The Living age ... / Volume 226, Issue 2926
265-336
THE LIVING AGE:
(FOUNDED BY E. LITTELL IN 1844.)
SEVI~NTH SERIES. NO. 2926. AUGUST ~t, i~oo.
VOLUME VIII.
Fno~ BRGYIING
Vol. CCX.XvI.
BRITISH VACILLATION IN CHINA AND ITS CONSEQUENCES.
Weariness, if not d~pair, must be
the dominant feeling of the writer upon
the Far East who takes up his pen oi~ice
more, at this moment of latest and
greatest crisis to discuss British policy
in relation to the Chinese Empire. A
dozen, perhaps a score of writers in
this country know the Far East well,
they have clearly foreseen what has
been coming, they have persistently is-
sued advice and warnings. As each
fresh rebuff or crisis has confirmed
their prophecies they have redoubled
their appeals for something in the shape
of a definite, consistent and supported
policy. For all the effect they have
had upon the Foreign Office they would
have been more usefully employed in
whitewashing its cellars.
Meanwhile, the great rival has with-
stood us to our face in the daylight,
and sown tares in our fields in the
night, and in the body we have tried
to preserve, the process of decay has
gone so steadily on that probably no
political antiseptic will now be able to
save it from dissolution. Suddenly
except to those who have cried from
the watch-towers in vainan appalling
situation faces us; every foreigner in
Peking, including diplomatists, ladies
and children, is virtually a prisoner,
in imminent peril of outrage, torture
I write on the 23rd of June.
and death; a foreign relief force of
2,000 men has not been heard of for a
week; the famous but old-fashioned
Taku forts, having fired upon the foreign
fleet at midnight, obviously by order o(
the Chinese Government, have been bom-
barded, blown up and occupied at a
serious loss of foreign life; the railways
are destroyed and all the telegraph
wires are cutif the 250 Europeans in
Peking had been massacred eight days
ago we should not know it yet; and all
the foreign buildings nt Peking, except
the legations, including the large Ro-
man Catholic Cathedral, upon the porch
of which is an Imperial inscription
hitherto supposed to guarantee it under
all possible circumstances from injury
at Chinese hands, and the buildings of
the Chinese Maritime Customs, Chinese
property and the bulwark of such Chi-
nese solvency as exists, have been
burned. The Western world has never
found itself in such an embarrassing
position in China before, and if, as
seems probable at this moment, all the
organized Chinese forces join in an at-
tempt to expel the foreigner, and the
always simmering rebellions of the
south break into flame, as they are al-
most certain to do if the situation is
prolonged, it is impossible to foresee
the end or to say how the West is to
re-establish its prestige and authority.
266 British Vacillation in China.
England has been for fifty years the
paramount Power in China. By the
vast preponderance of her trade, the
numbers of her nationals living and
trading there, her experience of the
East, her supply of capable adminis-
trators, her unquestioned command of
the sea highway thither, the position
of leader has naturally fallen to her
among the nations. How she has ac-
quitted herself of this responsible and
proud task is sufficiently shown by the
facts of the situation to-day as sum-
marized above. The humiliation, the
loss, the possible horrors, lie chiefly at
the door of England. Her paramountcy
is gone forever, beyond the faintest
possibility of retrieval. That the open-
ings for her trade will be largely cur-
tailed is also no longer a matter of
doubt. Our statesmen have been la-
mentably and conspicuously wanting
in the energy necessary to the perform-
ance of their task, and as the most un-
portant problems have arisen during
Lord Salisburys present Government,
it is the Cabinet of to-day that has
done, or left undone, most to bring this
injury upon the nation.
Since Lord Salisbury has been in
office there have been several occasions
when an intelligent appreciation of
affairs, backed by bold and straightfor-
ward action, would have preserved the
integrity of China, kept for all nations
alike the huge actualities and greater
potentialities of her trade and postponed
indefinitely, if not forever, the dangers
of a war over her partition. The abil-
ity of England to do this thing was far
greater than that of any other country,
for the simple reason that the world
realizes that we are by fixed policy a
free-trading nation, and that our object
is to maintain open markets for all.
The United States and Japan, with pos-
sibly Germany as well, would have
supported us in diplomatic action di-
rected to this endindeed, when it be-
came evident that nothing was to be
expected from Lord Salisbury, the
United States Government took the
matter up and secured assurances of
definite adherence to the open door
from every nation except Russia, whose
reply was characteristically vague and
unsatisfactory. But this was too late
to prevent the absorption of Manchuria
by a Power whose fixed policy is the
prohibition of foreign trade, whereas
there was plenty of time, after the in-
tentions of Russia were plain to all the
world, to secure a general declaration
of open trade policy for all China for-
ever, which no Power could have sub-
sequently abrogated except by force of
arms.
Sooner or later order will reign once
more in Peking, there will be some cen-
tral authority there, and the Ministers
of the Powers will once more be about
their businessor other Ministers if
these are in their graves. Then Eng-
land will have to profess a policy of
some kind, and make an effort of some
sort to carry it out. Beneath any pol-
icy there are a number of axioms, and
so far as these are borne in mind that
policy will stand a chance of success,
and so far as they are overlooked it
will once more fail. Expert opinion
will differ somewhat, of course, con-
cerning these axioms, but upon most
of them, all who know the Far East,
will be in substantial agreement, and
my desire here is to set some of these
plainly forth. Before doing so, how-
ever, it is essential to recall to public
attention a few of the extraordinary
lapses from common sense and com-
mon energy that have characterized our
treatment of the Chinese problem dur-
ing the last few years. So many other
exciting events have overlaid them
that they have probably passed out of
public recollection.
Is it generally remembered, for in-
stance, that the Britisfh Parliament
passed a resolution formally declaring
the integrity of China to be a British
British Vacillation in China. 267
concern? It meant nothing, and no
action whatever was intended to follow
it. It was tossed as a sop by a policy-
less Government to an uneasy House.
Could anything have been more dis-
creditable to the British Empire than
this bit of feeble bluff? The Cassini
Convention is even less likely to be
recollected. In November, 1895, the
Times published a telegram from a
correspondent in Hong Kong, stating
that a secret treaty had been signed
between Russia and China, by which
the former was conceded the right of
anchorage for her fleet in Port Arthur,
and the right to build railways across
Manchuria to Vladivostok and Port
Arthur. The Russian Embassy in Lon-
don at once declared these statements
to be absolutely unfounded. On the
28th of October, 1896, the North China
Daily News published the full text of
this Convention, which was seen to
place the whole of northern China vir-
tually under Russian protectionRus-
sia might station any force she pleased
in this territory, raise and drill Chinese
levies, develop mineral resources, forti-
fy Port Arthur, Talienwan and Kiao-
chao; if she found herself in danger of
war, China bound herself not to cede
strategical points to any other Power,
and Russia undertook to defend China
against other foreign encroachment.
Again and again the British Govern-
ment denied the existence of this Con-
vention. Yet for six weeks the baggage
of the Russian Minister in Peking was
packed ready for his instant departure
as soon as it was signed, and his car-
riages and mule litters stood ready all
this time in the courtyard of the Rus-
sian Legation. The Times felt com-
pelled by courtesy, in view of the offi-
cial Russian denial, to repudiate its
correspondent, but the English papers
in the Far East persisted in the fact
of the Convention, and, as I myself
knew th~ correspondent intimately and
the sources of his information, I wrote
at the time, I am profoundly con-
vinced that although the statement as
to the conclusion of a private treaty
may have been textually inaccurate,
the broad fact is indubitable. It might
have been thought that the Foreign
Office would have inquired privately
into the sources of so very serious a
rumor. On the contrary, it simply in-
formed Russia indirectly that she could
not be allowed to possess herself of
Port Arthur. On the 8th of February,
1898, Mr. (now Lord) Curzon reassured
the House of Commons as follows:
lip to now, Russia has done nothing
in respect of Port Arthur which she
has not been perfectly entitled, under
treaty rights, to do. Russia has sent
ships of war to Port Arthur; and if
blame is to be attached to her for so do-
ing, Her Majestys government must
be included in the accusation, for a
fortnight ago we did exactly the same
thing (Cheers). The right to send
ships of war to Port Arthur is
a right which we enjoy together
with other Powers under the treaty of
Tientsin, and when the occasion arises,
we shafl do it again.
On the 27th of March the lease of
Port Arthur by China to Russia was
signed by Li Hung-chang, Chang Chih-
tung and M. Pavioff, the Russian repre-
sentative in Peking, with the following
as its Article VI:
The governments of the two coun-
tries agree that as Port Arthur is sole-
ly a naval port, only Russian and Chi-
nese vessels are to be allowed to use
it, and it is to be considered a closed
port as far as the war and mer-
chant vessels of other Powers are con-
cerned.
Thus, within seven weeks the remark
of the Under-Secretary in the House
of Commons was shown by events to
be as ignorant in fact as it was flippant
in form. The alc~ove lease was not
generally known until the 3d of June,
268 British Vacillation in China.
when the Times published it. At once
Lord Salisbury telegraphed to the Brit-
Ish Ambassador in St. Petersburg to
inquire if it was correct, and to instruct
1dm, in that case, to point out to the
Russian Government that Article VI
was quite inconsistent with the spe-
cific assurances of the Russian Goy-
eminent and with our treaty rights in
Chinese ports. This infantile belief
that the Russian Government would
care a jot about specific assurances
~and treaty rights in a matter which
Russia had so close at heart as the
eventual mastery of northern China,
when she knew perfectly well that a
few sarcastically turned sentences in
a despatch would be all she would have
to bear for ignoring them, is of a piece
with too much of our diplomacy for
years past. Of course Russia pooh-
poohed all the objections, with even
less consideration for our feelings than
usual. One course alone would have
saved the situation. The treaty of
Tientsin (1858) gives us free and equal
participation in all privileges, immuni-
ties and advantages that may have
been, or may be hereafter, granted by
His Majesty, the Emperor of China to
the Government or the subjects of any
other nation. Here was a clear issue
the deliberate infraction by Russia of
the old standing treaty rights of all
other nations. The British flagshipa
more powerful vessel than any Russia
had on the spotshould have been or-
dered to enter Port Arthur, by
force if necessary, and to stay
there until the affair was settled in
accordance with the Treaty of Tien-
tsin, the Magna Gharta of the West in
China. Every student of the interna-
tional situation knows that Russia
would not have accepted the gage of
battle; but even if she had, it would
have been better to fight her with the
allies we should necessarily have had,
on such an issue, than to postpone an
inevitable conflict until she had queened
several more pawns. Before this, too,
the British Government had commit-
ted a blunder without parallel in mod-
em diplomacy for sheer ineptitude. The
country and tue House of Commons
had become very restless at the pros-
pect of the seizure of Port Arthur by
Russia and the apparent failure of Lord
Salisbury to take any steps to prevent
this. Thereupon, besides the statement of
Mr. Curzon quoted above aboutthe ships,
which was received with hearty cheers
of relief in the House, the Admiralty
circulated a list of ships stations in the
Far East containing these words: At
Port Arthur, Imiuortalit~ and Iphi-
genia. That is, we had two powerful
cruisers at the danger-point to guard
our rights. Naturally the country was
much relieved and criticism ceased.
Shortly afterwards Russia requested
that these two ships should be with-
drawn, and by an act of folly without
equal, I repeat, in diplomatic annals,
they were withdrawnforever. And
the country, after being quieted by the
news of their presence there, was posi-
tively assured that their presence had
possessed no signification whatever!
Once more a domestic storm broke
upon the Government, and a dangerous
discussion loomed ahead in the House.
To stave off thisto have something
to pacify its supporters withthe Gov-
ernment arranged with Japan, always
ready to act with us in keeping China
open, to occupy Wei-hai-wei when
Japan evacuated it upon payment of
the remainder of the war indemnity by
China. Military and naval opinion, al-
most without exception has declared
this place to be useless to us; the Gov-
ernment was besought by one of the
first authorities upon strategy not to
put any valuable stores there to be cap-
tured by the enemy or to keep the fleet
idle in defending them; ten thousand
men would be necessary to protect the
place, and we have raised one solitary
iegiment of Chinese; a million sterling
British Vacillation in China. 269
would have to be spent in fortificationS,
and we have spent nothing; our vital
interests, now that the partition of
China has begun, are in the Yangtse
Valley, and the Wei-hai-wei can no
more defend that, as a great military
authority has said, than a helmet upon
a mans head would defend his vitals;
the place, in fact, is an encumbrance
to us from a naval point of view, while
any commercial value it might have
had has been destroyed by our volun-
tary promise to Germany not to con-
struct a railroad from it to any other
part of the province.
The list of further failures of our
diplomacy in the Far East is far too
long to pursue, but one or two others
must be mentioned. We offered a large
loan to China and strongly urged her
to accept it. Russia forbade her, and
she declined it. British capital was
provided to build the railroad from
Peking to Niu-chwang; Russia pro-
tested; we wrote many strongly-worded
despatches; and then accepted the Rus-
sian insistence that the loan should
not give the right to any lien upon the
railway. The country became uneasy
at the apparent neglect of our interests
in the Yangtse Valley, but was once
more relieved by the Governments as-
surance that an undertaking had been
given by the Chinese Government safe-
guarding these interests. Three and a
half months later this undertaking was
issued to the public, but immediately
withdrawn because the official copy
contained Mr. Curzons private margin-
al notesstrictly speaking, this is not
grammar, etc. It proved to be ab-
solutely worthless. I quote the com-
ment of the Times:
Perhaps our light-hearted Under-Sec-
retary of State would not mind even
the ridicule with which his careless-
ness has covered him if it helped him
to divert public attention from the sub-
stance of these documents. . . . In
point of fact, this assurance up-
on which our Ministers have so often
prided themselves as one of the great
achievements of British policy in the
Far East, turns out to be no assurance
at all. No man in private life would
invest a single sovereign on the
strength of a declaration so evasive and
illusory. . . . This is nothing more
than an academic expression of opin-
ion, which commits the Chinese Gov-
ernment to nothing. It might change
its opinion tomorrow and cede half the
valley, yet, were this a transaction be-
tween ~ndividaals to be submitted to
an ordinary tribunal, we should simply
be laughed out of court if we pretended
to found a claim upon such a simu
lacrum of an assurance. . . . Is it not
time for Her Majestys Government to
drop playing with phrases and to loo1~
at facts?
One of the facts was that not long
afterwards a concession for a railway
from Peking to Hankow, the great port
in the very heart of the Yangtse Valley,
was granted (in spite of Lord Salis-
burys energetic protestson paper) to
a Belgian company, financed by the
Russo-Chinese Bankthat is, by the
Russian Government under one of its
numerous aliases.
During the time these things were
going on it was impossible for the coun-
try, through its Parliamentary repre-
sentatives, to obtain prompt, accurate,
or even straightforward information.
One glaring example must suffice.
When the British Government offered
its loan to China and strongly urged
acceptance, while Russia was success-
fully intriguing against it, Ministers in
both Houses were sharply questioned
as to the progress of negotiations. At
the same hour of the same day these
two absolutely contradictory answers
were given. Lord Salisbury in the
House of Lords:
I am not going through the propos-
als; the negotiations are not concluded
and it would not be right for me to do
so.
270 British Vacillation in China.
Mr. Balfour in the House of Com-
mons
The whole transaction is now a mat-
ter of ancient history. I mean the loan
negotiations; they do not ask for the
loan, and there is an end of it.
Again, the Times said: It is difficult
to be quite accurate about the Belgian
concession because Lord Salisbury and
Mr. Curzon are not in agreement about
its history. In fact, Mr. Curzons an-
swers in Parliament became something
of a public scandal, in proof of which
strong statement it may suffice, to
save space, to quote the remark of the
Times that we are lulled to sleep for
months by Parliamentary statements
of a more or less disingenuous charac-
ter.
To conclude: the situation two years
ago was that the policy imperatively
required by British interests in China,
and openly, indeed even defiantly, pro-
fessed by the British Government, was
hopelessly beaten and driven from the
field. Once more I cite the Times, a
strong supporter in other matters of
Lord Salisburys administration, since
my own assertion to this effect might be
re~,arded by those who have not fol-
lowed the facts as a partizan utter-
ance
It is most surprising that, after its
failure and its utter impossibility have
been clearly demonstrated, the Govern-
nient should go on complacently behav-
ing as if the open door policy were alive
and winning all along the line. In the
actual condition of affairs that policy
is merely a snare and a delusion. The
other policy for good or ill is dominant
and inevitable. Each nation is taking
in hand as much of China as she can
deal with, and all are firmly resolved
that British trade shall not, if they can
help it, effect an entry into their areas.
Are we to go on for ever trying to keep
out the ocean with a mop or are we
going to take the world as we find it,
and to secure at least some area of
Chinese territory where British ecter-
prise may have a chance? At prc,ent
there are few indications that the
problem has been seriously grappled
with by the Government.
In view of such an outcome of British
efforts, it would be too painful to char-
acterize the following brave words
spoken by Lord Salisbury in the House
of Lords:
Not only have we not surrendered
one iota of our treaty rights, but we
have no intention of surrendering
them, and though I will not make cise
of those high-sounding words which
grate on the noble earls nerves, I will
say there is no effort which this coun-
try xviii not make rather than allow
those rights to be destroyed.
Words, words, words, only good to
be laid away in the camphor of a stu-
dents note-book alongside Sir Michael
Hicks-Beachs equally brave and equal-
ly empty declaration that the Gov-
ernment were absolutely determined at
whatever cost, even at the cost of war
if necessary, that the door should not
be shut.
Unless we thoroughly realize how
badly we have done in the past, there
Is no hope that we shall do better in the
future. The object of this brief but
humiliating retrospect, therefore, is t
exhibit the urgency of a complete
change in our method of dealing with
the Chinese problem. Two things are
indispensable. First, a policy; second,
a determination to carry it out. The
second of these can be furnished only
by the pressure of public opinion, but
the former is a matter of discussion and
knowledge, and the light of past experi-
ence. Hitherto we have had no policy
at all; nobody can look at the Far East-
ern record of the present Government
and believe that at any time they had
definitely decided what they wished to
do, except fror~ day to day, or at what
British Vacillation in China.
point they would stand fast. As the
late German Minister to China said on
his return, the action of England has
been consistent in nothing except its
vacillation. Now a determined and
consistent policy must be based upon
certain accepted truths, as essential to
the resolution of our Chinese question,
as the axioms are to the solution of a
problem in Euclid. What, then, are
the axioms founded in fact or inculcat-
ed by experience, of a British Far East-
ern policy? I put forward the follow-
ing as affording a basis for discussion:
1. There is no such thing as China.
We are accustomed to speak of
China and the Chinese people as if
they were distinct entities. This is an
error at the bottom of many of our
mistakes and confusions. We may use
the word China as a convenient expres-
sion to connote a certain vast portion
of the earths surface, but in no more
exact sense. What figures as China on
the map is a number of districts, often
separated from each other and from
the centre by immense distances, dif-
fering widely in climate, resources and
configuration, inhabited by people of
largely ~arying race, temperament,
habit, religion and language. The Mo-
hammedans, of whom there are thirty
millions, retard the Buddhists as irre-
ligious forei~ners. The inhabitants of
the central and northern provinces,
says Mr. Keane, scarcely re~ard those
of the extreme southeast districts as
fellow-countrymen at all. A native
of Shanghai was heard to say, There
were seven Chinamen and two Canton-
ese. A man from Tientsin and a man
from Canton can no more talk to each
other than can a Frenchman and a
Dutchman. Moreover, there exists be-
tween th m a virulent race-hatred. I
lost the best Chinese servant I ever had
because, being from the north, nothing
would induce him to accompany me in
the south of China where his speech
would have betrayed him. Cantonese
271
velly bad man, master, he said to me;
L go home. This curious inter-ha-
tred is conspicuous where Chinese from
different parts of China meet together,
as, for example, in Bangkok, or on the
plantations in Malaya or the Dutch
Indies. Savage faction-fights are of
constant occurrence. Consequently it
is easy to raise a force of Chinese in
one place to fight Chinese in another.
It is because there is no such thing as
China that the military caste of the
Manchus, comparatively infinitesimal
in numbers, have been able to impose
their rule upon the enormous masses
of Chinese. Thus it is unwise to predi-
cate anything of China as a whole, or
to believe that what suits one part will
necessarily suit another. To this extent
the partition of China would rest upon
a scientific and practical basis.
2. China will not reform itself in
any way.This axiom arises naturally
from the preceding. Over the hetero-
,eneous and conflicting masses of China
there has never been any effective cen-
tral control, and what control there has
been has steadily grown weaker. The
Vermilion pencil makes a faint mark
in the south, while in the southwest
and extreme northwest it has little
but an academic influence, and on the
Tibetan borders none at all. Respect
this! appended to every imperial re-
script in the Peking Gazette, is as far
from actuality as the Oyez of the
usher with us, or the challenge of the
Queens champion at the Coronation.
There is, therefore, not the slightest
possibility of the establishment by Chi-
nese authority of a national army, or
navy, or civil service. And the corrup-
tion which is the fatal curse of China
is directly due to the fact that there is
not, and cannot be, any central author-
ity to exercise control over local offi-
dais, in the absence of this, to pay
them. The Chinese people in the lan-
guage of physics, is a mechanical mix-
ture and not a chemical compound, and
272 British Vacillation in China.
therefore it is irresponsive to the actIon
of any single re-agent, and incapable of
exhibiting any common property.
It follows that the bogey of the yel-
low peril, the conquest of Europe by
the Chinese, and such-like anticipations,
have no basis in fact. The late Mr.
Charles Pearson started this in recent
years, and the present Commander-in-
Chief is said to share his view. When
horses and dogs mutiny, and harness
and muzzle men, China will invade Eu-
rope, and not before. The same funda-
mental misconception which invented
this nightmare has led other writers
into similar errors of predication. For
instance, when war broke out between
China and Japan, Mr. Curzon, at the
end of two long and carefully reasoned
letters to the Times, reached this im-
posing conclusion:
China pours upon the enemy an inex-
haustible volume of men; her resources
are almost illimitable; her patience is
both colossal and profound. In a war
in which her entire prestige and her
continued domination of Eastern Asia
were at stake, she would fight on and
on, through defeat to victory, and
would sooner perish than capitulate.
The war, it will be remembered, did
not proceed along these lines. This
misconception, however, is very wide-
spread, and Mr. Curzon again fell a
victim to it in his interpretation, in his
well-known work upon the Far East,
of the sudden enthusiasm for a coin-
plete railway system professed a few
years ago by Chinese statesmen, for he
wrote:
The entire scheme, in fact, is Chinas
reply to the Trans-Siberian Railway of
Russia to Vladivostokthe prodigious
effect of which upon the future of Asia,
at present but scantily realh.~ed in this
country, is clearly realized by a few
Chinese statesmenand is a warning
to the Tsar that China does not mean
to let Manchuria and the Sungari River
slip from her grasp quite as easily as
she did the Amur and Ussuri Channels,
and the provinces upon their northern
and eastern banks.
Recent events add a pathos to the strik-
ing inaccuracy of this forecast.
Under the present nigirne what is true
of the Chinese Government is true also
of individual Chinamen. Many will
recollect the remarkable paper signed
(not written) by the Marquis Ts~ng, in
the Asiatic Quarterly Review, about
fourteen years ago, called The Awak-
ening of China, in which he declared
that the feet of China were at last
upon the path of progress. When I
was in Peking, Ts~ng himself was re-
garded as little better than a foreign
devil, and he had not enough influ-
ence to procure me admittance to an
ordinary temple. That arch-humbug,
Li Hung-chang, after throwing dust in
the eyes of generations of foreigners,
is probably found out by everybody at
last. If Russia succeeds in establish-
ing herself in Peking, his day of reward
will have dawned. His former secre-
tary and interpreter, the remarkably
able and accomplished Chinaman who
now represents the Son of Heaven at
the Court of St. James, is doubtless re-
joicing that he is not in Peking at this
moment, since, except under the wing
of his old patron, his head would not
be safe on his shoulders. Forand this
might almost stand as an axiom by it-
selfevery Chinaman who professes
Liberal ideas and sympathy with West-
ern nations is either assuming a con-
venient mask for a time, or else he has
cut himself off so completely from
his own people that they distrust and
dislike him almost more than they do
the foreigner himself. Ninety-nine
times out of a hundred the former is
the case. Generations of education in
China, combined with a strong hand
and just treatment, will produce a class
of Chinese as loyal to Western methods
27S
British Vacillation in China.
as the Chinese of Singapore, who re-
gard the British flag as their greatest
assetpolitical, not commercialbut
until then the attitude of the Chinese
will be that of the coolie on the labor
ship in Hong Kong harbor, who made
an obscene remark about the Protector
of Chinese as this official passed, and
who, when the latter turned and gave
him a sound rating in faultless Chinese,
remarked to his neighbor with genuine
surprise, It talks like a human being!
