in the lleimskringla Saga belongs to the same school, if not to the same epoch, as the Death Song of Ragnar Lodbrok. And though in the one, as in the other, Mr. Ker may detect the tone of imitative rhetoric, few will deny that the echo in both indicates some close proximity to the original voice of unconvention- alized heroism. But it is in the worship of valor alone that Northern and Southern romance accord. In the treatment of national love-romance there is more dissimi- larity than likeness. In lands where men had made a convention of chiv- alry, a code of courage, and an organi- zation of knighthood, where the re- ligious instinct was formularized in the creed and law of ecclesiastical catholicism, it was small wonder that love presented itself to the mind as re- quiring a kindred conventionalization. With knighthood as an Order, religion as a church, love was resolved into a science. And, further, the lover, Ito less than the monk, demanded an apocalypse. The romancers did their utmost to write it. Subject to the codes of the new science, tucy pursued the idealiza- tion of coarse and lawless passion much after the same manner as in the glorification of the spirit of combat. Their love stories, touched and re- touched by the hands of successive 88 generations and divers nationalities, at length attained to a more or less con- sistent representation of that manner of loving whose rule and example they would have enforced upon the imagina- tions, if not upon the lives, of men. It is impossible to make out with pre- cision the chronology of a moral senti- ment, the historian of European morals declares.. It is equally impos- sible definitely to follow the phases of an ideal sentiment. Moreover, critics are in conflict. Sir Walter Scott, who may well speak with authority, traces the ideals of chivalry to a birthplace amongst the ancient denizens of Ger- man forests. He regards the lover par amour of chivalry as theoretically em- bodying the reverent enthusiasms of a purer and sterner day, when Je laiine tant que je ne lose aimer was the true spirit of the lovers wor- ship. Others view medimval love far otherwise. Christian chivalry, we are told, in one of the most chivalrous pas- sages of modern prose, was respon- sible for a popular idealization com- bining elements of infamy and dis- honor to which there is no parallel in pagan records of antiquity.1 It would be easy to attest the justice of both statements from the romance literature of the Middle Ages. But the fact neither disputes is that, for good or evil, springing from one source or another, there was idealizationan at- tempt, that is, to divest sordid impulses of their more degraded aspect, and to rob the selfishness of passion of its viler semblances. Nominally, in the formulas of chivalry if nowhere else, the love of man and woman was to take its place in the scheme of life the inspiration and reward of the noblest deeds of manhood. Never before, surely, did an ideal challenge so hopeless a defeat at the hands of the actualities of its own day. And in the love-romances the dissonant reflections of both the real and the ideal are mirrored with intertwined outlines. The two greatest and most familiar of all romances may well Lecky, Hist. of European Morals, ii. 367. Ideals of Romance. serve to illustrate the singular contra- dictions and inconsistencies which en- sued. There be within the land but four lovers, said la Beale Isoud; that is, Sir Launcelot du Lake and Queen Guenevere, and Sir Tristram de Liones and Queen Isoud. And true it is that these four figures do indeed, in the worlds remembrance, dominate with unrivalled supremacy the love-pageants of the past. Moreover, in the whole course of Southern romance it would be difficult to find two pictures of more antagonistic sentiment, or two stories despite identities of incident and sit- uationtinted in sharper contrasts of color. The Tristram, technical tragedy as it is, is, more especially in its later version, characterized by a joyous and light-hearted materialism. Born under the free skies, he is from boyhood a vagrant, noble of mind, generous with the spendthrift generosity that squan- ders disastrous benefits on the unde- serving; but, at once and for all, we recognize the fact that Tristram is in- capable of that single-hearted devotion which with Lanneelot excludes all loves save one, and makes not so much a duty of constancy as an impossibility of change. Thus from the first Isoud is a woman no less wronged than wronging; yet with her also, in lesser measure, the keynote of life is mirth~ She too is courageous, unscrupulous, and generous, and, withal, strictly ob- servant of that thiefs honor which be- trays a Mark to be faithful to a This- tram. For, faithful she remains to his unfaith, until the outcast wife of a coward king, the gay-beseen queen. swoons to death upon her dead lover~s corse. Malory has blotted out even the one brief hint of Tristrams passing penitence found in Thomas the Rhymers verse. In the Morte shame and dishonor are things of which the barest perception seems alien to the nature of either Tristram or Isou(l. That she has sinned for his sake, or he for hers, never for a moment touches the one or the other with a shadow of regret. No uncertainties of conscience trammel their pleasures; for them the broken law of honor their loves, sans Ideals of Romance. conscience, sans religion, outrage, does not exist. With Launeelot the picture is abso lutely reversed. Destiny, symbolizel by the love-potion in the Tristram, is, we feel with Tristram, but the dupli- cate of choice. In Launcelot, destiny, the doom foretold by Merlin, is also present; but it is destiny in conflict with will. Launcelot, of sinners earthly the most peerless, stands throughout the emblem of that inner kingdom of a mans soul divided against itself. His own lips proclaim his creed of honor. To take m~ pleasure with paramours, that will I refuse in principal for dread of God. For knights that be adulterous or wan- ton shall not be happy nor fortunate. And whoso that so useth shall be unhappy, and all things is unhappy that is about them. Such was his creed, confessed in word, recanted in deed, for Launcelot was at war, not, as Tristram, with rival knights, but with the only enemy strong enough to over- come himLauncelot was at war with Launcelot. His own lips make confes- sion of his overthrow. My sin and my wickedness have brought me unto great dishonor. I have loved a great queen unmeasurably. . . . Where over- much sin dwelleth there may be but little sweetness. Tristram for th~ love of Isoud forfeited and suffered much. If he did not love well, at least he loved greatly. His cry as he dies, in spite of his love-wanderings, is the cry of an irrevocable passion: Ha, doulce amie, ~ Dieu vous command. 5amais ne me veerez, ne moy vous. And when grief exacts its mortal penalty from Isoud le Royne, and le cueur lul part et lame sen va; when the rose-briar springs from the grave of Monseigneur Tristan, and embraces the tomb of the dead queen, blam& s epitaph halts upon our lips. Yet be- side the love of Launcelot for Giiene vere such loves fade into nothingness. With them it was but the current of a barrierless torrent; with Launcelot it was the insweeping of a mighty sea through the broken dyke. Although it may be said that in its idealism the Launcelot legend stands alone, it nevertheless may fairly be con- tended that the tendency towards some such idealism was widely spread, for the lover in constancy no less than in strength; for the woman in fidelity no less than in fearlessness. Wolfram~ von Esehenbachs Par:~ivai:- Dass wahrlich nie em ander Weib Seine Minne nahm dahin, Als alein die K~nigin is not a solitary instance. Outside the Arthuiian group the loves of Florice and Blauncheflour, of Sir Bevis and Josyan, of Huon and Eselarmonde, are all records of mutual faith. In Gyron le Courtois, though tempted to the treachery of a Tristram, loyault& passe tout. Guy of Warwick, remem- bering his first love, Felice the Sheen, renounces the hand and kingdom of fair Loret. Le Frain, forsaken, unwil- lingly, by her lover, whom holy Church commanded Some lordis daughter for to take, And his leman all forsake. is as gentle, true, and constant of heart as Griseldis herself; while, to come down to a later date, the Amadis,. which in France and Spain stood first in the ranks of popular favor, is from beginning to end a portrayal of the Knight in the world who most loyally maintained his love. From the hour when Oriana, aged ten, accepted the service of the Child of the Sea, saying it pleased her, Amadis kept her~ word in his heart, and in all his life was never weary of serving her. And their loves lasted as long as thry lasted, for as well as he loved her dlii she also love him. Like Aucassin, Mr. Paters ideal of passion in its mood of deepest intensity, in the great malady of his love, his heart trembled at hear- ing her name, so that well-nigh he fell from his horse. We see him, a Donzei very fair, with shield of lions azure on a field or, clad in rich armor, his while horse stained with the blood that flowa. from the wounds of the youths first ad- venture, as he rides through the woods in April time where flowers grow on 90 either side, and the birds sang over- head, and, seeing him, we know that apart from his love he sits heedless of all about him. Night and day he weeps, his eyes are worn with their many tears, and many a time, as Aucassin likewise, he faints for very love. Nor, when the time of weeping is over and past, and the dawn breaks over the running brook and the soft herbage of the woods, and finds the two lovers together, is the prize won less dear to him than was the prize de- sired, for thereby was their love in- creased, as pure and true love always is. Amadis, who would not slay the lions before whom his foes had fled, may well be trusted by the woman who has laid her heart in his hand. Certes, Sir Knight, said an old man, you will not break faith to man since you keep it so well to beasts. And truly, as, in the passage quoted by Mr. Ker, the Cliges and Fenice of Christien de Troyes, to the end Amadis and Oriana are still lovers. De samie a feite sa femme, Mais ii lapele amie et dame. Que por ce ne pert ele mie, Que ii ne laint come s amie. Et ele lul autresi Con lan doit feire son amie. Nor are the love-stories of the North without their own ideal, although it is an ideal as divergent as are the favoi~- ite types of womanhood presented by Scald and Trouv~re. Between the heroines of North and South there was little affinity of nature or temperament, and they loved and were loved in differ- ent guise. No doubt the pages of chiv- alrous romance contain women evil and fair and crafty as Morgan le Fay, with her face somewhat brown of hue with her hands so fair that they were the fairest hands and the best skilled in all Breteyne, full debonaire to them who did her pleasure; for others evil to accord with, as Guenevere found to her undoing; weird, double-natured women as Vivianne (whose ancestors held dealings with Diana, the goddess) or Kundrie; women faithless as the lady of Maloanc, and ill-living as Ettard. But the heroine closest to the heart of the old romance-Writer is none of these. The best-beloved heroine to him, like Elain le Blanc, has at once the irresponsibility, the passion, the patience, the eager simplicity, and, above all, the docility of a child. Wed me, or be my lover, or my good days are done . . . and there never was child nor wife meeker to father or husband than was that fair maiden of Astolat, pious old Malory adds corn- mendingly. After the same manner the kings daughter loved Osale le Triste, when, clad as a minstrel, she wandered seeking him from castle to castle. So Nicollette loved Aucassin--- Enid Geraint. So Blauncheflour, Le Pram, and many another loved their lovers, sometimes as the girl-mother of A madis, not before the world without fault, but always -as she before God unbiamed, loved for good or ill, joy or grief, with the same reckless self- surrender, the same single-hearted truth, with life-long constancy and un- dismayed patience. They, indeed, know no other law but loves, yet they are, at least in that one servitude, set free from all lesser yokes. While be- tween them and their lovers grew up the ideal of that gentlest relationship of lifethe relationship of the strong to the weakof the worship to be laid at their feet, of the shield to be held over their head. The idealization of the Northerns im- plies a totally different conception. As one by one their heroines rise before us, the dominant impression stamped upon our imagination is of women strong to love, strong to suffer, and, above all, strong to avenge. The soli- tary figure of Hervor, daughter of Angantyr, as she passes alone through the death-fires, the dead around her, to seek the sword which lies in her fathers grave, that therewith she may revenge his death, is but a picture of the absolute fearlessness of body, of heart, and of soul, their ideal de- manded. They must meet death with the courage of noble boysas Swanhild faced the horses with eyes so shining that the king bade his servants blind- fold her before they trampled her r Ideals of Romance. Ideals of Romance. deaththey must inflict it, as Gudrun, even upon the children they have borne, with a steadfast ruthlessness surpassing courage. Thus it is that in the greatest hero- ines of Northern invention, love at its height is made manifest chiefly in ven- geance. Vengeance, as with Brynhild, in the Volsunga, for love betrayed; for slay herself for love as she does, it is not until she has sent the Volsung to Valhalla before her. Vengeance, as with Gudrun in the Nibelungenlied, who, bereft of joy, made red the stones of Atlis hail with the blood of her brothers. So, too, in succeeding ages, Brynhilds revenge is faintly repeated in the Laxdale Saga; in Gisli the out- law, Thordis, sister to Gisli who is slain, and wife to Thorgrim whom Gisli slew, is in turn the avenger of both. And in the semi-historical Chronicle-Sagas of the kings of Nor- way, no less than in the half-bio- graphical Sagas of Icelandic tradition, amidst the fierce annals of kings and vikings; of brothers in lonely places slaying either the other with the bridles of the horses who return home masterless; of children nourished upon the hearts of wolves; of men without number burnt, tortured and stung to deathamidst the records of riotous feasts, where Christs health was drunk; of savage horse-fights, and sombre legends of Lapland witch- women, amongst all the wild scenes of carnage and revel, still again and again the same ideal of womanhood appears. Fair, wise beyond the wisdom of men, resentful of wrong, but where love bound them wholly loyal. Sigfrid the Haughty, whose hatred to Olaf lies behind that death scene on the Long Serpent; Thora, of Rimmol, fairest of women, faithful to Hakon, her faitil- less lover; Gyda, the beautiful bonder- girl, who taunted Harold Haarfager, the subduer of all Norway, with cowardice; the Lapland woman Gun- hild, with her craft and cruelty and ambition, who wedded Harolds best- loved sonthese are the women who pass before our imagination through the midnight twilights of the Northern summers, or traverse the rocks and the ice in the winter dusk of sunless snow. In Southern romance many a woman dies of loves sorrow and despair. Isoud on Tristrams body, Colombe and Pellinores yellow-haired daughter upon the swords of their dead lovers; so died Elaine, like the Blancheflouve who loved Tristramqui de lamour meurt, et ne peust de son amour trouver merci. But the women of the North live; they outlive sorrow VO avenge loss, and with them the measure of their love which is past is given by the measure of their hate which is present. The severance of romantic idealiza- tion which begins in the love-romance, in so far as the literature of the North has been made known to English readers, is continued in the romantic treatment of the spiritual and super- natural. The Christianization of the supernatural, which in the South pro- duced the romance of religion, had little place in the Sagas, save in such miracle legends as those collected round the relics of Olaf the Saint, legends belonging rather to the eccle- siastical than the romantic school of imagination. Northern supernatural- ism is vivid, brutal, and sombre. The climax of the story of Grettirs life and death hinges upon it. Early in the Saga he fights the Barrow-dweller, Karr the Old, and robs the dead of the silver and gold which were under ihe feet of him as he sat upon his chair within the grave-mound. The episode oi the haunting of Thorhalistead serves for the turning point of the whole nar- rative. The scene is drawn with a strange, almost prosaic realism. Glam the Thrall, with his wolf-grey hair, has been murdered by an evil spirit. He, in his turn, has become Glam the Ghost, a ghost at once clumsy, fero- cious and terrible. The picture of the dreary and lonely homestead with its frozen thatch, its battered walls, of the hall where the beams and the rafters are broken and displaced, where all night the light is kept burning, is com- plete in all its details. Horses and cattle have been torn to death. The 91 Ideals of Romance. shepherd is dead, the neatherd is dead, and the bonders daughter too has fallen a victim to the savage visitant. Only the bonder himself remainsall else have fledand Grettir his guest. No touch is lacking to enhance the dim horror, when at length in the moon- lit darkness Glain breaks his way across the barred threshold, and Grettir wrestles with him. With Grettir the victory rests, yet not before the dying spirit has cursed the cou- queror. Henceforth in the dark Grettir shall always see the vision of Glams face as he sees it there in the moon- light, and henceforth the heart cf Grettir the Strong will never serve him that he may be alone in the dark. So also is it in the somewhat heavily monotonous record of Viga Glum. Underlying the story throughout, with its feuds and murders, its lawsuits and cattle-keeping and horse-fighting, is the whisper of that strain of Northern madness, the undertone of a dread more subtle than any known to the southiander; an undefined horror be- fore which the dragons and monsters of Arthurian wastes lose all their ter- rors. Glum does not hold life, but life holds him. From the day when first a fit of laughter came upon him, and affected him in such a manner that he turned quite pale, and tears burst from his eyes, as the appetite for killing seized him, we know that Glum in- dolent, sullen, silent, dreaming, savage, and farseeing, is predestined to live the bloodstained life of the wronged and the wronger. This darker side of the supernatural, although in another fashion, found its expression In the Merlin legend. But if the character of Merlin has some kin- ship with the character of Northern wizardry or Druidical magic, the primary conception of the romance rests on a different basis. A formal theory originating in the doctrines of religion lies at the root of the story. The idea is one of the most forcible if not the most curious of medleevalism. The Gospels had represented the pic- ture of the worlds redemption from the power of Satan by means of Christs Incarnation. The Inventor of the Merlin imagined to himself the pos- sibility of a Satanic counterpart to the Divine Incarnation. He created a Messiah of Hell by whose instrumen- tality the world might be once again redeemed from God. But the subject was greater than its inventor, the sequel of the story does not in any measure correspond to the prelude. Tragic and sinister as, in many of his appearances, the figure of Merlin may be, whether bearing men down as he rides his great black horse through the battle, Pendragon casting out flames of fire as his hand upholds it (albeit, he would strike no man to wound him), or as a jeering country churl sitting by the wayside, or again as an old man, crooked, white bearded,, black robed, clinging for support to his saddle-bow, the idea degenerates in the hands of the legend-makers into a mere tale of sorcery and enchantment. Baptized at birth by Master Blaise, the son of a devil is a personality spiritually crip- pled, crippled for good by his descent, crippled in evil by the action of grace. He is a devil with a conscience. He deceives and betrays an Igraine to the guilty love of Uther, but his soul is not acquitt of the sin. Wise and im- potent, the curse of his own fore- knowledge overshadows his life. For him the illusions which make the world fair to look upon do not exist. His laughter, so often and so significantly recorded, is the mournful mockery which recognizes everywhere and at all times the disparity between semblance and reality, between the show and the actuality. The spectacle of the incon- gruities of life, where the cares of men are so irrelevant to their needs, is ever before his eyes. Even as a child he watches the traffic of the market-place with derisive contempt. See you nought? That young man that has shoon bought And strong leather to do them clout, And grease to smear them all about? He weeneth to live them to wear: But, by my soul, I dare well swear His wretched life he shall forlet Ere he come to his own gate. 92 Ideals of Romance. Nor may the merciful blindness of common men in their own case make 1Pm the dupe of any hope. When the end approaches and he sees Nimiane (Vivianne), fair and young and false, seated by the bright spring water amongst the forest trees, and, seeing, loveshe, the great master of decep- tion, is the very prey of truth. Un- deluded, he buys her caresses, while the phantom singers he has conjured up have as love-burden to their song: Voirement se commencent amours En joye, et se finent en doulleurs. And soon, under the flower-laden Thorn-bush of the forest of Broceliande, his joy has indeed its dolorous ending; -for albeit like Grettir in his strength, Merlin in his wisdom most haps did foresee, yet might he do nought to meet them. Other sorcerers bear Merlin fellow- ship in the pages of romance from the lime of the early French romance, translated with variations in the En- gush Lyfe of Virgilius. Klinschor, Virgils grandson, elne Pfaffe der ~vohl zouber las, with his enchanted ~castle, plays a part in the Parzival; ~Blaise, Merlins master, in the Book of Merlin; Hypocras the physician in the *llraal; Morgan le Fay in many Arthu- Pan romances; Urganda the Enchant- tess in the Amadis. They are person- alities varying the monotony of the narrow range of characters included in the legends of war and love, where the routine roll-call of knights and ladies, (~ kings and queens, is, ~as a general rule, only broken by the introduction of such fantastic deformities as Tronc the Dwarf in Ysaie le Triste, or of the grotesquely pathetic figure of the Ape- Nurse of the little sons of Amyle, for whose death the great Charlemagne himself getta maint soupire et alla dire, Ha, Cinge, moult avois le cueur scavant; je s~ay de vray que tu es mort de joye. But it is especially in the legend of the Holy Graal that Southern romance em- bodied and idealized its instincts of the supernatural. Catholic Christianity In its sacramental system presented con- 93 tinually to the eyes of its wQrshippers the idea of the miraculous union of the two planes of existence, Lhe material and the spiritual. It centralized the doctrine in its daily eucharistic rites; le serviche si douce et si piteus comme de la mort Jhesu Crist, as the old legend-writer expresses it. Catholic romanticism was quick to translate its faith into imagination. With an insa- tiable love of the marvellous, for which even the wonders of Voragines L& - gende Dor~e were insufficient, it adapted the doctrinal scheme of the Church to serve the purposes of its inventive fan- tasy. Moreover it was a day when, to the lay mind, thought was mainly rep- resented as action; ideas by personali- ties; and while the world accepted de- voutly and obediently the sacramental theory, the romance-maker dramatized it, constructing a plot upon which he might fitly thread multitudinous inci- dents of consecrated magic. He cre- ated a new marvel, instituted