Any and every reform in China must
draw its motive power and its guid-
ance from outside.
3. Russian ambition has no limits.
This is an important axiomand not
alone in the Far Eastfor we have
hitherto acted in the belief that if Rus-
sia were conceded her immediate ob-
jects she would rest and be thankful.
You might as well expect only half the
stream to run down hill. Not until all
peoples that on earth do dwell are safe
within the fold of the Orthodox Greek
Church, and the gaze of the double-
headed eagle of Byzantium encircles
the equator and the meridian of St.
Petersburg, will Russian ambition be
gratified. For her an imperative Di-
vine command and a congenital terri-
torial ambition point the same way. No-
body can have studied Russian diplo-
macy for years without conceiving a
profound admiration of the skill and
the patriotism which inspire it. And
no contemporary sentiment is so foolish
as that blind Russophobia unhappily
not yet extinct among us. Russia will
take all she can possibly get, and, like
the rest of us, what she cannot get she
will do without. Instead of abusing
her it would be wiser to emulate her
qualities and so seek to put a barrier
in her way at the points where the
interests of our own country become
imperative. It is easy for a strong na-
tion to come to a durable understanding
with herwitness Germany and Aus-
tria. But we shall never do it by writ-
lug sarcastic despatches and making
rude speeches, and then meekly accept-
ing her fact accomplished to our injury.
That is the policy of the boy who puts
his finger to his nose and runs away
and it has been ours for too long.
There is no mystery whatever in Rus-
sian ambition in the Far East. It is to
become the protector of Chinato begin
with. Given twenty years of that and
she would be irresistible. This ambi-
tion was plainly announced by the great
Muravieff-Amurski himself, the won-
derful man who gave Russia the Amur
and led her to the Pacific, almost in
spite of herself. And a prohibitory tar-
iff towards the trade of other countries
follows her flag, wie die Thriine auf die
Zwiebel. British trade she has deliber-
ately destroyed wherever she has come
in contact with it. A very frank utter-
ance on this point relieves anybody else
from the need of making assertions
about her objects in China. Prince
Ukhtomsky, head of the last Russian
Commission in Peking, director of the
Russo-Chinese Bank, editor of the St.
Petersburg Vied~mosti, travelling com-
panion and intimate friend of the Tsar,
has stated that the policy of Russia is,
first, to absorb China, under the regis
of the present dynasty; second, to ex-
clude British trade; and third, to form
a continental alliance with the object
of crushing England.2 Dignity de-
mands that we should deceive ourselves
no longer. If it be indeed our lot to
be wiped out by the glacial movement
of Russia, let us, at least, like the sol-
dier who desires to be shot with un-
bandaged eyes, perish looking steadily
upon our fate.
4. Japan is face to face with a life-
and-death issue in the Far East.The
future of Japan rides upon a dials
point at this moment, and well she
knows it. If Russia once consolidate
her position in northern China, and in
2 Quoted by Mr. Geoffrey Drage, 1W P., in an
interesting speech in the House of Commons.
:274 British Vacillaf ion in China.
-another year this will be done, Japan
has lost the future of her brightest
hopes and may await the fulfilment of
her worst fears. For a year to come
Russia will do everything to conciliate
hereven, I believe, going so far as to
promise her the domination of Korea.
If Japan strike at all, the blow must
be delivered not later than six months
hence. Then, with an army admirable
in equipment, warlike in spirit, and
half a million strong, and a fleet begin-
ning with six battleships as powerful
-as any in the world, six new first-class
cruisers, the best that European ship-
yards can turn out, and an ample sup-
ply of second-class cruisers, destroyers
and transport, she may reasonably
hope for victory. But the crisis is a
terrible one for her, and a truly fearful
responsibility rests upon her statesmen.
It is needless to point out what an op-
portunity this situation gives to the
statesmen of any Power on terms of
-cordial friendship with Japan, whose
objects in the Far East are sure before-
hand of Japanese sympathy.
These axioms, hastily and made-
quately as they are set down here,
must underlie, I venture to submit, any
-successful British policy in the Far East.
And if this be so, it should not be diffi-
cult to deduce from them the broad
-outlines of such a policy. How the
fast-rising flames of anti-foreign
fury are to be subdued, and the
old semblance of order re-established
in China, is a problem past my solving.
But when this is accomplished, be the
time near or far, a more difficult task
will await the statesmen of the West.
So far as I can see, the solution will
have to be sought along some such lines
as these:
1. China can only be ruled through
the Chinese. Therefore, the Empress
Dowa~er being deposed and deported,
the Emperor must be replaced upon the
throne, to rule by the advice of a
Council of Chinese i\ inisters acting
under the control of a Council of repre-
sentatives of the Powers. The sugges-
tion that the capital should be removed
to Nanking is probably a wise one, but
Russia would exert all her influence
to prevent it.
2. The whole of China must be
thrown open to the foreign trade.
3. This can only be done when for-
eign troops, or foreign-led Chinese
troops, are prepared to defend foreign
merchants from molestation. There-
fore, the open door policy being dead
beyond resuscitation, and the partition
of China in a limited sense inevitable,
each Power should undertake to keep
order in its own sphere. These spheres
are already overtly or tacitly agreed
upon. Korea would form the sphere
of Japan, and any Power unwilling to
accept this would have to make a dif-
ferent arrangement by force of arms.
4. Every Power would enter into a
formal engagement with all the others
that no duties beyond those agreed
upon by all should be levied, that no
preferential or differential railway rates
should be imposed in its sphere, that
no force should be raised beyond that
necessary to keep order, and that all
matters of intercommunication should
be decided by the Council of foreign
representatives.
a. England should invite the United
States to address a communication to
the Powers simultaneously with herself
in this sense. The United States would
probably not desire a sphere of their
own, as there would be no advantage
in having one under this scheme, except
the prevailing use of ones own lan-
guage in it, and the United States
would find this advantage in the British
sphere and be in the same position as
other nations in all the other spheres
and in the general control. As the
American elections would be over by
the time this proposal would be under
discussion, there would be less difficulty
in inducing an American administratboo
Mrs. Radclzffe& Novels. 275
to take action. Moreover, if America
should ever desire to relieve herself of
special responsibility in the Philippines,
these islands could be included in this
Chinese union as the American sphere.
6. As there is nobody at the Foreign
Office or in the diplomatic service with
any expert knowledge of China, as our
Consuls, who are experts, are far away,
and as Britisjl dealings with the Far
East have formed an almost unbroken
series of blunders for some time past,
a number of gentlemen possessing spe-
cial qualifications for the task, begin-
ning, 1 would suggest, with Professor
Douglas, should be invited to form an
alvisory committee to be consulted
when n cessary by the Secretary of
State for Foreign Affairs.
The idea at the bottom of these pro-
posals is that they would compel every
nation to show her own hand, and place
in the position of the common enemy
the Power that would not co-operate
for the equal common good. I am well
The Nin& teenth Century.
aware of the difficulties in the way of
such a policy as is here outlined, espe-
cially in the working of a oominium
on so large a scale, and in the fact that
Russia, apart from the sincerely pacific
and conscientious aspirations of the
Tsar himself, would rather keep China
corrupt and weak than have her re-
formed and strong, and I am under no
illusion as to my own lack of claims
to formulate it, but I see no other al-
ternative to international quarrels, and
What I have written may, perhaps,
serve as a basis for discussion, for only
by open discussion and the consequent
growth of a strong public opinion will
anything be accomplished and British
interests saved from the wreck which
inept statesmanship has made of them.
At any rate, even this cursory glance at
our miserable record should be enough
to show that something must be done
by us at once, and something totally
different from what we have done
hitherto.
Illenry Norma
MRS. RADCLIFFES NOVELS.
Does any one now read Mrs. Radcliffe,
or am I the only wanderer in her windy
rorridors listening timidly to groans
and hollow voices, and shielding the
flame of a lamp, which, I fear, will
presently flicker out, and leave me in
darkness? People know the name of
The Mysteries of Udoipho; they
know that boys would say to Thacker-
y at school, Old fellow, draw us
Vivaldi in the Inquisition. But have
they penetrated into the chill galleries
of the C~ stle of IJdolpho? Have they
shuddered for Vivaldi in face of the
sable-clad and masked Inquisition?
Certainly Mrs. Radcliffe, within the
memory of man, has been extremely
popular. The thick, double-columned
volume in which I peruse the works of
the Enchantress belongs to a public
library. It is quite the dirtiest, greasi-
est, most dogs-eared and most bescrib-
bled tome in the collection. Many of
the books have remained during the
last hundred years, uncut, even to this
day, and I have had to apply the paper
knife to many an author, from Aid-
phron (1790) to Mr. Max 1\Iiiller, and
Dr. Birkbeck Hills edition of Bozzys
Life of Dr. Johnson. But Mrs. Rad-
cliffe has been read diligently, and co-
piously annotated.
276 Mrs. Radclz2fes Novels.
This lady was, in a literary sense,
and though, like the sire of Evelina, he
cast her off, the daughter of Horace
Walpole. Just when King Romance
seemed as dead as Queen Anne, Wal-
pole produced that Gothic tale, The
Castle of Otranto, in 1764. In that
very year was born Anne Ward, who,
in 1787, married William Radcliffe,
Esq., M.A. Oxon. In 1789 she pub-
lished The Castles of Athlin and Dun-
bayne. The scene, she tells us, is
laid in the most romantic part of the
Highlands, the northeast coast of Scot-
land. On castles, anywhere, she
doted. ~Valpole, not Smollett or Miss
Burney, inspired her with a passion for
those homes of old romance. But the
northeast coast of Scotland~ is hardly
part of the Highlands at all, and is
far from being very romantic. The
period is the dark ages in general.
Yet the captive Earl, when the sweet
tranquillity of evening threw an air of
tender melancholy over his mind
composed the following sonnet, which
(having committed it t@ paper) he, the
next evening, dropped upon the terrace.
He had the pleasure to observe that the
paper was taken up by the ladies, who
immediately retired into the castle.
These were not the manners of the
local Mackays, of the Sinclairs and of
the small but fierce clan of Gunn, in
the dark ages.
But this was Mrs. Radcliffes way.
She delighted in descriptions of scen-
ery, the more romantic the better, and
usually drawn entirely from her inner
consciousness. Her heroines write
sonnets (which never but once are son-
nets) and other lyrics on every occa-
sion. With his usual generosity Scott
praised her landscape and ~her lyrics,
but, indeed, they are, as Sir Walter
said of Mrs. Hemans, too poetical,
and probably they were skipped, even
by her contemporary devotees. The
Castles of Athlin and Dunlayne
frankly do not permit themselves to be
read, and it was not till 1790, with A
Sicilian Romance, that Mrs. Radcliffe
found herself and her public. After
reading, with breathless haste, through
A Sicilian Romance and The Ro-
mance of the Forest in a single dny,
it would ill become me to speak lightly
of Mrs. Radcliffe. Like Catherine Mor-
land, I love this ladys tender yet ter-
rific fancy.
Mrs. Radcliffe does not always keep
on her highest level, but we must re-
member that her last romance, The
Italian, is by far her best. She had
been feeling her way to this pitch of
excellence, and, when she had attained
to it she published no more. The re~- -
son is uncertain. Scott thinks that she
may have been annoyed by her imita-
tors, or by her critics, against whom
he defends her in an admirable pas-
sage, to be cited later. Meanwhile, let
us follow Mrs. Radcliffe in her upward
course.
The Sicilian Romance appeared in
1790, when the authors age was twen-
ty-six. The book has a treble attrac-
tion, for it contains the germ of North-
anger Abbey, and the germ of Jane
Eyre, andthe germ of Byron I Like
Joseph Andrews, Northanger Ab-
bey began as a parody (of Mrs. Rad-
cliffe) and developed into a real novel
of character. So, too, Byrons gloomy,
scowling adventures, with their dark-
ling past, are mere repetitions in rhyme
of Mrs. Radcliffes Schedoni. This is
so obvious that when discussing
Mrs. Radcliffes Schedoni, Scott adds
in a note parallel passages from By-
rons Giaour. Sir Walter did not
mean to mock, he merely compared
two kindred spirits. The noble poet
kept on the business still, and broke
into octosyllabics, borrowed from Scott,
his descriptions of miscreants borrowed
from Mrs. Radcliffe.
A Sicilian Romance has its scene
in the palace of Ferdinand, fifth Mar-
quis of Mazzini, on the northern coast
Mrs. Redcl~jff~es Novels. 277
of Sicily. The time is about 1580, but
there is nothing in the manners or cos-
tume to indicate that, or any other pe-
riod. Such local color was unknown
to Mrs. Radcliffe, as to Clara Reeve. In
Horace Walpole, hc~wever, a character
goes so far in the mediseval way as to
say by my halidome.
The Marquis Mazzini had one son
and two daughters by his first amiable
consort, supposed to be long dead when
the story opens. The son is the origin
of Henry Tilney in Northanger Ab-
bey, and in General Tilney does Cath-
erine recognize a modern Marquis of
Mazzini. But the Marquiss wife, to
be sure, is not dead; like the first Mrs.
Rochester, she is concealed about the
back premis& s, and, as in Jane Eyre,
it is her movements, and those of her
gaolers, that produce mystery, and
make the reader suppose that the
place is haunted. It is, of course, only
the mystery and the machinery of
Mrs. Radcliffe that Miss Bront~ adapt-
ed. These passages in Jane Eyre
have been censured, but it is not easy
to see how the navel could do without
them. Mrs. Radcliffes tale entirely
depends on its machinery. Her wick-
ed Marquis, having secretly immured
Number One, has now a new and beau-
tiful wife, whose character, alas! does
not bear inspection. This domestic
position, as Number Two, as we know,
was declined by the austere virtue of
Jane Byre.
Phenomena begin in the first chap-
ter of A Sicilian Romance, mysteri-
ous lights wander about uninhabited
parts of the castle, and are vainly in-
vestigated by young Ferdinand, son of
the Marquis. Meanwhile, Hippolitus
the Chaste, loved all in vain by the
reigning Marchioness, is adored by, and
adores, her stepdaughter Julia. Jeal-
ousy and revenge are clearly indicated.
But, in chasing mysterious lights
and figures through mouldering
towers. Ferdinand gets into the
very undesirable position of David
Baif our, when he climbs, in the dark,
the broken turret stair in his uncles
house of Shaws (in Kidnapped). Here
is a fourth author indebted to Mrs.
Radcliffe; her disciples are Miss Aus-
ten, Byron, Miss Bront~ and Mr. Louis
Stevenson! Ferdinand began the as-
cent. He had not proceeded very far,
when the stones of a step which his
foot had just quitted gave way, and,
dragging with them those adjoining,
formed a chasm in the staircase that
terrified even Ferdinand, who was left
tottering on the suspended half of the
steps, in momentary expectation of
falling to the bottom with the stone on
whh~h he rested. In the terror which
this occasioned, he attempted to save
himself by catching at a kind of beam
which suspended over the stairs, when
the lamp dropped from his hand, and
he was left in total darkness.
Can anything be more amazing hor-
rid, above all as there are mysterious
figures in and about the tower? Mrs.
Radcliffes lamps always fall, or are
blown out in the nick of time, an ex-
pedient already used by Clara Reeve
in that very mild but once popular
ghost story, The Old English Baron
(1777). All authors have such favorite
devices, and I wonder how many fights
Mr. Stanley Weymans heroes have
fought, from the cellar to their favor-
ite tilting ground, the roof of a strange
house!
Ferdinand hung on to the beam for
an hour, when the ladies came with a
light, and he scrambled back to solid
earth. In his next nocturnal reseai~ch,
a sullen groan arose from beneath
where he stood, and when he tried to
force a door (there are scores of such
weird doors in Mrs. Radcliffe) a groan
was repeated, more hollow and dread-
ful than the first. His courage forsook
himand no wonder! Of course h~
could not know that the author of the
groans was, in fact, his long-lost
278 Mrs. Radcl#es Novels.
mother, immured by his father, the
wicked Marquis. XVe need not follow
the narrative though the darkling
crimes and crumbling galleries of this
terrible castle on the north coast of
Sicily. Everybody is alxvays gazing
in silent terror, and all the locks are
rusty. A savage and dexterous ban-
ditti play a prominent part, and the
imprisoned Ferdinand did not hesitate
to believe that the moans he heard
came from the restless spirit of the
murdered della Campo. No working
hypothesis could seem more plausible
to Mr. Frederic Myers, but it was er-
roneous. Mrs. Radcliffe does not deal
in a single avowed ghost. She finally
explains away, by normal causes, every-
thing that she does not forget to ex-
plain. At the most, she indulges her-
self in a premonitory dream. On this
point she is true to common sense,
without quite adopting the philosophy
of David Hume. I do not see that
spirits have appeared, she remarks,
but if several discreet, unprejudiced
persons were to assure me that they
had seen oneI should not be bold or
proud enough to reply, it is impossible!
But Hume was bold and proud enough;
he went further than Mrs. Radcliffe.
Scott censures Mrs. Radcliffes em-
ployment of explanations. He is in
favor of boldly avowing the use of
supernatural machinery, or of leaving
the matter in the vague, as in the ap-
pearance of the wraith of the dying
Alice to Ravenswood. But, in Mrs.
Radcliffes day, common sense was so
tyrannical, that the poor ladys ro-
mances would have been excluded from
families, if she had not provided nor-
mal explanations of her groans,
moans, voices, lights and wandering
figures. The ghost hunt in the castle
finally brings Julia to a door, whose
bolts, strengthened by desperation, she
forced back. There was a middle-aged
lady in the room, who, after steadily
gazing on Julia, suddenly exclaimed,
My daughter! and fainted away.
Julia being about seventeen, and Ma-
dame Mazzini, her mamma, having-.
been immured for fifteen years, we ob-
serve in this recognition ~he force of
the maternal instinct.
The wicked Marquis was poisoned
by the partner of his iniquities, who
anon stabbed herself with a oniard.
The virtuous Julia marries the chaste
Hippolitus, and, says the author, in
reviewing this story, we perceive a
singular and striking instance of moral
retribution.
We also remark the futility of lock-
ing up an inconvenient wife, fabled to
be defunct, in ones own country house.
Had Mr. Rochester studied the Sicilian
Romance, he would have shunned an
obsolete system, inconvenient at best,.
and apt in the long run to be disas-
trous.
In the Romance of the Forest
(1791) Mrs. Radcliffe remained true to
Mr. Stanley Weymans favo ite period,.
the end of the sixteenth century. But
there are no historical characters or
costumes in the story, and all the per-
sons, as far as language and costume
go, might have been alive in the year
1791.
The story runs thus: One de la Motte,
who appears to have fallen from dissi-
pation to swindling, i~7on the first page,
discovered flying from Paris and th&
law, with his wife, in a carriage. Lost
in the dark on a moor, he follows a
light, and enters an old lonely house.
He is seized by ruffians, locked in, and
expects to be murdered, which he
knows that he cannot stand, for he is
timid by nature. In fact, a ruffian
puts a pistol to La Mottos hreast with
one hand, while with the other he-
drags along a beautiful girl of eighteen.
Swear that you will convey this girl
where I may never see her more, ex-
claims the bully, and La Motte, withy
the young lady, is taken to his carriage.
If you return within an hour you will
Mrs. Radcl#es Novels. 279
be welcomed with a brace of bullets,
is the ruffians parting threat.
So La Motte, Madame La Motte and
the beautiful girl drive away, La
Mottes one desire being to find a re-
treat safe from the police of an offended
justice.
Is this not a very original, striking
and affecting situation; provocative,
too, of the utmost curiosity? A fugi-
tive from justice, in a strange, small,
dark, ancient house, is seized, threat-
ened and presented with a young and
lovely female stranger. In this open-
ing we recognize the hand of a master
genius. There must be an explanation
of proceedings so highly unconven-
tional, and what can the reason be?
The reader is empoign6 in the first page
and eagerly follows the flight of La
Motte, also of Peter, his coachman, an
attached, comic, and familiar domes-
tic. After a few days the party ob-
serve, in the recesses of a gloomy f or-
est, the remains of a Gothic abbey.
They enter; by the light of a flickering
lamp they penetrate horrible recesses,
discover a room handsomely provided
with a trapdoor, and determine to re-
side in a dwelling so congenial, though
as La Motte judiciously remarks not
in all respects strictly Gothic. After
a few days La Motte finds that some-
body is inquiring for him in the nearest
town. He seeks foi~ a hiding-place, and
explores the chambers under the trap-
door. Here he finds in a large chest
what do you suppose he finds? It was
a human skeleton! Yet in this awful
vicinity he and his wife, with Adeline
(the fair stranger) conceal themselves.
The brave Adeline, when footsteps are
heard, and a figure is beheld in the up-
per rooms, accosts the stranger. His
keen eye presently detects the practical
trapdoor, he raises it, and the cowering
La Motte recognizes in the dreaded
visitorhis own son, who had sought
him out in filial affection.
Already Madame La Motte has be-
come jealous of Adeline, especially as
her husband is oddly melancholy, and.
apt to withdraw into a glade, where he
mysteriously disappears into the re-
cesses of a Gothic sepulchre. This,.
to the watchful eyes of a wife, is proof
of faithlessness on the part of a hus-
band. As the son Louis really falls in
love with Adeline, Madame La Motte
becomes doubly unkind, and Adelin~
now composes quantities of poems to.
Night, to Sunset, to the Nocturnal Gale
and so on.
In this uncomfortable situation, two.
strangers arrive in a terrific thunder-
storm. One is young, the other is a
Marquis. On seeing this nobleman,
La Mottes limbs trembled, and a
ghastly paleness overspread his coun-
tenance. The Marquis was little less
agitated, and was, at first, decidedly
hostile. La Motte implored forgiveness
for what?and the Marquis (who, in
fact, owned the Abbey, and had a
shooting lodge not far off) was molli-
fied. They all became rather friendly,
and Adeline asked La Motte about the
stories of hauntings, and a murder
said to have been, at some time, com-
mitted in the Abbey. La Motte said
that the Marquis could have no con-
nection with such fables; still there was
the skeleton.
Meanwhile, Adeline had conceived
a flame for Theodore, the young officer
who accompanied his colonel, the Mar-
quis; on their first visit to the family,
Theodore, who returned her passion,
had vaguely warned her of an impend-
ing danger, and then had failed to keep
tryst with her, one evening, and had
mysteriously disappeared. Then un-
happy Adeline dreamed about a pris-
oner, a dying man, a coffin, a voice
from the coffin, and the appearance
within it of the dying man amidst tor-
rents of blood. The chamber in which
she saw these visions was most vividly
represented. Next day the Marquis
came to dinner, and, though retuetautty,.
280 Airs. Radcl~fes Novels.
consented to pass the night; Adeline,
therefore, was put in a new bedroom.
Disturbed by the wind shaking the
mouldering tapestry, she found a con-
cealed door behind the arras and a
suite of rooms, one of which was the
chamber of her dream! On the floor
lay a rusty dagger! The bedstead, be-
ing touched, crumbled, and disclosed
a small roll of manuscripts. They were
not washing bills, like those discovered
by Catherine Morland in Northanger
Abbey. Returning to her own cham-
ber, Adeline heard the Marquis profes-
sing to La Motte a passion for herself.
Conceive her horror! Silence then
reigned, till all was sudden noise and
confusion; the Marquis flying in terror
from his room, and insisting on instant
departure. His emotion was powerful-
ly displayed.
What had occurred? Mrs. Radcliffe
does not say, but horror, whether
caused by a conscience ill at ease, or
by events of a terrific and supernatural
kind, is plainly indicated. In daylight
the Marquis audaciously pressed his
unholy suit, and even offered marriage,
a hollow mockery, for he was well
known to be already a married man.
The scenes of Adelines flight, capture,
retention in an elegant villa of the li-
centious noble, renewed flight, rescue
by Theodore, with Theodores arrest,
and wounding of the tyrannical Mar-
quis, are all of breathless interest. Mrs.
Radcliffe excels in narratives of roman-
tic escapes, a topic always thrilling
when well handled. Adeline herself is
carried back to the Abbey, but La
Motte, who had rather not be a villain
if he could avoid it, enables her again
to secure her freedom. He is clearly
in the power of the Marquis, and his
ily of La Luc, the kindred of her Theo-
dore (by a romantic coincidence), and,
in the adorable scenery of Savoy, she
throws many a ballad to the Moon.
La Motte, on the discovery of Ade-
lines flight was cast into prison by the
revengeful Marquis, for, in fact, soon
after settling in the Abbey, it had oc-
curred to La Motte to commence high-
wayman. His very first victim had
been the Marquis, and, during his mys-
terious retreats to a tomb in a glade in
the forest, be had, In short, been contem-
plating his booty, jewels which he
could not convert into ready money.
Consequently, when the Marquis first
entered the Abbey, La Motte had every
reason for alarm, and only pacified the
vindictive aristocrat by yielding to his
cruel schemes against the virtue of
Adeline.
Happily for La Motte, a witness ap-
peared at his trial, who cast a lurid
light on the character of the Marquis.
That villain, to be plain, had murdered
his elder brother (the skeleton of the
Abbey), and had been anxious to mur-
der, it was added, his own natural
daughterthat is Adeline! His hired
felons, however, placed her in a con-
vent, and, later (rather than kill her,
on which the Marquis insisted), simply
thrust her into the hands of La Motte,
who happened to pass by that way, as
we saw in the opening of this romance.
Thus, in making love to Adeline, the
Marquis was, unconsciously, in an
awkward position. On further exam-
ination of evidence, however, things
proved otherwise. Adeline was not
the natural daughter of the Marquis,
but his niece, the legitimate daughter
and heiress of his brother (the skeleton
of the Abbey). The MSS. found by
life has been unscrupulous, but he re- Adeline in the room of the rusty dag-
tains traces of better things. Adeline ger added documentary evidence, for
is now secretly conveyed to a peaceful it was a narrative of the sufferings of
valley in Savoy, the home of the hon- her father (later the skeleton), written
est Peter, who accompanies her. Here by him in the Abbey where he was
she learus to know and value the fain- imprisoned and stabbed, and where his
Mrs. Radcl~fes Novels. 281
bones were discovered by La Motte.
The hasty nocturnal flight of the Mar-
quis from the Abbey is thus accounted
for; for he had probably been the vic-
tim of a terrific hallucination; whether
veridical ormerely subjective, Mrs. Rad-
cliffe does not decide. Rather than face
the outraged justice of his country, the
Marquis, after these revelations, took
poison. La Motte was banished; and
Adeline, now mistress of the Abbey,
removed the paternal skeleton to the
vault of his ancestors. Theodore and
Adeline were united, and virtuously re-
sided in a villa on the beautiful banks
of the Lake of Geneva.
Such is the Romance of the Forest,
a fiction in which character is subordi-
nate to plot and incident. There is an
attempt at character drawing in La
Motte, and in his wife; the hero and
heroine ~re not distinguishable from
Julia and Hippolitus. But Mrs. Rad-
cliffe does not aim at psychological
niceties, and we must not blame her
for withholding what it was no part
of her purpose to give. The Romance
of the Forest wits, so far, infinitely
the most thrilling of modern English
works of fiction. Every reader felt
The force, says Scott, from the sage
in his study, to the family group in
middle life, and nobody felt it more
than a young gentleman of nineteen,
who, when asked how his time was
employed, answered, I read no Civil
Law. He did read Mrs. Radcliffe,
and, in The Betrothed, followed her
example in the story of the haunted
chamber where the heroine faces the
spectre attached to her ancient family.
The Mysteries of Udoipho, Mrs.
Radcliffes next and most celebrated
work, is not (in the judgment of this
reader, at least) her masterpiece. The
booksellers paid her what Scott errone-
ously calls the unprecedented sum of
5001. for the romance, and they must
have made a profitable bargain. The
public, says Scott, rushed upon it
LIVING AGE. TOL. viii. 415
with all the eagerness of curiosity, and
rose from it with unsated appetite.
I arise with a thoroughly sated appetite
from The Mysteries of Udoipho. The
book, as Sir Walter saw, is The Ro-~
mance of the Forest raised to a higher
power. We have a similar and simi-
larly situated heroine, cruelly detached
from her young man, and immured in
a howling wilderness of a brigand cas-
tle in the Apennines. In place of the
Marquis is a miscreant on a larger and
more ferocious scale. The usual mys-
teries of voices, lights, secret passages
and innumerable doors are provided,
regardless of economy. The great ques-
tion, which I. shall not answer, is,
what did the Black Veil conceal? Not
the bones of Laurentina, as Cather-
ine Morland supposed.
Here is Emilys adventure with the
veil. She paused again, andthen with a
timid hand lifted the veil; but instantly
let it fallperceiving that what it had
concealed was no picture, and before
she could leave the chamber she
dropped senseless on the floor. When
she recovered her recollection, . . -
horror occupied her mind. Countless
mysteries coagulate around this veil,
and the reader is apt to be disappointed
when the awful curtain is withdrawn.
But he has enjoyed, for several hun-
dred pages, the pleasures of anticipa-
tion. A pedantic censor may remark
that, while the date of the story is 1580,
all the virtuous people live in an idyllic
fashion, like the creatures of Rousseau,
existing solely for landscape and the
affections, writing poetry on Nature,
animate and inanimate, including the
common Bat, and drawing in water
colors. In those elegant avocations be-
gan, and in these, after an interval of
adventures amazing horrid, conclud-
ed the career of Emily.
Mrs. Radcliffe keeps the many en-
tangled threads of her complex web
well in hand, and incidents which puz-
zle you at the beginning fall naturally
~82 Mrs. Radcl#es Novels.
into place before the end. The charac-
ter of the heroines silly, vain, unkind
and unreasonable aunt is vividly de-
signed (that Emily should mistake the
corse of a moustached bandit for that
of her aunt is an incident hard to de-
fend). Valancourt is not an ordinary
spotless hero, but sows his wild oats,
-and reaps the usual harvest; and An-
nette is a good sample of the usual
.soubrette. When one has said that the
landscapes and 1i~andits of this romance
are worthy of Poussin and Salvator
Rosa, from whom they were probably
translated into words, not much re-
~mains to be added. Sir Walter, after
~repeated perusals, considered IJdol-
~pho a step beyond Mrs. Radcliffes
former work, high as that had justly
advanced her. But he admits that
persons of no mean judgment pre-
ferred the Romance of the Forest.
With these persons I would be ranked.
The ingenuity and originality of the
Romance are greater; our friend the
skeleton is better than that Thing
which was behind the Black Veil, the
escapes of Adeline are more thrilling
than the escape of Emily, and the Ro-
mance is not nearly so long, not nearly
so prolix as Udoipho.
The roof and crown of Mrs. Rad-
cliffes work is The Italian (1797),
for which she received 8001. The scene
is Naples, the date about 1764; the topic
is the thwarted loves of Vivaldi and
Ellena; the villain is the admirable
Schedoni, the prototype of Byrons
lurid characters.
The Italian is an excellent novel.
The Prelude, the dark and vaulted
gateway, is not unworthy of Haw-
thorne, who, I suspect, has studied
Mrs. Radcliffe. The theme is more like
a theme of this world than usual. The
parents of a young noble might well
try to prevent him from marrying an
1 I like to know what the author got, and wish
that Sir waiter Besant would publish historical
statistics.
unknown and penniless girl. The Mar-
chese Vivaldi only adopts the ordinary
paternal measures; the Marchesa, and
her confessor, the dark-souled Sche-
doni, go fartheras far as assassina-
tion. The casuistry by which Schedoni
brings the lady to this pass, while rep-
resenting her as the originator of the
scheme, is really subtle, and the scenes
between the pair show an extraordi-
nary advance on Mrs. Radcliffes earlier
art. The mysterious Monk who coun-
terworks Schedoni remains an unsolved
mystery to me, but of that I do not
complain. He is as good as the dweller
in the Catacombs who haunts Miriam
in Hawthornes Marble Faun. The
Inquisition, its cells and its tribunals
are colored
as when some great painter dips
His pencil in the gloom of thunder and
eclipse.
The comic valet, Paulo, who insists
on being locked up in the dungeons of
the Inquisition merely because his mas-
ter is there, reminds one of Samuel
Weller, a Neapolitan Samivel. The
escapes are Mrs. Radcliffes most excit-
ing escapes, and to say that is to say
a go.od deal. Poetry is not written, or
not often, by the heroine. The scene
in which Schedoni has his dagger raised
to murder Ellena, when he discovers
that she is his daughter, is of a new,
grand and powerful character (Scott),
while it is even more satisfactory to
learn later that Ellena was not Sche-
donis daughter after all.
Why Mrs. Radcliffe, having reached
such a pitch of success, never again
published a novel, remains more mys-
terious than any of her Mysteries. Scott
justly remarks that her censors at-
tacked her by showing that she does
not possess the excellences proper to a
style of composition totally different
from that which she has attempted.
This is the usual way of reviewers.
Tales that fascinated Scott, Fox, and
Of the Hudson and the Thames. 283
Sheridan, which possess charms for
the learned and unlearned, the grave
and gay, the gentleman and clown, do
not deserve to be dismissed with a
sneer by people who have never read
them. Following Horace Walpole in
some degree, Mrs. Radcliffe paved the
way for Scott, Byron, Maturin, Lewis,
and Charlotte Bront~, just as Miss
Burney filled the gap between Smollett
and Miss Austen. Mrs. Radcliffe, in
short, kept the Lamp of Romance burn-
ing much more steadily than the lamps~
which, in her novels, are always blown
out, in the moment of excited appre-
tUbe Cornbifl Magazine.
hension, by the night wind walking in
the dank corridors of haunted abbeys.
But mark the cruelty of an intellectual
parent! Horace Walpole was Mrs.
Radcliffes father in the spirit. Yet,
on September 4, 1794, he wrote to Lady
Ossory: I have read some of the de-
scriptive verbose tales, of which your
Ladyship says I was the patriarch by
several mothers (Miss Reeve and Mrs.
Radcliffe?). All I can say for myself
is that I do not think my concubines
have produced issue more natural for
excluding the aid of anything marvel-
lous.
Andrew Lang.
OF THE HUDSON AND THE THAMES.
Now reigns the joyful May time.
The air is blossom-sweet,
As fragrant as the hay-time
When spring and summer meet;
But here in Londons very heart, all radiant of spring,
To a bay as blue as Naples a thought has taken wing.
I let the Thames go dreaming
Beneath the crowded ships,
Along the Hudson gleaming
My boat her rudder dips,
And under bright, unclouded skies, where all the world is
young,
I meet the faces Memory has often wept and sung.
I clasp the hands I shall not touch
Till deeper seas are past,
1 look on eyes that gave me much
When I looked back at last;
Though death has snapped the cable, yet love that understands
May leave the broken message in Loves unerring hands.
Annie Matheson.
284 The Heart of Darkness.
THE HEART OF DARKNESS.
BY JOSEPH CO~1R& D.
(Conclusion.)
VIII.
I think I would have raised an out-
cry lf I had believed my eyes. But I
didnt believe them at first, the thing
seemed so impossible. The fact is I
was completely unnerved. Sheer blank
fright, pure abstract terror, uncon-
nected with any distinct shape of phy-
sical danger. What made this emotion
so overpowering washow shall I de-
fine itthe moral shock I received, as
if something altogether monstrous, in-
tolerable to thought, odious to the soul,
had been thrust upon me unexpectedly.
This lasted, of course, the merest frac-
tion of a second, and then the usual
sense of commonplace, deadly danger,
the possibility of a sudden onslaught
and massacre, or something of the
kind, which I saw impending, was pos-
itively welcome and composing. It
pacified me, in fact, and I did not raise
an alarm.
There was an agent buttoned up in-
side an ulster sleeping on a chair on
deck within three feet of me. The yells
had not awakened him and he snored
very slightly. I left him to his slumbers
and leaped ashore. I did not betray Mr.
Kurtzit was ordered I should never
betray himit was written I should be
loyal to the nightmare of my choice. I
was anxious to deal with this shadow
by myself aloneand to this day I
dont know why I was so jealous of
sharing with any one the dismal black-
ness of this experience.
As soon as I got on the bank I saw
a traila broad trail through the grass.
[ remember the exultation with which
* Copyright by S. S. McClure & co.
I said to myself, He cant walkhe is
crawlingIve got him. The grass was
wet with dew. I strode rapidly with
clenched fists. I fancy I had some
vague notion of falling upon him and
giving him a drubbing. I dont know.
I had some imbecile thoughts. The old
woman obtruded herself upon me as a
most improper person to be sitting at
the other end of such an affair. I saw
a row of pilgrims squirting lead in the
air out of Winchesters held to the hip.
I thought I would never get back to
the steamer, and saw myself living
alone and unarmed in the woods to an
advanced age. Such silly thingsyou
know. And I remember I confounded
the beat of the drum with the beating
of my heart, and was pleased at its
calm regularity.
I kept to the track thoughthen
slopped to listen. The night was very
clear; a dark blue space, sparkling with
dew and starlight, where black things
stood very still. I thought I saw a kind
of motion ahead of me. I was strangely
cocksure of everything that night. I
actually left the track and ran in a
wide semicircle, I verily believe, chuck-
ling to myselt~ so as to get in front of
that stir, of that motion I had seenif
indeed I had seen anything. I was cir-
cumventing Kurtz as if it had been a
boyish game for fun.
I came upon him, and, if he had not
heard me coming, I would have fallen
over him, too; but he got up in time in
front of me. He rose, unsteady, long,
pale, indistinct, like a vapor exhaled
by the earth, nnd swayed slightly,
misty and silent before me; while at
my back the fires loomed up between
The Heart of Darkness. 285
the trees, and the murmur of many
voices issued from the forest. I had
cut him off cleverly; but when actually
confronting him I seemed to come to
my senses, saw the danger in its right
proportion. It was by no means over
yet. Suppose he began to shout. Though
he could hardly stand, there was still
plenty of vigor in his voice. Go away
hide yourself, he said in that pro-
tound tone. It was very awful. I
glanced back. We were within 30
yards of the nearest fire. A black fig-
ure stood up, strode on long black legs,
waving long black arms, across the
glow. It had hornsantelope horns,
I thinkon its head. Some sorcerer,
some witchman, no doubt; it looked
fiend-like enough. Do you know what
you are doing? I whispered. Perfect-
ly, he answered, raising his voice for
that single word; it sounded to me far
off and yet loud, like a hail through a
speaking trumpet. If he makes a row
we are lost, I thought to myself. This
clearly was not a case for fisticuffs,
even apart from the very natural aver-
sion I had to beat that shadowthis
wandering and tormented thing, that
seemed released from one grave only to
sink forever into another. You will be
lost, I saidutterly lost. One gets
sometimes such a flash of inspiration,
you know. I did say the right thing,
though, indeed, he could not have been
more irretrievably lost than he was at
this very moment, when the founda-
tions of our intimacy were being laid
to endureto endureeven to the end
even beyond. I had immense plans,
he muttered irresolutely. Yes, said I;
but if you try to shout, Ill smash your
head with there was not a stick or a
stone near. I will throttle you for
good, I corrected myself. I was on the
threshold of great things, he pleaded
in a voice of longing, with a wistful-
ness of tone that made my blood run
cold. And now for this stupid scoun-
drel Your success in Europe is as-
sured in any case, I affirmed steadily.
I did not want to have the throttling of
him, you understandand, indeed, it
would have been very little use for any
practical purpose. I tried to break the
spellthe heavy, mute spell of the wil-
(icinessthat seemed to draw him to
its pitiless breast by the awakening of
forgotten and brutal instincts, by the
memory of gratified and monstrous
passions. This alone, I was convinced,
had driven him out to the edge of the
forest, to the bush, toward the gleam
of fires, the throb of drums, the drone
of weird incantations, that had be-
guiled his unlawful soul beyond the
bounds of permitted aspirations. And,
dont you see, the terror of the position
was not in being knocked on the head
though I had a very lively sense of
that danger, toobut in this, that I had
to deal with a being to whom I could
not appeal in the name of anything
high or low. I had, even like the nig-
gers, to invoke himhimselfhis own
exalted and incredible degradation.
There was nothing either above or be-
low him, and I knew it. He had kicked
himself loose of the earth, confound
the man! He had kicked the very
earth to pieces. He was alone, and I
before him, did not know whether I
stood on the ground or floated in the
air. Ive been telling you what we
saidrepeating the phrases we pro-
nouncedbut whats the good? They
were common, every-day words, the
familiar, vague sounds exchanged on
every waking day of life. But what of
that? They had behind them, to my
mind, the terrific suggestiveness of
words heard in dreams, of phrases spo-
ken in nightmares. Soul! if anybody
ever struggled with a soul, I am the
man. And I wasnt arguing with a
madman either. Believe me or not, his
intelligence was perfectly clearit is
true, concentrated upon himself with
horrible intensity, yet clear; and there-
in was my only chancebarring, of
286 The Heart of Darkness.
course, the killing him there and then,
which wasnt so good, on account of
unavoidable noise. But his soul was
mad. Being alone in the wilderness, it
had looked within itself, and, by heav-
ens! I tell you, it had gone mad. I had
for my sins, I supposeto go through
the ordeal of looking into it myself. No
eloquence could be so withering as his
final burst of sincerity. He struggled
with himself, too. I saw it, I heard it.
I saw the inconceivable mystery of a
soul that knew no restraint, no faith,
and no fear, yet struggling blindly with
itself. I kept my head pretty well; but
when I had him at last stretched on the
couch, I wiped my forehead, while my
legs shook under me as though I had
carried half a ton on my back down
that hill. And yet I had only supported
him, his bony arm clasped round my
neck, and he was not much heavier
than a child.
And when next day we left at noon,
the crowd, of whose presence behind
the curtain of trees I had been acutely
conscious all the time, flowed out of
the woods again, filled the clearing,
covered the slope with a mass of naked,
breathing, quivering bronze bodies. I
steamed up a bit, then swung down
stream, and 2000 eyes followed the evo-
lutions of the splashing, thumping,
fierce river demon, beating the water
with its terrible tail and breathing
black smoke into the air. In front of
the first rank, along the river, three
men, plastered with bright red earth
from head to foot, strutted to and fro
restlessly. When we came abreast
again, they faced the river, stamped
their feet, nodded their horned heads,
swayed their scarlet bodies; they shook
towards the same river demon a bunch
of black feathers, a spotted skin with
a pendant tailsomething that looked
like a dried gourd; they shouted period-
ically together strings of amazing
words that resembled no sounds of hu-
man language; and the deep murmurs
of the crowd, interrupted suddenly,
were like the responses of some satanic
litany.
We had carried Kurtz into the pilot
house; there was more air there. Ly-
lag on the couch, he stared through the
open shutter. There was an eddy in
the mass of black heads, arid the wom-
an with helmeted head and tawny
cheeks rushed out to the very brink of
the stream. She put out her hands,
shouted something, and all that wild
mob took up the shout in an amazing
chorus of articulated, rapid, breathless
utterance.
Do you understand this? I asked.
He kept on looking out with fiery,
longing eyes, with mingled expression
of wistfulness and hate. He did not
answer me, but at my question I saw
a smile, a smile of indefinable meaning,
appear in his colorless lips that a mo-
ment after twitched convulsively with
pain or rage. I will return, he said
slowly, gasping as if the words of
promise and menace had been torn out
of him by a supernatural power.
I pulled the string of the whistle,
and I did this because I saw the pil-
grims on deck getting out their rifles
with an air of anticipating a jolly lark.
At the sudden screech there was a
movement of abject terror through that
wedged mass of bodies. Dont! dont!
you frighten them away, cried some
one on deck disconsolately. I pulled the
string again and again. They broke
and ran, they leaped, they crouched,
they swerved, as if dodging the terrible
sound. The three red chaps had fallen
fiat, face down on the shore, as though
they had been shot dead. Only the bar-
barous and superb woman did not so
much as flinch, and stretched tragically
her bare arms after us over the brown
and glittering river.
And then that imbecile crowd down
on the deck started their little fun, and
I could see nothing more for smoke.
The brown current ran swiftly out
The Heart of Darkness. 287
of the heart of darkness, bearing us
down toward the sea with twice the
speed of our upward progress; and
Kurtzs life was running out swiftly,
too, ebbing, ebbing out of his heart into
the sea of inexorable time. The man-
ager was very placid. He had no vital
anxieties now. He took in both of us
in a comprehensive and satisfied glance.
The affair had come off as well as
could be wished. I saw the time ap-
proaching when I would be left alone
of the party of unsound method. The
pilgrims looked upon me with disfavor.
I was, so to speak, numbered with the
dead. It is strange how I accepted this
unforeseen partnership, this choice of
nightmares forced upon me in the tene-
brous land invaded by these mean and
greedy phantoms.
Kurtz discoursed. A voice! a voice!
It rang deep to the very last. It sur-
vived his strength to hide in the mag-
nificent folds of eloquence the barren
darkness of his heart. Oh, he strug-
gled! he struggled! The wastes of his
weary brain were haunted by shadowy
images nowimages of wealth and
fame revolving obsequiously round his
unextinguishable gift of noble and lof-
ty expression. My intended, my sta-
tion, my career, my ideasthese were
the subjects for the occasional utter-
ances of elevated sentiments. The
shade of the original Kurtz frequented
the bedside of the hollow sham, whose
fate it was to be buried presently in
the mold of primeval earth. But both
the diab0lic love and the unearthly
hate of the mysteries it had penetrated
fought for the possession of that soul
satiated with primitive emotions, avid
of lying fame, of sham distinction, of
all the appearances of success and
power.
Sometimes he was contemptibly
childish. He desired to have kings meet
him at railway stations on his return
from ghastly Nowhere, where he in-
tended to accomplish great things. You
show them that you have in you some-
thing that is really profitable, and thert
there will be no limits to the recogni-
tion of your ability, he would say. Of
course you must take care of the mo~
tivesright motivesalways. The long
reaches that were like one and the
same reach, monotonous bends that
were exactly alike, slipped past the
steamer with their multitude of secu-
lar trees looking patiently after this
grimy fragment of another world, the
forerunner of change, of conquest, of
trade, of massacres, of blessings. I
looked aheadpiloting. Close the shut-
ter, said Kurtz suddenly one day; I
cant bear to look at this. I did so.
There was a silence. 0, but I will
wring your heart yet! he cried at the
invisible wilderness.
We broke downas I had expected
and had to lie up for repairs at the
head of an island. This delay was the
first thing that shook Kurtzs confidence.
One morning he gave me a packet of pa-
pers and a photographthe lot tied to-
gether with a shoestring. Keep this
for me, he said. This noxious fool
(meaning the manager) is capable of
prying into my boxes when I am not
looking. In the afternoon I saw him.
He was lying on his back with closed
eyes, and I withdrew quietly, but I
heard him mutter: Live rightly, die,
die. . . . I listened. There was nothing
more. Was he rehearsing some speech
it his sleep, or was it a fragment of a
1)hrase from some newspaper article?
He had been writing for the papers
and meant to do so again, for the fur-
thering of my ideas. Its a duty.
His was an impenetrable darkness.
I looked at him as you peer down at a
man who is lying at the bottom of a
precipice where the sun never shines.
But I had not much time to give him,
because I was helping the engine driv-
er to take to pieces the leaky cylinders,
to straighten a bent connecting-rod,
and in other such matters. I lived in a
288 The Heart of Darkness.
epulsive mess of nuts, bolts. spanners,
-hammers, ratchetsthings I abom-
~1nate, because I dont get on with them.
11 tended the little forge we had fortu-
~nately aboard; I toiled wearily in a
wretched scrapheap, unless I had the
shakes too bad to stand.
One evening, coming in with a can-
dle I was startled to hear him say a
little querulously, I am lying here in
the dark waiting for death. The light
was within a foot of his eyes. I man-
uged to murmur, 0, nonsense! and
stood over him as if transfixed.
Anything approaching the expres-
sion that came over his face I have
never seen before, and hope never to
see again. 0, I wasnt touched. I was
fascinated. It was as though a vail had
been rent. I saw on that ivory visage
the expression of strange pride, of
mental power, of avarice, of blood-
thirstiness, of cunning, of excessive
terror, of an intense and hopeless de-
spair. Did he live his life through in
every detail of desire, temptation, and
surrender during that supreme moment
of complete knowledge? He cried whis-
peringly at some image, at some vision,
he cried with a cry that was no more
than a breath, 0, the horror!
I blew the candle out and left the
cabin. The pilgrims were dining in the
mess-cabin. I took my place opposite
the manager, who lifted his eyes to
give me a questioning glance, which I
successfully ignored. He leaned back,
serene, with that peculiar smile of his
sealing the unexpressed depths of his
meanness. A continuous shower of
small flies streamed upon the lamp, up-
on the cloth, upon our hands and faces.
Suddenly the managers boy put his
insolent black face in the doorway, and
said in a tone of scathing contempt,
Mistah Kurtzhe dead.
All the pilgrims rushed out to see.
I remained, and went on with my din-
ner. I believe I was considered brutal-
ly callous. However, I did not eat
much. There was a lamp in there
light, dont you knowand outside it
was so beastly, beastly dark. I went no
more near the remarkable man who had
so unhesitatingly pronounced a judg-
ment upon the adventures of his soul
on this earth. The voice was gone.