an eighth ~acrament por compaynie e por con- fort, to many another knight besides Joseph the Arimathian. He chose for its symbols the Holy Dish as the vital source of bodily and spiritual refresh- - ment, and the mystical spear, which wounded and healed and bled. Around these symbols there grew up the chron- icle of an ideal chivalry, a spiritual city, reigned over by a divinely anointed dynastythe Signourie of the Graal, the greatest gentlemen of the world, the blood-royal of Gods grace, la haute lignie of Arimathie, descendants of the good knight St. Joseph, and of the first Galahad his son. Each legend-maker by turn was free to choose that phase of the record it best pleased his fancy to remould or supplement. Thus Gawaines story is interlinked with Parzivals, and the compiler of the Morte has used Galahads quest as the antithesis to the quests of worldly ad- venture. ThQ knights of the Graal are to fight for God. Good now, said heathen Conor the king, as to his dying vision Good Fridays Calvary became apparent, It is a pity that He (~Jhrist) did not ap- peal to a valiant high king, which would 94 bring me in the shape of a hardy cham- pion. . . . Bitter the slaughter by which there should be propitiated free relief. With Christ should my assistance be. Beautiful the overthrowing I would give. Beautiful the combat I would wage for Christ, who is being defiled. . . . It crushes my heart to hear the voice of wailing for my God, and that His arm does not come to arrest the sorrow of death. The spirit of Conor the king was the spirit by which the knights of Sarras and Montsalvat and Corbonic were bound to unsheathe their swords and ride forth throughout the world as the avengers of Gods wrongs and the de- fenders of His sanctuaries. It was a conception, so far as litera- ture is concerned, lying in the dubious borderland between romance and alle- gory, between the regions of true sym- bol and feigned history. It was at once more than the one and less than the other, belonging as it did to days when men found in such records, if not a truth, at least a possibility, days when the boundary line of the might be lay far beyond the horizons of the visible. The early French romance, Li Livres du S. Graal, translated into English by Lonelich, appeals in the very beginning to this willing belief in the near vicini- ties of the miraculous to the common- place of daily custom. To the author, a monk (as we read in the autobiographi- cal prelude of the story), like Thomas the Apostle of little faith, Christ Him- self appeared in a vision of Good Fri- day eve, and bestowed upon his servant un petit livret. And in this supple- mentary gospel, which seems to take up the story of St. Joseph much at the point where it was left in the false gospel of Nicodemus, was written the history of the Graal, la jole de lame et la jole du cors. Then presently it appeared to the monk that in his lonely cell toutes les eles des oisiaux ki sont en lair senvolaissent par devant moi. It would seem that with that sound of flying wings, intermingled with the song-notes of multitudinous birds, the imagination of man, falling into a trance, beheld the world-old story of the passion of the soul, transfigured into the narrative of that high spiritual adventure of the knight-errantry of grace. Here, as in the war-romances, endless battles are fought, but the old war-note of strife for strifes sake has lost some- thing, if not all, of its relentless and brutal barbarities. Here, too, the loves of earth are loved, but the heart has taken the soul into partnership, and caught consecration from the spirit. And here religion is illuminated by fit- ful but persistent touches of tender hu- man affections no austerities of dogmas could obliterate and no perversion of renunciations could annul. The sweet ness and grace, the almost gay placidity of that young-hearted mysticism, the mysticism of emotion rather than of thought, is wedded to the strong joy in outward beauty no doctrines of the cor- ruption of deathly flesh had eradi- cated. As in the margins of the old missal-painters manuscripts fair im- ages decorate the sacred pages, so here picture after picture of earthly loveli- ness rises before the authors fancy. It is the sight of the Arimathians feet, bare and wayworn with his long pil- grimage, but moult blaus et moult blans which moves the heart of the pagan king to listen to his voice, for si len prist moult grant pites. Sarra- cinte, child-princess and queen, led by her mother to receive the baptismal rite in the old hermits forest cell, although docile and obedient, does not accept the new faith without questioning. She said if Christ were fairer than her brother she would worship Him, but the her- mit she would not worship, for his beard aifrighted her. Whereat the old man laughed. Yet the laughter is in no wise discordant with the silence of the ensu- ing vision, when to the childs sight Christ is made visible, fairer indeed than the fairest of earths princes, with clear, burning eyes which draw Sarra- cintes child-soul straightway to hia feet. Thus it is throughout the narrative that things humanly and things di- vinely lovely are presented to our view. Ideals of Romance. With all her Heart. The horse of the Spirit Knight who rides to Evelacks succor through the red battle is as white as a lylye flower. Ships of burnished silver sail the seas; the sword which will be most cruel to him to whom it will be most debonaire is set in its marvellous rose- red sheath. In the little story of Prince Cehdoyne, nine hands like snow for whiteness bear the seven years old child through the air in a fairy tale which might have been invented by a mother-angel amongst the angels for the delight of some heavenly nursery. Here, too, is the legend of the first Sir Launcelot, slandered and slain by rea- son of the love with w~hich, all blame- lessly, he loved that queen whose hair so shone that she might not hide it any- where, and of the kings daughter who sang so loud and sweetly on the sea- shore that a wounded knight, drifting in his boat, wrapped in a death sleep, heard, wakened, and was healed. The parable of the worlds fall and redemption is found in a form of strangely picturesque beauty, where a rose-tree springs from a lily, and from the greatest rose of all its blossoms a man comes forth to slay the serpent, and gathers together all his brother and sister blossoms, faded or perished. And the wounded knight kissing that rose is healed of his hurt. And once again, in a final vision of the Holy Dish, as at the beginning of the book, so at the end, there is a beating of birds wings as if all they in the world had been there. After some such fashion, perfectly, or most often imperfectly, with manifold inconsistencies, romance strove after its own ideals. Its counsels of perfec- tion far transcended the capacities of mankind. It made of courage a gro- tesque, of love an idolatry. It trans- gressed the bounds of worldly sanity, and became the jest of succeeding gen- erations. It was in very truth a dream of mans imagination. But it remains, like those other night dreams of which Novalis tells us, elne Schutzwehr gegen die Regelmitssigkeit und Gew6hn- lichkeit des Lebens. From the Revue des Deuk Mondes. WITH ALL HER HEART.1 BY RENE J3AZIN. Translated for the Ltving Age. CHAPTER XIV. It was now near the end of June. Henriette had not seen Etienne again~ but her Uncle Elol had once said to her: Thats a fine fellowthat Etienne Loutrel! I like him because he has so much character. Hed make a good sol dierand a good husband, too! What do you think about it, Henriette? She felt sure that the Mauves fisherman had said something to her uncle, and that the two were allies; the one telling hia secrets, the other lending a willing ear. The more closely she observed her uncle, the more she was convinced of this. He was cheerful and even merry; complained no more of his hand, but was full of plans and projects, as peo~ pie are when they see a new life open- ing before them. Had he not all Henri- ettes life, which would double the length of his own? Meanwhile at Mine. Cl6mences work was becoming every day more slack. At last it befell on a Saturday evening that Mile. Reine, who had been sent to Mourieux for his account, took Henri- ette aside on her return to the work- room and said: M. Mourleux wants you to go and see him to-morrow morning. I fancy he has some idea of a marria,~e for you He? Why I never had an hours talk with him in my life! M. Mourleux, I would like ten metres of gold braid, if you please! Yes, miss. That is ab- solutely all! He has an immensely high opinion of you, all the same. They had left the shop in company, and were walking rapidly side by side, and Reine half turned toward Henriette her thin oval face, so like that of a saint in a painted window, and her eyes colorless as two grains of un- burned coffee, while she added: But so has everybody, for that mat- ter. The town clocks were striking teR 1 Copyright by The Living Age Company.. With all her Heart. when Henriette arrived, the next morn- ing, at M. Mourleux house. He lived in the busiest and most commercial quar- ter of Nantes, in a short street which descended steeply to the Place Royale. Most of the shops were closed; his own not entirely so, for while folding shut- ters concealed the usual display of passementerie, artificial flowers, feath- ers and bonnet-shapes, the door stood opena black spot in the bright street. The shop inside presented the form of an axe-head. Narrow at the front, fur- nished with two oak counters, and pigeon-holed on either side for the r~- ception of goods, it widened out at the back so as to accommodate a desk and a book-case; and here, suspended upon the wall, was a huge pasteboard sheet, with strips of paper pasted between lines of green thread and inscribed: Offers and applications for young girls in the millinery business. For years Mourleux had barely fluitted that narrow shop and the small office at the back, which was dimly lighted by a window opening upon a court. He was to be found there at all hours, and always the same, big and heavy, with his bushy eyebrows, thick, short moustache and grizzled hair, parted far on one side and brushed smoothly over the right ear. He looked rough, almost vulgar; but his keen and deep set eyes were straightforward in their glance, and seemed to pierce the very brain of his interlocutor. The im- pression he produced, at first sight, was that of an intelligent boor, absorbed in trade, who knew very well how to look after three clerks and a cashier. But the young milliner-girls had come to know that beneath that retired police- mans exterior beat the largest, the warmest and the humblest heart in the world. Knowing smiles were some- times exchanged, at the sight of the big man in the back shop, surrounded by pretty young girls who talked to him in subdued tones. But those astute young creatures themselves, with wits painfully sharp concerning the secret motive of a mans attentions, knew, both by their own experience and by the tradition handed down from their elders, that here was one who would help them for the pure pleasure of doing good; in whom a natural, kindly im- pulse had passed into a thirty-years habit. The result was that they adored him. He, on his part, kept a list of their applications for employment, found them places, recommended them to the head-milliners who applied to him, and xvas torced, in many cases, whether he would or no, to become acquainted ~vith the more or less honorable secrets of their lives. He never joked with them, and this was a form of respect which they could all appreciate. Henriette knew him but slightly. She entered the shop, ana, away at the back, near the book-case stuffed with the well-worn volumes, which Mou- ricux was in the habit of lending to his young customers, she caught a glimpse of the merchant in his revolving chair, and of the little apprentice Louisa standing on tip-toe before the library. Her tousled head was turned toward the book-shelves, and she gazed at the titles with arms hanging limply at her sides. What sort of a book do you want? asked Mourleux. I dont know, monsieur. Something for my Sunday. A bit of a story? Travels? Anec- dotes ? She settled upon her right leg because the other was swollen and pained her, and held out her hands with an infan- tile gesture. Oh, I dont know at all! Just give me something that will make me cry! Mourleux got up, steadying himself against the book-case, chose a volume and gave it to the child, Who went limp- ing off in the half light, throwing a joyous look of recognition at Henriette when she passed her. Good-morning, Mile. Henriette, said Mourieux. Youll excuse my asking you to come here. Its not easy for me to get off, on a Sunday. Of course not, and Henriette slipped into a seat near the book-case, where she faced Mourleux, who had fallen back heavily into his revolving- chair. You keep a lending-library, out With all her Heart. of pure kindness to your customers. What a luxury! Mourleux looked till the last bit of Louisas cape and skirt had vanished through the shop-door: Thats a good child, said he, that little apprentice of yours! And so hard-worked! How can I get off on a Sunday? If I were not here to choose her books for her, she would go to the public libraries, where they would give heranything. Well, Mile. Henriette, I have a message for you from Mine. Lemari& At the sound of that name, Henri- ettes mood changed. Her first impres- sion passed away. What, a~ain? she said, It cant be that she wants an- other bonnet! No. He had sunk back in his chair, with his chin upon his breast, as was his wont, and those searching eyes of his followed the effect of his words upon her mind. Mile. Henriette, he said, at last, I dont think you do that lady justice. I have known her ever since her mar- riage, and I know that sorrow has saved her from selfishness. She is a very generous, noble woman, and at last she is free to do the good she de- sires. She has been thinking of you It is very good of her. We are not rich, certainly, but we can live, espe- cially now that uncle has got his pen- sion. You dont allow me to finish! She thought of you as one who might help her in her good works. She knows, Mile. Henriette, how many friends you have among the poor in your district; that they are not afraid of you, and that you are acquainted with misery. Now dont lets have any affectation of mod- esty! I know all about you. Couldnt you point out to her the cases most in need of assistance in your quarterthe real ones, I mean? You could do what you liked. But, monsieur, that is a mission A perfectly honorable one to you, mademoiselle, and one, observe, which would enable you quietly and kindly to help friends of your own, who chance lIVING AGE. VOL. XVII. 867 to be ill or out of work. People in our trade do suffer in the dead season. Oh, yes ! said Heariette. But why should I be the one? I dont mind telling you who sug- ,,ested your name to Mine. Lemarh?. The culprit isnt far off. Ill fact, I am the man. I should be very unwilling to annoy a person like you, but I have been thinking about this for a long time. You are good, you are pitiful Henriette laughed, a nervous little laugh. Oh, but what an idea! she said. Please tell me a little more clearly, M. Mourieux, what you mean. Still smiling, she gazed with a sort of veiled anxiety at the man who thus gave expression to a thought which had often troubled herself. Was it not true that people were always confiding in her, as though she were a creature apart from others, vowed to some mys- terious mission of mercy? Her maid- enly pride, impatient of all control, shrinking, too, from the career of soli- tude and sacrifice which she felt being forced upon her, impelled her to run away. But the upright soul within her conquered, and Henriette did not rise. She leaned forward as though to catch the utterance of Fate in person, her slender neck bent, her shining eyes fixed. For a moment Mourleux did not speak, and she said again: What is it you all want of me? It seems to me I am just like every one else. The old merchant rubbed his hands over his knees, for he was really a little afraid of Henriette. He had only his heart to guide him, but at last he said: Excuse me! I may be mistaken, but I dont think that is true. All I would ask of you is a little help for those who are trying to help others. They are not very many, mademoiselle. I am an old man, and I cannot do much more; but you with your youth and prettiness, and the sort of things you would know how to saywhat a comfort you might be to the distressed! And it is so good to be able to comfort them ! He shook his big head and went on: You will say I am meddling with what does not concern me. But Mine. Lemnri~ begged me to speak to you. She did not 97 With all her Heart. venture, not knowing you even as well as I do. Henriette pulled herself up very gravely. Her face, as often happens with those who have been listening with concentrated attention, seemed to reflect the very thought of the man who had addressed her. M. Mourleux, I thank you, very much. I was only afraid you were judging me too favorably. And then, I am only twenty-four, and I have She paused with parted lips, but she did not finish her sentence and say, I have a lover, though in very truth the image of Etienne did present itself at that moment, as a motive for resist- ance. She seemed to see him, in the morning stillness of the Loire, standing upright in his boat, with his arms thrown wide. She felt as though, deep down, within her, something were be- ginning to weep. Yet nothing was re- quired of her which need be any ~b- stacle to an every-day lifeto marriage. Her nerves were unstrung. Presently she rose, smoothing her gloves, and looking hard at the ball of cut crystal on the handle of her parasol. I never desired any such thing as this, she said. But perhaps it would be unfair to others, not to do it. If you think that I ought to go and see Mine. Lemari& Oh, pray do! Very well. I will. A moment later, Mourieux was cran- ing his neck over the door-sill of his shop, and watching the retreating fig- ure of the young girl, as she pursued her way, straight down the middle of the street, gathering in her left hand the folds of her black skirt. He felt pleased. If she only will, he was thinking. The poor would brighten at the very sight of her. And to think that there are idiots who pre- tend that all the milliner-girls are them- selves for sale! Much they know about it! I dont say they are all saints, but there are good souls among themand brave and upright onesand a spirit of self-sacrifice fit to break ones heart! CHAPTER XV. She went on, at hap-hazard, some- times making the turn of a square and coming back to the point from whicl4 she had started, enjoying the alterna- tions of sun and shade, and all the movement in the streets, as so many means of procrastinating the moment of her visit. Should she go? Why need she assume new cares and mix herself up with the affairs of others? She had been amazed at the insight of that clumsy Mourieux. He was regarded in the trade as a kind-hearted body, who liked to do a good turn, but Who found his account in benevolence, be- cause it enabled him to keep his cus- tomers. I never thought he was so good a man, was her reflection. Certain of his expressions kept recurring to her You with your youth and prettiness what a comfort you might be and so she found herself ringing at Mine. Lemari~s door. A footman showed her into the blue room, but this time Henriette pressed the hand which Mine. Lemarid held out t~ her. It is I who have to thank you to-day mademoiselle. You have seen Mou- rieux 2 Yet they talked a little while of in: different things before approaching the subject which had brought them to- gether, Qf Uncle Madiot, and the shop, and the Rue de lErmitage, and the other work-girls. Mine. Lemarid was observing the young girl, timidly bu~ closely, and, little by little, the latter felt herself won by the humble good: ness of the o4der woman. At the end of a good quarter of an hour, Mine. Lemari6 understood that she might speak freely. Im going to tell you a secret, she said, a cherished secret of my own. My dear old friend Mourieux is, I fear, breaking, but he has done me such ser- vice, in the past, by conveying alms which would never have been accepted from my hand! If one of our workmen happened to be discharged without any very weighty reason, or sometimes, God knows! for only too good reason, I could not undertake to assist him, don~t you see? Then Mourleux would be my agent, I was associated to some extent also in his own benefactions, in the help he gave, not to accomplished work- women like you, of course, but to the humblest kind of shop-girls, who got poor wages, or were ill, or run down, or out of employment, or anything of that sort. And now, when I can be more liberal than I ever was before, having more to dispose of, my good Mourieux seems powerless to help me. I have so wanted to find some one of your class, of whom the poor would not be afraid, in whom they would confide more readily than in me, who could come to me and say, Theres a very bad case over yonder which might be cured. People are so divided in this world, mademoiselle, that one has to have permission even to pity the unfor- tunate. Do you think I have found that person? Henriette held out her gloved hand and said in her clear voice, I will try, madame. ~You wont need even to come to my house! At least, I will not ask it of you, because you have so little time at your disposal. Just write to me! Describe the pitiful cases you meet, the little troubles and the great troubles; tell me what sort of institutions you would like to see founded. I will keep your secret, and you, as far as may be, will keep mine! Henriettes feeling of confidence had so wonderfully increased that she ven- tured to speak of Marie. They talked of her without reserve, and at last Mine. Lemari~ said, Buy her a little furni- ture, and let her fancy that you paid for it. She would sell it else. Even after this talk about Marie, Henriette did not at once take leave; she lingered on, detained by an ex- quisite realization of the fact that her own words and looks gave pleasure. She could read in this old womans face the appeal which children and women who are still young and attractive dis- cern on every sideDo not go! It is the reflection of a happy life in a tar- nished mirror. Meanwhile Mine. Lemari6 was think- ing, How quickly this girl understood 99 me! And unconsciously, led by the mysterious power which envelops our little deeds in its own larger purposes in the very act of confiding the distribu- tion of alms to hands which had the true touch of healing, she offered to the young creature before her the most un- expected, as well as the least under- stood of all compensations: the blessing of those who are ready to perish. [To BE CONTI~UED.] From Tne contemporary Review. IS PHOTOGRAPHY AMONG THE FINE ARTS? For some years photographers have been assuring us that photography is a fine art, and that they themselves are artists. This year they are more posi- tive about it than ever. It seems to me, therefore, high time to investigate their claim. It would be easier and more amusing, I admit, to pass it over with contempt, or cover it with confusion and ridicule. Indeed, hitherto their ex- hibitions which, year by year, have given them the chance to state their case, have been either almost ignored, or else lightly dismissed by the art critic. It has been left for the photog- raphers themselves to criticise their shows, and their criticism is based upon no other standard than their own wishes. They say that photography is a fine art, and they discuss it from that point of view. And yet, if photography is a fine art, then it comes distinctly within the province of the art critic, and photographs must be judged from the same standpoint as pictures, photog- raphers from the same standpoint as painters. The skilled and capable art critics in this country to-day are very few in number; they are to be counted on less than the fingers of one hand. Only one among them this year