What else had been there? But I am
of course aware that next day the pil-
grims buried something in a muddy
hole.
And then they very nearly buried
me.
However, as you see, I did not go to
join Kurtz there and then. I did not.
I remained to dream the nightmare out
to the end, and to show my loyalty to
Kurtz once more. Destiny. My des-
tiny! Droll thing life isthat myste-
rious arrangement of merciless logic for
a futile purpose. The most you can
hope from it is some knowledge of
yourselfthat comes too latea crop
of inextinguishable regrets. I have
wrestled with death. It is the most
unexciting contest you can imagine. It
takes place in an impalpable grayness,
with nothing underfoot, with nothing
around, without spectators, without
clamor, without glory, without the
great desire of victory, without the
great fear of defeat, in a sickly atmos-
phere of tepid scepticism, without
much belief in your own right, and still
less in that of your adversary. If such
i~ the form of ultimate wisdom, then
life is a greater riddle than some of
us think it to be. I was within a hairs
breadth of the last opportunity for
pronouncement, and I found with hu-
miliation that probably I would have
nothing to say. That is the reason why
I affirm that I~urtz was a remarkable
man. He had something to say. He said
it. Since I had peeped over the edge
myself, I understand better the mean-
ing of his stare, that could not see the
flame of the candle, but was wide
enough to embrace the whole universe,
piercing enough to penetrate all the
289
The Heart oj Darkness.
hearts that beat in the darkness. He
had summed uphe had judged. 0,
the horror! He was a remarkable
man. After all, this was the expres-
sion of some sort of belief, It had can-
dor, it had conviction, it had a vibrat-
ing note of revolt in its whisper, it
had the appalling face of a glimpsed
truththe strange commingling of de-
aire and hate. And it is not my own
extremity I remember besta vision
of grayness without form filled with
physical pain, and a careless contempt
for the evanescence of all thingseven
of this pain itself. No! It is his ex-
tremity that I seem to have lived
through. True, he had made that last
atride, he had stepped over the edge,
while I had been permitted to draw
back my hesitating foot. And perhaps
in this is the whole difference; perhaps
all the wisdom, and all truth, and all
sincerity, are just compressed into that
inappreciable moment of time in which
we step over the threshold of the in-
visible. Perhaps! I like to think my
summing up would not have been a
word of careless contempt. Better his
crymuch better. It was an affirma-
tion, a moral victory paid for by in-
~rumerable defeats, by abominable ter-
iors, by abominable satisfactions. But
it was a victory. That is why I have
remained loyal to Kurtz to the last,
and even beyond, when long time after
I heard once more, not his own voice,
but the echo of his magnificent do-
quence thrown to me from a soul as
translucently pure as a cliff of crystal.
No, they did not bury me, though
there is a period of time which I re-
member mistily, with a shuddering
wonder, like a passage through some
inconceivable world that had no hope
in it and no desire. I found myself in
the sepulchral city resenting the sight
of people hurrying through the streets
to filch a little money from each other
or to devour their infamous cookery,
to gulp their unwholesome beer, or to
dream their insignificant and silly
dreams. They trespassed upon my
thoughts. They were intruders whose
knowledge of life was an irritating pre-
tense, because I felt so sure they could
not possibly know the things I knew;
and their bearing, which was simply
the bearing of commonplace individ-
uals, going about their business in the
assurance of perfect safety, was of-
fensive to me like the outrageous
flauntings of folly in the face of a dan-
ger it is unable to comprehend. I
had no particular desire to enlighten
them, but I had some difficulty in re-
straining myself from laughing in their
faces, so full of stupid importance. I
daresay I was not very well at that
time. I tottered about the streets
there were various affairs to settle
grinning bitterly at perfectly respect-
able persons. I admit my behavior was
inexcusable, but then my temperature
was seldom normal in these days. My
dear aunts endeavors to nurse up my
strength seemcd altogether beside the
mark. It was not my strength that
wanted nursing, it was my imagina-
tion that wanted soothing, really. I
kept the bundle of papers given me by
Iiurtz, not knowing exactly what to do
with it. His mother had died lately,
watched over, as I was told, by his in-
tended. A clean-shaved man, with an
official manner and wearing gold-
rimmed spectacles, called on me one
day and made inquiries, at first cir-
cuitous, afterwards suavely pressing,
about what he was pleased to denomi-
nate certain documents. I was not
very surprised, because I had had two
rows with the manager on the subject
out there. I had refused to give up the
smallest scrap out of that package to
him, and I took the same attitude with
the spectacled man. He became darkly
menacing at last, and with much heat
argued that the company had the right
to every bit ~f information about their
territories. And, said he, Mr. Kurtzs
290 Tke Heart of Darkness.
knowledge of unexplored regions must
have been necessarily extensive and
peculiarowing to his great abilities
and to the deplorable circumstances in
which he had been placed; therefore
I assured him Mr. Kurtzs knowledge,
however extensive, did not bear upon
the problems of commerce or adminis-
tration. He invoked then the name of
science. It would be an incalculable
loss if, etc, etc. I offered him the re-
port on the Suppression of Savage Cus-
toms, with the postscriptum torn off.
He took it up eagerly, but ended by
sniffing at it with an air of contempt.
~That is not what we had a right to
expect, he remarked. Expect nothing
else, I said. There are only private
letters. He withdrew upon some threat
e legal proceedings, and I saw him no
more; but another fellow calling him-
self Kurtzs cousin, appeared two days
later, and was anxious to hear all the
details about his dear relatives last
moments. Incidentally he gave me
to understand that Kurtz had been es-
sentially a great musician. There was
the making of a great success, said the
man, who was an organist, I believe,
with lank gray hair flowing over a
greasy coatcollar. I had no reason to
doubt his statement, and to this day I
am unable to say what was Kurtzs
profession, whether he ever had any,
which was the greatest of all his tal-
ents. I had thought him a painter who
wrote for the papers, or a journalist
who could paintbut even the cousin
(who took snuff during the interview)
could not tell me what he had beenex-
actly. He was a universal geniuson
that point I agreed with the old chap,
who thereupon blew his nose noisily
into a large cotton handkerchief and
withdrew in senile agitation, bearing
off some family letters and memoranda
without importance. Ultimately a jour-
nalist anxious to know something of
the fate of his dear colleague turned
up. This visitor informed me Kurtzs
real sphere ought to have been politics
on the popular side. He had furry
straight eyebrows, bristly hair cropped
short, and eyeglass on a broad ribbon,
and becoming expansive, confessed his
opinion that Kurtz(couldntwr}te a bit---
but heavens! how that man could talkt
He electrified large meetings. He had
faithdont you seehe had the faith.
He could believe anythinganything.
He would have been a splendid leader
of an extreme party. What party?~
I asked. Any party, answered the
other. He was ananextremist.
Did I not think so? I assented. Did I
know, he asked with a sudden flash of
curiosity, what induced him to go out
there? Yes, said I, and forthwith
handed him the famous report for pub-
lication, if he thought fit. He glanced
through it hurriedly, mumbling all the
time, judged it would do, and then
took himself off with this plunder.
Thus I was left at last with a slin~
packet of letters and the girls portrait..
She struck me as beautifulI mean she
had a beautiful expression. I know
that the sunshine can be made to lie,,
too, yet that face on paper seemed to~
he a reflection of truth itself. One felt
that no manipulation of light and pose
could have conveyed the delicate shade
of truthfulness upon those features.
~4he looked out truthfully. She seemed
ready to listen without mental reserva~
tion, without suspicion, without a
thought for herself. I concluded I
would go and give her back the por-
trait and those letters myself. Curios-
ity? Yes; and also some other feeling,
perhaps. All that had been Kurtzs had
passed out of my hands; his soul, hi~
body, his station, his plans, his ivory,
his career. There remained only hi~
memory and his intendedand I want-
ed to give that up, too, to the past, in
a wayto surrender personally all that
remained of him with me to that obliv-
ion which is the last word of our com-
mon fate. I dont defend myself. I
The Heart of Darkness. 291
had no clear perception of what it was
I really wanted. Perhaps it was an
impulse of unconscious loyalty, or the
fulfilment of one of these ironic neces-
sities that lurk in the facts of human
existence. I dont know. I cant tell.
But I went.
I thought his memory was like other
memories of the dead that accumulate
in every mans lifea vague impress on
the brain, of shadows that had fallen
on it in their swift and final passage;
but before the high and ponderous
door, between the tall houses of a street
as still and decorous as a well-kept
sepulcher, I had a vision of him on the
stretcher, opening hi~ mouth voracious-
ly, as if to devour all the earth with all
its mankind. lie lived then before me;
he lived as much as he had ever lived
a shadow insatiable, of splendid appear-
ances, of frightful realities; a shadow
darker than the shadow of night, and
draped nobly in the folds of a gorgeous
eloquence. The vision seemed to en-
ter the house with me, the stretcher,
the phantom bearers; the wild crowd of
obedient worshippers; the gloom of the
forests; the glitter of the reach between
the murky bends; the beat of the drum,
regular and muffled like the beating of
a heartthe heart of a conquering dark-
ness. It was a moment of triumph
br the wilderness, an invading and
vengeful rush which, it seemed to me,
I would have to keep back alone for
the salvation of another soul. And the
memory of what I had heard him say
afar there, with the horned shapes
stirring at my back, in the glow of the
fires, within the patient woods, those
broken phrases came back to me, were
heard again in their ominous and ter-
rifying simplicity: I have livedsu-
premely! What do you want here?
J have been dead and damned. Let me
goI want more of it. More of what?
More blood, more heads on stakes,
more adoration, rapine and murder. I
remembered his abject pleading, his
abject threats, the colossal scale of hi~
vile desires, the meanness, the torment,.
the tempestuous anguish of his soul.
And later on his collected languid man-
ncr, when he said one day, This lot
of ivory now is really mine. The com-
pany did not pay for it. I collected it
myself at my personal risk. I aut
afraid they will claim it as theirs. It
is a difficult case. What do you think I
ought to doresist? Eh! I want no
more than justice. He wanted no more
than justice. No more than justice. I
rang the bell before a mahogany door on
the first floor, and while I waited he
seemed to stare at me out of the pol-
ished panelstare with that wide and.
immense stare embracing, condemn-
ing, loathing all the universe; I seemed.
to hear the whispered cry, 0, the hor-
ror!
The dusk was falling. I had to wait
in a lofty drawing room with three long
windows from floor to ceiling that were
like three luminous and bedraped col-
umns. The bent gilt legs and backs of
the furniture shone in indistinct
curves. The tall white marble fire-
place had a cold and heavy whiteness~
A grand piano stood massively in
a corner with dark gleams on the
flat surfaces like a sombre and polished
sarcophagus. A high door opened
closed. I rose.
She came forward, all in black, with
a pale head, floating toward me in the
dusk. She was in mourning. It wa~
more than a year since his death, more
than a year since the news came; she
seemed as though she could remember
and mourn forever. She took both my
hands in hers and murmured, I heard
you were coming. I noticed she wa~
not very youngI mean not girlish. She
had a mature capacity for fidelity, for
belief, for suffering. The room seemed.
to have grown darker, as if all the sad.
light of the cloudy evening had taken
tefuge on her forehead. This fair hair,
this fair visage, this candid brow
2~2 The Heart of Darkness.
seemed surrounded by an ashy halo
from which the dark eyes looked out
at me. Their glance was guileless, pro-
found, confident and trustful. She car-
ried her sorrowful head as though she
were proud of that sorrow, as though
she would say, II alone know how
to mourn for him as he deserves. But
while we were still shaking hands,
such a look of awful desolation
came upon her face that I per-
ceived she was one of those crea-
tures that are not the playthings of
Time. For her he had died only yes-
terday. And by jove! the impression
was so powerful that for me too he
seemed to have died only yesterday
nay, this very minute. I saw her and
him in the same instant of timehis
death and her sorrow. I saw her sor-
row in the very moment of his death.
It was too terrible. Do you understand?
I saw them togetherI heard them to-
gether. She had said with a deep catch
of the breath, I have survived, while
my strained ears seemed to hear dis-
tinctly, mingled with her tone of de-
spairing regret, the summing-up whis-
per of his eternal condemnation. I tell
you it was terrible. I asked myself
what I was doing there, with a sensa-
tion of panic in my heart as though I
had blundered into a place of cruel and
absurd mysteries not fit for a human
being to behold. I wanted to get out.
She motioned me to a chair. We sat
down. I laid the packet gently on the
little table, and she put her hand over
it. You knew him well, she mur-
mured, after a moment of mourning si-
lence.
Intimacy grows quick out there,
1 said. I knew him as well as it is
possible for one man to know another.
And you admired him, she said.
It was impossible to know him and not
to admire him. Was it?
He was a remarkable man, I said,
unsteadily. Then before the appalling
fixity of her gaze, that seemed to watch
for more words on my lips, I went on,
It was impossible not to
Love him, she finished eagerly, si-
lencing me into an appalled dumbness.
How true! how true! But when you
think that no one knew him so well as
I! I had all his noble confidence. I
knew him best.
You knew him best, I repeated.
And perhaps she did. But I fancied
that with every word spoken the room
was growing darker, and only her fore-
head smooth and white, remained illu-
mined by the unextinguishable light of
belief and love.
You were his friend, she went on.
His friend, she repeated, a little loud-
er. You must have been, if he had
given this to you, and sent you to me.
I feel I can speak to youO, I must
speak. I want youyou who have
heard his last wordsto know I have
been worthy of him. . . . It is not
pride. . . . Yes! I am proud to know
I understood him better than anyone
on earthhe said it himself. And since
his mother died I have had no oneno
enetoto
I listened. The darkness deepened.
I was not even sure whether he had
given me the right bundle. I rather
suspect he wanted me to take care of
another batch of his papers which, af-
ter his death, I saw the manager exam-
ining under the lamp. But in the box
I had brought to his bedside there were
several packages pretty well alike, all
tied with shoestrings, and probably he
had made a mistake. And the girl
talked, easing her pain in the certitude
of my sympathy; she talked as~thirsty
men drink. I had heard that her en-
gagement with Kurtz had been disap-
proved generally. He wasnt rich
enough or something. And, indeed, I
dont know whether he had not been
a pauper all his life. He had given me
some reason to infer that it was his
impatience of comparative poverty that
drove him out there.
The Heart of Darkness. 293
Who was not his friend who
bad heard him speak once? she was
saying. He drew the men toward him
by what was best in them. She looked
at me with intensity. It is the gift of
the great, she went on, and the sound
of her low voice seemed to have the ac-
companiment of all the other sounds,
full of mystery, desolation, and sorrow
I had ever heardthe ripple of the riv-
er, the soughing of the trees swayed
by the wind, the murmurs of wild
crowds, the faint ring of incomprehen-
sible words cried from afar, the whis-
per of a voice speaking from beyond
the threshold of an eternal darkness.
But you have heard him! You know!
she cried.
Yes, I know, I said, with some-
thing like despair in my heart, but
bowing my head before the faith that
was in her, before that great and sav-
ing illusion that shone with an un-
earthly glow in the darkness, in the
triumphant darkness from which I
could not have defended herfrom
which I could not even defend myself.
What a loss to meto us! She cor-
rected herself with beautiful generos-
ity, then added in a murmur. To the
world. By the last gleams of twilight
I could see the glitter of her eyes, full
of tearsof tears that would not fall.
I have been very happyvery for-
tunatevery proud, she went on. Too
fortunate. Too happy for a little while.
And now I am unhappy forfor life.
She stood up; her fair hair seemed
to catch all the remaining light in a
glimmer of gold. I rose, too.
And of all this, she went on,
mournfully, of all his promise, and of
all his greatness, of his generous mind,
of his noble heart, nothing remains
nothing but a memory. You and I
I will always remember him, T~
said, hastily.
No! she cried. It is impossible
that all this should be lostthat such a
life should be sacrificed to leave noth
lugbut sorrow. You know he had
vast plans. I knew them tooI could
~iot perhaps, understandbut others
knew of them. Something must re-
main. His words at least have not
died.
His words will remain, I said.
And his example, she whispered
to herself. Wherever he went men
looked up to himhis goodness shone
in every act. His example
True, I said, his example, too.
Yes, his example. I forgot that.
But I do not. I cannotI cannot
believenot yet. I cannot believe that
I will never see him again, that nobody
will see him again, never, never, never.
She put out her arms as if after a
retreating figure, stretching them back
and with clasped pale hands across the
fading and narrow sheen of the win-
dow. Never see him. I saw him clearly
enough then. I shall see this eloquent
j)hantom as long as I live, and I shall
see her, too, a tragic and familiar
Shade, resembling in this gesture an-
other one, tragic also, and bedecked
with powerless charms, stretching bare
brown arms over the glitter of the in-
fernal stream, the stream of darkness.
She said suddenly, very low. He died
as he lived.
His end, said I, with dull anger
stirring in me, was in every way wor-
thy of his life.
And I was not with him, she mur-
inured. My anger subsided before a
feeling of infinite pity.
Everything that could be done
I mumbled.
Ah, but I believe in him more than
any one on earthmore than his own
mother, more thanhimself. ~He need-
ed me! Me! I would have treasured
every sigh, every murmur, every word,
every sign, every glance.
I felt a chill grip on my chest.
Dont, I said in a muffled voice.
Forgive me. II have mourned
so long in silence-in silence. . . You
294
were with him-to the last? I think of
his loneliness. Nobody near to under-
~tand him as I would have understood.
Perhaps no one to hear. . .
To the very end, I said shakily.
I heard his very last words. . . . I
stopped in a fright.
Repeat them, she said in a heart-
broken tone. I wantI want some-
thingsomethingtotolive with.
I was on the point of crying at her,
Dont you hear them? The dusk was
repeating them in a persistent whisper
all around us, in a whisper that seemed
to swell menacingly like the first whis-
per of a rising wind. The horror! the
horror!
His last word---to live with, she
murmured. Dont you understand I
loved himI loved himI loved him?
I pulled myself together and spoke
slowly.
The last word he pronounced was
your name.
I heard a light sigh, and then my
heart stood still, stopped dead short by
an exulting and terrible cry, by the cry
Blackwoods Magaulne.
of inconceivable triumph and of un-
speakable pain. 1 knew itI was sure!
She knew. She was sure. I heard
her weeping, her face in her hands. It
seemed to me that the house would
collapse directly, that the heavens
would fall upon my head. But nothing
happened. The heavens do not fall for
such a trifle. Would they have fallen,
I wonder, if I had rendered Kurtz that
justice which was his due? Hadnt he
said he wanted only justice? But I
couldnt. I could not tell her. It would
have been too darktoo dark alto-
gether.
Marlow ceased, and sat apart indis-
tinct and silent in the pose of a medi-
tating Buddha. Nobody moved for a
time. We have lost the first of the
ebb, said the director suddenly. I
looked around. The offing was barred
by a black bank of clouds and the tran-
quil waterway that leads to the utter-
most ends of the earth, flowing sombre
under an overcast sky, seemed to lead
also into the heart of an immense dark-
ness.
CUPIDS REVENGE.
They toyed with Love one idle Summers day
Within an old-world garden, sweet and fair,
Then said Good-bye, and laughing went their way,
Nor either dreamed the other much would care.
But Cupid, who had marked their careless joy,
Swift from his quiver drew a feathered dart,
And bending back his bow, the wanton boy,
With aim unerring, pierced both to the heart.
And now forever, through the long, long years,
Near, or apart, in sorrow ~tnd in weal,
Mid sunny hours or blending mist of tears,
Each bears a wound no touch, save one, can heaL
Foflett Thorpe.
The Argosy.
Cupid s Revenge.
The Passion-Play of Ob er-Arnmergau. 295
THE PASSION-PLAY OF OBER-AMMERGAU.
[We are authorized to publish in an-
ticipationas especially interesting
during the present yeara letter which
will appear in the forthcoming vol-
umes of The Story of My Life.]
To Louisa, Marchioness of Waterford.
Ober-Ammergau, June 2.We have
seen the Passion-Play. It is a day to
have lived for; nothing can he more
sublimely devotional, more indescrib-
ably pathetic.
On Friday night we slept at Oberau,
and drove here early on Saturday morn-
ing, finding the Lowthers at once in
the village street, and spending most
of that day in drawing with them. We
went at once to the house of the Burgo-
master to inquire where we were billet-
ed. All the material part of life is
most comfortably and economically ar-
ranged for visitors. I am quartered
with St. Thomas, and all through the
day one meets peasants with long hair,
recalling Biblical figures. The Burgo-
masters beautiful daughter is the Vir-
gin Mary. In a gracious and touching
spirit of unselfish love all these villagers
live together for mutual help and com-
fort. They have been trained under
their late pastor, Aloys Daisemberger,
to regard the Passions-Spiel, which is
the great event of their quiet lives, not
only as a religious service of thanks-
giving to which every talent and energy
must be contributed for the glory of
God, and. a manifestation of gratitude
for His preservation of them, but they
are also taught to look upon it as an
instrument which Gods grace has
placed in their hands for the calling
back of Europe to Christianity, through
the dark mists of infidelity which have
been creeping over it in the nineteenth
century. And truly in this the actual
visit to Ober-Ammergau may be as full
of teaching as the great rt~presentation
itselfthe simple contact with such
men as Christus Maler, as he is
called, whose lifes work is to endeav-
or to do Gods will aufs innersten, and
to be helpful to those around him.
Here, in Ober-Ammergauperhaps here
alonereligion takes no heed of Roman
Catholic or Protestant vagaries; the
will of God, the example of Christ,
those are the only guidance of life. In
the five sermons of Daisemberger pre-
paratory to the Passion-Play of 1871,2
there is not a single word which indi-
cates Romanism. Look, 0 disciples of
Christ, says Daisemberger to his peo-
ple; see your Master, how gentle, how
kind He is, how mild in His intercourse
with those around Him, how full of
heartiest sympathy for their joys and
sorrows. Then can you, in your inter-
course with those around you, be
grumbling, rough, discourteous, self-
asserting, repellant and wanting in
sympathy? Oh no! you could never
endure to be so unlike your Master.
It is a beautiful place, a high upland
mountain valley, covered with rich pas-
tures and enamelled with flowers. A
long street, or rather road, lined by
comfortable detached timber houses,
leads to the handsome church, around
which the older part of the village
groups itself above the clear, rushing
Ammer, and is highly picturesque. Be-
yond the village, in the meadows over-
looked by the peak of the Kofel, is the
theatre where the great drama of the
Passion is enacted, which, ever since
1634, has commemorated every tenth
year the then deliverance of Ammer-
gau from the plague which was devas-
tating the neighboring villages.
All through Friday it was curious
to meet a succession of London ac
Joseph Majer, the eminent wood-sculptor. 2 Die Fruchte der Pass1onbeti~chtung.
296 The Passion-Play of Ober-Ammergau.
quaintances, and most unexpected
ones, but from all being here with one
object, no one was uncongenial. And
all is so perfectly managed, there is no
fuss or hurry; comfortable accommoda-
tion, good seats, excellent food are pro-
vided for all who are permitted to
come, for the visitors for every per-
formance are limited to the 2,000 for
whom there is room; no unexpected
persons, no excursionists are ever ad-
mitted. No thought of gain has ever
the slightest influence upon the vil-
lagers, and the prices are only such as
pay what is absolutely due.
Yesterday morning, I imagine, no
visitor could sleep after four, when
their peasant hosts began to tramp
overhead and clatter down the narrow
oak staircases. Then, after an excel-
lent breakfast of hot coffee, cream,
eggs and toast, many visitors and all
the people of Ober-Ammergau hurried
to the six oclock service in the church,
where all the five hundred actors knelt
with their pastor in silent prayer, and
many of them received the Sacrament.
At eight all were comfortably placed in
their seats in the open-air theatre, and
the soft wild music of Schutzgeister,
which seems to come from behind the
hills, preluded the performance.