has, so far as I know, paid any attention to the photographers and their exhibitions, and he has disposed of them with a pat- ronizing levity which might seem un- fair, had not the photographers gone out of the way in their pronouncements Is Photography A mong the Fine Arts? 100 to court it. But art critics are as liable to err as any other prophets, and it may he that they hesitate to commit them- selves. If photography is proved to be a fine art, then they may have to swal- low the words they nave already spoken; if it is proved not to be a fine art, they would care still less to have already announced from the housetops, or in the columns of their journal, that it is. Mistakes of the sort have been made before, when wholesale swallow- ing of opinion wa~ not found a pleasant dose, though one that had to be taken. it might be thought presumptuous on my part even to touch upon a matter hitherto so carefully avoided, especially as I make no pretensions to a knowl- edge of photography, had not photog- raphers removed the difficulty by say- ing that they are artists. Altogether, it s~ems to me that it would be just as well if some attention were paid to the subject before it is disposed of and put in its place by the French and the Ger- mans, and we are told that we must ac- cepu and abide by their critical conclu- sions. The weight of art criticism is now swinging from the Continent to En- gland, at the moment when Continental nations have suddenly begun to look to England for a standard in the decora- tive arts; therefore there is no reason why England should wait for the Con- tinent to settle the question. Since, then, serious criticism by art critics has hitherto been denied the photographers, let us for once try to consider their assertions. When artist photographers have beeu compared in a flippant strain to artist tailors and artist barbers and music hall artists, they have frequently shown a degree of temper which a man, morally conscious of right, would think super- fluous. They have insisted the more angrily that they are artists; they have talked the louder about artistic photog- raphy and its place among the fine arts. Fortunately, as I write, there is a chance to study them, not merely by their words, but by their works, for two photographic exhibitions are open in London. The visitor to these two ex- hibitions will quickly discover that their aims are very different, though the difference in actual results obtained is not so marked. The members of the Royal Photographic Society evidently have for their object the recording of the years progress in photography. It is true that what they call the art section has been judged by artists, while the technical section has been judged by photographers. It might be pointed out that if photography is an art and its practitioners artists, they should be quite as capable as humble Associates of the Royal Academy of Arts to decide upon the merit of their own work; art- ists, as a rule, do not submit their pro- ductions to the maker of frames and the manufacturer of colors. At the Photographic Salon, on the other hand, we are informed that, released from mechanical trammels, photography is capable of dealing with the subtleties of pictorial effect; that it may aim at a high expression of decorative value; that its practitioners are not precluded from the power of exercising their fancy and ima~ination; and that pho- tographers themselves should be capa- ble of fixing a standard of merit of their own pictorial work, without appealing for assistance to experts in other arts. Thus, it seems that photographers, be- fore they have established their posi- tion, have begun to disagree among themselves as to what it is. The mem- bers of the Royal Society frankly ap- peal to artists for artistic judgment; the members of the Photographi.c Salon declare there is no necessity to call in experts, though that they really do de- sire criticism other than their own is evident, as they continue to send tick- ets to the press. I think, on the whole, the Royal Photographic Society, while it does not pretend to be essentially an artistic body, is more consistent to tra- ditions heretofore accepted as artistic than the Photographic Salon, despite its Franco-British name. If upon tech- nical matters an architect does not con- sult a painter, nor the illustrator refer to the sculptor, yet all artists have always worked harmoniously together for a common endthe advancement of their profession. But this is a side Is Photography Among the Fine Arts? 1; Photography Among the Fine Arts? issue. The one important question is whether the photographers, by the prints shown, justify their claim to the rank of artists. I only note, in passing, that artists have not insisted upon their right to be called artists on every ap- propriate and inappropriate occasion. The fact that they are artists has been recognized since the earliest ages, and any form of expression they may evolve is gladly accepted, if it is ar- tistic; the greater the artist, the more diffident he feels about his position in the world of art. At first, photographers argued that they were artists because their photo- graphs had a pictorial value. Now perhaps it is because they have made too rapid strides for the critics to keep up with, that so little criticism has been granted themthey go still fur- ther, and say that their photographs have -also a decorative value. At the present time a large section of the craftsmen who alone have heretofore been known as artists maintain that picturesthat is, easel pictures, in which category, I suppose, photographs are to be includedcannot strictly speaking be considered decorative; that a decoration must be a conventional- ized, a simplified rendering of a subject, in no sense realistic. Other artists deny this as emphatically, though the painters of easel pictures and the paint- ers of decorative pictures have usually been in accord in their appreciation of the greatest works in either class: if there be any such classes, which I am disposed to doubt. The photographers, however, sweep aside all such subtle distinctions, settle in a minute ques- tions that have perplexed artists for centuries, and declare boldly that in their pictures the pictorial and decora- tive qualities are combined. Again, they argue, in support of their claims, that they have largely influenced the artist in the choice of subjects; that they are the true realists; that they have solved problems of momentary ac- fion. Therefore, having produced pic- tures themselves, having exerted so wide an influence upon art, they ask for, or suggest, that they should be ac 101 corded, space on the walls of the Royal Academy and other galleries where art- ists exhibit, and thus receive the official recognition which is their due.1 It is interesting, and instructive too, before examining their work and their influence more carefully, to compare the methods by which they achieve perfec- tion with the technical and mental training thought essential for the worker who alone, until now, has been called artist. It may be that the artist was always, in a fashion, looked down upon by his fellows, save those who understood him, as a weakling who should be encouraged, or at any rate tolerated, in a curious pastime rather beneath the dignity of the average full- grown man; though, at times, when he was invited to discharge the duties of some of the more usual and common avocations of life, such as diplomacy and statecraft, he distinguished himself supremely. But, as a rule, he lived so much in his own world that he scarcely knew what was happening about him, and the world knew still less of him. He was so absorbed in his own affairs that little else interested or appealed to him. He usually entered his profes- sion at a very early age. He began as an apprentice. He learned to wash his masters brushes, to clean and set his masters palette. He mixed the clay or he fired the furnace. When he had learned to do these thingsthe ele- ments of his trade, at which he was kept for some yearshe was allowed to draw, and for more years he studied: he copied in line nature or art. Then he was permitted to work, exactly in the manner of his master, on the least important part of his masters paint- ings. And after ten or fifteen years of this sort of practice or preparation, when he had learned to judge pictures critically, because he knew how they were made, when he was able to make them because critically and scientifi- cally and technically he understood his craft, he left his master and started for 1 This recognition, it may interest artists to know, is to be granted them in the Spring (1898) Exhibition of the walker Art Gallery, at Liver- pool. Is Photography Among the Fine Arts .2 himself. In nine cases out of ten, after years of struggling, he discovered that he was quite incapable of doing as good work as that produced in the workshop which he had left. If he had something to say for himself, he said it in a slightly different way from his master; and if he said it better, or even as well, he took equal rank with him in the course of years, sometimes sooner, sometimes later. If he were possessed of what we call geniusthat is, the ca- pacity for tremendously hard workhe might become known after a shorter apprenticeship. But the chances were, and still are, that throughout his life he would remain unrecognized, that no one would ever hear of him until his death. He probably believed that he was doing his work as he should do it, and it was never his business to be avowedly revolutionaryexcept in the sense that the Van Eycks, or whoever introduced the use of oils in painting, were revolutionary, or Wirer when he perfected wood-cutting, or Bewick when he developed wood-engraving, or Senefelder when he discovered lithog- raphy; nor was it the artists mission to live down the opposition of the unintelli- gent multitude. When old age came upon him, he craved for more years that he might work and solve those new problems that were continually present- ing themselves to him as he grew in knowledge and handicraft; and, dying, he might murmur the names of some of the great ones in the worlds history, and say, I, too, am an artist! In a word, to be worthy of the name of art- ist, it has always been held necessary to give to art ones whole life, ones whole thought, and, above all, ones entire technical and mechanical skill, only to be acquired by unending study and practice. The average student may de- velop his powers after years of unceas- ing toil; there are others who, with the same toil, may express themselves im- perfectly, and yet have something to say; but the great artist is he who, technically and intellectually, is per- fectly equipped, and he has come about half-a-dozen times in the history of the world. All, however, go through a cer tam manual training, which is their stock in trade, a training unknown in any other profession; they must study a multitude of subjects, see a multitude of things, and have the power to con- vert what they see into graphic or plastic form. They must have some knowledge of the abstruse mysteries of chemistry, optics, and mathematics, despised by the art photographer. They must have mastered the science of anatomy, and it is well for them to be conversant with the history of painting, and decoration, and architecture, and much besides. Unfortunately, nowa- days hundreds of thousands, probably millions of people, who ought to be busy about something else, are studying and practising art, because art happens to be popular and is endowed by the par- ish, and some artists manage to achieve a very enviable degree of social and financial success. But becauSt~ the term has been already abused, that is no reason why it should be abused still furtherwhy a mechanical contrivance should be called artistic, and those who make use of it artists. It would be pleasant, no doubt, for photographers to obtain the same social and financial recognition as artists; it would be pleas- ant, too, if the Italian with his hurdy- ~,urdy could win for himself the reputa- tion and fortune of Paderewski. And now, what is the training of the photographer who is noisiest in his as- sertion that he is an artist? Does he devote his whole life, or a year, or a month to the study of art? Does he give up his whole life to the study and the practice even of photography? Is photography his profession, his occupa- tion, his sole concern and interest? Is he first the apprentice, then the master, in the shop, the useless room with no window, or studio, as he prefers to call it? I look down the list of exhibitors at the Photographic Salon, where the gos- pel of art is most strenuously preached; I see among them the names of par- sons, of government clerks, of solicitors, of a beef-extract maker, of a banker, and some titlesin fact, the amateur rampant. It is the time left over from his serious work in life that this pho 102 Is Photography Among the Fine Arts? tographer gives to his art. Photog- raphy is his amusement, his relaxation. He labors in his pulpit or at his desk 1111 the week, and then, when the half- holiday comes, he seizes his little black box, skips nimbly to the top of a bus, hurries from his Hampstead heights to the Embankment, plants his machine in a convenient corner, and, with the pressing of a button or the loosing of a cap, creates for you a nocturne which shall rank with the life-work of the master. Or, at odd moments, in his wilds of Clapham, he will evolve the scheme of a poster that shall humble Ch~ret into the dust. Or, getting a model to pose stark naked for him, he will present you an idyl out of the same little box that should putand it does Botticelli to shame. He sees what he likes, for he has been taught what to like by reading books upon painting, which he does not understand, and which teach nothing for him; he pre- pares his camera; he focusses it, or knocks it out of focus; he puts in his glass plate or his film. And who does the work? who makes the picture? Why, he does not as much as know whether there is a picture on it until he brings the plate or film home and develops it. What does the painter do? He either sits down in front of his sub- jecta landscape, let us suppose makes a careful study of it with his unaided hands, which he Is able to do because he has had a certain training, and has the power to do ita power in which the photographer is totally defi- cient; or he looks at it, and his observa- tion and his menliory are so keen that he can absorb the whole character of the scene before him, and then, later, reproduce it out of his boxhis brain without, perhaps, doing a scrap of work on the spot. Let the photographer find his subject in the same fashion, and study it in his way, and having, to his own great delight, selected and ar- ranged and composed it, as he says for he uses only the artists technical termsforget to take the cap off his lens. What happens then? But he does not forget; he pushes the button, and a picture is the result. Until lately 103 he was the mute inglorious Milton; now he has discovered a machine to make his masterpiece for him. No wonder he laughs at the poor artist who must humbly toil to create beauty, which a camera manufactures for him at once. What a farce it is to think of Titian and Velasquez and Rembrandt actually studying and working, puzzling their brains over subtleties of drawing and modelling, of light and atmosphere and color, when the modern master has but to step into a shop, buy a camera, play a few tricks with gum chomateI be- lieve it is calledto turn you out a fin- ished masterpiece which is far more like the real thing, he says, than any mere hand-made picture ever could be. Is it not natural that he should boast of his avowedly revolutionary aims? Is he not doing for art what Watt and Stephenson have done for labor? There are to be machine-made pictures, as there are machine-made shirts and car- pets. In time he hopes to be released from mechanical trammels, to which the artist has ever been subjected. He is not bound down by any rule of accu- racy of definition, which the artist has given his life to make or to break. He dispenses with capability of producing a documentary fact, when the greatest artists would give their lives to render, only approximately, one of the smallest. He, however, is in no need of fact; he can, he says, exercise his fancy and imagination, which, apparently, he thinks everybody possesses naturally; the artist, for his part, spends his life curbing his fancy and imaginationif he has any. For pictorial work by pho- tography, an indissoluble connection with the abstruse mysteries of chem- istry, optics, and mathematics is . very slight indeed; for the artist, if I understand what is meant, it is indis- pensable. He discards the worlds s uni- versally accepted traditions; it is the artists proudest boast to have con- served them. He creates new princi- ples for himself; the artist has jealously preserved those handed down from the earliest ages. In a word, the photographer is the bold independent wbo has broken loose 104: from tradition and asserted his indi- viduality, not by the cultivation of his hand and bis brain and his eye, that these three unruly members may work together to produce the harmony the artist almost despairs of; no, but by sticking his head into a black box, and at the crucial moment letting a machine do everything for him. It is the chem- istry he despises, the optics he is superior to, the science he scoffs at which do the whole thing. I have heard of one artist who, like the photog- rapher, hands over his task to an agent the emperor of Germany. He too, with no trouble to himself, throu,,h his faithful Knackfuss, may produce mas- terpieces; and they are more amus- ing than photographs because, in this case, the agent is human, not mechan- ical. When the photographer touches his great works with his hands they cease to be photographs. The most skilful painter is a bungler who takes months to put a figure on his canvas; a photographers machine will put it on the same canvas while you wait. And the art? Why, with his machinery and his chemicals, he can put upon canvas, upon paper, upon metal, pictures which look to himself and his friends surpris- ingly like the real thing. The man who sells margarine for butter, and chalk and water for milk, does much the same, and renders himself liable to legal prosecution by doing it. The art of the photographer, as now explained, is to make his photographs as much like something that they are not as he can. The old-fashioned idea was to give a straightforward photograph, as direct and clear and true as possible, a photo- graph that was of some use as a record. The revolutionary photograph is one that bears upon the surface a vague resemblance to a poor photograph of a charcoal, a sepia, or a wash drawing, to an aquatint or a water-color. I never heard of a great painter who en- deavored to palm off his paintings as chromos. The photographer plays with his print, until it is neither the photo- graph it ought to be, nor the drawing he would like it to be. But his one am- bition is to have you forget that his photograph is a photo~raph. Thus, you read in a sympathetic criticism that a certain print is a graceful design for a fan in red chalk, when it is nothing but some sort of a faked-up print in red, which looks as much like chalk as that useful commodity does like cheese. All the old critical jargon, long since dis- carded by even the oldest of the old critics, is brought into service in photo- graphic discussions and notices to strengthen the deception, and the new- est of new technical terms into the bar- gain, to the infinite confusion of the humble inquirer. From one writer, en- couraged by the Tirne8 to the extent of a column and a quarter, I learn that a photographer may employ a method of printing which allows of an amount of modification, from absolute obliteration to varying degrees of half-tone and shadow; but I wonder if anybody will tell me what a half-tone is, except, of course, as the term is employed by the mechanical engraver; the critic does not condescend to explain, but adds that the system is one of which only the most skilfuland they must be true artists alsocan avail themselves success- fully. They must also, it appears, be possessed of striking originality and unrivalled artistic feeling, though that they should know anything of drawing and painting does not seem necessary. But they must be chic to a degree! It is not astonishing to find that the print which inspired this delightfully inap- propriate medley of applause should deal with a subject that is confessed to be [ranch ent canaille. Again, I read that a certain photograph of Molly is a piece of decoration for which the beautiful and harmonious frame is somewhat responsible: were it not also described as an impression I would suggest that the frame might have been sent alone. Even the poor tortured term impression, you see, must be dragged in. It is really in this perpetual and pretentious aping of the artist that photographers have made their blunder. An artist, for example~ an etcher, is continuously dealing with complex scientific problems, but he does not describe himself ~s a chemist. The is Photography Among the Fine Arts 2 Is Photo graphy Among the Fine Arts? illustrator is hopelessly involved with the printer and the engraver, but he does not insist upon joining their trade unions. But it is the irrepressible itch of the amateur or outsider to pass him- self off as something he is not that char- acterizes the present-day photographer. If he is an artist, why does he try to imitate another form of art which has no relation to or connection with his own? When photographers produce some form of artor artlessness either which has as much individuality of expression and character as oil-painting or etching, then it will be another mat- ter. But it is safe to say they never will. There is a certain something, a certain virtue, a certain qualityper- sonal, human, emotional, as you may choose to describe itin work done by the unaided union of brain and eye and hand which makes all the difference be- tween art and the machine-manufac- tured shadow. If the photographer could produce from nature, with his own unaided hands, a duplicate of any one of his photographs, would he use his camera? But I do not believe there is in London a single photographer who could. It is just possible that if some of these clerks, parsons, and stockbrok- ers were to give up their black boxes and their trades and their business in the city to the study of .art, one or two of them might, after many years, be- come passable artists. But they have yet to begin their apprenticeship. However, even if photographs are not pictures in the artists sense of the word, the photographer, ignorant of the most elementary rudiments of drawing, says, I have taught the artist so much. What has he taught? That the sky is beautiful? Claude knew that centuries ago. That a portrait may be a faithful likeness? He has still to sur- pass Holbein. Did Muybridge discover the action of the horse, or did the Greeks? Who has told us the most about the growth of flowers and the flight of birds, a bank clerk or the Jap- anese draughtsman? The photog- rapher has made the artist more accu- rate, he says. I wonder how much more accurate Van Eyck would have been had he had a kodak. If the pho- tographer, who does not know such ele- mentary historical facts as these, is to teach the artist, who learnt them in his school-days, if he is to rank with the artist, then the world is a great deal nearer realizing Mr. Bellamys depress- ing forecast of the future than any one had any idea of. If the actual work of the artist counts for nothing, then we might as well hear Wagner on a hurdy- gurdy as in Baireuth; the squeaking of a phonograph is quite as artistic and original as the voice of the prima donna.. But has photography accomplished anything? Yes, it has cheapened art greatly. It has lowered the standard with a public that instinctively prefers the sham and the machine-made and the microscopic; it has reduced the art- ist to a demoralizing struggle with the amateur simply to get his bread and butter. In the beginning of the cen- tury England was celebrated for its beautifully illustrated books, in which. the greatest artists, engravers, and printers collaborated to produce a per- fect whole. To-day, the place of these~ books has been taken by the Strtnd Magazine and the Sketch, thanks to the services of photography. In the mak- ing of books, however, the tendency has always been toward the survival of the cheapest, and the cheapestusually the newesthas always interested artists for a while, though for other reasons than its cheapness. Steel engraving succumbed before wood engraving and lithography, and they, in turn, have suc- cumbed to the cheapness of the process man. In many ways, until lately,. process was a great advance upon any other form of reproduction. Now,. process-block makers are mostly pho- tographers, who are killing each other in the race for cheapness. I do not want any one to think I would imply that photography is not useful to the artist. On the contrary, it is, and es- pecially in illustration, since it pre serves the illustrators original design for him. It enables the architect to get, at small expense and without the trouble of going to see and draw them,. bits of detail in foreign lands, thougb~ 105 I~ Photography Among the Fine Arts? this is a questionable advantage. The worlds greatest architects managed very well without it. One critic has said that if photographers would turn their attention to the recording of his- toric events like the Jubilee, or of van- ishing buildings, they could do an im- mense service to art. In one way this is true; in another it is not. Surely this critic would be the last to suggest that the cinematographic picturesthe whole twenty-two thousand of them, shown at the Empire, I thinkare equal to one picture of a procession by Car- paccio, painted centuries before we had any photographs. No doubt twenty- two thousand artists would be required to secure as many views of the Jubilee procession as were obtained by the cinematograph, and their employment might have been too much of a good thing. But if, say, half-a-dozen accom- plished artists had been commissioned, and allowed to do what they wanted, might we not have had a record of some artistic importance? As to the photo- graphing of old buildings, which would the architect rather have, an etching by Piranesi or a photograph by one of the most revolutionary of the Salon pho- tographers? I cannot agree with this same critic that a photograph will give a better idea of an ancient building than a drawing by a trained architectural draughtsman. The senseless lens of the camera will never record the vital, characteristic qualities of great archi- tecture. For two reasons: first, be- cause it is mechanically impossible in the majority of cases for the lens to take in the subject that is wanted; and secondly, even if it does, there is al- ways, in the best of photographs, a hopeless confusion of detail and light and shade. While there is still another reason, out of which photographers may make as much or as little as they wish: an architectural draughtsman uses his brain and his hands to give the best possible rendering of a building, and to do this he is frequently com- pelled to compose his effects and to alter his point of view. Of course the photographer may say that he can make composite photographs. But a composite photograph of architecture would be a quaint, weird, uncanny ob- jectI mean, if the photographer were to change his point of view as the draughtsman does. The pictures by Canaletto are a thousand times more realistic than any photograph ever made of Venice. And though I have heard it objected that a painter like Rico, for example, produces nothing but colored photographs, you have but to put a colored photograph alongside of one of Ricos pictures to appreciate the difference. I am, however, alto- gether in sympathy with D. S. M., the critic to whom I refer, when he says and, indeed, I have said the same thing myselfthat I would as soon have a good photograph as many of the pic- tures one is compelled to look at. And yet, after all, I am not sure that this is not a mere figure of speech; when It comes to the point, I would not. I look at the average Isracis, or Luke Fildes, or Geoffroi, and I know that while a photographer can adopt their methods of composition, and build up hovels in swell studios, and arrange the light and group the figures most effectively in it, he can go no further. These painters can, with time and with patience and great struggles, produce something that is truer to the facts before them than the machine, though these facts may not be so elaborately recorded. Take the machine away from the photog- rapher, and what can he do? Nothing. The other man can copy what he sees, and no camera can with any intelli- gence, while the photographer working the machine does nothing. Really the painter, no matter whether the result is artistic or not, should have more credit than a machine for doing the same thing. I may not like the result; it may be shockingly bad as art; but it is infinitely more praiseworthy than the photograph. Again, it has been sug- gested that the amateur photographer devote himself to preserving for us copies of furniture, embroidery, tap- estry, and jewelry. Now, anybody who knows anything about the difficulties of drawing or photographing just these 106 A Photography Among the Pine Arts? objects, knows how hopelessly impos- sible it is for the camera to reproduce many of them. Whoever prefers the best photograph to a drawing of virtu- ally the same subjects by any great artist, ~rom the time of Mantegna and Dtirer to Jacquemart, must have had his eyesight impaired by the study of photographs. Photography is also of use to the il- lustrator by enabling him to get more material from which to work up his drawings with less trouble. But this also is a doubtful advantage. For if he depends on his camera instead of using his sketch-book, that is the end of him. He is saved at times drudgery to which Uarpaccio, Guardi, iogarth were sub- jectedand they were all the better draughtsmen for it. A good photo- graph of an event will prove more sug- gestive to the clever illustrator than a bad drawing, but in nine cases out of ten the illustrator would have preferred to be on the spot with a lead pencil in- stead of a camera. For instance, an event like the Jubilee procession, which occurs but once in the history of the world, and which, as it happened, oc- curred on a beautifully clear day, can be recorded by photography more com- pletely than in any other way; unless, as I have said, the same number of art- ists as there were photographers had been set to work. But the photographs made were no more works of art than the phonograph recital of a great poets poem is an original creation. Both are curious reproductions. And useful as photography is to the illustrator on the weekly or daily press, it is safe to say it is absolutely useless unless he can draw equally well without it. It may verify momentary action for him, and at times prove him to be right or wrong; but, although artists had not the same means of verification, the same facts were known to them hundreds of years hefore photography was invented. I have made photographs, and used them, and found them helpful, and so, I fancy, has every other illustrator. But there are few who would not rather, when it is possible, study a subject from nature than from a photograph, using the 107 photograph only to help out their sketches, much as the novelist makes use of historical documents to obtain his facts, or, better still, doing without it altogether. With the illustrator, un- fortunately, it is frequently a question of time. I once made any number of photographs of bull fights, because I could not stay in Spain any longer. But, somehow, I do not know that I have beaten Goya, who devoted many years of his life to the subject before photography was invented. And I pre- fer the etchings of Rembrandt and Whistler to any photographic facts about London or Amsterdam. As I understand it, an artist who is an art- ist, when he uses photographs, does so simply to save time. Art was invented before photography, and, if photog- raphy were to be prohibited to-morrow, art would continue. Only, I believe that better work would be done by the artist. For there is no doubt that many artists and draughtsmen do now depend upon photographs, more or less. In- stead of taking a sketch-book, or else along with it, they take a camera. If they take a camera alone, they simply shirk their work and ruin their style. And if their attention is divided be- tween the camera and the sketch-book, the chances are they bring back with them nothing. A few artists can ren- der in their sketches even the most momentary effects, the most transitory actions, the ability to do this having been acquired by a lifetime of observa- tion. Anybody can make a snapshot of the same subjectas photographers themselves say, anybody can make a good photograph. But the man who can put down his notes of what he has seen is an artist; the man who cannot is a photographer. Instead of teaching us how to see things, photography is simply keeping some artists from ob- serving them at all. Instead of the bulk of students trying to produce architectural studies which shall rival those of Turner, they make the merest notes and plans, and depend upon pho- tographs which, eventually, prove of but too little assistance to them. If this were the rule, as fortunately it is 108 ]?amazdn. not, in one hundred years, as likely as not, sketching would become a lost art, until the great artist was born who would revive it. Less questionable is the service ren- dered to science and medicine by pho- tography. It has also added to the pleasure of many people by the sugges- tive reproductions of old and modern pictures which it can supply, though here it has been productive of evil as well as good, for it has reduced the study of painting for historian and critic to a study of photographs, and we have the much-vaunted new criticism of the disciples of Morelll as the result. Finally, unless a man can draw with his own unaided hand he is not an art- 1st, he never has been considered one, and he never will be. To fake up photo- graphic prints so that they shall look like drawings or paintings is a sham which one would think any person who pretended to call himself an artist would be ashamed to descend to. It is a harmless amusement to make photo- graphs, but to publish them as works of art is more serious, because it helps to lower the standard, already too low, for the great ignorant, artless public. This is the one grievance artists have against the photographers: they cheapen and degrade everything, even their own often excellent work, when they insist that they themselves are art- ists, and that their snapshots printed on stained papers, faked and fiddled, are works of art. They might to their profit remember that the best work in photo- engraving, the one photographic con- trivance that comes in direct connection with art, is done by men who were first artists, and then afterwards turned to photography. If some day artists de- vote themselves seriously to making snapshot pictures, the photographic amateur will have a bad time of it. Even photographers admit that the art- ist who has been trained knows best what to do with the camera. It stands to reason that the man who talks loudly about tones and values without the ability to render them with his own hands, will run a poor chance against the man who spends his life studying and trying to record these riiost evanes cent and elusive phenomena of nature. However, just as margarine has never superseded butter, or chalk and water milk, or been put in equal rank with it, so photography, even at Its best and in the hands of artists, will never destroy art, will never be considered one of tbe fine arts. JosEPH PEN~ELL. From Macmillans Magazine. RAMAZAN. As under cover of departing day, Slunk hunger-stricken Ramanin away. Oi~rAa KHAYYAM. The quiet evening hour, when th tired earth sighs softly with relief that the day is ending, is settling down over the land, and the whole sky is aflame. In the west the angry sun, a ball of crimson fire, is sinking slowly and re- luctantly upon a bed of tawny pink and saffron clouds. In the east the warm flush of the reflected sunset splashes the horizon with color, against which the jagged black cloud-banks stand boldly out with edges strongly defineI. Waves of delicate tints, alternating and growing more exquisitely etherial as they near the arching of the dome overhead, paint the whole of the vast heavens, till all the world is drenched in color. The slender stems and droop lug fronds of the palm trees, all sway- ing gently and sleepily in the soft breeze of evening, are outlined against the ruddy sky, and by contrast their tender green takes to itself a color that is almost black. The reaches of the river run darkly with here and there a dull, uneven wave of crimson re- flected from the splendor overhead; and on the banks, watching with hungry eyes the coming of the night, sit lines of patient fasters; for it is the Blessed Month when daylight is a hated thing. They sit in little knots and groups talk- ing fitfully in languid tones, for at all times, in the Malay Peninsula, sunset is an hour of lassitude and depression, when mens energies are at their lowest Ba maz6n. ebb, and during the month of Ramazttu the slight faintness born of lon~ a~- stinence is upon the people. These groups are gay with color, for the Malays, who lack all power to ap- preciate the glories with which nature has surrounded them, display an ex- quisite taste in dress, and love bri~,ht tints cunnin~ly blended and silks and cottons of the finest. A little cluster of natives is always a picturesque sight, and differs as much from a crowd of white men as does the ~lorious tropic sky from the dingy, leaden-colored clouds that lower over us on a winter day in England. As you watch the fasters on the river bank, the gorgeous plaid of a silk 8drong, or waist-cloth, the green of a young dandys trousers, the white of a linen coat, the ffi7tter of a head-kerchief, the brilliant orange ~own on the back of a pilgrim from Mecca, or here and there the flapping of a ~ay garment as its wearer passes to and fro, serve to give color and life to the scene. Every tint is intensified and deepened by the mellowing glory in the sky, and a ruddy hue is imparted even t4 the brown faces which gaze so patiently at the sinking sun. But the beauties of the evening are nothing to these simple folk. They gaze lazily at the blood-stained heavens, at the crimson flood which rolls slowly by them, at the black bulk of the buffaloes standing knee-deep in the shallows or wallowing luxuriously in midstream, or at the tiny dug-outs gliding by to their moorings. The scream of the cicada and tree-beetles amid the palms, the squeaking low of a young buffalo that seeks its dam, the faint chirrup of the birds, the clucking of sleepy fowls, all the soft, half-heard noises which herald the dying of the day, come to their ears. But to the fasters all these things mean nothing, save only that in a little space empty bellies will be suffered to have their -fill. Presently the sun, sinking lower, slips behind a broad bank of heavy clouds, and as it leaves the earth, throws passionate arms of gold and opal heavenwards, as though to em- 109 brace a world from which it is loth to part. A moment longer, and the tints on all sides fade and alter as one watches them, until the brilliancy of the sunset hour gives place to the quiet, more chastened loveliness of the after- glow. One little star, low down upon the horizon, blinks sleepily as though newly awakened from a heavy slumbei, and the blackness of night begins to creep stealthily across the heavens, slowly effacing the rosy tints as it passes. From the wooden mosque in the quiet groves the Bildl raises his voice in shrill falsetto, sounding ihe call to prayers. The sound floats out acros the river, proclaiming that God is great, that there is no God but God. and that Mahomed is the Prophet of Allah, and the watchers rise up quickly. The semi-silence that has held them, while the last terrible houy of waiting passed with leaden feet, is suddenly exchanged for the hum of many voices. The more scrupulous among the fasters hasten to spread their mats upon the warm earth, and to perform the prostrations and to repeat the formula prescribed by Mahomedan ritual for the evening prayer. Th~ majority of the Malays, however, have in their own estimation suffered suffi- ciently in the cause of religion for one day, and the thirst of parched throats is slaked by the water of green cocoa- nuts and the juices of luscious tropi~ fruits. The infidel observer hardly knows whether to regard this month of Ramaz~n as a period of fasting o~ feasting; for at no other time do men live in such plenty and such luxury as during these thirty days of penitence. While the Fast Month lasts, more money is spent in buying food, sweet- meats, and dainties of all kinds than is dreamed of durin~ any other portion of the year. Prices rise exceedingly in the bazaars and in the villages, and the hawkers of sweet-stuff and of cun- ningly prepared condiments, and the vendors of fruit, fat oleaginous rice, and richly spiced meats wax rici through driving a roaring trade. Look 110 Ramaz4u. not for the hollow cheek, the cavernous eye, the ascetic air, among the followers of Mahomeds law who rigidly observe the Fast, for Ramaz~n leaves no such marks behind it. Those who are well acquainted with the tenets of the Mahomedan religion are aware that the teachings of the Prophet of God are more full of strange anomalies than in any other system that the perversicy of man has devised; and a Fast Month in which men wax fat and well-liking, where the spirit of penitence is lost in a whirl of feasting, while the letter of the law is observed with scrupulous exactness, fits naturally with the prac- tices of such a faith. From the hour when the dawn makes the grey east grow pale, until the mo- ment when the short-lived dusk lies low upon the land, the Mahomedans fast as do the followers of no other religion. To them fasting means en- tire abstinence from all creature com- forts. No food, nor drink, no tobacco- smoke, no fat quids of areca-nuts must be suffered to pass the lips of the faithful; even the saliva must be ejected, lest by any chance it should serve to moisten the parched throat, and this is why spittoons form so im- portant a part of our household furni- ture during the Blessed Month. Merit is lost if the faster seeks solace in sleep during too many of the long hours of daylight, and though the rdjahor, the noble, in his womens apartments, may break this rule freely, the bulk of the people must toil as usual at the plough- lug or tree-planting, the searching for jungle-produce, or the netting of deep- sea fish, while they endure the aching thirst which the fierce heat occasions, and the hunger born of hard manual labor. Among many Malays the observance of the Fast has come to be regardedwith a superstitious awe, and few are found who dare to risk the consequences that might be expected to follow upon a breach of its rules. I remember seeing an old Malay chiefa man, be it said, who was ut- terly ignorant of the tenets of his r~- ligion, who never prayed on week-days, and never attended the Friday congre- gational prayers at the mosquefaint dead away when, one day in Ramazrui, a whitlow on his hand was lanced; yet when he regained consciousness he steadfastly refused to swallow the restoratives he needed so sorely. I have marched all day, through blazing sunshine, or up and down steep hills, and through forests where the brooks on every side sang of cool water to be had for the asking, and, since it was the Blessed Month, my parched follow- ers have patiently endured the pains of Tantalus, and have gone dry and thirsty till the merciful sun dropped be- low the horizon and suffered them to drink their fill. Yet not one of these men ~jas in any sense religious. They were wont to drive a horse and cart through the strictest prohibitions of their prophet upon the smallest temp- tation: they cheerfully committed five mortal sins daily, by allowing the Ill ~ hours to slip past unobserved by rh& prescribed prayer; and they added am extra mortal offence to their account regularly every week so surely as Frb. day came round and the con~regationaL prayers remained unattended. They would probably have found it difficult themselves to explain why they ob- served the Fast in such tryin~ circum- stances, when they so readily neglected all their other religious duties, the per- formance of which occasioned no more suffering than is experienced from a slight sensation of boredom; andif they- could not account for their conduct.. how can others hope to do so? It is merely another of those bafflin5- anomalies which the student of native character must expect to encounter at every turn; but I cannot think tha their endurance and self-sacrifice were utterly thrown away, no matter what Mahomed may have to say to the con- trary. But let us take a day in the Bless~d Month beginning, as do the Mahome- dans, with sunset; for, with the ex- traordinary aptitude for putting things up-side down and undertaking every- thing from the wrong end, which seems. to white men the distinguishing char ]~?amaz4n. acteristic of Orientals, day in the East starts when the night shuts down. When the motley groups upon the river banks break up, when fruit and green cocoanuts have slaked mens thirst, when tobacco smoke is being puffed soft and cool over the astringent betel-nut, every individual who has helped to compose the crowd wends his way homewards, slowly and languidly, with peace in his soul. During Shaa- ban, the month preceding the Fast. every man who can afford it, and who is not already provided with a wife, has married some girl of his acquaint- ance; for though the women fast also, how should a man cook his own rice during the days of Ramaz~n? Accord- ingly a face, of which he has not yet had time to become weary, is within tue thatched hut to greet him on his coming, and by seven oclocka decent interval between the opening of the fast and the consumption of a heavy meal being necessary if the empty stomach is to receive and retain food in large quantitiesa meal is spread along the matted floor. The wife sits modestly at the mans side, to tend him as he feeds and to urge the excellence of some particular dish which she has carefully prepared in order to tempt his appetite. Her own meal will be a less stately and solemn affair, eaten in a dim background amid the cats and the cooking-pots, when her mans hun- ger is appeased. Feed the beast! says the English wife. How should he love her, seeing that she has no care for his victuals? said the Malay lady when her friend is divorced, showing that both in the West and in the East the female mind has formed the same cynical opinion that the stomach, and not the heart, is the seat of manly affection and sensi- bility. We have been taught to place implicit faith in womens intuition and instinct; but as a man, I cannot but think that in this instance her general- ization is a fallacy. Perhaps she at- taches an undue importance to the de- partment over which she chances to preside, and so is led to deceive herself as to the noble nature of our sex. 111 As the evening changes into night~ the man saunters out of the hut, andi strolls through the quiet moonlit grove to some neighbors house. As he goes. he casts a look or two at the great silver orb staring down from the sky overhead through the tender lace-work of the palm-fronds, for its shape tells him, who has no other calendar, how the month of penance is waning. He counts the time that divides him from the end of Ramaz~n slowly, labo- riously, with fingers doubled into the palms of his horny hands, each one to mark a day of fasting still to come. At his neighbors house the holy men and priests and pilgrims of the village are gathered together