One might be seated in the Piazza
del Popolo at Rome with ones back to
the gate. There is the same vast inter-
vening space, and the same three
branching streets (the central closed by
an inner theatre for tableaux), with
marked buildings at the entrance. Only
here those buildings are the houses of
Annas, Calaphas and Pilate, and the
streets are those of Jerusalem lined
with Eastern houses, domes, and here
and there a palm-tree, and they melt
far away into lovely ethereal mountain
distances, the real mountains of the
Bavarian Alps. The performance be-
gins when the spirit-chorus of eighteen
persons, male and female, in many-col-
ored tunics and mantles, advance in
stately lines from either side of the
stage, and in a chaunt, weird but most
distinctly audible, explain what is com-
ing, and urge those present to receive
it in a humble spirit of reverence and
adoration of God. Then, on the central
stage, begin the strange series of typea
and anti-types, and, as the veil falls the
second time, the vast Hosanna-proces-
sion of five hundred men, womea and~
children, singing, shouting and strew-
ing palm-branches, appears down the
distant streets, and, as it draws nearer,.
and the mountains resound with jubi
lant shouts and the whole air is ablaze
with life and color, the serene, rapt,.
stately figure of the Christus, riding.
upon the ass, but even then spiritual-
ized into absolute sublimity by the
sense of his divine mission, comes for
the first time before us. Afterwards,.
through the long eight hours of thril-
ling tension which follow, overshadow-
ing the endless, almost wearisome, ser-
ies of Old Testament scenes, drawing
every he5t and eye nearer to himself
through the agony of the trial, the
cross-bearing, the crucifixion, does that
sublime figure become more familiar;.
never again can the thought of the God-
man be severed from it. And in the
great drama itself one sees all the rest,
but one feels with, one lives for, the
Christ alone; and the dignity of his
lofty patience, unmoved from the holy
calm which pervades his whole being
even when four hundred savage Jews
are shouting and jibing round in clam-
orous eagerness for his death, must be
present with one through life.
I cannot tell it all. Words fail and
emotions are too much. Through that
long dayoh! is it that day alone?one
knows how to live with, to suffer with
Christ; one is raised above earth and
its surroundings; one dies with Him to
sin and suffering; one is raised with
Him into heavenly places. After some~
hours England is forgotten, Germany is
forgotten. You are a Jew. Jerusalem,
The Passion-Play of Ober-Ammergau.
is your home; all, all your interests are
centred there; nothing earthly is of the
very least importance to you except the
great tragedy that is being enacted be-
fore your eyes. It is, perhaps~ the hu-
manity of Christ which is brought most
forcibly before you; but oh! how divine-
ly human, how humanly divine!
Could one wonder that Mr. Vander-
Nit, the American millionaire, said that
he owed everythingeverything for
this world and the nextto Ober-Am-
mergau? it had unveiled and explained
religion for him; it had made the Bible
a living reality.
I think of the Old Testament scenes,
the Fall of the Manna is the most beau-
tiful. More than four hundred Israel-
ites, including a hundred and ~fty chil-
dren, are seengroups of the most ex-
quisite and harmonious eolor~with
Moses and Aaron in the desert; and
between you and them, and amongst
and around them, falls mysteriously
the soft, vaporous manna; whilst the
chorus in sweet, wild, lingering mono-
tone chaunt the beautiful hymn begin-
ning
Gut ist der Herr, gut ist der Herr.
Of the New Testament scenes, the
leave-taking with the family of Bethany
is, perhaps, the most pathetic. It is an
exquisite sunset scene. Huge olive-
trees stretch their gnarled boughs over-
head and are embossed against the am-
ber sky; in the distance the village of
Bethany stands out in the soft, blue
mists of evening. Through the sunset
comes the Christ in lingering last
words with the sisters and Lazarus,
and there, under the old trees, is their
last far~well, touching indescribably,
after which the weeping family return
to Bethany, and he goes away, a soil-
I know no gnilt like that o~ incontinent
speech. How long chrl~t was silent before He
spoke, and how little He then said!Carlyle, in
Reids Life of Lord Heughton.
A passage in Richard Hourds sermons (vol.
LIVING AGE. VIII. 416
~97
tary figure upon the burnt hills in the
twilight, to his death at Jerusalem.
At Ober-Ammergati one, for the first
time, realizes the many phases of the
trialin the house of Calaphas, of An-
nas, of Pilate, of Calaphas again, of
Pilate again; and all is terribly realthe
three crosses, for instance, so really
heavy, that none but a very strong man
can support them. One thinks better
of Pilate after the performance, through
which one has watched his struggles
his weary, hopeless struggles to save
the life of Christ. Almost every act,
nearly every word, is directly taken
from the Gospel history. Amongst the
few touches added is that of Mary the
mother, accidentally arriving at Jeru-
salem, meeting the other Marys in one
of the side streets and talking of the
condemnation of a Galilean which has
just taken place. Then, as the street
opens, suddenly seeing the cross-bear-
ing in the distance, and thrilling the
whole audience with anguish in her
cry of It is my son; it is Jesus! The
Last Supper is an exact reproduction
of Leonardos fresco, and many of the
other scenes follow the great masters.
How thrilling were the words, how
almost more thrilling were the silences
of Christ!3
The evening shadows are beginning
to fall as we see Christ raised on the
cross. He hangs there for twenty min-
utes, and most indescribably sublime
are the words given from thence. When
all is over, it is so real, you think that
this time death must really have taken
place. The three crosses, the bound
thieves, the fainting women, the
mounted centurion, the soldiers draw-
ing lots, all seem to belong to real
events, enacted, not acted. The deposi-
tion of the dead Christ on the white
sheet is a vast Rubens picture.
ii.), which I had read long ago, would come back
to me during this terrible hour. In this awfully
stupendous manner, at which Reason stands
aghast, and Faith herself Is half-confounded, was
the grace of God to man at length manifested.
29& The Old Cab Driver.
The resurrection is more theatrical,
but in the final scene where the perfect
figure of the spiritual Christ is seen for
the last time, he goes far away with his
disciples and the Marys. and then, upon
Olivet, in the midst of the group re-
lieved against the golden sunset, he
solemnly blesses his beloved ones, and
whilst you gaze rapt, seems to be raised
a little, and then you look for him and
he is not.
The Argosy.
Each one of the four thousand spec-
tators then sits in a vast sense of lone-
liness amid the silent Bavarian hills.
The long tension is over. The day is
lived out. The Master we have fol-
lowed we can follow no longer with
material sight. He has suffered, died
and risen from the grave, and is no
longer with us; in the heavens alone
can we hope to behold Him as He is.
Augustus J. U. Hare.
THE OLD CAB DRIVER.*
Eighteen, nineteen, twenty. Quite
right!
It was at the cashiers window of the
Credit-Lyonnais that Roger told off the
twentieth of his thousand-franc notes.
What amazing luck! He had drawn
a lottery prize and won twenty thou-
sand francs at a stroke!
Once more the old proverb was justi-
fied in that water had come to the
stream. For Roger was rich, and this
little premium which had fallen, as it
were, from the skies, was a piece of
good luck for him, and nothing more.
Still, whether you need them or not, it
is always a pleasant thing to receive
twenty thousand francs, and it was
with unfeigned satisfaction that our
young man nodded to the cashier and
slipped the bundle of bills into his inner
waist-coat pocket, on the side next his
heart.
Laden with his cheerful burden, Rog-
er issued from the Cr6dit-Lyonnais, and
loving, like the true Parisian he was,
a walk on the asphalt, he followed the
boulevard as far as the Madeleine,
turned up the Rue Royale and stopped
on the corner by the Ministry of Ma-
rine to consult his watch.
Five minutes to twelve!
He ran his eye doubtfully over the
great, white Place de la Concorde,
Translated for The Living Age.
scorched by the fiercest of summer
suns. One might well get a fatal sun-
stroke there. And then he would have
to climb the Champs Elysdes to his
abode near the Arc de Triomphe. An
open cab was passing; he hailed it and
jumped in, experiencing a burning sen-
sation all along his white duck trous-
ers, as he sank upon the shrivelled
leather cushions. He gave his address
and the horse moved off at a slow trot,
which was only not a walk.
Roger had been in too great a hurry
to take particular notice of his vehicle,
which proved to be one of those im-
possible victorias we all know, belong-
ing to no company, denuded of varnish,
tipsy and hardly holding together, mov-
ing amid a clatter of loose iron, with
one lamp missing and the other tied on
with a string. The horse matched the
cab. As for the driver, he was repre-
sented by a great, round back, termin-
ating below in two coat-tails which had
once appertained to a faded livery,
with one of the waist-buttons missing,.
and above in an enormous black, glazed
hat of the stove-pipe pattern, whence:
escaped a few straggling gray locks.
At the left of this mass of humanity
swung a forlorn whip, which looked
like a discarded fishing-rod.
Roger was hungry and his wife would
wait lunch for him. He was, however,
The Old Cab Driver. 299
an amiable man, and restrained his im-
patience for a time, in the vain hope.
that the beast would quicken his pace.
He remembered his Latin, crescit eundo,
but no such thing occurred. At last
he said, with some irritation:
Come, come, Cocher! Get on!
The back turned, and a big, red, kind-
ly old face disclosed itself, with an ami-
able little nose, watery eyes and a
large, toothless mouth.
But its so hot! You wouldnt have
me kill Cocotte!
The words were spoken in all sin-
eeritypolitelybut in a thin, worn,
rather plaintive, voice.
Roger was one of those rich people
who respect humble folk and like to
talk with them. He had a notion that
there was often more to be got out of
them than out of those men and women
of the world, who are all cut after the
same pattern, and are either too f a-
miliar to us or too entirely artificial to
be in the least interesting. Moreover,
there was something about the old cab-
driver that disarmed him. Bah! His
wife might wait, and his dijeuner be
spoiled~ he wasnt going to kill Cocotte.
Well, go as you please, only get me
there sometime.
Between the bourgeois and his coach-
man the ice was now broken;if such
an expression be allowable in view of
the tropical weather. The old man
had turned three-quarters round to an-
swer the observation of his fare, and
in that position he remained, so that
they inevitably fell into talk.
Mighty hot, all the same, said cab-
by. Its as bad as S6ndgal.
Have you ever been in Sdndgal?
Rather! Im a Breton from Saint-
Malo. Ive been a sailor.
And now youve turned cab-driver.
Ever since 1855.
They were now opposite the site of
the ex-Palais de lIndustrie, and the
driver waved his whip in that direction.
Ah, the Exposition of 1855! We did
well then! And in 67, too, we made
a good thing of it, and 78 wasnt bad.
But 89 was no go!
Why, I always supposed
Twas owing to the competition,
monsieur! Too many omnibuses! Too
much upholstery; and, above all, too
many tramways. Ah, the man who in-
vented tramways ought to lose hi&
head! And now, with their Metropoli-
tan line and their automobiles!i shant
do much in 1900even if Im therot
How old are you?
About seventy-four, monsieur.
Roger felt a pang of pity. He with
his thirty-live lusty years, his full and
prosperous life, was touched at the
thought of this worn-out old fellow,
still forced to work.
They had now passed the Rond-Point,
and with the beginning of the rise
Cocotte dropped into an undisguised
walk.
After a short silence the driver mur-
mured: Its weather to give one an
apoplexy; and, lifting his formidable
glazed hat, he deposited it on the seat
beside him, and weariedly but resign-
edly began mopping his bald, wet
brow.
Why dont you wear a straw hat?
asked Roger.
Ill tell you! Its because of my
fares! Yes. Theres some of em dont
like it. I had a straw hat a little while
ago, quite new, and cost me pretty
dear; one of those broad-brimmed hats
such as the fishermen wear. Twas
quite handsome and so cool! Well, a
servant called me at the railway station
to go and pick up a passenger in the
rue Marboeuf. So I went, taking the
servant along as one always does. They
get a good many lifts that way. There
was a pretty little woman waiting at
the door; and when the servant jumped
out, says she, mighty drily, Whats
this? A driver in a straw hat? You
know I wont have that, Joseph! Call
me another fiacre! That was her no-
i300 The Old Cab Driver.
tion of things, you seethe little wom-
ans! The servant muttered something
not very nice about his mistress and
gave me fifteen sous. But I lost my
course.
Roger laughed.
With five or six passengers like that
in a day, said he, youd do famously,
and not wear out Cocotte, either.
The old cab-driver did not seem to
understand the joke. He only mur-
mured to himself with a touch of def-
erence and a sort of far-away sugges-
tion of Breton mysticism.
No, no! You mustnt offend your
passenger! and, so saying, he slowly
replaced his glazed hat.
By this time Rogers sympathies were
fully aroused for the poor man, with
his honest, antiquated ideas, so differ-
ent from the careless, insolent young
cabby of to-day, Who crosses his legs,
turns up the ends of his moustache, and
always has a cigar between his teeth.
At all events, my good fellow, I
hope that, at your age, you have some-
thing laid up! You cant go on work-
ing forever.
The old man perceived that his bour-
geois was taking a genuine interest in
him. He therefore turned himself a
little further round, and became quite
confidential, giving only an occasional
glance at Cocotte. He spoke with the
touching simplicity of poor folk, for
whom their history is the whole of
history,a tale many times told among
humble friends, or to the first inquirer,
in vacant hours of waiting on the side-
walk, or at night when work is done,
in some eating-house of the meanest
description.
Oh, as to laying-up, monsieur, in-
deed I have! I have worked hard and
Ive been economical! Ive only given
myself the least bit of a blow-out, now
and then, after working hours. But
you see,if one has no luck! And I
dont have any; I never did. No chance
at all! I had fifteen thousand frafics
onceall my savingsand it all went
in the Panama. Some folks say, of
course, that I ought never to have put
it there. Say I ought to have taken
something safer that didnt pay as
well. Now, thats all very fine if you
are rich, and have lots of money in
different places; but if you are poor
and must get all you can out of what
you have, youre tempted, dont you
see? And I wasnt the only one, by a
long count!though theres not much
comfort in that! The amount of it is
that just as I was getting old and would
have liked to take life easy, I had to
go to work again. Up to that time I
had been employed by one of the regu-
lar companies, who have big stables; I
even drove sometimes at grand funer-
als for the Burial Society. Now they
thanked me, but said I was too old.
So ever since, Ive been driving for a
man in a very small way, who has only
three carriages; and Ive just managed
to live from day to day. One must do
as one can!
Have you a wife and children?
My wife died about ten years ago.
She was a dressmaker on Montnrnrtre.
And I had two girls. The older one
married, and she is dead, too. She
made waistcoats at Vangdrard. The
otherwell, Id rather not speak of the
other. She was a flower-girl first, and
then . . . I havent heard from her
for years. I dont even know if she is
alive.
And so youre quite alone?
Quite alone. Theres not much fun
in it, I can tell you! But whats to be
done, if you have no luck? . . . Good
God! how het it is! . . . One might die
of it, sure enough! And the old fellow
took off his glazed hat again and once
more wiped his forehead.
By this time the victoria had climbed
the Champ Elys~es, and turned into
the rue de Presbourg. Glancing idly
about him, Roger noted the incessant
movement, under that cruei sky, of
The Old Cab Driver. 301
people going up and down the avenue
on their various errands, carrying bun-
dles, pushing handcarts, workmen,
shop-boys, employ~s of all kinds; all
that crowd which forms the chief part
of the Parisian population during the
summer monthsa world of toilers,
who must accomplish their task alike
amid the snows of winter and under
the raging dog-star. Opposite the rue
de Bern they had to make their way
through a gang of workmen who were
repairing the wooden pavement. With
shirts thrown open and arms and neck
scorched fiery red, the men sweated
and suffered. Just on the corner of
the rue de Presbourg, some masons
perched upon a scaffolding were c@v-
ering a wall with rough-east plaster of
a blinding whiteness. A little farther
on, in the Avenue Marceau, an old
woman, bent nearly double, was drag-
ging a costermongers cart slowly along.
It was the perpetual spectacle of human
activity, rendered painful and even
perilous by the high temperature of
the day. The accident of birth had
made Roger a mere looker-on at this busy
scenea tranquil, comfortable specta-
tor, without effort to make or risk to
run. Reclining in his victoria, he
slipped through it all without the
slightest fatigue, absolutely sure of
finding in a few moments an appetizing
meal, with iced beverages; to be fol-
lowed by a good cigar and a refreshing
nap in a large, cool, silent room.
Being far from hard-hearted, the
young man found himself disturbed
by the comparison. He thought upon
those fine words, Equality and Frater-
nity, so profusely inscribed on all the
public monuments. Did they signify
a mere Utopian dream? Undoubtedly,
in their strict and absolute sense; but
though the end be unattainable may
not one strive toward it? Ought not
those who are on top to hold out a
helping hand to those beneath them,
hold them up; at all events, pick a
thorn or two from the rough hedges
between which their pathway lies?
While Roger indulged in these hu-
manitarian reflections, the cab was rat-
tling on, and the old Cocker becoming
every moment more bowed and somno-
lent. As they drew near the number
he had given he opened his pocket-book,
feeling prepared to give cabby a good
pour-boire. But might he not, ought
he not, to do more? His hand trav-
elled toward the bundle of notes in his
inner vest-pocket, which he had just
received at the Cr6dit-Lyonnais. What
was he going to do with that unex-
pected sum which had fallen to him
by pure chance? He would invest a
part of it, no doubt, and with the rest
gratify some costly and useless fancy
of himself or his wife! And there are
so many people-so vast a majority of
the wholewho have not even the
necessaries of life! While they are
young they can work, of course, but
this round-backed old cabby, who had
been so specially unfortunate. Whuit a
difference between that poor mans
fate and his own!
As these thoughts passed rapidly
through his mind, Roger became so af-
fected that he hesitated no longer. Re-
placing the small porte-monnale in his
outer pocket, he pulled out the package
from within, and selected one of his
thousand-franc notes.
Theres for your course, my good
man, said he. And no matter about
the change! I dont think you have it.
The old cabby looked at him wildly,
and stammered in utter bewilderment:
But, monsieur,but, monsieur
Keep it. Its all right!
Redder than ever, with eyes that
seemed starting from his head, the
driver stretched forth a shaky old
hand. Then, suddenlywas it the
shock of surprise, or was it only the
heat ?from scarlet he became white,
speech died in his throat, his lips moved
convulsively, the whip dropped from
~3O2 Until the Day Dawn.
this hand, and he fell forward upon the
~dasher with arms outstretched, as
ithough felled by the blow of an axe.
~Cabby! CabbyOld fellow!
~Xided by the servants who rushed out
of his house at the noise, Roger made
every effort to restore the old man to
consciousness. Then they lifted and
carried him into a pharmacy near by,
but all to no purpose. He was
dead....
* * * * * * *
You see, said Roger, to one of his
friends, the old man had been telling
Lea Annales.
me how he was all alone in the world,
and I was tuterested in him. I gave
the money in charity, all the same, of
course, but I so wish lie could have had
it! But no; his ill-luck pursued him to
the end. And to think that it was I
who killed him! It gave him such a
shock
More likely it was the heat, ob-
served the friend.
It was horribly warm, no doubt, but
I tell you it will be warmer still before
I give another thousand-franc pour-
boire to a cab-driver!
Jacques Normand.
UNTIL THE DAY DAWN.
Silence and Night were alone in the forest; afar was the sound
of the sea,
That moaned on its shores with a presage low of the storm
about to be;
The dark clouds drooped like~b& imers~ef death, and the tops of
the tall trees bowed;
For a wind came forth, and after the wind a Voice, from the
midst of the cloud.
And the stars went out, and the forest trembled, knowing the
Voice of God;
And He cried:
Is this well that thou doest, 0 Man? Did I make
thee a shedder of blood?
I gave thee the Earth and the fruits thereof, the sun and the
wind and the rain;
Child and wife to thy bosom; have these My gifts been given
in vain?
I gave thee the breath and the beauty of dawn, the service and
splendor of day;
The seed and the sap of thy thought, and the skill of thy
fashioning hands that obey;
I gave thee the strength of the morning, and wrought thee the
curtains of darkness deep
To fold over labor and patience and pleasure the sweetness
and solace of sleep.
But My dawns are red with the shame of the flame that thy
passions have kindled and fed,
Until the Day Dawn. 303
And My Earth cries aloud unto Me from her hills and her
plains with their burden of dead.
Lo, where is the joy of the harvest? My seasons have nour-
ished the growth of the grain,
Yet the garners are empty. But Death has garnered his har-
vest of terror and palm
For the songs of thy labor are turned into thunder and clamor
and clash of the fight;
Thou takest no joy from the glory of day, no enfolding of
peace from the night;
Thy wife and the child that I gave thee are heavy with
mourning and wasted with tears,
And the power and strength of thy manhood is lavished and
lost at the crown of thy years.
Art thou weary of light and of gladness? Desirest thou blood-
shed and darkness of death?
Arise now and answer, 0 Man whom I made in My likeness
and filled with My breath.
Then the night gathered back into silence. But, fainting, there
passed on the wind as it went
An infinite murmur of anguish and pain, irretrievable loss and
lament;
Till a curse clove it sharply asunder and! flung up a challenge
of wrath fierce and bold:
Judge Thou! Is it we who have pandered to power? Is it
we who have grasped after gold?
As sheep we were driven to slaughter, our eyes have been daz-
zled and blinded with lies;
Judge Thou; are we guilty, that knew not? The curse be on
those who have played for the prize.
Judge Thou!
The storm burst on the forest; the wild-beating fury
and blast of the rain,
The roar of the wind in the trees, were as voices of Earth in
her passion and pain;
The quick, jagged spear of the lightning flashed forth from the
terror and gloom of the sky,
And the thunder rolled far to the end of the heavens its sullea
and angry reply.
Then, slowly, the night gathered silence again, with sighs for
delight of release;
The stars in their places shone forth, and the breath of the
wind was as healing and peace;
And there rose in the darkness a song,on the wings of the
wind it swept loftily by,
While the trees waved as banners of triumph before the un-
clouded clear arch of the sky.
Until the Day Dawn.
Thou gayest us life, and we loved it; yet went with the gift of
our life in our hand;
And our blood has baptized to a life that is newer and stronger
the length of the land.
We gave it for Freedom, and freely; nor feared we the sure
shaft of death when it came;
We were shedders of blood, we were givers of blood; we are
sharers of glorynot shame.
Oh, sweet were the dawn and the day! and the strength of our
manhood was joyous as wine;
And the light of the eyes that we loved was more lovely when
tears made their tenderness shine;
But the voice that had called us was stronger than these,per-
chance though we knew not its name;
But we knew there were those that must yield up their lives;
and we counted it glorynot shame!
Then she silence sank down like a dove in the heart of the for-
est, that waited and kept
The long, solemn watches of night
And at last came an answer:
The eyes that have wept
Shall be lightened, the bruised shall be healed, and the people
shall lift up their faces again,
And the songs of their love and their labor be heard; and the
Earth shall be cleansed from her slain.
The word of My promise is sure; I have spoken; I change not,
nor fail, nor forget;
For the thunders of War 8hafl be hushed, and the Earth shall
learn Peace. But the time is not yet.
So the Night, with the voice of its storm, and the clouds and
the darkness passed slowly away;
And the Dawn softly stirred in the E~ist, and came forth in the
glow of her glorious array.
And the heart of the world, that had slept, woke and beat; and
God blessed it, and gave a New Day.
Ada Bartriclc Baker.
Blaekwoods Magazine.
304
The Paris Exhibition.
THE PARIS EXHIBITION.
Whatever faults one may find with it
in detail, there can be no question that
the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1900
is, as a whole, a great achievement, at
all events in a spectacular sense. Per-
haps, indeed, one may come to the con-
clusion that the buildings themselves
whether regarded in coup 4oiit or sep-
arately, are really of greater interest
than their contents. Specialists in va-
rious subjects will, no doubt, find matter
for study among the classes of ex-
hibits in which they may respectively
be interested, but for the general crowd
of visitors, the Exhibition will present
itself as a vast and picturesque spec-
tacle,1 an architectural and artistic
fairy-land of palaces and domes and
towers and sculptured decoration. Not
all of it, to be sure, is immaculate in
taste; even as temporary structures for
a festal occasion some of the buildings
present too rampant a spirit of rococo;
though it is fair to remember that most
of these are but temporary erections
The earth hath bubbles as the water
hath,
And these are of them
and that what would be impertinent in
permanent architecture may claim in-
dulgence as a temporary picture. But
it is impossible that the most purist of
critics should not be impressed with the
extraordinary vigor and vitality of inven-
tIon and modelling displayed in that
part of the Exhibitionthe largest and
most important partwhich is directly
due to French influence and to French
artists. The row of pavilions of for-
eign Powers, extending along the left
bank of the river, from the Pont de
1 It is amusing to notice, in this connection,
that the street people in Paris all refer to the
Exhibition as La Foire.
lAlma to the Pont des Invalides, and
designed mostly by foreign architects,
is, no doubt, an important feature in
the show, and has a most picturesque
effect as seen from the river; but near-
ly all these, when considered in detail.
are seen to be merely imitation archi-
tecture, characteristic of the different
countries which they represent. But
the French edifices are all pure inven-
tion, the offspring of the alert and vi-
vacious artistic genius of the country.
The buildings of the Chicago Exhibi-
tion, with which the Paris Exhibition
is inevitably compared, were more
classic and more dignified in style, but
they were mostly formed on antique
models, whereas the French buildings
of the Paris Exhibition are an out-
break of sheer originality. This spirit
of artistic invention crops out in all the
minor details as well as in the more
prominent features of the Exhibition.