to feast, and to chant verses from the Koran; and he too joins in the noisy dirge, eating, chewing, and smoking anything upon which he can lay his bands. The inter- vals between one chant and another are filled up by conversation, gossip of the village or the court, often pungent and scandalous enough, but no man present finds any discordance between the discussion of such topics and the intoning of the Sublime Book which alternates with the talk. The priests and pilgrims and the holy men will chant and chant, and talk and eat and gossip till the day is coming with the dawn, their host supplying the ample meal with which the followers of the Prophet fortify themselves for the long abstinence of the morrow. Some bachelors, and a few other outliers stay to share in the meal, but most of the laymen trail off homewards, one by one, through the soft fragrant coolness of the night, to the huts where their wives await them. Soon after midnight the g6yan!J breaks upon the stillnessa wild toc- sin of sound, produced by beatin~ gongs in a peculiar mannerand for full half an hour the clanging wak~s the echoes. Lights spring up in the darkened houses, and the passer-by may hear the sleepy voices of the women-folk as they set about the prel)- arations of the mens meal, and the querulous cry of some infant whom the unusual stir has awakened rudely. Bamaz6it. 112 Soon after two oclock the heav~r meal of rice gnd richly spiced curry and condiments is eaten; and when a final quid of areca-nut has been chewed and tobacco inhaled for the last time, the village once more sinks into slum- ber. During the first days of the Fast Month many find it impossible to rouse themselves sufficiently to eat a hearty meal at such an hour, and these go hungry through the day, suffering some real distress from want. But the habit is soon formed, and as Ram- ozfin approaches its end all eat the sJut (as this meal is named) with appetite and relish. So quickly even do men become the creatures of a recurring custom, that for the days immediately following the conclusion of the Fast all the world wakes hungry and loudly de- manding food from their sleepy women- folk during the small hours of the night. And here is the secret which under- lies the whole Fast. It is necessary io try it in order to understand how slight a mortification this abstinence from food during the daytime becomes to most men, after the first wrench has been got over. Tobacco and quids of areca-nut are missed far more keenly than anything else, far more thaa water, strange though this may seem; hut even abstinence from these good gifts of God during the hours of sun- light soon forms itself into a habit, and presently becomes a privation that hardly makes itself felt. For the first four days, for the first week in some extreme cases, real suffering is entailed by the observance of Mahomeds law; but when the habit of going without food, drink, tobacco and betel-nut dur- ing certain hours has had time to form, the discomfort experienced in ordinary circumstances is very trifling indeed. Qf course when great physical exertion bas been necessary, a man may for a space be racked by thirst; but even this is mitigated greatly by the fact that for days it has not been his wont to drink from morning to evening. I speak as ~ne having experience, for in a spirit of enquiry I, smne years ago, made the experiment in person, and~~am well able to gauge how far the sufferings of my Malay friends are really acute during this month of Ramaziin. I have al- ways found that a few days personal experience carried one further on the road to complete insight with the un- known than years of the most patienl and scientific enquiry can do. During Ramazffn Malays rise some- what later in the day than is usual among them. They shirk such duties as they can find any means of neglect- ing, are more persistently idle than ever, and work as little and as badly as their task-masters will allow. But as the vernacular proverb has it, Milk in the breasts cannot be shirked, and no matter how willing the spirit, the weakness of the flesh makes it absolutely necessary for the bulk of the population to pass sonic hours of each day in the toil they grudge and hate, but without which life cannot be supported. But when all is said and done the Blessed Month holds thirty days during which a Malay feels that, even more than at any other time, he does well to be idle. The Malay ideal of a happy life is one in which a man need do nought but eat and sleep,rnOioan tidor sahdjaand during Ramazfin he goes near to attaining this high standard of exist- ence. At the Malay courts, upon the east coast of the Peninsula, the kings keep open house during the Fast Month in true feudal style. The king himself, punctual for once, for even he cannot risk the unpopularity which would be his did he keep the hungry fasters waiting, sits in the bdlai or Hall of State, at the hour when the sun is sink- ing. Mountains of white rice and dishes of fowl and duck and fat goats meat, spiced in a hundred ways by the ladies of the harem, cover the floor of the bOld, where only men of rank may eat, and are distributed among the people who squat in the temporary booths, erected for the purpose, within the fences of the royal inclosure. All may come who need a hearty meal, and a Malay would take shame to himself B a maz6n. were he to allow the Fast Month to slip by without availing himself of the chance of a good feed at the kings charges. Then through the long ni~ht the dirge of the priests and holy men floats ont across the river. The scene in the bdlai is the same as that in any village hut where during the Fast men are gathered together to praise God in the intervals of feeding and gossip, only that things are done on a somewhat larger scale. It is the same with every- thing on the east coasts. The king is a great man, rich and powerful, and he i-ides in some state; but he talks the same dialect, with its peculiar provin- cialisms, as does the tiller of the soil without his gates. If you look closely you will see that, king though he be, he differs very little from the ordinary run of Malays, save only in his power and his wealth. The same superstitions, the same desires, the same instincts, the same likes and dislikes, the same prej- udices, are to be found alike in prince and peasant in a Malayan land. If you understood the one thoroughly, and have sufficient imagination to forecast the effects which a change of environ- ment may be expected to have upon him, you will find that the other is equally well known to you. Perhaps it is this close resemblance between the prince and the peasant, coupled ~xith the fact that the former is usually sprung from the people on his mothers side, that is accountable for the as- tonishing loyalty which the Malay often feels for those of the royal stock. When the moon, whose crescent marked the seizing of the Fast, has waxed to the full, and then has slowly waned until the twenty-seventh night of its course has come, the land after dusk is a blaze of light. Every house is illuminated, and the banks of the rivers are set with flaring torches and cocoanut shells full of hard resin flaming brightly. As you float upon the broad bosom of the stream through the blackness of a moonless night, the sounds of revelry are borne to you 113 from the villa~es which line the banks. A full-ton~ucd Malay yells a lov& song at the top of his voice; a party of priests intone the Koran in solemn, resonant chorus; the laughter of some merry-makcrs, dimly seen in the red glare of one of the larger bonfires, rip- ples across the water. Among the palms and fruit trees, in which the villages nestle snugly, the tiny points and dots of light, from the torches set above the houses, play hide and seek as your boat glides past them, looking like a million tire-flies dancing in a thicket. The reflections of the bonfires and of the illuminations, seen in the water of the river, shimmer and skip lightly as the stream rolls on. At court some rude attempts at transparencies- loud and vulgar and unsuccessful, are made by the more civilized Malays; but elsewhere, throughout the land, the na- tives pile their fires and light their pitch torches as their fathers did be- fore them; and nature, who loves the natural and abominates the artificial, helps them to some really beautiful effects. Then at last the night arrives when the little crescent moon shows that Ramaziin has found a successor. The women-folk look out the smartest clothes, for to-morrow their men will appear in their best, and then pass to the cook-house to prepare food in plenty, for from sunrise to sunset on the Hdt-i Rdya, the first day of the month of ~hawa~, all the world will eat and guzzle and gorge, until some few will die of a surfeit. Meanwhile the men rejoice noisily. Every one who can lay hands upon a gun and a pinch of powder, fires it off gleefully; every gong in the country is banged and beaten, while the thumped drums throb and pulse, and the plaintive howling of the thikir-singers floats out over the land. And then, amid a babel of glad sound, the people rejoice exceedingly, As under cover of departing day, Slinks hunger-stricken Ramazfln away. HUGH CLIFFOaD. LIVING AGE. VOL. xvi. 868 Materfamilias. From The Cornhull Magazine. MATERFAMILIAS. Three-quarters of a pound of bread crumbs, three-quarters suet, eight eggs. I told her to be careful in weigh- ing, but you can never tell. Last year it fell to pieces before it came to table, and spoiled my pleasure for the rest of the dinner. Father used to say that nobodys puddings were like ours, but that was when I made my own. I wish I could have made them this year, but I dared not suggest it. They are so flisty nowadays, these fine servants. Maria would have taken offence at once, and it would never have done to he without her just now with a house full of visitors. . . . It felt like old times to-night, and how happy father looked welcoming them all! He will ruin those boys before the holidays are over. It was the same with our own children; if he was obliged to disap- point them, he was miserable for the rest of the day. Such a tender heart as he has! I never knew a man like him. He has never lost patience with me in all these years, and I have been sharp with him many a timeabout such little things! . . . When I have fretted about the children going away and leaving us, one by one, I have re- membered his faithful love and been comforted. Nothing else could make up for that. Im only a plain, uninter- esting old woman to the rest of the world, but to him I am always best, always the firstand he is more to me than ten sons. ButI Want the children! If it is a wet day they must all go into the library so that the table can be laid in good time. If the jellies dont turn out properly, Ill have them served in custard glasses with cream whipped on top. Nothing looks worse than broken jellies; but they ought to be goodreal calves feet, and every- thing of the best. I never had one of~ those tablets in my house, and I never will! . . . Four children, three grand- children, all of them back beneath the old roof, exceptoh, my boy! where are you to-night? What are you doing? You cant go to sleep on Christmas Eve without remembering the old home, and your mother, Robbiethe old mother who tried to make your Christ- mases happy years ago! . . . Father doesnt say anything, but there is a. look on his face I know well. I wake in the night and hear him sigh. He is getting an old man, and he depended on Rob to help him. He was our first. None of the others were quite the same. . . . I remember the Christmas after he was born as if it were yester- day. Eleven months old, and he sat on his high chair like a prince. He had on the white frock that I worked my- self, embroidery up to the waist and down the front of the bodice. William and Ernest wore it too, and then that red-haired Mary let her iron get too hot, and burnt a hole right out. Care- less thing! I nearly cried when I saw it.... We gave him a Punchinello on the end of a stick, and when he turned it round it played a tune. His little face of astonishment, how sweet it was! How we loved him! . . . If yotl had died, Rob, it would have been easier; but to know that you are alive and dont carethats the hard part; it is that that breaks my beart~ . . . Poor lad! Poor lad~ You are not happy. I know yoij are not. . . . Its a rough road. . . . I wont give up hope; it is Christmas day to-morrow, perhaps his heart may be softened; perhaps he may meet some kind soul who will speak a word for home and the old folks. . . . God bless them, whoever they may be, and let me see him again before I die. . . . I shouldnt like to die before Rob comes back. His brothers might be harsh with him. William is very bitter. He has always been a dutiful boy himself, and he cannot un- derstand such behavior. . . . How handsome he looked when he arrived to-night, and how prosperous! He must be making a big income I should say by the way they live; but he was always close, and he is worse than ever since his marriage. . . . Emily must have bought a new travelling cloak! Last year she wore a brown one trimmed with fur. It didnt look shabby to me, but she is so extrava- gant! Five servants now, and only 114 those two children. No wonder Will is getting grey; it must be a strain on hini to provide for such a household. When father and I were young we managed with one servant and laid by money for the childrens education; but then, as Emily reminded me, I was brou~ht up in different surroundings from hers. . . It wasnt nice of her to say that no! it wasnt nice at all. William would not have been pleased if he had heard her, and it isnt the only time; I could say disagreeable things too if I chose. Those poor children are not half warmly enough clothed; its no wonder they have coughs, and when I was with them I saw many things about the house. . . . Well! well! what does it matter? She makes William happy, and thats the great thing. I am an old woman, surely I can forgive a few thoughtless words from a young thing like that. Shell learn more sense. . . . I wonder if Hannah re- membered to put frilled pillow-cases on her bed. I shall be annoyed if she has forgotten, for it is just one of the things Emily would notice. She has all her sheets hem-stitched. The children are beauties! Eric is the picture of his father at the same age, and what a spirit! He couldnt help breaking the tumbler, poor little man, but it spoiL the set. Thats eleven of the stars and sixteen of the Grecian borderI must have them made up, for once the sets are broken, theres no check upon the servants. Cecil takes after his mothers family. I love them dearly, but its a good thing children come while one is youngI eouldn t stand the racket for long nowadays. Ernest looks thin. He doesnt get on, poor boy. It would have been wiser we had given him his own way and let him go abroad, but we did it for the best. . . . Father says we cannot d) more than act upon the light of the moment, and that it is useless grieving over what is irretrievable, but I can~t help grieving. The poor lad~s cuffs were frayed at the wrists. I saw them, and he used to be such a dandy. . . . Amy has had a hard time: No one would 115 think, to look at her now, what a pretty girl she was when they were married. She has no nurse for the baby, and that is the same dress she wore last year, with new trimmings to freshen it up. Velveteen, I should say by ihe look of it, not velvet. We must give them a cheque with their Christmas present, but not before the others they would not like thatjust quietly when we are alone. . . . Ernest shall take me in to dinner. I cant help it if Will is offended. I must consider Ernest first. Every one must be es- pecially kind to him this year. He was always a sensitive child. Minette and Charlie came last, though they live nearest of all. She planned that, the little rogue! I know her tricks. She was not goin~ to ar- rive in the character of bride without making sure of her audience; and how pretty she wasa perfect picture I ~ those lovely furs. Father says she b exactly what I was as a girl, but my hair was never so golden. Darling! And Charlie adores her. I ought to be thankful for that marriage, for at one time I was afraid it would be young Sinclair, and he is a wild fellowshe would not have been happy. . . . Her house is prettier than any of the others, but I dont know how she will manage. She uses the best things every day, and never draws the blinds for the sun. When I say anything she pulls my cap on one side and asks if I remembcr Aunt Christinas sofa blanket. They all laugh at me about that, but I cant see the joke. It was far too grand for our room, and the red and green stripes made the furniture look shabby, so I put it aside for one of the children, and now none of them will have it. It can~t be soiled, for it is wrapped up in the same paper in which it arrived ten years ago, and its a beautiful thing there must be pounds of wool in it, not to mention the silk. . Charlie sits next to Emily. I wonder what she will wear! Sonie- thing very fine, no doubt. I will say for her that sbe knows how to dress. I wonder which cap I should put on! The one with the pearl drops is tht~ Materfamilias. Blackwoodiana. most becoming, but the lace is not real. Ill wear the new one, and let her see that my Brussels is as good as hers. As I said to father, its no use sparing money when you go to buy lace. Have it good, or not at all. I think Ill give Amy the old Honiton. She has brought presents for every one, the kind little thing, though she is so shabby herself. She showed me Nells to-night. Pinic silk covers for her cushions! She is going to sew them on in the morning, and they will be on the couch as a sur- prise for Nell when she is carried down to dinner. The pink will make her look less pale. My precious lamb! A week ago I thought she would not be able to come down, but she has stayed in bed and taken every care. She knew it would spoil our Christmas if she were not among us. Ah! what am I saying? Last year she walked down; this year she must be carriednext year, per- haps My baby! The last of them all! I cant faee it, I cant let her go! I have nursed her night and day for nineteen years, I should have nothing to do if Nellie were not here. . . . And yet to see her grow more and more helpless; to suffer worse pain! Thank God, the choice is not in my handH. He will help me to bear what comes. ... She would be well and strong, and she has had nothing but suffering here never any enjoyment like other girls. There are worse troubles than deathmuch worse. If I could think of Robbie in heaven! Ah! my boy, where are you to-night? What are you doing? Have you forgotten me, Rob- bie, altogether? . . . Twelve oclock striking! Father in Heaven, Thy Son~s birthday! Hear a mothers prayer. My children! Remember my children! JEssIE MAN SEEGII. From Longmans Magazine. BLAGKwOoDIANA. The interest always shown by out- siders in the inner life of letters is en- Annals of a Publishing House: William Blaekwood and His Sons, by Mrs. Oliphant (W. Blackwood & Sons). hanced in the massive volumes devoted to the house of Blackwood, its maga- zine and friends, by reason that they represent the last work of their writer, and that the pen dropped from the in- dustrious hand before that work was complete. Mrs. Oliphant has rendered touching tribute to the friendship which endured for half a century between her and the Blackwoods. Her office of chronicler has not been without its haz- ards, for, like that of most nations, the early history of this house is most re- membered by its wars. So much has been written already about the strife, such warm feeling has been enlisted 011 either part, and truth wears such vari- ous seeming viewed from different sides, that one is disposed to shrink from re-entering the timeworn con- troversy. But Mrs. Oliphant has brought womanly tact to her task. Full of loyal enthusiasm for her subject, she has not sacrificed the annalist to the champion, and it is as a guide, not as a partisan, that she leads us over the old battle-ground, and points out the posi- tions so stoutly attacked and defended. When William Blackwood was bound apprentice in 1790 to a firm of book- sellers in Edinburgh, the Scottish cap- ital was a busy centre of letters, but there was no dividing line between the branches of the book trade; the same individual undertook the business of publishing, selling new or old books wholesale, retail, and by auction. So that when, fourteen years later, Black- wood set up for himself on the South Bridge, his chief business was that of a second-hand booksellerfairly profit- able, sometimes, in those days, but not necessarily a career to lead either to fame or fortune. Yet there were magnificent possibili- ties afloat. Such a discovery as Scott, such an adventure as the Edinburgh Review . . . went a little to the heads of those new men in the new business, which, for the moment, seemed about to take its place at the top of all com- inercial affiiirs. . . . You had but to set a man of genius spinning at that shin- ing thread which came from nowhere, which required no purchase of materi I ~6 Blackwoodiana. als or plant of machinery, and your for- tune was made. Every young gentle- man with a manuscript in his pocket might be a genius. And the chances were that every young gentleman enter- ing a booksellers shop laid a manuscript in his pocket. Ten, even twenty guineas a sheet for a review, writes Lord Cockburn; 2,0001. or 3,0001. for a single poem, and 1,0001. for two philo- sophical dissertations, drew authors out of their dens, and made Edinburgh a literary mart famous with strangers, and the pride of its own citizens. By the bye, Mrs. Oliphant comments with undue severity more than once in these pages on the modern practice, which she describes as selling words per thou. across the counter, and con- trasts it unfavorably with the habits of an earlier age. It is true that one hears more at present than seems desirable about the earnings of authors. But, with the single eccentric exception of Lord Byron, it is difficult to trace among the multitude of writers who crowd this narrative any coyness about striking a bargain. Dr. Johnson had long ago formulated his notions on this matter pretty bluntly; and if anything comes out more clearly and more con- stantly than another in these volumes, it is the sameness of human nature from generation to generation. Blackwoods first stroke of luck was being appointed John Murrays Edinburgh agentworth about 3001. a yearwhen the Emperor of the West shook himself free of the tiresome Ballantynes. This was in 1811, and three years later he received also the agency of Cadell and Davies, a large London firm. By this time the humble bookstall on the South Bridge had been abandoned for premises in Princes Street, soon to become famous as the meeting-place of a remarkable literary group. Bitten with the publish- ing fm-ore, he had an early success with MCries Life of Knox, which went quickly through five editions, and by 1817 was negotiating with an anony- mous writer for a work of fiction. This was Miss Ferrier: the novel was Mar- riage. and most writers will pale with envy on reading the profuse compli ments written by the publisher to his unknown correspondent. He is not so lavish in praise of the work of another author, also anonymous (n any all nov- elists affected to be so in those days), and doubts if it would be acceptable to British readers, who are not accus- tomed to a husband knocking down his wife, nor yet to some other traits of Continental manners! But the noblest game, which all the trade were stalking, was Walter Scott. Murray had Byron at his beck and call; to bag Scott would be a splendid feather in his Edinburgh allys cap. In describ- ing Blackwoods brief triumph, and ex- plaining why it was so brief and so bit- ter, Mrs. Oliphant leads us where the flames still grumble beneath very treacherous cinders. We will speed across them. Lockhart and Murray have both described what happened. Mrs. Oliphant thought that scant jus- tice had been done to Blackwood. This story, she says, is exactly