Wherever you turn, there is nothing
commonplace or done in a commonplace
manner. Look, for instance, at the
timber bridge which crosses the public
road south of the Pont de lAlma, with
its characteristic and picturesque open
timber towers and light egg-shaped
wrought-iron cupolas over them. Even
the high wooden palisadin~ which
seems to wind all about Paris, forming
the enclosure of the Exhibition, has
been the subject of a special design,
simple but exceedingly effective. The
one discordant note (and a terribly
loud one) is to be felt when one sees
how from every point of view, amid the
maze of turrets and cupolas
The Elifel Tower, pointing to the skies,
Like a tall bully, lifts its head and lies--
falsifying the whole scale of the Ex-
hibition and of Paris itself; looking close
3o~
306 The Paris Exhibition.
to us when it is really far off; an un-
gracious presence which one can never
shake off. If only the French had had
the sense, after the close of the 1889
Exhibition, to demolish this bumptuous
piece of ironmasters brag, erected in
defiance of the protests of the whole
artistic world of Paris, it might have
been forgotten by this timeforgotten,
but not forgiven.
Indeed, the permanent results on the
city of these vast shows, though not all
of them as exasperating as the Elifel
Tower, are to be considered. Every
demonstration on such a scale as the
1889 Exhibition and the present one
must leave a great scar, so to speak, on
the face of Paris; and even when this
is healed, each one has wiped out for-
ever some part of the history and to-
pography of the city; and as there
seems to be a kind of necessity to make
every successive show bigger than the
previous one, the ultimate consequences
are unpleasant to contemplate. Even
for the moment, Paris seems to be more
turned inside out by the Exhibition
than one would wish. The Pont dIena
is unrecognizable, save for its two fat
hor es at each end, whose pedestals are
no longer terminations to the balus-
trade, but stand in the middle of the
roadway, which has been widened by
jutting out a series of steel cantilevers
from the stone piers. The highroad to
S~vres and Yersailles, which used to
run past the end of the bridge, has been
sunk into a deep cutting, with long in-
clines to carry it under the Exhibition;
the concrete walls of this cutting, by
the way, being duly decorated with
stencilled ornament, to bring them into
harmony with the environment. The
Exhibition is, indeed so mixed up with
the city that it is difficult sometimes to
be quite sure when you are in it and
when you are not. After entering at
the Trocad~ro end, for instance, I got
on a river steamer at the Pont dIena,
in order to get a view of the buildings
from the river, but on being landed
near the Pont de lAlma found that I
was outside the sacred fence, and had
to deliver up another coupon ticket for
re-admission. And the influence of the
Exhibition extends beyond its bounda-
ries, not always pleasantly. There
used, for instance, to be an open-air
caf6 at one side of the Avenue de Neull-
ly in the Bois de Boulogne, where you
could sit under trees in the warm sum-
mer night and listen to an excellent
string and wind band, and regret that
London climate and customs allowed
of no such way of spending an evening.
But this year the Avenue de Neulily has
become a hear garden, a kind of Bar-
tholomew Fair; the musical cafl has
gone, the avenue is festooned with
lamps from tree to tree, lined with
merry-go-rounds, shooting stands and
curiosity-shops, and hideous with noises
and with the dust and tobacco-smoke of
the festive proletariat If this trans-
formation is permanent, it will hardly
form an agreeable reminiscence of the
Exhibition year, either to Parisians or
visitors.
Fortunately, however, the permanent
structures which the Exhibition of
1900 will leave behind it as a record
the two art palaces and the new bridge
over the Seineare of a very different
character from that monstrous iron
tower, which is the most prominent
record of the 1899 Exhibition. In these
we have the hand, not of the advertis-
ing engineer, but of the artist. Before
speaking of them more particularly,
however, it may be as well to take a
general survey of the situation. The
present Exhibition, like that of 1889, is
arranged in two main territories: the
larger on the Champ de Mars site, fol-
lowing the axis of the T~ocad6ro and
the Eiffel Tower, on a line running
southeast, and terminated at its lower
end by the great Gallerie des Machines
erected for the 1889 Exhibition. The
smaller territory is that on the Esplan
The Paris Exhibition. 307
nade des Invalides site, running nearly
due south from the left bank of the
Seine towards the Invalides, and laid
out axially with the centre of that cele-
brated building. In this respect we
may notice in passing, the careful at-
tention which the French always pay
to the setting out of groups of build-
ings in reference to a central axial line
~which governs the whole laying out of
~the site; a principle as habitually neg-
lected in English cities as it is habitu-
ally kept in view in French ones. In
London nothing is central with any-
thing elseeven the Albert Hall and
Albert Memorial, built about the same
time and in connection with the same
idea, are out of line with each other
while in Paris almost every great street
and great building is laid out on a cen-
tral axis; one of the causes to which
is to be attributed the superior stateli-
ness of Paris as a city. The two terri-
tories of the Exhibition, each thus com-
plete and axial in itself, are wide apart
at the northern end, where they are
connected by the long sweep of the
~uai dOrsay, and converge towards
each other at the southern end, though
still at a considerable distance, the
Avenue de la Motte Picquet connecting
them. The main difference in the site
of the present as compared with the
previous Exhibition is that on both
sites the Exhibition this year has
crossed the Seine northwards. The
%Jhamp de Mars territory extends
across the river (including, as already
observed, the Pont dIena) right up to
the Trocad~ro, which, in fact, forms
one of the main entrances. The In-
valides territory extends right up to the
Avenue des Champs Elys6es, crossing
the Seine by a wide new bridge, the
Pont Alexandre III, which also is in-
cluded in the ExhibItion grounds, but
which remain afterwards as one of the
permanent public bridges over the
Seine. On the space between the
northern end of the bridge and the
Avenue des Champs Elys~es are erected
the two great permanent art palaces
the Grand Palais, an immense building,
to the west of the axial line; the build-
ing relatively called the Petit Palais
(though even this is a very large and
sumptuous edifice) to the east, the two
facing each other, of course centrally,
across a wide space of garden and
drive. These stand partly on the
ground formerly occupied by the Palais
de lIndustrie, a building one can well
spare, since it was quite unworthy of
French art and of the position it occu-
pied.
It is in this group of structures that
the great glory of the present Exhibi-
tion consists. The bridge is one of
the most remarkable erections of the
kind in modern times. Structurally it
is a steel bridge, forming one large arch
in very fiat lines, the level of the road-
way having been kept as low as possible
consistently with getting the requisite
headway over the river, in order not
to interfere in any way with the view
of the facade and dome of the Invalides
at the southern end of the vistaa quite
sufficient reason in France, but one
which would never occur to any Gov-
ernment or public bedy in England.
The main design of the bridge is the
joint work of two architects, MM. Ber-
nard and Cousin, and two engineers,
MM. R~sal and Alby; the engineers be-
ing responsible for the structure, and
the architects for the details of the
design. What a contrast to the pro-
cedure in London, where the County
Council are spending half a million of
public money on a bridge in which the
engineer is to be allowed to bungle the
decorative details as he pleases, and an
architect, we are told, cannot be em-
ployed because it would hurt the feel-
ings of the engineer! The massive
bronze lamp standards on the bridge
are designed by one of the most gifted
of the younger French sculptors of the
day, M. Gauqui~, who has shown a
308 The Paris Exhibition.
special aptitude for decorative design.
The entry to the bridge at each end is
flanked by a lofty stone pylon at either
side, on the line of the parapet; these
are architectural erections decorated
with angle columns, the whole of the
most refined and careful design, and
each forms a pedestal to a rearing
winged Pegasus led by a nude Gen-
ius, the whole of these figures being
entirely gilt. Whether these erections
would have quite the same effect in
a more northern atmosphere may be
doubted, but in the clear air of Paris,
and under the bright sky of early June,
the clean and delicate lines of the
freshly cut stonework and the sparkle
of the gilded sculpture against the in-
tense blue of the sky combined to pro-
duce a perfectly beautiful effect; in
certain positions the sunlight seemed
actually to shine through the thin wings
of the horses, though this was most
likely an effect of reflected light from
another part of the gilt surface. Then
at the base of each pedestal, facing out-
ward from the bridge, is a colossal
carved emblematical figure, seated,
the two facing the Champs Elys~es
side representing Medheval France,
by M. Lenoir, and Modern France,
by M. Michel; those on the southern
side, Renaissance France, by M.
Coutan, and Louis Quatorze France,
by M. Marqueste; four of the first
French sculptors of the day having
thus contributed to the decoration of
the new bridge. Finally, the approach
to each end of the bridge is flanked by
lions led by cupids, carved in stone by
M. Gardet, one of the finest animal
sculptors in France. That is what goes
to make a new bridge in Paris. Is it
not enough to make every Englishman
who cares about art blush for his coun-
try, where, for a similar work, an
engineer and a trading stonemason
would be thought sufficient?
Now let us look at the two palaces.
three architects, MM. Thomas, Deglane,
and Louvet, is really two buildings in
combination; the larger portion on the
plan of an inverted ~, having its front
parallel with the axis of the bridge; the
smaller block, which contains the cen-
tennial art exhibition, is placed across
the stem at the at a slightly oblique
angle, so as to present a fa~ade parallel
with . the Avenue dAntin, towards
which it faces. The two are, however,
externally combined very cleverly into
one design. The main portion of the
building, which contains the exhibition
of contemporary art (the art of the last
ten years), has a double-story range of
galleries running round a central court
of the same shape as the exterior of the
building; the lower range of galleries
are, of course, side-lighted, the upper
ones top-lighted. The building is on
an immense scale, and the principal
facade, facing the central drive, is a
noble-looking architectural monument
in a freely-treated classic style, the
main walls of the wings being set back
behind a colonnade, and the upper part
of the walls behind the colonnade
decorated in the upper portion
with a ceramic frieze. The cen-
tral entrance is flanked by figures
representing, on one side, Greek,.
Roman, Byzantine and Egyptian art,
and on the other side, the arts of paint-
ing, sculpture, architecture and engrav-
ing. The colonnades and colossal sculp-
tures, all executed in a fine and per-
fectly white stone, have an imposing
effect. The drawback to the general
monumental effect of the building is
that it is all roofed with glass, which
shows conspicuously above the stone
sub-structure. This was, perhaps, un-
avoidable if it was to be adequately
lighted as a range of picture galleries
at all events, it was the easiest and
readiest way of securing ample light;
and, as a matter of architectural truth-
fulness, it was better to show the glass
The Grand Palais, the joint design of roof frankly than to endeavor to mask
309
The Paris Exhibition.
it behind a false stone screen; still, it
cannot be denied that it injures the ef-
fect of the building. The Petit Palais
opposite, designed by M. Girault, is a
finer work of architecture than the
large palace; it is somewhat in the same
character of architecture externally,
but has escaped the deteriorating effect
of glass roofing, and is, on the whole,
more refined in detail. But the beauty
of the building is only fully appreciated
after making acquaintance with the in-
terior, which is a most original archi-
tectural conception. Going through the
principal entrance, at the top of a lofty
flight of steps and furnished with fine-
ly-designed gilt metal folding gates, we
find ourselves in a central vestibule
roofed by a dome, and with a great
gallery of the same width, but raised
several steps above the floor of the
vestibule, stretching on either hand the
whole length of the building; the pilas-
ters on the walls are of a pink veined
marble, the roofs being covered with
modelled decoration in plaster, rather
too restless in style, but showing that
facility and invention in decorative de-
tail which meet us at every turn in the
Exhibition. Opening from the back of
this front block is a semi-circular open
court, laid out as a garden, and sur-
rounded by an open colonnaded walk
with marble columns, raised two or
three steps above the garden. Outside
of this semi-circular colonnade is a
double range of galleries on the plan
of a semi-hexagon, the sides tangent to
the walls of the semi-circular colon-
nade. Seen from the garden, this col-
onnade, with the loftier wall of the
gallery rising behind it, and crowned
with a balustrade and beautifully de-
signed colored and gilt vases, has a
charming effect, and strikes one as
something quite new in modern archi-
tecture. The front of the small palace
2 A spandrel, in architectural phraseology,
is the nearly triangular space left on each side
t an arch hetween the outer curve of the arch
is decorated with some very fine sculp-
ture; a figure over the principal en-
trance representing Science, by M.
4Jarl~s, a panel representing the City of
Paris surrounded by the Arts, by M.
Injalbert, and bas-relief figures in the
spandrels2 of the doorway arches, by
M. Peynot. Altogether, the Petit Palais
is a building well worth seeing for its
own sake, independently of its contents,
which may be passed over here. As
far as it is filled, it is an archaeological
museum, and not directly connected
with the main objects of the 1900 Ex-
hibition. After the Exhibition is over,
the building will become the property
of the Municipality of Paris, and be
used as a museum; this is a quid pro
quo for the subscription of twenty mil-
lion francs given by the Municipality
towards the cost of the Exhibition.
Coming out again on to the central
roadway between the palaces, one
should not omit to notice the fine effect
of the view looking southward from
this point; the two stately palaces, one
on each hand; then the pylons of the
bridge, with their gilt sculpture; then
the variegated outline of the two par-
allel lines of white buildings of the
Exhibition, flanking the lower portion
of the Esplanade des Invalides; and in
the extreme distance the dome of the
Invalides closing the vista. It is not
often one sees such a stately piece of
effect; and then, as an enthusiastic
young American lady observed, It is
so interesting to think that Napoleon
rests under that dome.~~
The large palace is to be the perma-
nent home of the annual Salon, and is
certainly the finest which the Soci~td
des Artistes Pranqais has ever had,
though, when one looks at the immense
extent of wall space in these ranges of
galleries, one rather trembles to think
of the possible results of an attempt to
and any horizontal line, such as a cornice, ahove
it. It Is a favourite position for sculptural dec-
oration.
310 The Paris Exhibition.
fill them all. It is the weak point of
the Salon that its exhibition spaces,
ever since it went into the Palais de
lJndustrie, have always been too large
to be filled except by the more than
doubtful expedient of admitting a great
number of paintings of very mediocre
merit; and here we have, as far as the
eye can judge, the promise or threat of
even larger spaces, except in the cen-
tral sculpture court, which is not so
large as that of either the Palais de
lIndustrie or the Galerie des Machines.
And in this present Universal Exhibi-
tion there is no doubt that the sculpture
court is inconveniently and undesirably
crowded, especially as a considerable
number of the exhibitors seem to have
been aiming at quantity rather than
quality, and making bids for fame by
colossal monuments and equestrian
statues. The result is a crowd, in
which you cannot isolate any work
sufficiently to enjoy it; and as, more-
over, the numbers were not even yet
fixed to the works (eight weeks after
the nominal opening of the Exhibi-
tion), and one could not find out what
they were, I will not attempt any re-
mark on them here, except to note that,
according to the catalogue, all the best
French sculptors of the day are repre-
sented, though not always by their best
works; that it is a pity that the late M.
Falgui~re is represented only by two
of his portrait statues in costume, La
Rochejaquelain and Cardinal La-
vigerie, instead of by any of hisimag-
inative nudes; and that an Italian
sculptor (I forget his name, and indeed
it is better concealed) has perpetrated
a life-size bronze group of a set of
drunken monks, one of the most de-
testable pieces of vulgarity I ever saw
in sculpture, which has been purchased
by the Italian Government for a public
museuma pretty piquant indication
of the condition of artistic taste in
modern Italy. Most of the leading
English sculptors, Mr. Gilbert excepted,
are represented, but their comparatively
small and delicate work is completely
lost amid the crowd of huge and often:
violent compositions of the sculptors of
some other nationalitiesFrench includ-
ed, unhappily, for French sculpture is
showing alarming signs of forsaking.
its first love and running after sensa-~
tionalism.
One piece of American sculpture chal-~
lenges attention, as it is placed sepa--
rately in the balcony, outside the Amer-
ican picture galleriesnamely, Mr. ~t.
Gaudenss alto-relief called the Shaw
monument, representing an officer riding:
with drawn sword, a group of young
infantry soldiers, who troop along with
him, forming the background of the
subject. This has been illustrated and.
greatly praised in American magazines~
(which have a way of blowing very
large trumpets for American art), and
it unquestionably has the noble and
excellent quality of sincerity and earn-~
estness, but it seems also an indication
that American sculpture has not yet
attained that mystic and indefinable~
something called style; it strikes one~
for its moral rather than its artistic~
quality.
The French have devoted one-half of
the space in the building to French art,
the remainder being divided among
foreign nationsan apportionment of
space which can hardly be complained
of; they have had the labor and cost of
getting up the show, and it is natural
that they should reserve the lions share
in it for their own art. The ground~
floor galleries need not trouble us~
much; they contain the padding; the
important section is in the top-lighted
galleries on the upper floor. On the
whole, the French show in pictures~
hardly seems equal to that of 1889, and
certainly a good many works of little
interest are hung. Still, there are a~
number of fine pictures to be seen,.,
many of them old acquaintances that
one is only too glad to meet again. M. -
The Paris Exhibition. 311
GerOme does not exhibit, nor, among
less celebrated names, does that original
and as yet little-known artist, M. Ridel,
whose DernRires Fleurs was one of
the most charming pictures in this
years Salon. Among the prominent
works are M. Gervaiss noble Juge-
ment de Paris, one of the finest pieces
of color la modern painting, and M.
Harpigniess La Loire; M. Dagnan-
Bouverets Bretonnes au Pardon!
Mdme. Demont-Bretons Dans leau
hleue; M. Tattegrains horrible, but
probably only too true, picture of a
chapter in medlieval warfare, Les
Bouches Inutiles; M. Bonnats remark-
able portrait of Renan, and M. B6rauds
picture of Christ and the Magdalen
translated into modern Parisian life,
which has been the parent or sugges-
tion for a number of pictures based
on a similar idea, and without the merit
of originality which certainly belongs
to this one. M. Benjamin-Constants
portrait of the Queen, somewhat arti-
ficial in lighting and color, is, in its
way, one of the most remarkable works
in the gallery, and his Urban II enter-
ing Toulouse one of the largest, but
not of an artistic value commensurate
with its area in square yards. M. Bou-
guereau, the prince of correct and ele-
gant painters, is, of course, largely rep-
resented, and his small work, Idylle
enfantine, is one of the sweetest things
he has painted; it may be a question
whether his children are not better
than his classic nudes; they have ex-
pression, at all events, ~Vhile the nudes
serve to show how learned and admir-
able an executant a painter may be,
and yet leave you perfectly uninterest-
ed in his work. Here, too, the younger
generation may make acquaintance
with the work of Jules Breton, who
As usual in French exhibitions, it is impos-
sible to find any picture you see in the catalogue
except by chance. Really a general Insurrection
ought to be made against that preposterous and
exasperating method of cataloguing pictures which
the French calmly persist in; the result of num
has almost ceased practically to belong
to the present generation; some of his.
earlier works also are to be found in
the Centennial Exhibition. M. Char-
trans two great plough-oxen again il-
lustrate St. Franois dAssise au
labor, a monumental work which one
is glad to meet again; his group of por-
traits under the title Signature dii
Protocole de Paix entre lEspagne et
les Etats-Unis is obviously a new
work, which will have historical inter-
est. M. Detailles chivalrous picture~
Sortie de la Garnison de Huningue,
one of the most interesting and char-
acteristic of war pictures, one is glad
to see again; and M. Rouffet again
affords a cynical amusement to the
British mind by his immense picture,
Fin de lepop~e, illustrating Victor
Hugos elaborately worked-up fable
(or shall we use a stronger word?) that
the real cause of the loss of the battle
of Waterloo was the accidental mishap
of the French cavalry in tumbling into
an unexpected ravine when in full
charge; the artistic value of the work
is not such as to atone for the bravery
of the fiction. Among other remark-
able works is M. Henri Martins Cha-
cun sa Chim~re, not a sort of paint-
ing one cares to see too much ofthe
literary element is too strong in it; but
it broke new ground, and left an inef-
faceable inlpression on the mind; nor
has its author since then produced any-
thing equally powerful in an intellec-
tual sense, though he has produced bet-
ter pictures in a decorative sense.
French landscape is not as largely rep-
resented as one could wish, but there
are two of the best of M. Quignons
works, two by M. Didier-Pouget, two
by M. Lamy (which I did not see3), and
a whole collection of M. Cazins beau-
bering the pictures before they are hung instead
of after. It Is too ridiculous. You see a num-
ber on a picture, but you have not an idea where
to find It in the catalogue; you see an artists
name In the catalogue, but you have not an Idea
where to find his work. At the Salon this year
312 The Paris Exhibition.
tiful small landscapes, works which
show the perfection of style in land-
scape painting.
The English schoolor shall we say
English painting? since the French
critics deny that we have any school
is not as well represented as one
could wish; that is to say, many emi-
nent artists are represented, but few of
them by their best works. The only
prominent English artists who are seen
here at their best are, perhaps, the
late Henry Moore, whose splendid sea
in The Race of St. Albans ought to
be a lesson to French sea painters, and
Mr. Dicksce, whose A Confession is
certainly the best thing he has ever
done. To be sure one must remember
that the selection is limited to the last
ten years, and perhaps during that pe-
riod The Return of Persephone and
The Old Garden may be considered
adequate presentments of the art of
Leighton and Millais respectively; there
are other works of each, bar these are
t!ie most important. Mr. Watts has
only a lan(lscape. Mr. Mark Fisher is
not represented (he would have been
appreciated by the French), an4 what
is still worse, Mr. Sidney Coope:- is.
But though the English col1e~ton night
well have been a stronger one, there is
enough as it is to give one the satis-
factory feeling that France and Eng-
land are ahead of every other country
in painting. The Americans, it is true~
have Mr. Abbey and Mr. Sargent, but
they are very exceptional Americans,
and, beyond their works, the American
gallery is a collection of mediocrities.
As to Italy, the less said the better.
The Germans, with their characteristic
vigor and thoroughness, have got up
and decorated their galleries better than
any other nation; their columned ex
H. Harpignies had only one small and incon-
spicuous work; seeing his name in the catalogue,
I wanted to find this, hnt after a half an hours
hunt had to give it up and ap~ al to an official,
who in his turn had to appeal to another; between
the two they at last found It. Had the pie-
edrije, black plinth and gold walls, and
frieze of emblematic animals, are very
effective; but the general style of the
paintings hung in these sumptuous
rooms is coarse and their color harsh.
If Providence had given the Germans
artistic genius in proportion to their
energy and ambition, there would, in-
deed, be another story to tell.
The block containing the Centennial
Exhibition, examples of French art
since the commencement of the cen-
tury, is connected with the main build-
ing by a portal of communication,
wilich leads to a very fine central cir-
cular domed hail in two stories, with
a wide gallery running round it; on the
upper floor are wide centre galleries
stretching right and left the whole
length of the building, with a vista
from end to end across the domed hail.
On the ground floor the central space is
occupied by sculpture halls, and on
both stories there is a range of picture
galleries outside of the central halls.
The selection of works has been made
on the principle of not admitting any-
thing which was included in the similar
department of the 1889 Exhibition, one
result of which is that this collection
is not quite equal to the 1889 one; the
best things had heen shown already;
but still there is a great deal of inter-
esting work. In the downstairs picture
galleries are placed the earlier paint-
ings of the century, including a consid-
erable number of the works of Ingres
and Delacroix, some of them rather
passe in style, but others furnish very
fine examples of the French art of that
period. In the centre galleries upstairs
is a collection of studies and drawings
by Frengiimasterssketches by Ohapu,
Legros, Delaunay and others of the
later deceased artists; a powerful red
tnres been numbered eon cutively, as at the
Academy, It could have been found in half a
minute. The fact that most French artists sign
their pictures legibly is ones only chance of
finding out what they are.
chalk study of nude men at a forge, by
Puvis de Chavannes, giving a new side
of that artists work; portrait studies
by Cabanel, figure studies by Jules Bre-
ton, etc. The opposite side contains
studies by an earlier generation of ar-
tistsPrudhon, G~ricault and others.
In the circular hall is a fine collection
of French sculpture of the earlier part
of the century (mostly), not equal, cer-
tainly, either in power of modelling or
intensity of conception and expression
to the finest work of the last twenty
years, but nevertheless containing
much fine work by Rude, Jouffrey,
Idrac, David dAngers (whose statue
of Cuvier is a work of great power),
Dubois, Giraud and others; while
among the later men we find Pradier
and Carpeaux well represented. In
one of the side galleries downstairs is
a collection of furniture, mostly of the
First Empire period, but containing
also some very fine examples in Louis
Seize style, for the style survived into
the present century, though the unhappy
king for whom it was named did not.
To these remarks on the artistic cen-
tre of the Exhibition we have only
space to add a few notes on the re-
mainder of the Exhibition buildings
considered in their general aspect. If
we follow the aforesaid vista south-
ward toward the Invalides, we pass be-
tween two ranges of temporary build-
ings which are rather too exuberant
in style, but which present some fine
effects of color from the decorative pic-
tures with which they are adorned.