th~ kind of skilful compound of truth and imagination which has ruined the char- acter of many a man, and proceeds to tell it afresh. Everybody is impartial now, and can realize what material there was for angry misunderstanding, when the anonymous author of Waver- ley, adopting a duplicate disguise, of- fered to Blackwood, through such a go- between as James Ballantyne, the Tales of my Landlord, by Jedediah Cleishbotham. Add to all this compli- cated conditions about the authors profits (quite in what Mrs. Oliphant re- gards as the exclusively modern spirit), and the obligation to take over 6001. worth of John Ballantynes unsalable stockno wonder such hazy weather foreran a storm. Blackwood believed he was purchasing the copyright; Bal lantine had writtenthe property of the book to be the publishers, who were to print such editions as they chose. Scott vowed Ballantyne had bungled, and that he would see their noses cheese first. The fourth edition of the Black Dwarf hung fire; Black- wood had twelve hundred copies on hand, and Murray many more, when, in May. 1817, like a bombshell came an 117 Blac~woodiana. advertlsement of a fifth edition to be published by Constable. No need to re- trace the bewilderment and tortuous correspondence which ensued; hence- forward, for good or ill, the Great Un- known was to pass into other hands. Nothing daunted by this reverse, I3iackwood conceived the project which, after many vicissitudes, was to carry him to distinction. It took the form of a new monthly, the Edinburgh Magazine --~which was projected as an opponent to the great Whig review, more nimble and dan~erous than the ponderous Quarterly had proved itself. He was unlucky in the choice of a brace of ut- terly incongruous and equally incompe- tent editors. The magazine ran through halPa-dozen inglorious num- bers in 1817, and vanished. But from its ashes arose that which at once be- came known far and wide as Black- woods Magazine. John Wilson, better known as Christopher North, Lock- hart, and James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherdthese are the well-marked figures which an extraordinary chance grouped round the quiet, businesslike bookseller of Princes Street. It is an oft-told tale, this conspiracy which set the most literary of towns ablaze and compelled the notice of those afar off, but it is good to read it again in Mrs. Oliphants picturesque paragraphs. She tried bravely to palliate the brutal ity of the early numbers, but it is best to own the fact that, judged by the standard of to-day, it is past pardon. Edinburgh was a small town, and the persons held up to ridicule and personal affront in the Chaldee Manuscript were easily recognized under the thin veil of allegory and scriptural phrase- ology thrown round them. Mrs. Oil- phant pleads that the ridicule poured by the Blackwood group upon them- selves was ns mordant and relentless as that aimed at other characters, and that ~there was no bitterness in it, nor cause of complaint, that we can see. But she gives away her defence when, in describing events five years later, she refers to these early days as the age of glorious sport, when to bait an un- fortunate victim and pursue him about the world was the inspiration of the moment; but the magazine, not any longer a dashing and reckless adven- turer, but a very important undertak- ing, meaning both fame and fortune. had outgrow~i it. Nevertheless, it would be intensely hypocritical to affect to regret the stormy childhood of Maga. Literary history has been enriched thereby with one of its most exciting chapters, and literature itself perhaps owes the per- inanence of one of the most seductive periodicals to the violence of its initial velocity. Whatever faults Biackwoods new venture possessed, the unpardon- able crime of dulness was not one of them. Its wild oats once scattered, the clouds of anger and legal perils once dispelled, it entered upon a field of prosperity extending far beyond its native city. In two years Blackwood was strong enough to survive the sever- ance of his alliance with Murray; in 1827 the monthly sales amounted to five thousand; in 1831, to eight thousand. Coleridge, though he had been the sub- ject of what Mrs. Oliphant describes as a virulent and uncalled-for attack in the first number, lived to pronounce his conviction that Blackwoods Magazine is an unprecedented phenomenon in the world of letters, and forms the golden alas! the onlyremaining link between the periodical press and the enduring literature of Great Britain. But it must not be imagined that the peace attained with the outward world was uniformly refiedted among those concerned in the production of Maga. Far from it: almost the only contributor who, previous to the elder Blackwoods d ath in 1834, did not conceive vehe- ment offence either against the pro- prietor or other writers in the maga- zine, and express the same in bitter letters, was quiet, modest John Gait the founder of our kailyard type of fiction. How intensely human is Norths sensitiveness to imagined slights! He begins, for instance, on one occasion, Of all men I most dislike and have the least turn for letter-writ- ing that can seem to be of a querulous character, then proceeds at intermi 118 Blackwoodiana. nable length to complain of a dryness and distance in Blackwoods manner, and winds up, I was not treated in the way I like, that is the short and long of the matter, and there must be no repe- tition of it. llogg was another handful for an editor: equally confident in his own powers, equally resentful of criticism; threatening to transfer his writings to another publisher, and immediately after begging for an advance of 501. for future work, for if you go away (to London) I may be left in the lurch, hav- ing no other certain resource. Even Lockhart, fast friend to Maga as he continued to the end of his life must have been an expensive ally according to his own valuation. I have no hesitation in telling you most distinctly . . . that I think I have been during the last year (1820?) by far the most efficient of your con- tribu~tors, and that I consider the re- views of new books furnished by me in that time quite equal, taken altogether, to any equal number of articles you have had. . . . I do think that a per- son who does so much for your book ought to make more by doing so. One of the most extraordinary char- acteristics of literature in the earlier part of the present century, and one which contributed not a little to fre- quent feud, was the craze for anonym- ity. Men take, and give expression to, umbrage much more readily when they are moving in masquerade, than when they meet in open daily intercourse. But the fashion set by Waverley became almost universal. and it is ludicrous to see how intensely the most robust writ- ers dreaded dropping the mask. Chris- topher North was not very scrupulous about the feelings of others whom he dealt with in the Noctes. In 1823 one of these papers contained a slashing at- tack on WordsworthNorths intimate friend. My God! to compare such a writer with Scott and Byron! Scott was attacked in the same amazing arti- cle as a ~tame and feeble writer, but neither of these great figures was likely to be moved by anonymous scribbling. Not so Mr. Martin, the well-known Irish M.P., whom North alluded to pleasantly as a jackass. Martin wPathfully demanded of the editor the writers name. Conscience-stricken be- cause of his perfidy to Wordsworth, North, who had sh wn no aversion to avowing himself when Leigh Hunt had threatened a prosecution for a previous article, declared it was impossible for him to come forward. I would rather die this evening; . . . lying or dis- honor are to me death. . . . If I must avow myself, I will not survive it. Eventually Martin Was pacified by the good offices of his countryman, Maginn (the ODoherty of the Noctes). He said, wrote Magma to Blackwood, he understood you were a dd decent man, but that you ought to take care of what you got your people to write. (True enough, entre nous.) Maginn himself, despite this sagacious aside, landed his editor not long after in a libel case. While known to Black- wood only as R. T. S. of the Minerva Rooms, Cork, he had contributed lively articles to Maga for some time, and Blackwoods private letters to him had acquired a tone of intimacy very un- usual except between personal friends. The prosecution was at the instance of Professor Leslie, whose agent de- m~anded the writers name. Leslie knows me too well, wrote Blackwood to R. T. S., to believe for one mo- ment that I would give up the name of any writer who did not wish himself to come forward. In this case he could not give it, for he did not know it, and R. T. S. took good care not to en- lighten him till the storm had blown over. Blackwood set a high value on Ma- gians contributions. There is one peculiar excellence, he writes, in this writer which strikes us Scotsmenhis easy, idiomatic English. No scotsman. however practised as a writer, is master of the English tongue so as to be able to write in this way. But he iiever ventured to impart this opinioa to the voluble and irascible North. Maginn was a brilliant, but unman- ageable creature; he soon drifted away from Maga, and devoted himself to 119 Bla ckwoodiana. its rival and imitator, Frasers. When~ his habits had brought him to a prema- ture grave, Lockhart wrote his epitaph in a score of jingling rhymes: Here, early to bed, lies kind William Maginn, Light for lone was his heart, though his breeches were thia; But at last he was beat and sought help from the bin. Barring drink and the girls, I neer heard of a sin: Many worse, better few, than bright, broken Maginn. From the copious correspondence of the firm might be culled a host of piquant illustrations of well-known authors, their doings and sayings. Mr. Blackwood, says Sir Walter, while still the Known Unknown, if ever I were to write a novel, I would like to write the first two volumes, and leave any- body that liked to write the third. Byron returned Murrays draft for one thousand guineas for the Siege of Cor- inth and Parisina because he thought the poems not worth so much. The publisher was welcome to them for nothing, he said, provided they were printed in one volume. This seems to support Mrs. Oliphants assertion that authors were less mercenary of yore; but the poet did not continue long in this vein. Not long before Mundell & Co. had obtained Thomas Campbells Pleasures of Hope for the considera- tion of fifty printed copies of the work. Publishers may sometimes get a good thing without payin~ for it, but also they are not without bowels, as some do affirm. Charles Lloyd, of the Lakes, sent a tragedy for publication in Maga; Blackwood, finding it unsuit- able, returned it with a cheque for twenty guineas. It must be confessed that his sons and successors were not always so scrupulous in returning re- jected MSS. There remain in these archives long poems from the ill-starred Branwell Bront~, rolled up with pas- sionate appeals for admission to the magazine and reproaches that no an- swer is ever vouchsafed to his letters. But when Adam Bede turned out a success they paid the pseudonymous author (whom they had never seen) SOOt. above the stipulated terms. Characters who were afterwards to become illustrious often make their first appearance in these pages without much dignity. In 1520, Alaric Attila Watts, a correspondent of exceeding liveliness, wrote to Blackwood Murray was much pleased with the philip [sic] at young DIsraeli in the Noctes. This fellow has humbugged him most completely. After the tricks of which he has been guilty, he will scarcely dare show his face in London again for some time. You are aware, I dare say, that Vivian Grey was palmed off upon Colburn . . . as the production of the author of TI-emaine! and upon this understanding Colburn gave three times as much as he would otherwise have done.~~ Fifteen years later, in 1841, young John Blackwood, being established in the branch set up in Pall Mall, was in frequent consultation with Mr. Glad- stone upon schemes to defeat the Anti- Corn Law League and the Free Traders. There is a characteristic touch in old Gladstone, as the father is irreverently termed, constantly sending back books in the morning which his impetuous son had purchased with liberal hand over- night. The drift of circumstances dissolved the intimate relations with Mr. Glad- stone long before these Tory editors could mention Disraeli without impa- tience. It has not been unhehrd of in recent years that secrets should leak out of the best-laid party gatherings. In one of his gossiping letters from Pall Mall, in 1844, John Blackwood makes mention of a great row over at the Canton; and there is a requisition, signed by one hundred and sixteen members, stigmatizing in the strongest langua,,e the traitor who sent a report (and that a garbled one) of their private meeting to the Times, and calling a gen- eral meeting for the 10th of July, if p05- sible to bring it home to some one and dismiss him from the club. OBrien 120 Blackwoodiana. and Newdigate say there is little doubt among them that Disraeli is the delin- quent. Lockhart has no doubt, and says it is not the less likely that Ben is one of the one hundred and sixteen who signed the requisition! The domestic affairs of the Tory party were rather uncomfortable in those days of Corn Laws agitation. John Blackwood was present in the House of Commons when Peel delivered his epoch-making speech in January, 1846. No doubt it was a most able and elo- quent one, but the impression it lefives upon me is intense dislike and disgust. . . The gloomy silence on his own side of the House was very striking. Not one solitary cheer, so far as I could ob- serve, came from behind him. Nothing could more completely prove the prostration of the Conservative and Agricultural party than that such a sw-ab as Disraeli should be the first to rise from among them on such a grand occasion. Crofton Croker, a very different indi- vidual from Wilson Croker, was a cap- ital gossiping correspondent. lie has much to say in 1826 on the crash of Constable. The highest reputations were suspected. Hurst and Robin- sons here is regarded with great dis- trust. Knight and Jarvis have ap- peared in the Gazette, and Whitt~kers name, it is supposed, will be there on Saturday. Rumor even whispered something about the stability of Long- man & Co., but this, of course, is with- out any good foundation. Colburn was the great publisher of fashionable novels. Croker reports that Jerdan, the moral editor of the Literary Gazette, having pronounced Lady Mor~ans OBriens and OFlaher- ties an improper book for ladies, Col- burn was furious, vowing that this opinion had cost him 5001. How would a modern publisher regard himself as affected commercially by a similar critique? Colburn seems to have been no favor- ite in the trade, judging from the tone of stories current about him. His last feat, writes John Blackwood, in the art of puffing a book (viz, by causing Colonel Davidson to have him up at the police court for the return of his manu- script, and then publishing the book within three days) has excited the envy and admiration of the whole book trade. In 1839, young John Blackwood, din- ing with John Murray, listened to ani- mated discussion about the Oxford Tractarians, then the subject of intense interest. At last, to the horror of his wife and party, Murray burst out, d ning the whole set for disturbing the tranquillity of the Church. Per- haps if he had foreseen the prodigious impetus to the publishing trade com- municated by that movement, profes- sional prudence might have modified Murrays vehemence. The elder Blackwood seldom or never missed a good contributor to Maga; but the instinct of his sons was scarcely so unerring. In 1840 they received an offer of some papers, to be entitled The World We Live In. No politics, as much fun and satire as I can muster, literary lath and criticism of a spicy nature, and general gossip, explained the writer, and signed his letter W. M. Thackeray. The Yellowplush Papers had been published already. Nevertheless, this offer was not ac- cepted, and the Roundabout Papers appeared elsewhere. The Irish Sketch Book and the Great Hoggarty Diamond were also offered and met with the same fate, greatly to the profit of Frasers iIIaqa- zine, where they were gladly accepted. The greatest editors, like the greatest generals, are those who make fewest blunders; but it is difficult to understand how the shrewd literary instinct of the Blackwoods failed them in this in- stance. Perhaps affection for the tra- ditions of Maga made them slow to realize the change in popular taste. Christopher North had enjoyed a tre- mendous vogue, but his fantastic and boisterous style was beginning to lose favor with the public. Nowadays few people care for the Noctes, except for their associations, and Thackeray has a thousand readers for every one of the great professors. The reason for this 12 t Bla~k~~oodiana~ is suggested in one of Mrs. Oliphants carelessly constructed sentences. Per- haps a man cannot get so much from his own age, and at the same time from the hands of posterity. It makes one hold his breath to read how nearly another famous writer was lost to Maga. Mr. G. H. Lewes, who had been an occasional contributor himself, submitted Amos Barton in 1855, as the work of a young writer whom he thought might be useful. John Blackwood wrote a long criticism of the tale. unquestionably very pleasant reading, but objecting to the wind-up as lame. He wished to see more before deciding to accept any. The unknown author was deeply wounded, but, after some more letters passed, Blackwood agreed to publish Amos at once, and added: I am glad to hear that your friend is, as I supposed, a clergyman. Such a subject is best in clerical hands, and some of the pleasantest and least prejudiced correspondents I ever had are English clergymen. Colonel Hamley, to whom Blackwood showed the manuscript, thought the writer very possibly a man of science, but not a practised writer. Thack- cray, who, though he had never re- newed his overtures to Maga, was now on cordial terms with its owners, would not pronounce an opinion. There was, however, no doubt about public verdict as soon as the story ap- peared; the publishers congratulations were so warm that the author feigned to drop incognito in sending Mr. Gilfils Love-story, writing in the full name George Eliot. For three years this was all Blackwood knew of the splen- did recruit he had enlisted; and, so far as the public was concerned, the truth was only revealed on the eve of the appeacance of the Mill on the Floss, in consequence of the claims of a crazy impostor, Joseph Liggins, to the authorship of Adam Bede. Meanwhile, Major Blackwood visited Lewes at Richmond, and wrote to his brother: George Eliot did not show: he is such a timid fellow, Lewes said. . . . I saw a Mrs. Lewes. How the pair of conspirators must have en- joyed this delicious mystification of the Scottish editor! Most of us, I suppose, have accused our publishers mentally of parsimony in the matter of advertising our works. forgetting that it is at least as impor- tant to publisher as to author to push the sale; but perhaps comparatively few have had the hardihood to com- plain, as George Eliot did in 1862, that to the majority of readers the fact of my books having entered a new edition remains quite a secret. There is more ground for sympathy in her expostulation with the printers reader, who made corrections after the authors proofs had been returned. He has everywhere substituted the form the Misses So-and-So for the Miss So-and-Sos, a form which in En- gland is confined to public announce- ments, to the backs of letters, and to the conversation of schoolmistresses. Nothing can be more diverting than the revelation in their correspondence of the characteristics of authors. Sam- uel Warren, who attained immense popularity by his Ten Thousand a Year, which appeared first in Maga, is delightfully naive sometimes, and describes himself in a letter dated 1812 as an honorable and fearless rival of Dickens, then at the height of his popularity. He offers to review Dickenss American Notes, and sketches out his line of criticism. There is palpable genius; subtle and vivid perception, exquisite felicity of illustration and feeling and natural cir- cumstances; real humor, mannerism. exa~geration, glaring but unconscious~ egotism and vanity, glimpses of under- breeding. These last I should touca on in a manly and delicate and gener- ous spirit. Rely on Sam Warren. . Dickens seems to have been incapable. and indisposed to look beyond the sur- face of American manners and society. Oh, what a book I could have writ- ten!!! I mean I who have not only observed but reflectca so much on the characters of the people of England and America.~~ Poor Sam Warren! It seems almost unhandsome to show up his little weak- 122 BlaC kwoodiana. nesses, seeing that Ten Thousand a Year is nearly forgotten, and Dickens is still Dickens. His talents never da~- zied his publishers, but he was fiercely intolerant of criticism or editors inter- ference. I hate his beastly names, wrote Alexander Blackwood to his brother, referring to the trick Warren had of naming his characters in allu- sion either to their originals or to their imaginary qualitiesLord Bulfinch (Lord John Russell), OGibbet (OCon- nell), Rev. Morphine Velvet (fashion- able preacher), and so on; but he re- frained from telling the author so. Warrens own portrait is given in a single sly sentence by the Rev. James White, a frequent and entertaining cor- respondent of the Blackwoods from the Isle of Wight. Warren was in the island for a week, and dined here one day. Oh, Tittlebat! Himself the won- drous hero of his song. In striking contrast to this curious little figure appears on Mrs. Oliphants canvas the grandiose personality of Buiwer Lytton. It was towards the end of the forties that the author of Peiham, apparently weary of the high romantic vein, sought the screen of anonymity for another class of fic- tion. There is no higgling over terms. Lytton merely expresses some doubt whether the Blackwoods would care to give him as much as he has been ac- customed to receive. They gave him 3,0001. apiece for the publication in Maga of The Caxtons, My Novel, and What will He do with It? retain- ing the right to the subsequent prolits in book form for five years. Lytton was offered far higher terms elsewhere, but he observes in his princely way: The pleasure of continuing our con- nection, free from a remorseful convic- tion that it cost you too dear, has its natural weight in the scale against some ounces even of the vile argent urn. In tolerance of criticism from his publisher, Lytton was very different from many inferior, and some superior, writers. A Liberal himself, he was always at pains not to insert anything at variance with the staunch Toryism of Maga. Of My Novel he tells John Blackwood that, if he does not like the key in which it is pitched, I am quite ready to lay it aside. He discusses the various characters of each novel as the successive parts are forwarded for the magazineWhat will He do with It? with greater zest than all the others~ The two characters that come out with a force I never originally in- tended, he writes to John Blackwood, are Jasper and Mrs. Crane. Jasper owes his increase of power to you; for you were kind enough to say he was a very fine type, which bad never struck me before, and so I took particular pains that he should deserve your ap- probation. And I do think now that he is as original a beast as has been shown off this many a day. Considering what a darling the ele- gant novelist was with the fair sex, it is amusing to read one of his letters to Blackwood when Lytton was about v be entertained at a banquet in Edia- burgh. Pray let me express a hope that the Music Hall will not be overcrowded with ladiesthey always throw a chill on every audience. Accustomed to talk, it bores them to listen. . . . If those fair refrigerators are to be mul- titudinous, I hope they xviii be ranged together, and not interspersed through- out, so as to leave the whole assembly despoiled of any spark of electricity by non-conductors of silk or muslin. One of the earliest and most constant contributors to Maga was Alison, and out of this connection arose one of the weightiest and most successful publications ever undertaken by the firm. A History of Europe, on the scale which it ultimately assumed, was not unattended with financial risk, yet these nine weighty volumes sold line magic. The industry of their author was really prodigious. Though he xvas Sheriff of Glasgow, and kept three presses going on his History and a work of a thousand pages on Popula- tion, he maintained a continual supply of articles for Maga. What say you, he writes in April, 1840, to a review of Beaumont and 123 124 against Irish Romanism for the next number, and a paper on the war in Affghanistan for the one afterR Again, on October 4: Since the 12th August the Registra- tion Court has sat for eight or nine hours each day, without the intermis- sion of a single day, except the Scien- tific Association week, when, from hav- ing the house full of strangers, I could get nothing done. This dreadful labor has almost totally obstI~ucted my His- tory during this period, but it will terminate about 13th or 14th, and on the day it closes I will begin your article. I have a good deal written of the ix. volume in spite of every ob- stacle, and work regularly every even- ing now, though you may conceive the effort of doing so after sitting eight hours in court, speaking or writing without intermission.~~ Alison keenly felt the injustice of the Quarterly reviewer who accused him of inaccuracies in his great work, which, in fact, he had not committed. John Blackwood mentioned this to Lockhart, the editor, who told him the review was written by John Wilson Croker, and described how Croker used to read a bookviz. with one eye shut, so that he never sees but one side of a page as he turns over the leaves.,~ Mrs. Oliphant has done a great deal more in these volumes than merely chronicle the origin and progress of a successful commercial house. She has marshalled before her readers a long, living pageant, in which some of the personages are still well remembered, while others have receded into an ob- livion which was, perhaps, the lot they had least anticipated. In their corre- spondence all are allowed to reveal their inner selves; we can gather, also, what measure of esteem they won from others. Many more than those alluded to above claim recognitionAytoui, with his fardel of quips and knightly lays; Oliphant, so full of promise and piquancy; Hamley, soldier, novelist, and historian; Kinglake, with his long narrative of British blunders and British endurance. I have endeavored to tempt the The Yellow Peril. reader to explore this rioli mine of personal anecdote and reminiscence, without entangling himself in the mazes of slumbering disputes and mis- understanding. Among all the literary characters touched upon, there is none on whom he will cast an eye more gently critical than on the authoress herself. Here is a tender little bit ~f autobiographyone of a very few with which Mrs. Oliphant has indulged her readers. Greatly trembling, for an earlier production had been declined, she sent in 1852 for consideration of the editors of Maga a little story called Katie Stewart. The first proofs I received on the morning of my wedding-daynot ex- actly a moment when the glory and excitement of such a second event could have the appreciation which was its due. HERBERT MAXWELL. From The Spectator. TIlE YELLOW PERIL. What a curious thing it would be if William II. of Germany, who was the first statesman to allude to the Yellow Peril in a public speechhe had prob- ably been reading Mr. Pearsons thoughtful bookshould be the first to prove that his apparently far-fetched caution was justified by the facts. The statesmen of Europe, it is pretty clear, have all been convinced by the result of the Japanes war that China is moribund, and that whatever she as a nation may suffer, no active resistance to any aggression is to be expected from her citizens, her statesmen, or her imperial house. The Russians have in- sisted on concessions to their railway policy which virtually make them mas- ters of Manchuria and North Corea. The French are insisting on privi. leges for Tonquin which will, when they are granted, enable them to enter Yunnan at will, and interfere most seriously with the independence of the Southern Mandarins, who have hitherto retained their vast and wealthy dis The Yellow Peril. tricts in the most jealous seclusion. It is by no means certain, moreover, that the French are not casting coveto us eyes upon Hainan, which for obvious reasons connected with their position in Indo-China would be to them an in- valuable possession. Ihe Germans, again, have not only claimed the shore of the Bay of Kiao-chow in full sover- eigntytbe lease is a mere formula and seized upon a great city eighteen miles from the coast, and demanded rights of way for their railways all through Shantung, but they have ac- tually required Chinait seems in- credibleto pay the expenses they have incurred in making all these aggres- sions. Even England is supposed to be asking for something, though it is not much, consisting only of some little islands too close to Hong-kong, and claims with little disguise that if the empire is partitioned she shall have her full share. The Japanese, too, are looking on with very hungry eyes, and have not forgotten that they conquered, and are being compelled to resign, Corea, which in Chinese imagination, if not in fact, belongs to the flowery land as clearly as Thibet. The fishers, as we said recently, are, in fact, hacking at the great whale with a full conviction that it is dying, and that they have nothing to fear even from its flurry. They may be right, but to those who have studied history the conclu- sion appears to be somewhat prema- ture. They are unable to believe tint the men who guide the great monarchy which for so many centuries has shel- tered three hundred millions of men, ano has so governed them that no man in any country ever mistakes a China- man for anybody else, do not feel the intolerable insults to which they are exposed, do not fear for their own posi- tions, do not dread the subjugation which for Chinamen must alter all the conditions of life. And it is equally haru to believe that, if they do feel as all other human beings would feel, they are absolutely powerless to protest against or to avenge such treatment. Can a third of the human race be all cowards, or imbeciles, or too lost in selfishness to care even a liflie for the general weal? Grant for a moment that the Chinese are as unwarlike is Bengaleeswhich must be untrue, or they could not have annihilated the Panthays and the militant population of Kashgar, or defeated the French in the way they didthe government of China is rich, and has only to open its coffers to fill its ships with the sea- wolves of the Far East, the Malay pirates, who know how to die in heaps; to bring up hundreds, possibly thou- sands, of brave adventurers from Europe and America; and to create an army out of the swarms of daredevils who throughout Asia ask nothing but a good paymaster and a few cannon to make of themselves formidable troops. We admit all the facts alleged on the other side, the senility of the imperial house, the corruption of the highest official class, the dominance of the debasing idea that ic is not for civilized men like the Chinese to fight for any cause, and still we find it hard to believe that in an hour of extremity such a race can find no man to make a desperate, and possibly successful, effort to maintain their independence and their honor. A Chinaman, it may be asserted, has no sense of honor; but he has pride, and organizes most things upon the theory that whatever happens his face, that is, his personal dignity, is not to be irreparably wounded. If it is, he commits suicide, as a Frenchman does under the same circumstances. Suppose for a moment that the em- peror, who, it is known, feels defeat very keenly, and had arranged if the Japanese had entered Pekin to go through a grand and ceremonial suicide in public, should in utter despair throw himself into the hands of the Japanese and grant any terms they please as the price of their assistance. The Japan- ese, who are sighing for place in the world, would almost certainly accept his proposals, and, controlling for the moment the whole yellow race, would try whether a European power could or could not give that race orders at dis- cretion. The Japanese fleet, though it 125 126 is not so powerful as it will be three years hence, is alreadytcste the American naval inspector sent out to survey European arsenalsin a posi- tion to commence a struggle with the fleet of any single power in the Far East, and has this further advantage, that the mikado has subjects who would not hesitate to ram a foreign ship from any fear of going down with her. The Germans, under such circum- stances, would have to fight well to win a naval engagement, though no doubt Japanese sailors have not yet been fairly tested, while on land the position of their marines would be most embarrassing. They are as good as any soldiers in the world, and the Chinese. whenever menaced, run away from them in a way that strikes Kuro- peans as shameful, but is it certain that they run away out of cowardice, or that Japanese officers, who would pay them religiously, who would see that their cartridges fittedwhich they did not do in the last warand who would hang them in heaps without fail for skulking, could not turn them into soldiers? General Gordon, we fancy, with his Ever-Victorious Army, would have walked over a good many Germans, however brave or well dis- ciplined, and we do not clearly see why a Japanese general, opposed by minute numbers, and commanding men whose lives are of no value, should not do the same. Germany would then have to send a large army of conscripts to re- gain her position, which is expensive and painful work, and might, if she had not free command of the sea, find herself in a disagreeable or even un- manageable situation. That such a situation will arise is improbable, be- cause the Chinese are hardly pressed enough to call in Japanese help, but that it is impossible we find it difficult to believe. It is to be noted that the Tsung-li Yamen, while it has agreed to all other conditions, has not agreed, by the best accounts, to cede Kiao- chow, and that the great Mandarins of the coast provinces will be furious at the timidity of a court which is al- ways asking for revenue, but does not The Vegetarian Creed. in return provide even f6r their ex- ternal defence. We wish to avoid even the chance of misunderstanding. We have no means of proving, and do not, therefore, in- tend to affirm, that the Chinese empire is not dead. It may be dead, as it seemed to be after the Japanese wam, and it may be possible to cut up its body, even when the knife threatens the heart, without any fear of re- prisals. It is possible also that, setting apart any idea of death, the great men of Pekin may be ready to retreat to some city in the West, to govern their ten thousand grehn villages from thence, and to give up their coast dis- tricts to foreign occupation. In the recent intercourse between Europe and China, China has always yielded, and it is quite possible that she may con- tinue upon that course until Europe has fairly taken possession of her lands upon the sea. What we want to point out is that much of this calculation rests upon pure assumption, that we do not yet know how far the great men of China have been wounded by recefit events, and that the new plan of Eu- rope, which is really to occupy prov- inces, instead of making terms and then going away, may arouse unsuspected passions within the Chinese breast. The villagers stoned the German marines as they marched upon Kiao- chow, and were punished, not mildly, for that display of patriotic temper. It is possible, we say, and, if history is worth anything, it is not improbable, that the Chinese may be very irritated, that in their irritation the yellow giants may turn to the yellow dwarfs, and that if they do the struggle may be at least more protracted than any one in Berlin, or indeed in Europe, now expects. From The Speaker. THE VEGETARIAN CREED. Vegetarians continue to manifest a cheerfulness which cannot be ascribed to good living. Impartial witnesses as to the vegetarian restaurants suggest that they are maintained by zeal rather than by relish. We are still waiting for the vegetarian epicure and the vege- tarian Soyer. No enthusiast has writ- ten a cookery book to show that a vege- table diet can minister to the refined exigencies of the palate. Vegetarians in congress talk about spiritualizing the physical frame of man, not about the succulence of their favorite dishes. The idea that man will consent to be spiritualized by a fare which rejects alike the simplicity of the steak and the subtle perfections of the French cuisine is rather too ethereal for practical ex- perience. Men who are not fanatics will not be persuaded to regard food as a spiritual agent. All they want to know about it is whether it is sustain- ing and palatable. So far the judgment of mankind nas decided that a vege- tarian diet is neither, and the talk about spiritualizing the appetite, instead of making converts, is more likely to be regarded as a confirmation of the pre- vailing opinion. The cook who can persuade the world that some decoction of herbs is more appetizing and nour- ishing than grouse will make the cause of vegetarians triumph; but the moral reformer who says we mu& t leave off eating meat for the sake of spiritual evolution might as well proclaim this edifying gospel in the middle of Sahara. No consciousness of this elementary truth has disturbed the jubilee of the Vegetarian Society. It was commem- orated by an exhibition, designed to show how spiritualized man may dis- pense not only with the flesh of animals for food but with their skins for cloth- ing. Devout vegetarians were treated to the spectacle of shoes and gloves made from vegetable fibres. It will scarcely be asserted that these were equal to leather and kidbut what of that? The object of the vegetarians is not so much to satisfy the convenience and a~sthetic taste of man as to convince him that the sacrifice of animal life for any purpose is wrong, and even crim- inal. He must not be so gross as to trouble about whaL he eats, or where- wit1ial he shall ~e clothed, when he can 127 delight in the thought of sa~ing flocks and herds from the slaughter-house and the tannery. When we are spiritual- ized, we shall never wear furs in win- ter, and if (the vegetable substitutes are not warm enough, we shall glow with the satisfaction of the higher humanity. In Australia, where the plague of iab- bits is the despair of the farmers, all idea of keeping down the superabun- dance of this population will be aban- doned, and nobody will ever yearn again for rabbit pie. Kittens and pup- pies will never be drowned, but per- mitted~ to multiply without stint. Tt is difficult to say whether any vegetarian has ever meditated on the condition of a country in which no animals would be killed for food or sport or clothing. Cattle breeding would be ruined, and the butcher spiritualized out of exist- ence; but perhaps the most singular change in our economic state would be caused by the multiplication of animals, ignorant of Maithusian principles, and all clamoring to be fed. It is one of the amiable delusions of vegetarians that theirs is the only standard of health. A lady who read a 1)aper at the Congress was deeply im- pressed by the fact that vegetables agreed with her better than meat. It may be so, though the ideas of some women as to what constitutes a healthy diet are eccentric. But to argue, from the cases of people who suppose them- selves to be all the better for vegetable fool, that this must he fittest for the rest of mankind will not convince the robust man who has been out for a days shooting. The lady will probably retort that shooting is an unspiritual exercise which depraves both mind and body. Another feminine essayist at the Congress gravely affirmed that from a meat diet sprang peevishness, ill-temper, cruelty, and hardness of heart. Doubtless she believes that Abel was the first vegetarian, and Cain the horrid exemplar of the murderous passions which are generated in the flesh-eaters bosom. But the birds and beasts we chiefly eat are graminivo- rous, and ought to impart to us the pacific disposition of vegetarian prin The Vegetarian Creed. 128 ciples. Any lingering ferocity in our beef and mutton dissolves in the proc- ess of cooking; and a good many French dishes with a flesh foundation retain nothing of it but the flavor. How much warlike stimulus does the fire-eating French duellist draw from his soup and poulet? The Turkish sol- dier is one of the most abstemious of men, with the temper, when aroused by fanaticism, of the man-eating tiger. The Italian peasant, who lives mainly on macaroni, and not too much of that in these days of heavy taxation, is often a man of the most violent passh~ns. It is just as irrational to say that meat hardens mens hearts as it would be to say that whale oil causes homicidal mania in an Esquimaux. The orthodox vegetarian will not eat fish; yet what sensible person supposes that the flesh of the lobster, the fiercest denizen of the sea, instils cruelty into the damsels who consume him in the form of salad at ball-suppers? One good service might be done by the vegetarians if they would drop this nonsense about the spiritualizing quality of parsnips. Far too much meat is eaten in this country by many people who lead sedentary lives. It is not the quality of this diet which harms them, but the lack of proportion; and if they would eat less meat and more The Vegetarian Creed. vegetables and fruit, they Would enjoy better health. ft is from this class probably that the vegetarians draw their scanty recruits; for persons who have no discretion with the entn~cs may be precipitated into an exclusive wor- ship of roots. If vegetarianism would modify its dogma, there might be a happy mean between these extremes for Gargantuan feeders. But now the Vegetarian Society has started its ath- letic and cycling club, we shall hear of the vegetable scorcher and gymnast, of the athlete who is trained on arti- chokes, and the pacemaker who is built up with asparagus. It is a dangerous competition, into which the vegetarians are urged by overweening ambition. 1~vidently there are~ men amongst them who are not content with a spiritual mission, who say, Let us produce a record-breaking cyclist; let us have our own strong man; only by such prodigies can the world be converted. This challenge to the eater of beef must cause some misgiving amongst the orthodox. Suppose the vegetarian ath- lete should be tempted from the faith by the success of his carnivorous com- peers? He may forget that it was vegetarianism he was appointed to vindicate, and not the egotism of his thews and sinews. Two AnecdotesWho does not know the Copper Horse at Windsorthat equestrian statue at the end of the Long Walk, to which (and back again) the local flyman always offers to drive the tourist? The queen was entertain- ing a great man, who in the afternoon walked from the Castle to Cumberland Lodge. At dinner, her Majesty, full, as always, of gracious solicitude for the comfort of her guests, said, I hope you were not tired by your long walk? Oh, not at all, thank you, maam. I got a lift as far hack as the Copper Horse. As far as what? inquired her Majesty, in evident astonishment. Oh, the Copper Horse, at the end of the Long Walk. Thats not a Copper Horse. Thats my grandfather! Lord R , preaching at the French Exhibition, implored his hearers to come and drink of the eau de vie.Man- chester Guardian.

The Living Age.Supplemen-t. JANUARY 8, ~898. READINGS FROM AMERICAN MAGAZ1NES. From Harpers Magazine. EDWIN BOOTH, MAN AND ACTOR. A good many years ago, while Edwin Booth was playing a successful en~age- ment in one of the leading theatres, I dropped into his dressing-room one night during the course of the perform- aiice. He chanced to be in a particu- larly happy frame of mindand he was often cheerful and happy, tradition to the contrary notwithstanding. He was smoking the inevitable pipe, and he was arrayed in the costume of Richelieu, w-ith his feet upon the table, submitting patiently to the manipulations of his wardrobe-man or dresser. After a few words of greeting the call-boy knocked at the door and said that Mr. Booth was wanted at a certain left lower entrance. The protagonist jumped up quickly, and asked it I would stay where I was and keep his pipe alight, or go along with him and see him lunch the cuss of Rum, quoting the words of George L. Pox, who had been producing recently a ludicrously clever burlesque of Booth in the same part. I followed him to the wings, and stood by his side while he waited for his cue. It was the fourth act of the drama, I remember, and the stage was set as a garden, nothing of which was visible from our position but the flies and the back of the wings; and we might have been placed in a great bare barn, so far as any scenic effect was ap- parent. Adrian, Baradas, and the con- spirators were speaking, and at an opposite entrance, waiting for her cue, was the Julie of the evening. She was a good woman and an excellent actress, but unfortunately not a personal favor- ite with the Star, who called my atten- tion to the bismuth with which she was covered, and said that if she got any of it on to his new scarlet cloak he would pinch her black and blue, puffing vol LIVING AGE. VOL. XVI. 869. umes of smoke into my face as he spoke. When the proper time came lie rushed upon the stage, with a parting injunction not to let his pipe go out; and with the great meerschaum in my own mouth I saw the heroine of the play cast herself into his arms, and noticed, to my great amusement, that she did smear the robes of my Lord Cardinal with the greasy white stuff he so much disliked. I winked back a~ the half- comic, half-an~ry glance he shot towards me over Julies snowy shoul- ders. I half expected to hear the real scream he had threatened to cause her to utter. I thought of nothing but the humorous, absurd side of the situation; I was eager to keep the pipe going. And lo! he raised his hand and spoke those familiar lines: Around her form I draw the awful circle of our solemn Church. Place but a foot within that hallowed ground, and on thy head, yea, though it wear a crown, Ill launch the curse of Rome! Every bead upon the stage was uncovered, and I found my own hat in my hand! I forgot all the tomfoolery we had been indul~ing in; I forgot his pipe, and my promise regard- ing it; I forgot that I had been a habit- ual theatre-goer all my life; I forgot that I was a Protestant heretic, and that it was nothing but stage-play; I forgot everything, except the fact that I was standing in the presence of the great, visible head of the Catholic re- ligion in France, and that I was ready to drop upon my knees with the rest of them at his invocation. That was Edwin Booth the actor! In my Memoir of Booth I have spoken of his kindness of heart, of his delicacy of feeling, of his thoughtful- ness of others, and of his unbounded, silent charity. Even the members of his own family and his most intimate Edwin Booth, Man and Actor. friends never heard of half the good lie did. Sitting in his room in The Play- ers, when his physical decay was first becoming manifest, I told him of a let- ter I had just received from the daugh- ter of one of the old comedians, in whfch she offered the club a portrait of her father. Booth had received a let- ter from her to the same purport, would I write for both of us in reply? Her note was on his desk across the room, that black-bordered one, on the top of a pile of unanswered epistles, he said, just at my hand. I picked it up and read aloud, My dear Mr. Booth,How can I ever thank you for your great liberality No, no; not that one; the next. The next