The buildings, flanking the entrance op-
posite the Invalides building, form how-
ever, one of the best bits of the Exhibi-
tion, with their recessed semi-circular
porticos, delicate spirelets in white and
gold sparkling against the sky, and on
the outside, towards the road, two beau-
tiful bas-reliefs symbolical of Indus-
trial Art. Returning northwards to the
foot of the new bridge, we find, going
westwards along the Qual dOrsay, one
LIVING AGE. VOL. VIII. 417
313
of the most picturesque portions Ot the
Exhibitionthe row of pavilions of for-
eign Powers which line the river bank.
Italy comes first with a sumptuous
erection to which reminiscences of Ven-
ice, the Florence Cathedral, and the
Certosa at Pavia, have all contributed.
Turkey follows with its white mass of
buildings and colored tiles. Denmark
shows a pretty timbered pavilion, with
carved woodwork; the United States
a stately erection, with a dome over
which is the eagle with outspread
wings, while internally the stars and
stripes banner is repeated in every pos-
sible position. If we had flaunted the
Union Jack everywhere in the British
pavilion in the same way, it would
have been called bad taste, but the
British pavilion is a sober reproduction
of an English Jacobean mansion, ad-
mirably finished and fitted internally,
and apparently much appreciated by
the crowds who keep filing through it.
Belgium shows a Late Gothic Hotel de
Ville; Norway a red timber building,
with white window frames and an in-
terior redolent of nets, cordage, models
of ships, and a pleasant sea-faring
scent over everything (notice the pi-
quant treatment of the stair-newels,
with their walrus heads); Germany a
sumptuous pavilion, too obviously
made in Germany, and covered with
decorative painting of a robustious
character; Finland a most characteris-
tic little house, one of the most piquant
things in the Exhibition. Spain shows
a dignified piece of Spanish Renais-
sance; little Monaco has made a
most spirited show; Sweden shows an
extraordinary and preposterous erec-
tion covered with red tiles: Greece a
small building of Byzantine type, with
red-tiled cupolas. Whatever one ma
find to criticize in the individual build-
ings, the whole make a most pictu-
resque show, especially as seen from
the river. On the opposite (right) bank
of the river the most noticeable ob
The Paris Exhibition.
314,
jects are the great pavilion of the City
of Paris, appropriately designed with
something of a HOtel de Yule type
about it, and filled with illustrations of
the work of the Municipality; the restor-
ation of Yieux Paris, which looks
picturesque At a distance, but is not
worth enteringit is at best a trum-
pery piece of sham antique; and the
large Palais de lEconomie Sociale,
one of the most dignified erections in
the Exhibition.
Coming to the upper end of the Champ
de Mars, we find on either hand large
masses of building of extraordinary ef-
fectiveness in a sense, and certainly of
extraordinary boldness and originality.
Here, as everywhere else, we are
struck with the French facility and
vigor in modelling, and the lavish use
of the figure in decoration; nude figures
everywhere, hanging on cornices and
ledges as if blown there by the wind,
with their feet kicking out into the air;
always well and vigorously designed,
but a little too omnipresent. The view
is closed at the lower end of the Champ
de Mars by the Palais de lElectricit6,
a most brilliant bit of improvization in
The Fortnightly Review.
which the building seems to symbolize
something of the flashing and restless.
character of electricity; and in the cen-
tre of it the vast architectural cavern
of the Chateau dEau, whence issue
cascades of water, to be illuminated at
night by colored light, to the delight of
the festive parisian. This may be
called pronounced and rampant rococo,
no doubt, but it is impossible to deny
that there is a touch of genius in it.
In conclusion, let it be said, that
while the Paris Exhibition is a remark-
able effort of French genius, it is to be
hoped that Paris will now be left in
peace for a considerable period. Tlie~
cost to her, in every sense, of such
shows recurring at such short periods.
as the eleven years which separate
this from the 1889 Exhibition, and
that from its predecessor, is too great
to be regarded without alarm. Once
in a generation is often enough for
such an Exhibition, to exhibit the
progress made in arts and industries.
during that period, and it will be well
if a quarter of a century is allowed to
elapse before such another effort is.
made.
H. Heatheote ftatharn.
A PENiTENT.
It was high noon in the New Zealand
bush. The great silence was made only
the more impressive by the little
breaks of soundthe rippling of the
stream or an occasional tul flitting
overhead, with a gush of melody.
Scarcely a leaf stirred in all that green
wilderness. Here and there, where a
shaft of sunlight had found its way
through, spotted lizards lay basking
among the dry leaves and fragments
of brown and silvery bark that covered
the moist black earth on every side.
Above were myriads of leaves and.
branches; below, myriads of ferns. Th~
stately tree-ferns towered up above
the gravel bed of the stream, and in.
every gully by tens and hundreds the
ferns multiplied and grew. Life was
so rampant here as to hide death and
decay. If a tree fell to-day one would
expect to find it green to morrow with
ferns and yciung suckers. There seemed
something almost savage and unnat-
ural in this swarming luxuriance of
life, this insistence of growth. A touch~
A Penitent.
A Penitent. 315
of quiet autumn would have come as a
benediction. In such an hour one feels
most the mystery and the solemn gran-
deur of the bush.
Presently a man came limping into
sight. He was covered with dust from
head to foot, and the great beads of
perspiration rolling down his face had
made runlets through the dust, and
gave him a strange, ghastly look. His
eyes were like those of a hunted animal;
his tongue lolled out in the heat like
a dogs.
He made straight for the stream,
and, painfully scrambling down the
edge of the gully, among ferns and
creepers, he flung himself over the
water and drank eagerly, laying his
face in the stream as he drank. Then
he drew a deep breath of relief, and
lay back, his arms behind his head, in
a state of exhaustion.
He had thrown aside his hat; and
his hair, wet with sweat, lay limply on
his brow. He was a stalwartly built
fellow, with a keen, hard face, and
hands roughened by years of toil. His
clothes were old and rough; on the
knee of one trouser was a stain like
that of recently spilt blood.
As he lay pillowed among delicate
fern fronds, still hot, and panting now
and then, a wild pigeon came close
above him on a fallen tree bough. The
mild, innocent creature looked at him
with its full red eye, and showed no
sign of perturbation; its kind had not
yet learned to be afraid of man. This
man lay and watched it awhile in si-
lence. His eye marked its one beauty
after another; its broad, snowy breast,
its red bill, the lovely mingling of
green, red and purple on its wings and
back. He had opportunity to examine
it fully, for it sat there with great coin-
posure, only now and then pulling off
a green leaf and eating it. At last the
man reached out his hand for a big
pebble; he could knoek it down easily
without changing his position. He had
his hand ready to throw, when a swift
compunction seized him and he flung
the pebble crashing through the distant
underwood.
No, Im darned, he muttered, if
I can hurt the pretty, innocent thing
after all!
At the iwise of the falling pebble the
bird rose with a loud whirr of its mag-
nificent wings, and passed on to another
tree. The man was sorry; he wished.
it had stayed where it was, that he-
might watch it. Then things gradually~
grew indistinct, and he fell asleep as.
easily as a child.
He slept heavily for a time. Then hi~
sleep became broken, dreams troubIed~
himugly dreams of things that had
happened since this summer sun rose.
Again he was at the little vifls.g~
public-house, smoking and drinkin,,,
with his mate, Bill Harris. The drinlc
was bad, but the day was hot, and
both men thirsty after hours of work
in the scorching sun. Then they turned
out again, going back to their felling
and sawing of timber. And as they
went a quarrel sprang up between
them and grew fierce. Then Bill, in an
unhappy moment, reminded his mate
Jack of the 3Q~. he had been owing him
these months past. This brought Jacks
wrath to a climax; he raised the axe he
was carrying and struc1~ Bill, who fell
like a log on the dusty road, the blood
spouting from his wound. Jack knelt
down and gazed stupidly; Bill was
dead. The shock sobered him on the
instant. He dragged the dead man
into the shade of the bushes, and fled
for his life, feeling the hot breath of
the avengers behind him every second.
Bill dead? Bill? Oh, confound it all,
no! Things were getting mixed up in
his brain. It was he himself who had
been ill for weeks together in the win-
ternigh at deaths doorand Bill had
nursed him and waited on him with the
tenderness of a woman. Yes, it was
Bill who had saved his lifebrave,
316 A Penitent.
honest old Bill, who had faced sun and
~storm with him for three years past.
Ay, he was such a mate as a fellow
didnt often chance to get. And then
to say that he was dead! Oh, how ab-
surd!
Wildly thoughts and images floated
~through his brain, leaving only a dim,
haunting sense of trouble. Then he
slipped back to the English meadows
~of his ~~jldhood~daisy-5prinkled grass,
and a gray river edged with pollard
willows that broke into green loveli-
ness every spring. Ilow well he re-
membered it all! He used, to bathe
there as a boy, and dream of striking
out bravely for himself in the great
river of life. The skies above him were
not higher than his aspirations. And
now it had all come to thisthat he
had struck down his friend, and the
word MURDERER was written in let-
ters of fire across his soul!
He shivered, drew a long breath and
awoke. There was a refreshing under-
current of coolness in the air, and
golden lights slanted down among the
ferns. It must be evening, then. He
looked at his watch; it was five oclock.
He rose, still shivering, and looked
round him. What should he do? Self-
preservation urged him to some imme-
diate course, but where had he best
turn for safety?
He stumbled on listlessly for awhile,
swearing hard now and again at the
tangles of creeper and brambles through
which he had to force his way. All at
once he stood stock still, trembling in
every limb. He rubbed his hand across
his eyes to assure himself that he was
not dreaming, and then grew a worse
feelingthat madness had come upon
him. He had often heard of murderers
being haunted by the corpses of their
victims, and aht here the ghastly thing
had come upon him! Bills body lay
almost at his feet, and already it was
overarched by long, luxuriant ferns.
He knelt down with a little stifled
cry and hid his face. When he looked
again IT was still there; but as he
looked a sudden ray of hope darted
into his mind. This thing wore a
coarse plaid. It could not be Bill. The
sudden overpowering sense of relief
made him sick and dizzy. Then, recov-
ering himself, he examined the body
carefully, with a new gentleness of
touch and a new reverence. Slowly he
identified it as that of an old stockmnn
who had lived in a lonely hut on the
ranges; and then the whole story came
back to him. The man had gone away
to town and nothing further had ever
been heard of him. He had lived so
solitary a life that he had not been
missed at once, and little wonder was
raised when he was, for he was known
to be a queer, erratic being. He was
believed to have no relations on this
side of the world, and public opinion
conjectured that he had taken ship and
gone home to his people. And here he
had perished far from all kindly human
sounds, in this mockery of green, silent
beauty. It made Jack shudder afresh.
In the dead mans pocket-book he
found crisp bank-notes for 501. Good
God! Had he had these yesterday
he had not now been a murderer! He
bowed his head, then started up wildly,
for he seemed to hear footsteps gath-
ering all round him, and voices accus-
ing him from every tree. In an agony
of fear his resolution was taken. He
would take this mans clothes and per-
sonate him in his hermits hut till the
crime had blown over sufficiently for
him to slip off to Australia with safety.
Anything rather than be taken!
It was nearly midnight when he reached
the deserted sod hut, for he was foot-
sore and weary and walked but slowly.
It was a cloudless summer night, and
the moon was at her full. Under such
skies as these even the rugged hills
looked lovely, folded into soft, ample
curves in the quiet moonlight. And
the nodding tussocks in Jacks eyes
A Penitent. 31T
looked far more friendly and beautiful
than the wonderful shimmering ferns
he had left. He pushed open the door
of the hut and went in, a cobweb catch-
ing his brow as he did so. He struck
a match and looked round him. All
was neat and in good order as the
dead man had left it. His blankets
were rolled up in one corner, the kettle
swung over the empty fireplace, and a
pipe with some tobacco was on the
shelf above. There was a cupboard,
too, with some cheese, tea, flour and a
mouldy loaf in it. The sight of food
reminded Jack that he had had nothing
sincesince that last drink with his
chum. Was it only years ago, or in
some other existence?
He brought water from the little
spring by the door, built up the fire,
and put the kettle on to make tea.
Then he made himself some damper,
and took his meal with relish. He was
not used to fast so long. After that he
sat smoking awhile, then put out the
tallow dip, rolled himself up in the
blankets, and slept fitfully till morn-
ing.
His scheme was perfectly success-
ful. The days passed on in monoto-
nous succession, and no man came near
his city of refuge. Once or twice he
ventured down to the township on the
other side of the hills to replenish his
stock of necessaries. Few people knew
him there, and no one eyed him askance
as he came and went. Still, had he been
a prisoner, living on the poorest fare,
it could not have changed him more.
His cheeks began to fall in; he was
haggard and gaunt; his bloodshot eyes
had a strained, listening look in them.
Among the bare, bleak hills by day, and
alone beneath the illimitable stars by
ni~.ht, his mind began to totter. As
every summer sun sprang up, red and
glorious, he almost hoped that a po-
liceman would come for him before
night and break this awful spell of
loneliness. His was not the plight of
the Ancient Mariner, sailing a sea so
lonely that God Himself scarce seemed.
there to be. To this man the terror
and the awe lay in the fact that God
did seem there beside him night and day,.
the only Being in all that changeless
solitude. God, and the dead man, and.
he seemed the only realities in a uni
verse of shifting shadows.
One day he found a late-blossoming:
wild flower in the shadow of a tussock..
He clutched at it like a child, and.
hugged it to his bosom, tears springing
to his eyes. He took it home with him,
and had it by .him while he slept. He
could not love and admire too much.
this homely little thing that spoke of
simplicity and common everyday life.
He held it in his hand and fondled it,
till the fragile flower drooped on its
long, slender stem and died. Then
again he was left alone with the ma-
jestic, unpitying stars, whose million
eyes burnt into his soul. He remem-
bered a fragment of the Psalms that
he had once known: The heavens de-
clare the glory of God. What came
after he had forgotten, but this he
had no chance of forgetting whilst these
relentless ministers of His glory shone
luminous above him night by night.
Often at dusk the woodhens would
steal out from tussock and toomatoo-
gooroo, croaking shrilly. One, bolder
than the rest, would come to his very
door. He had been wont to hunt these
birds unmercifully, but now he tried
his utmost to propitiate and tame this
one. He longed to stroke its speckled
black-and-brown plumage, and have it
eat out of his hand. Once it carried off
a gaudy handkerchief he had spread
out to attract it, and he rolled himself
up in his blankets that night happy.
But it never came again. Perhaps a
chance stone or a dog had ended its
life.
He had been almost afraid to ask for
a newspaper when buying his stores,
lest the very fact should betray him.
318 A Penitent.
Yet he had conquered his guilty tre-
inors, bought one and unfolded the
crackling sheets in his hut, glancing
his eyes fearfully over each column.
No, there was nothing ofof his murder
case! Perhaps the first sensation
caused by it was over, or perhaps this
little country chronicle was silent when
larger papers were still full of it. Any-
way, he told himself for the meantime
he was safesafesafe! He tried to
say the word jubilantly, but in spite of
himself it had a melancholy ring.
The door of the hut had evidently
been made of new timber, for as the
sap had receded the planks had shrank
apart from each other, leaving wide,
yawning gaps through which the day-
light streamed and the wind blew. To
remedy this state of affairs the dead
man had pasted old newspapers partly
across the back of the door. These
the present occupier would read and re-
read as he lay listlessly on the floor
beside them. At least they kept his
reason from going. But one sheet
contained an account of a murder, every
word of which soon seemed branded
into his brain, so well he knew every
line, every turn of phrase in it. It
ended abruptly, too, at the turn of the
sheet on which it was printed. At the
very climax of the tragedy all became
suddenly blank. The unfinished hor-
ror of it haunted the man. To him it
was made more awful by far by this
ghastly break in it. He pondered it
over and over, half unconsciously,
many a dreamlike ending suggesting
itself to him, always to be rejected on
a later review of it. At last, in despair,
and to save his mind from the utter
horror of madness, he rose one morn-
ing and pasted another sheet over it,
which contained only the trivial news
of some local centre. The relief to his
overwrought and sensitive mood was
exquisite. It came upon him with a
sudden burst of sweetness, like the
scent of unguessed at violets.
One morning in February, for he had
kept some rude count of the days, he
awoke in the dusk of earliest dawn.
He could not sleep again; a voice
seemed whispering in his heart, and
the place seemed insufferably hot. He
hustled on his clothes and went out to
the door. It was very still. The rug-
ged peaks looked softer in this light,
and the undulating tussocks might
have passed for waves of the sea.
Slowly the gorgeous rose of day burst
and flamed above the horizon, shooting
its marvellous lights far and wide, till
the sun himself leaped up, and the
pomp of dawn was over. Jack stood
watching, and still that voice seemed
whispering in his heart. He had a
strange idea of an angel with a fiery
sword standing beside him. At last
lie could endure it no longer. All the
slow agony of these weeks seemed
concentrated into a moment, and with
a rush his soul went down into the
l)lack waters of a bitterness worse than
death. He dropped on his knees, and
a cry of anguish broke from him. St.
Peters words seemed the only prayer
he could use. He muttered hoarsely
again and again, Depart from me, 0
Lord, for I am a sinful man! Then
the awful loneliness seemed to break,
and in its stead came a feeling of warm
human compassion and kindliness.
He took some breakfast, made his
few scanty preparations and set off for
his old home. Harvesting had begun,
and as he went he rejoiced in the
cheery sounds of lalior that met him,
watched with eagerness the reaping
machines that went on and on, leaving
full sheaves behind them, and could
have laughed with joy at the sound of
mens voices. One or two loiterers
eyed him curiously, making him con-
scious that he looked an odd figure,
but he cared little; he went on almost
as though he trod on air. He reached
the village and made straight for the
police station.
319
A Penitent.
There was a new official there, a six-
foot Irishman, with red whiskers, who
looked up from his papers in wonder,
as this thin, hollow-eyed man, with
straggling, grizzled hair, came in and
greeted him. He was inclined, from
his looks, to think him a shingle
short.
This belief was strengthened when
his visitor, without any preamble,
rushed into the statement of a murder
committed by him some two months
back. His account was clear enough,
certainly; he gave facts, dates and
names without a shadow of hesitation,
and yet the Irishman scratched his
head in the manner of one sorely puz-
zled.
Now see here, me boy, he began
at length, wan of us two must be mad,
and, faith, Im thinking that ones not
me. You say it was Bill Harris fwhat
you knocked on the head, af ore iver I
came to the place. Now that may be;
but, faith, it was Bill Harris and me
were havin a cup of thay togither no
longer ago than the last night. So
fwhat in the livin wide world dlv ye
mean by sayin yeve killed him? Or
use, fwhat, in the creation of cats,
does he mane by comm aloive agin?
Tell me that, me son!
Jack tottered to the one chair the
office contained, and sank down in it,
his breath coming hard and hoarse. He
tried to speak, but his dry lips uttered
no sound. The Irishman being a good-
hearted fellow, got him a glass of wa-
ter and held it to his lips while he
drank.
Now, see here, me sonny, he con-
tinued, soothingly, Ill jist tell ye
fwhat it all is. You and this man hey
quarrelled, and yeve got dhrinkand
infernal bad dhrink it is here, me son
Loagmans Magazine.
and thin yeve had bad drames. Praise
the Virgin! We all hey our bad drames
at toimes, and come out ar em agin.
Bill Harris, belave me, has had his owa
drames, too. He drames himself into
fallin an the edge av his own saw that
he was carryin wan day, afore iver I
came here, and sez he to me, sez he,
Pat Malony, sorra anither such dhrink
as that will I take in all my born days,
for uts cost me a sore head, and a sore
heart into the bargain. For he sez he
was blind with dhrink, and run his
head down on his own tools. So kape
your heart up, me lihoy, for dlvii a
word of this story do I belave.
Still like one in a dream, Jack mum-
bled out a few words of thanks, clapped
on his hat and tottered out again. The
Irishman watched him setting off at a
half run down the street, and deter-
mined to follow him. For by the
livin jingo, he said to himself, who-
ever he is, hes a shingle short, and I
wouldnt hey harm come av ut.
So, locking his door, and putting the
key in his pocket, he followed at a re-
spectful distance, and saw his man
make straight for the sawmill. Scratch-
ing his head harder than ever, he fol-
lowed. And then a wonderful thing
happened. He saw Bill Harris come
out, and stand gazing as if petrified.
Then he heard his man cry Bill!
Why, Jack, Jack, old man! was
the answer, and then and there the
two men flew into each others arms,
jist for all the iwurruld bike a pair of
swate schoolgirls, said the onlooker
to himself. Then he turned back.
Be jabers, was his inward com-
ment; but I never saw the bike! And
nivir will agin, unless I live to the age
of Methuselah, and thin Ill be too
bhlind to enjiy it.
L. E. Smith.
320 St ej5 hen Crane.
STEPHEN CRANE.
As special correspondent he had seen
two wars; he had been wrecked; he
had written eleven hooks, two still in
MS., and when he died last Wednes-
day his years did not numher thirty.
He was the type of the nervous, nim-
ble-minded American, slight in figure,
shy and kind in manner, speaking lit-
tIe, with a great power of work, a fine
n~emory, and an imagination of aston-
~shing psychological insight. Latterly
his health had been had, partly consti-
tutional, and partly through malarial
lever contracted in the C uban cam-
paign. The last two years of his life
were spent in the old, huge, fascinat-
ing house in Sussex, Brede Place,
v,-hich he made his home. There he
lived, many miles from the nearest
railway station, a quiet domesticated
life, welcoming his friends, and writ-
ingalways writing. He battled brave-
ly against ill-health; but the disease
gained ground, and a few weeks ago
he was ordered to the Black Forest. It
was a forlorn hope, and, although
many days were given to the journey,
he succumbed at the end to exhaustion.
The Red Badge of Courage was
published when he was twenty-five.
This study of the psychological side of
war, of its effect on a private soldier,
justly won for him immediate recogni-
tion. Critics of all schools united in
praise of that remarkable book, and the
more wonderful did the performance
appear when it became known that he
had never seen a battle, that the whole
was evolved from his imagination, fed
by a long and minute study of military
history. It is said that when he re-
turned from the Gr~co-Turkish war
he remarked to a friend: The Red
Badge is all right. It was all right.
The same swift and unerring char-
acterization, the same keen vision into
the springs of motives, the same vivid
phrasing, marked Georges Mother.
Here, as in most of his other stories,
and in all his episodes, the environ-
ment grows round the characters. He
takes them at some period of emotion-
al or physical stress, and, working from
within outwards, with quick, firm
touches, vivifies them into life. No-
where is this more evident than in the
short sketches and studies that were,
probably, after The Red Badge of
Courage, the real expression of his
~enius. His longer novels, though not
wanting in passages that show him at
his best, suggest that in time he would
have returned to the earlier instinct
that prompted him to work on a small
canvas.
As a writer he was very modern. He
troubled himself little about style or
literary art. Butrare gifthe saw
for himself, and, like Mr. Steevens, he
knew in a flash just what was essential
to bring the picture vividly to time read-
er. His books are full of images and
similes that not only fulfil their pur-
pose of the moment, but live in the
memory afterwards. A super-refined
literary taste might object to some of
his phrasesto such a sentence as this,
for example: By the very last star of
truth, it is easier to steal eggs from
under a hen than it was to chaa,~e seats
in the din~,ey, to his colloquialisms, to
the slang with which he peppers tIme
talk of his menbut that was the man,
who looked at things with his own
eyes, and was unafraid of his prepos:
sessions.
His gift of presenting the critical or
dramatic moments in the lives of men
and women was supreme. We could
give a hundred examples, and though
St et hen Crane. 321
the sketch we take the liberty of quot-
ing is not by any means the best of its
kind, it is complete in itself, and shows
how neat, how to the point, how sym-
pathetic without being sentimental,
his work was. It is called A Detail,
and is included in the volume of sto-
ries and sketches called The Open
Boat (Heinemann), the title of that re-
markable account of the escape of him-
self and three companions from the
wreck of the steamer Commodore:
The tIny old lady in the black dress
and curious little black bonnet had at
first seemed alarmed at the sound made
by her feet upon the stone pavements.
But later she forgot about it, for she
suddenly came into the tempest of the
Sixth Avenue shopping district, where
from the streams of people and vehi-
cles went up a roar like that from head-
long mountain torrents.
She seemed then like a chip that
catches, recoils, turns and wheels, a
reluctant thing in the clutch of the im-
petuous river. She hesitated, faltered,
debated with herself. Frequently she
seemed about to address people; then
of a sudden she would evidently lose
her courage. Meanwhile the torrent
jostled her, swung her this and that
way.