began, I do not know what to say to you for your won- derful generosity ~ No, no; not that either; and he picked up the whole package and threw them into an open drawer, ashamed that I should unwit- tingly have discovered some of his beneficiaries. Another old friend of Booth, a super- annuated actor, and a very aged man, lunched with him one day at The Play- ers. The weather was threatening as he left, and his host sent him home in a carriage. The guest was very much affected when they parted, and tried to say something, in a half-tearful way, which Booth would not let him utter. After he had gone some one spoke of the gentleness and sweetness of the vet- erans character, and said it was to be hoped that he had managed to save enough to keep his body and his soul to- gether for the little time that was left to him here. Oh yes, hes all right! replied Booth. He has something to support him comfortably as long as he lives, poor dear. And Im glad of it. After Booth had passed away it was learned that the something, more than enough, was furnished by Booth, who had invested nine thousand dollars in an annuity to cheer his fellow-players declining years. But he did not even hint of such a deed. He simply said, I am glad of it! Many years before that I called upon Booth, one afternoon, at the Albemarle Hotel, in New York, during an engagc ment at the Fifth Avenue Theatre. His wife was dead; his daughter was mar- ried and living in a distant city, and he was quite alone and lonely. I brought in to him a little fresh air, something from the outside world, and change of thought; and I was made to feel that my presence was not unwelcome. He sat, with the never-missing pipe, in an easy-chair, restful and content, talking of the old times and old seasons in which he then was beginning almost exclusively to live, when the waiter entered the room and put a visiting- card into his hand. Tell the lady that Mr. Booth is engaged, was the quiet remark, and he continued the conversa- tion where it had been interrupted. The caller was an influential leader of society in New York, and a charming woman personally, and I remonstrated with him for not receiving her and her equally charming daughter, who was with her. But he coulunt be bothered! In a few moments there came another card. This time that of a prominent man of affairs, a man known hon- orably throughout the country, a busy man, whose call was a com- pliment in itself; but Mr. Booth was lying down. Still another card was presented, two cards, those of a man and his wife whom nobody could afford to refuse to receive. But Mr. Booth was engaged. At last came a card, followed by the request to show the lady up! I put on my overcoat to leave the room, but was told to wait. The lady was a friend of mine, whom I would be glad to see and who would be glad to see me. Curious to discover the identity of the person so distin- guished, I did wait, and Black Betty entered, the old negro servant who had nursed his daughter when she was a baby, who had taken the most tender care of his wife when she was slowly and unhappily dying, and who had been a life-long, devoted, faithful friend to them all. She had left his service after his daugh- ters marriage, and had been married recently herself. She kissed Massa Edwins handshe was born a slave; she shook hands cordially with me; she 130 Nerozumim. was placed in the most comfortable rocking-chair, and she began to talk, familiarly, about her own affairs and his. She couldnt afford to go to the theatre no mo, she said, but she wanted her husband to see Massa Ed- win play; could she have a pass, for two, for that night? He wrote the pass at once, which she read, and returned to him with a shake of the head. They was only niggas; the dokeeper wouldnt let no niggas into the orchestra seats; a pass to the gallery v-as good enough for them. A second paper she re- ceived silently, but with another, and still more decided, shake of the head. I saw ii~ over her shoulder, and it read, Pass my friend Betty Blank and party to my box this evening. Edwin BoQth. And Betty occupied the box! Still ho was too tired to receive the daughter of one of the most distin- guished men of science in the country, a judge of the Supreme Court of the United States, or a bishop and his wife! That was Edwin Booth the Man! From A Group of Players. By Laurence Hutton. From The Review of Reviews. KNEROZUMIM. In August, 1885, I attended the great imperial maneuvers of the Austrian army in Western Bohemia. The sup- position was that an army corps had to prevent the enemy, invading Bo- hemia from Bavaria, from reaching Prague, and if possible throw them back over the frontier. The dawn of the second day found me with the right wing of the army corps, where a light field battery of eight guns and a squadron of dragoons were posted to protect the position against a flank movement; near by, also well covered, was a battalion of sharpshooters. The commander of the battery, a captain of fifteen years service, was a highly educated man and well-instructed officer, who spoke French, Italian, and English fluently. Our chat was inter- rupted by the arrival of a cavalry patrol, and the leader, a sergeant of Bohemian dragoons, reported some- thing to the captain in Czech. The cap- tain, not conversant with the language of Palacky and Svatopluk Czech, ques- tioned him in German, but could get no other answer but Nerozumim (I do not understand). While the captain was giving orders to a lieutenant to go reconnoitering with a dozen men, a second patrolthis time five hussars led by a corporalarrived. The ex- cited leader spoke very rapidly awl sonorously in Magyar. Every question of the captain, as to what he had tn report, if he had seen anythin~ of the enemy, etc., was answered monoto- nously with Nemtudom (I do not un- derstand). Then the captain, sure of something worth knowing going on somewhere, mounted, and ordered the battery ready! While the men were tightening their saddle-girths and ar- ranging their paraphernalia, a half- dozen Uhlans came veiUre 4 terre toward the battery from the right. A panting sergeant, covered with the dust and perspiration of a hard ride, gabbled most furiously in Polish, and to the captains eager query, Can you not speak German? he had but one answer: Neznam (I do not under- stand). Then there was some shout- ing, bugle-calls from the right, a bugle- call from our cavalry escort, the thundering Hurrah! of a. long gal- loping line of the enemys cavalry, the shrill command of the captain: Cav- alry to the right! Dismount! Eight hundred paces! Grape-shot charge! Fire! But it was too late. The three squadrons of the enemys hussars were in the battery before a shot could be fired; the eight guns and the squadron of dragoons had to surrenderhad it been war instead of sham battle few would have remained to tell the tale. Furthermore, the enemy unmasked a mounted battery of eight guns that opened fire on the battalion of sharp- shooters, and they also had to sur- render. The enemy was in possession of the commanding hill on our right flank. His Majesty Emperor Francis Joseph. 131 132 who had watched the whole affair through his field-glass from afar, frowned; the general in command got very wroth; the brigadier was furious; the colonel used extremely strong lan- guage; the captain was severely repri- manded, and a few months afterward pensioned. But was it really his fault, or not rather uhe fault of the nerozu- mim, nemtudom, and neznam? This reminiscence would not be worth telling were it not characteristic of the conditions of the Austro-Hun- garian army, very characteristic of the political situation of the empire, and eminently characteristic of the crisis that is culminating there at present. The army, although her official lan- guage and the words of command are German, is not any more a homogene- ous unity, but has become a loosely jointed set of polyglot brigades. The Hungarian Honved (second reserv& ~ is drilled and commanded in Magyar; her non-commissioned and even many commissioned officers do not understand German at all. In all field regiments, with the exception of those recruited from the German provinces, few non- commissioned officers can speak, scarcely any can wFite or even read, the army language, and the percentage of reserve officers who are able to write and speak German fluently is growing smaller every year. Although there are many officers who speak two or three of the different languages of Austria. there can naturally be but few who are able to understand all the tongues: Magyar, Polish. Czech, Routhenian, Roumanian. Slavonic, Groat, Slovak, Servian, Bosnian. and Italian. The I-do-not-understand in eleven different languages is met with in the daily army routine more and more frequently, and this fact must lead, in case of war, to the most dis- astrous consequences. Parliament likewise presents a modern tower of Babel. The Aus- trian House of Commons has a few dozen members who cannot speak Gcr- man, some who even do not understand it, and speeches are delivered in half-a- dozen tongues not understood by the majority of the members. Similar con- ditions are prevalent in all branches of government. Thousands of law- suits, the majority of the cases before the courts of provinces of mixed lan- guage, must be carried on in two ~)r three tongues; briefs, pleadings, sen- tences, have to be translated and re- translated, time and money are wasted for interpreters, and the jury system has become a farce and sham on ac- count of nationalistic prejudices and by reason of the inability of many jurors to understand any other language but tneir own. The postal, telegraph, and railroad service, the collection of taxes, the execution of law, business, com- merce, industry, and last, not least, the education of the people, suffer enor- mously under this polyglot from the lack of a state language. The inter- course of the peoples, their exchange of ideas, the approximation of opposing views, the compromise between differ- ences, intermarriage, assimilation, amalgamationin short, all and every- thing that ought to constitute a state or make a homogeneous unity are want- ing. I do not understand is charac- teristic also of the feelings, the aims, and ends of the people; the nations of Austria-Hungary do not understand each other any longer. This is the crisis in Austria. From The Future of Austria-Hungary. By an Austrian. From Tue Atlantic Monthly. PATERNAL GOVERNMENT IN BOSTON. To get an every-day basis for discuss- in~ th~ present scope of government in America, let us view rapidly the experi- euwes of an imaginary Bostonian dur- ing a day differing in no respect from ordinary days; iii short, an average daily record of aim average luau. He begins the day by bathing in water supplied by the public through an elaborate system of public pumps and reservoirs and pipes. After it has been used, the water escapes through the citizens own plumbing system; but Paternal Government in Boston. Paternal Government in Boston. this private plumbin~ system has been constructed in accordance with public regulations, is liable to inspection by public officials, and empties into sew- ers constructed and managed by the public. When he has dressed himself in clothing of which every article is l)robably the subject of a national tariff intended to affect production or price, our Bostonian goes to his breakfast- table, and finds there not only table linen, china, glass, knives, forks, and spoons, each of them coming under the same national protection, but also food, almost all of which has been actually or potentially inspected, or otherwise regulated, by the national or state or municipal government. The meat has been liable to inspection. The bread has been made by the baker in loaves of a cert~in statutory weight. The but- ter, if it happens to be oleomargarine, has been packed and stamped as stat- utes require. The milk has been fur- nished by a milkman whose dairy is officially inspected, and whose milk must reach a certain statutory stand- ard. The chocolate has been bought in cakes stamped in the statutory man- ner. The remnants of the breakfast will be carried away by public garbage carts; and the public will also care for the ashes of the coal that cooked the meal. Nor do this average Bostonian and his family escape from public control upon rising from the table. The children are compelled by law to go to school; and though there is an option to attend a private school, the city gratuitously fur- nishes a school and school-books. As for the father himself, when he reaches his door, he finds that public servants are girdling his trees with burlap, and searching his premises for traces of the gypsy moth. Without stopping to re- flect that he has not been asked to per- mit these public servants to go upon his property, he steps out upon a side- walk constructed in accordance with public requirements. crosses a street paved and watered and swept by the public, and enters a street car whose route. speed, and fare are regulated by the public. Reaching the centre of the city, he ascends to his office by an ele- vator subject to public inspection, and reads the mail that has been brought to him from all parts of the United States by public servants. If the dimness of his office causes him to regret that sun- light appears to be outside public pro- tection, he may be answered that there are regulations controlling the height of buildings and prohibiting the malicious construction of high fences. If now he leaves his office and goes to some store or factory in which he owns an interest, he finds that for female em- ployees chairs must be provided, that children must not be employed in cer- tain kinds of work, that dangerous ma- chinery must be fenced, that fire- escapes must be furnished, and prob- ably that the goods produced or sold must be marked or packed in a pre- scribeu way, or must reach a statutory standard. Indeed, whatever this mans business may be, the probability is that in one way or another the publics hand comes between him and his employee, or between him and his customer. Leaving his store or his factory, this average man deposits money in a bank, which is carefully inspected by public officials, and which is compelled by the public to refrain from specified modes of investment and also to publish peri- odical statements of its condition. He next makes a payment to an insurance company, which is subject to even stricter statutory regulations. He then goes to East Boston and back upon a ferry-boat owned and managed by the public. When finally all the business of the day is finished, this imaginary Bos- tonian walks throu~h the Common and the Public Garden, and soon enters the Public Library, a building that is the latest and most striking expression of the publics interest in the indlividual. Leaving the Public Library, he strolls past a free bathhouse sustained by the public, an(l then past a free public out- door gymnasium; and at last he hastens home through & treets that public ser- vants are now be~inning to light. When this Bostonian reaches home; he can reflect that he has passed no 1133 131 very extraordinary day. If events had been a little different, the public would have furnished steam fire-engines to protect his house, or a policeman to find a lost child for him, or an ambulance to take his cook to the city hospital, or a health officer to inspect his neighbors premises. No one of these emergencies has arisen, and yet this average Bos- tonian, if he has happened to think of the various ways in which he has this day been affected by public control, must wonder whether his mornings conception of the functions of govern- ment was adequate. From The Present Scope of Government By Eugene wambaugli. From Scribners Magazine. WAGNERISM. More than a dozen years ago an emi- nent English critic, commenting on the signs of that imitation, that plagiarism of the Wagner manner already then evident among composers, pointed out the danger that would exist if Wag- ner s most enthusiastic supporters should attemptas they certainly have (toneto carry his views and theories even farther than he carried them him- self. He says: This warns us of serb ous danger, danger that the free course of art may be paralyzed by a soulless mannerism worthy only of the meanest copyist; danger, on the other hand, of a reaction which will be all the more violent and unreasoning in proportion to the amount of provoca- tion needed to excite it. He remarks further, and with truth: It would take us a long day to tire of Wagner, but we cannot take him at second hand. Wagnerism, nor gods nor men can tolerate. Does not this warning seem almost prophetic? Are not the operatic com- posers of the day imitators almost to the extent of plagiarism? Are we not, indeed, getting Wagnerism Wagner at second hand i~sque ad nausearn .~ Are there not two perils, stagnation and reaction, which lie in wait for us? and JJagnerism. does it not appear more than probable that between the two opera is likely to come to a considerable amount of grief? There is certainly stagnation In opera at the present day. Operatic managers all over the world are look- ing for operatic novelties and find none. Within the last decade the operas written which have any artistic signi- ficance, or even the slightest element of enduring merit and lasting popularity, might be counted on the fingers of one hand, and as a result of this un- doubted stagnation are we not more than likely to get a reaction which may well be in ~he direction of simpler forms, and a more euphonious, less pedantic and involved expression of musical thought? As the future that lies before us, whatever it may be, must be prepared by a careful and un- remitting study of the past, so the leader of the new period of operatic writing, who is certainly yet to appear. must look to the past for the model and the basis of his future work, just as Wagner looked back to Jacopo Pen. But how far is he to look back? in what mould will his work be cast .~ After what model shall he build? On the lines of the dramas of the Nie- belungen Rind or of an earlier work? The worlds history and development has been always carried along by great men, but it is quite possible, and his- tory has shown, that sometimes the greatness of a man may be so intense, so overpowering, as to impede and even arrest the development which he him- self inaugurated. It may seem both heretical and paradoxical to say so, but, while exalting opera as an art- form to a position that it had never held before, Wagner, for the time being at least, practically killed opera as a form of art. With all his genius, with all his over- whelming Individuality and influence, Wagner did not succeed in founding a school. He left followers and imita- tors, but no successor; and this fact, more than any other, points and em- phasizes the extraordinary tendency to individualism in modern art. A suc- cessor to Wagner, who would follow Marriages in France. strictly along the lines he laid down, is improbable, if not impossible, be- cause composers are not often equally great as poets and musicians, and it was the intensely close co-relation be- tween text and music which was the great feature, the great novelty, the great power and strength of Wagners work. If we admit this fact, if we allow that a Wagner, like a Napoleon, occurs once within a cycle of centuries, and also admitas obviously we must that the composers of the present day are hopelessly, almost servilely, under his influence (another Wagner is hardly immediately possible), are we not forced to the conclusion that this in- fluence of an overwhelming personality is responsible for the present un- doubted stagnation in operatic produc- tion, and has, therefore, been sub- versive and hurtful both to opera in particular and to the best interests of musical art in general? Can we indeed say that we are richer in genius and promise in opera since Wagner destroyed our operatic theori~~s and, in pushing his own theories to an extreme of developmbnt, set up an im- possible and impracticable standard of operatic construction? It is not at all inconceivable that had Wagner lived he himself would have recognized that he had indeed pushed his theories to an impracticable extreme, and evi- dences are not wanting in ParsifaF that he had arrived at this conclusion. Prom Some Tendencies of Modern Opera. By Reginald de Koven. From The Century. MARRIAGES IN FRANCE. The old manage de convcnance, which caused so much sorrow and consequent evil in former days, when a girl was taken out of a convent to be shown the man to whom she was about to be mar- ried, is now a thing of the past. It must be acknowledged, however, that mar- riages are still made up, often too has- tily and superficially, by nicely bal- anced family arrangements and by the intervention of friends. Nevertheless, attraction and repulsion are now taken into consideration, and a girl is no longer forced to marry a man whom she poslitively dislikes. I could quote in- stances in the very highest (historical) aristocracy where, at the last moment, after the trousseau had been sent in (marked, according to custom, with the united initial letters of the two names elaborately embroidered), and all the social preparations made, the marriage was broken off because the bride had declared that she could not get accus- tomed to the bridegroom, nor endure the idea of seeing his face in her home during her natural life. In one of these instances the family lamentations over the initials of the trousseau were really amusing. Fortunately, a substitute was soon found, whose name like that of the rejected suitor began with an X, and the complications were thus hap- pily settled. The great object of the French girls life is marriage. From the time of her birth her parents have prepared for this event, and in many cases they have considerably straitened their income and curtailed their enjoyments to make up her dot. Every girl in every class is expected to have something; those who have nothing are exceptions, and con- stitute a minority of old maids. The girls who from choice do not marry generally become nuns, usually much against the wishes of their parents. The old tales of young women being forced into convents to improve the po- sition of their brothers are for~otten in these days when, while no child can on any pretense be deprived of a share in the fathers inheritance, monastic vows are not recognized by law. Nuns and spinsters are exceptions; marriage is the rule. When a girl is of n age to be intro- duced into society, her friends and rela- tives immediately look out for a suit- able husband, whom it is considered highly d sirable to obtain before she had reached the age of twenty-one, that she may not be proclaimed flue majeure when the banns are published. The principal considerations are equality of 13~ Professor Drisier. birth, of position, of fortune; and in. the last particular the scale is usually ex- pected to weigh rather more on the side of the young lady, especially if the young man, in addition to sufficient present advantages, can bring forward a number of relatives not likely to live long. This is called having bopes (des esp~ra aces1eaucoup d.esp~rauces). If the young lady with a substantial dot can also show a satisfactory back- ground of invalid uncles and aunts, then everything is as it should be, and the young people are brought together with every prospect of a favorable con- clusion. It happens, however, too often that they do not know each other suffi- ciently, and that they are persuaded to believe that the mutual liking is greater than it really is. Sometimes this sort of undefined attraction ripens into a deep and devoted love; when this occurs there are no more affectionate wives or more faithful widows than French women. More frequently, especially in the higher classes, a sort of cool friendli- ness springs up, where they see but lit- tle of each other, and freedom is en- joyed on both sides. The authority of the husband is less felt than in an En- ~lish household. There is a sort of un- derstanding that in her home the wife is queen, and settles matters as she pleases. But