At last, however, she saw two young
women gazing in at a shop-window.
They were well-dressed girls; they wore
gowns with enormous sleeves that
made them look like full-rigged ships
with all sails set. They seemed to have
plenty of time; they leisurely scanned
the goods in the window. Other peo-
ple had made the tiny old woman much
afraid because obviously they were
speeding to keep such tremendously im-
l~ortant engagements. She went close
to the girls and peered in at the same
window. She watched them furtively
for a time. Then finally she said:
Excuse me!
The girls looked down at this old face
with its two large eyes turned toward
them.
Excuse me, can you tell me where I
can get any work?
For an instant the two girls stared.
Then they seemed about to exchange a
smile, but at the last moment they
checked it. The tiny old ladys eyes were
upon them. She was quaintly serious, si-
lently expectant. She made one mar-
vel that in that face the wrinkles
showed no trace of experience, know-
ledge; they were simply little, soft in-
nocent creases. As for her glance, it
had the trustfulness of ignorance and
the candor of babyhood.
I want to get something to do, be-
cause I need the money, she contin-
ued, since in their astonish-
ment they had not replied
to her first question. Of course
Im not strong and I couldnt do very
much, but I can sew well; and in a
house where there was a good many
men folks I could do all the mending.
Do you know any place where they
would like me to come?
The young women did then exchange
a smile, but it was a subtle, tender
smile, the edge of personal grief.
Well, no, madame, hesitatingly
said one of them at last; I dont think
I know anyone.
A shade passed over the tiny old la-
dys face, a shadow of the wins of dis
appointment.
Dont you? she said, ~rith a little
struggle to be brave in her voice.
Then the girl hastily continued: But
if you will give me your address, I may
find someone, and if I do, I will surely
let you know of it.
The tiny old lady dictated her ad-
dress, bending over to watch the girl
write on a visiting card with a little
silver pencil. Then she said.
I thank you very much. She bowed
to them, smiling, and went on down the
avenue.
As for the two girls, they walked to
the curb and watched this aged figure,
small and frail, in its black town and
curious black bonnet. At last the
crowd, the innumerable wagons, inter-
mingling and changing with uproar
and riot, suddenly engulfed it.
This youth wandered much over the
world in his brief, brilliant life. As
we write his last journey is beginning.
He is being taken to his home in Amer-
lea.
The Academy.
322 Dryasdust.
DRYASDUST.
The question of preserving all pro-
vincial newspapers at the British Mu-
seum suggests certain obvious and un-
comfortable questions. My own life,
like that of many, has been recently a
struggle against the masses of printed
matter which threaten to submerge
any moderate household. They can be
treated by very summary domestic
methods; and one is tempted to won-
der whether the same system might not
be applied to the great public reservoir
for such things. Would the
world be any the worse if
the Eatanswill Gazette passed once
for all out of existence? If my
own opinion were in favor of sum-
mary destruction, I should not venture
to utter it; I might be torn in pieces by
bold antiquaries. The bare contempla-
tion of such a possibility is regarded
as wicked and condemned in the name
of sound scholarship and scientific re-
search. Moreover, I can admit some
force in the case for universal preser-
vation. Dryasdust, though Carlyle
writhed under his dominion, is, after all,
one of the most harmless of human be-
ings. There are few amusements in
which a man can indulge with less in-
jury to his fellow-creatures than the
investigation of the vast rubbish-
heaps and waste lumber mountains
over which his victim plodded with
sonorous groans. If we are willing to
preserve waste spaces for the amuse-
ment of golf-players, we ought not to
grudge an accumulation of waste pa-
per where people of a different taste
may find a recreation, to them equally
fascinating. It is true that they dont
often find much that is of the least in-
terest to others. It may be doubted
whether all the labor bestowed upon
Shakesperian details has made any-
body understand Hamlet or Othello one
bit better than before. Still it has g~v-
en immense pleasure and pride to the
laborers, and it cannot be denied that
here and there some really illuminative
spark has been struck out. Carlyle cer-
tainly succeeded in here and there
eliciting brilliant flashes, and putting
life into thedeadbones. He complained,
not of the preservation of the mate-
rials, but of the totally chaotic and un-
sifted condition in which they had been
left.
Nobody doubts, indeed, that the old-
er records should be religiously pre-
served. The more ambitious historian
will tell us that they enable him to dis-
cover facts of primary importance for
the right understanding of political in-
stitutions; and will add that our ances-
tors would have been incapable of fore-
seeing which were the really signifi-
cant documents. As we, however,
much wiser, are yet not quite infalli-
ble, we must keep everything, that we
may be sure of not destroying just
what our posterity will desire. Some
things are to us so familiar to one gen-
eration that the necessity of recording
them does not suggest itself and yet a
following generation may see that they
were of critical importance. The argu-
inent may be fully admitted with one
reservation. Historians seem at times
to confuse the two very different prop-
ositions. Because any fact may be
important, they speak as if every fact
must be interesting. A single obser-
vation may clear up a scientific diffi-
culty. Millions of years ago an in-
sect happened to be stuck in a clod of
earth. Its mortal remains when dug
tip may give a decisive solution of some
problem of evolution. The one speci-
men was priceless. But if we after-
wards found a whole stratum com-
posed of similar remains they might
Dryasdust. 323
tell us nothing more. A single locust
~would be as instructive as a countless
swarm. So a single ancient document
found in a mummy may reveal some-
Thing of deep interest as to the remot-
~est civilization. If similar documents
were discovered their value would de-
~cline in a rapidly accelerating ratio.
ihey would only repeat what we knew
-already. The enormous majority of
-ascertainable facts become after all
worthless, and merely correspond to
repetitions for the millionth time of
perfectly familiar truths. Historians
sometimes seem to overlook this very
Qbvious distinction, and act like the
directors of a museum who, instead of
~collecting specimens of all known va-
rieties, should collect all the specimens
~f any given variety. They lose the
sense of proportion and become infect-
~d with a mania for communicating
facts simply as facts. Historians of
an earlier period were superficial and
ilid not care to burrow into original
sources. Their hasty surveys required
to be compared with facts; but one re-
sult seems to be a superstitious regard
for even irrelevant details, if they rest
upon first-hand evidence.
This tendency may no doubt cor-
respond to a necessary stage and be at
worst the exaggeration of a sound
principle. But it suggests one other
remark. The danger of losing really
important information seems to be
greatly exaggerated. The important
facts are the common facts; the facts
which are illustrated in innumerable
relations of life. Dip anywhere into
the great ocean of history and you will
bring up plenty of specimens. What
is required is less to add to the accu-
mulated knowledge than to arrange
the knowledge already acquired in the
significant order. Considering the vast
masses of records of every kind which
are sure of preservation, it is hard to
suppose that there is any really impor-
tant historical research which will be
in want of ample illustration. It is
highly probable no doubt that posterity
may discover the interest of some pro-
cesses to which we pay little atten-
tion. The symptoms of great changes
may be still obscure; but, though we
may not understand their significance,
they can hardly fail to be on record.
The great difficulty of the coming phi-
losophers who unravel the play of the
political forces will not be to get ma-
terials, but to disengage the really im-
portant facts from the masses of ir-
relevant matter in which they are im-
bedded. The historian of this century
is pretty certain to shudder when lie
contemplates the vast masses of ma-
terial. If he thinks it necessary to
know all the evidence for any one se-
mies of eventsto know, as a specialist
is supposed to know, all that has been
said upon his own familiar province of
inquiryhe will have to devote a life-
lime to getting up the history of a
year. But, whatever his lwovince, I
cannot imagine that he will ever find
reason to complain of any deficiency
of essential materials.
I do not propose to simplify the la-
hors of posterity by suppressing any-
thing. We might, no doubt, make mis-
takes, and we may leave the future
philosopher to find his own methods of
dealing with a problem daily becoming
more difficult. My only moral is of a
different kind. The demand for the
preservation of the material should be
accompanied by a demand for its or-
ganization. Our huge storehouses should
be arranged with a view to their acces-
sibility. Carlyle complains piteously
that Dryasdust had rarely even troub-
led himself to make an index. The index
maker is, I hope, becoming more ac-
tive. The plan for an extensive index
of scientific papers is a natural corol-
lary from the demand for preserving
vast accumulations of material. The
Dictionary of National Biography,
which has a certain personal
324 The Dead.
interest to me, is already a
kind of index to British his-
tory; but its value would be greatly in-
creased if an index were added to it,
virtually classifying its contents ac-
cording to events as well as according
to names, to enable one to find out not
only what a given man has done, but
who has been the doer of a given thing.
The index-maker, though he deserves
the hearty blessing of all readers, rep-
resents the lowest stage of a whole
class of work daily becoming more im-
portant. There are many manuals and
monograms useful either as guides to
the student of some special subject or
as supplying the specialist with such
knowledge as he requires of subjects
more or less conterminous with his
own. But the need for such work ste~ d-
ily increases. When one thinks of the
The Speaker.
stream daily setting into the British
Museum and of the horror raised by
any suggestion that any limit should
be set to it, one may be pardoned for
thinking more of the correlative neces-
sity. Our catalogues and indexes and
calendars have been immensely im-
1~roved of late years, and at least made
paths through the tangled wilderness.
Still my heart sometimes sinks at the
thoughts of the vast trouble that we
are bequeathing to our children; I be-
gin to think more kindly of the Sultan
Omar, and to wonder whether there a
audi cious incendiary might not be a
benefactor in disguise. The wickedness
of such thoughts needs no (lemonstra-
lion; and the effectual way of suppress-
ing them is to promote any system
which can deal effectually with the
powers of chaos and darkness.
Leslie stephen.
THE DEAD.
The dead abide with us! Thou~.h stark and cold
Earth seems to grip them, they are with us still
They have forged our chains of being for good or ill,
And their invisible hands these hands yet hold.
Our perishable bodies are the mould
In which their strong imperishable will
Mortalitys deep yearning to fulfil
liath grown incorporate through dim time untold.
Vibrations infinite of life in death,
As a stars travelling li~ht survives its star!
So may we hold our lives that when we are
The fate of those who then will draw their breath,
They shall not drag us to their judgment bar,
And curse the heritage which we bequeath.
Mathilde Blind.
The Living Age. Supplement.
AUGUST 4, ~9OO.
READINGS FROM NEW BOOKS.
LEGATION STREET IN PEKING.*
At the close of the war in 1860, the
humiliated government, accepting the
presence of foreign envoys at Peking
as a necessary evil, offered the Summer
lIalace inclosure for a great diplomatic
compound, and then a tract of land im-
mediately outside the west wall for a
foreign concession. Sir Harry Parkes
led in emphatically repudiating these
offers, and the Liang-Kung fu (palace
of the Duke of Liang) was bought for
a British legation, Duke Tsins fu be-
coming the French legation. A fu al-
ways has green tiled roofs, stone lions
before the eve-bayed entrance gate,
and four courts and pavilions beyond,
and a fu is assigned to each imperial
son outside of the succession. Imperial
descendants move down one degree in
rank with each generation and when
the third descendant has reached the
level of the people again, the fu reverts
to the crown. The occupants of fus
fi~ay have eunuchs attached to their es-
tablishments, and to the remotest gen-
eration they may wear the yellow gir-
dle of imperial descent. There have
been yellow-belted teachers, and even
domestic servants in forei~n employ,
starvelings of imperial ancestry who
took their few dollars with plebeian
gratitude.
All the legations are in that quarter
of the Tartar city where Mongols, Ti-
* From China, The Long-Lived Empire. By
Eliza R. Scidrnore. CopyrIght, 1899-1900. The
Century Go. Price $2.50.
betans, Koreans, and other tribute-bear-
ing visitors were always lodged, and
where the Mongols still have a street
to themselves. The French, German,
Japanese, Spanish, and Italian lega-
tions, the club, the hotel, the bank, and
the two foreign stores are grouped
closely together, facing and touching
one another half-way down Legation
Street; and, across a once splendid
bridge, the American and Russian le-
gations face, and the British legation,
adjoining, stretches along an infra-
grant canal, or open sewer, that drains
away from lakes in the palace grounds.
The British is the largest establish-
ment, the five-acre compound always
sheltering from forty to fifty British
souls or mouths in the sordid Chi-
nese expression. All these European
legations and the Japanese legation
have their corps of student-interpre-
ters, university graduates sent out for
two years study of the Chinese written
and spoken language, the Pekingese or
niandarian court dialect used by the
official class throughout the empire. At
the completion of their prescribed
course under their ministers charge,
they are drafted to the consulates, are
steadily promoted in line o~ seniority,
and retire on pensions after twenty-five
years service.
All these official European residences
are maintained on a scale of consider-
able splendor, and the sudden trans-
fers from the noisome streets to the
326 Leg ation Street in Peking.
beautiful parks and garden compounds,
the drawing-rooms and ball-rooms,
with their brilliant companies living
and amusing themselves exactly as in
Europe, are among the greatest con-
trasts and surprises of Peking. The
picked diplomats of all Europe are sent
to Peking, lodged sumptuously, paid
high salaries, and sustained by the cer-
tainty of promotions and rewards af-
ter a useful term at Pekingall but
the American minister, who is crowded
in small rented premises, is paid about
a fourth as much as the other envoys,
and, coming untrained to his career,
has the cheerful certainty of being put
out of office as soon as he has learned
his business and another President is
elected, his stay in Peking on a mea-
gre salary, a sufficient incident in itself,
leading to nothing further officially.
The United States does not maintain
student-interpreters at Peking, and the
legation has so far drafted its inter-
lDreters from the mission boards.
Such interpreters, having usually
given most attention to the local di-
alects of the people, must then acquire
the elaborate and specialized idioms of
the official class. Dr. Peter Parker and
the great Wells Williams are the only
sinologues, or Chinese scholars, who
have lent lustre to the roll of American
diplomats serving in China.
The diplomats in exile lead a narrow,
busy life among themselves, occupied
with their social amusements and
feuds, often well satisfied with Peking
after their first months disgust, re-
sentment and homesickness, and even
becoming sensitive to any criticism or
disparagement of the place. They have
their club, the tennis-courts of which
are flooded and roofed over as a skat-
ing-rink, their spring and autumn ra-
ces at a track beyond the walls, fre-
quent garden parties and picnic teas
in the open seasons, and a busy round
of state dinners and balls all winter.
For the nearly forty years that the
fine flowers of European diplomacy~
have been transplanted to Peking, they
have been content to wallow along this~
filthy Legation street, breathing its~
dust, sickened with its mud and stench-
es, the highway before their doors a
general sewer and dumping-ground for
offensive refuse of every kind. The
street is all gutter save where there are
fragmentary attempts at a raised mud-
bank footwalk beside the house walls,
for use when the cartway between is.
too deep a mud-slough. We are here
on sufferance, under protest, you
know, say the meek and lowly diplo-
mats. We must not offend Chinese
prejudices. Moreover, all the lega-
tions would not subscribe to an at-
tempted improvement fund, nor all.
unite in demanding that the Chinese
should clean, light, pave, and drain Le-
gation Street. That jealousy of the
great Powers so ironically termed the
Concert of Europe, is as much to-
blame for the sanitary situation of Pe-
king as for affairs in Crete and Ar-
menia.
The whole stay of the envoys at Pe-
king has been a long story of trial and
finitless effort, of rebuff and covert in-
sults. It was unfortunate th.at their
residence began without the refugee
Emperor being forced to come down.
from Jehol and receive them with hon-
ors and due courtesy, and that the long
legency of the two secluded empresses.
continued the evasion of personal au-
diences, since precedent and custom
soon crystallize in fixed laws to the
Chinese. In the first years of their dis-
grace and defeat, the officials were civ-
ii and courteous, gracious and kindly~
in their intercourse with diplomats: but
in a few years they recovered their
aplomb, found their lost face, and be-.
came as insolent, arrogant, contemptu-
ous, and overbearing as they had been
before the war, and have continued to~
be, . save in other brief moments of hu-
miliation and defeat, ever since.
327
Legation Street in Peking.
The audience question was just reach-
ing the hopeful and enlightened stage
when the coup detat unsettled things.
There have been no social relations be-
tween the diplomatic corps and the
court circle, no meeting or mingling
save for the formal presentation of cre-
dentials, the dreary New Years audi-
ences in the palace inclosure, the la-
dies audience in 1898, and the formal
exchange of visits with the members
of the Board of the Tsungli Yamun,
and, in general, none know less of Chi-
nese character and life than those offi-
(ially acquainted with the Emperor of
China. No Chinese official dares main-
tain intimate social relations with the
legations, even those who have appre-
ciated and keenly enjoyed the social
life and official hospitalities of London,
Paris, Tokio, and Washington, relaps-
ing into strange conservatism and
churlishness, the usual contemptuous
attitude of the Manchu officials, when
they return to Peking. Even then they
are denounced to the throne for inti-
macy with foreigners, black-balled
nnd cold-shouldered at their clubs, and
persecuted into retirement by jealous
ones, who consider association with
foreigners a sure sign of disloyalty.
Even the needy literati, who teach Chi-
nese at the different legations, would
scorn to recognize their foreign pupils
on the street or in the presence of any
other Chinese, and the contempt of
grandees and petty button-folk as they
pass one on the streets of Peking is
something to remember in ones hour
of pride.
During recent years, Peking has been
such a hot-bed of intrigue, secret con-
ventions, and concession-seeking, of
high-handed and underhanded pro-
ceedings, that a diplomats life has not
been a happy one, nor his position a
sinecure. With coup d6tats before
breakfast, executions over night, riot-
ing soldiers at the railway-station,
mobs stoning legation carts and chairs
at will, and telegraphic communication
broken whenever the soldiers could
reach the wires, the legations called for
guards of their own marines in the
autumn of 1898. Thirty or forty guards
were sent to different European lega-
tions, but the Russian legation re-
quired seventy men-at-arms and Cos-
sacks to protect it. Last to arrive were
nine marines to defend the modest
premises rented to the great republic
of the United States of America, the
want of actual roof-area to shelter
more guards obliging the American
minister to ask that the other marines
should remain at Tientsin. eighty miles
away. By renting a Chinese house~
eighteen marines were finally quartered
near the legation. This would have
been farcical and laughable, humiliat-
ing to American pride only, if there
had not been real danger and
need for guards for the lit-
tie community of foreign diplo-
mats, shut like rats in a trap in a doub-
le-walled city of an estimated million
three hundred thousand fanatic, f or-
eign-hating Chinese, with a more hos-
tile and lawless army of sixty thousand
vicious Chinese soldiers without the
walls and scattered over the country
toward Tientsin.
* * * * * * ,
Every servant in a foreign establish-
ment in Peking is a spy and informer
of some degree; espionage is a regular
business: and the table-talk, visiting-
list, card-tray, and scrap-basket, with
full accounts of all comings and goings,
sayings and doings of any envoy or
foreigner in Peking, are regularly of-
fered for purchase by recognized pur-
veyors of such news. One often catches
a glimpse of concentrated attention
on the face of the turbaned servants
standing behind dining-room chairs,
that convinces one of this feature of
capital life. Diplomatic secrets are fair-
ly impossible in such an atmosphere.
Every secret convention and conces
328 In the Day of Terror.
sion is soon blazoned abroad. Every
word the British minister uttered at
the Tsung-li Yamun was reported to
the Russian legation with almost elec-
tric promptness, until the envoy threat-
ened to suspend negotiations and with-
draw. Wily concessionaries know each
night where their rivals are dining and
what they have said; whether any
piece of written paper has passed, and
what has gone on at each legation in
Peking and each consulate at Tientsin.
Every legation keyhole, crack, and
chink has its eye and ear at critical
times, and by a multiplication in fin-
agination one arrives at an idea of
what the palace may be like.
IN THE DAY OF TERROR.*
One memorable night during that
same autumn season our village was
startled by a fearful cry. Les pa-
triotes! Les patriotes! and Libert~I
rang through the streets and set the
echoes trembling. The tramp of many
feet and the shouts of frenzied voices
filled the air. Torches flashed, display-
ing loathsome and angry faces; and
people awoke from their peaceful slum-
her to know that for them the day of
terror was come. The wild multitudes
bore down upon noble dwellings, seized
and sacked all that fell in their way.
It was as if a flood of vultures had
swooped upon our innocent village.
The Chevalier de la Br~te had been
sitting at his oriel window, the one
beneath the gray gable yonder. His
eyes had found no sleep that night,
and he was steeped in a strange, fear-
ful reverie when the cry roused him.
He leaned out to listen, and immediate-
ly a horrible sight rose before his eyes.
The seigniory was surrounded by a fu-
rious mob, inhuman yells were threat-
ening it, a black cloud of smoke curled
round its base and enveloped it. Now
it burst into scarlet flames, rising high-
er and higher, and the noble edifice
towered white and terrified above the
* From Tales of an Old Chateau. By Mar-
guerite Bouvet. Copyright 1899 by A. c.
Mc~Y1urg & Co. Price $1.25.
ghastly spectacle. The south and east
walls were soon ablaze. One casement
after another burst open, emitting a
flood of fire, and the vandals had gath-
ered around it to witness with fiendish
glee the birth of their holocaust to free-
dom.
The Chevalier looked aghast, but only
for the hundredth part of a second.
Quick he leaped from his chairby
what miracle he found strength heaven
alone knowsand rushed out of his
dwelling. The next instant old Jacques
was beside him.
In Gods name, monsieur, whither?
he cried, laying hold of his master.
Stay me not, but do thou follow me.
A woman and a child are at the farther-
most window of the north wing, and
beckoning here for help. Dost thou
hear?
His eyes were luminous with a sud-
den rush of life. His every nerve qtxlv-
ered and his lips were set, as he made
his perilous way to the one unattacked
angle of the chateau.
Jacques, meanwhile, beguiled some
half-drunken ~tragglers out of his path
with promises of copious draughts of
something better than the scorched
blood of aristocrats.
When the Chevalier reached tile spot,
the womans face had disappeared
from the window, but the childs golden
In the Day of Terror. 329
head was resting upon the stone mul-
lion, its white lids opening and droop-
ing by turns between sleep and wonder,
its cheeks and brow tinted a roseate
hue with the reflection caught from the
burning midnight sky. The height was
steep. There was no stepping-stone or
foothold in the wall. What then? The
Chevalier cast about him almost in
despair. Suddenly he caught sight of
a sturdy vine that sprang from the foot
of a neighboring tower. It had been
growing higher and higher, even to the
embrasure of the fatal window, thrust-
ing its wiry tentacles deeper and deeper
into the stone and wood for centuries.
Its trunk was like a goodly tree. Its
branches knotted and intertwined like
a tangled net of iron. He gripped it
with his slender fingers, and essayed
its strength. It yielded not. Then,
with heaven-born power, he swung
himself aloft, and rose, clutching his
way among the green foliage as fear-
lessly and surely as upon the stoutest
ladder. In a moment more he had
reached the casement and gently lifted
the child upon his shoulder. Her soft
arms were wound about his neck, she
cooed and gurgled in contentment at
finding herself in the embrace of a
protector. Lightly as he had mounted
he descended with his tender burden,
and when he reached the earth once
more, old Jacques was there waiting
to bear them both away.
The old vine had yearly been growing
stronger, and the Chevalier had been
wasting day by day, that, through the
inscrutable ways of Providence this
thing might be accomplished.
At daybreak the seigniory was in
ruins, and Monsieur du Marais and his
family had been captured and made
prisoners. None but the mother knew
that the little one lay at that hour
asleep beneath the Chevaliers humbler
roof.
And new the ruffians were satiated
of their ghoulish revelry for a time,
LIVING AGE. VOL. VIII. 418
and sought no further mischief to do
in the name of sweet liberty. Yet we
were in a very net of fretfulness the
while, not knowing who might be pin-
ioned next.
But the child Madeleine, unconsciona
of all the strife, dwelt with the Cheva-
lier. Her inquiries and perplexities
concerning the great change that hai
so suddenly come into her young life
were answered and soothed with words
but little short of a parents tenderness.
Between her and the good Chevalier
there sprang, like a flower in the night,
the sympathy that comes of a common
heart-grief. Out of that sympathy
there grew a still more beauteous flow-
er, the love betwixt a little child and a
noble man, than which there is nothing
purer or more sacred.
Some days later the vanguards ol~
public safety, once more athirst for the
blood of innocence with which to lave
their own guilt, betook themselves to
the precincts of Les Tourelles. There
were, perhaps, not more than a dozen
of them, but these were among the
most rabid. They scaled the walls and
would have broken into the little chalet,
even as a wolf might into a sheepfold,
if some invisible hand had not stayed
them. I have already told you how
the very air of that kindly dwelling
breathed of peace and piety. I think
that even those crazed, misguided
wretches must have felt something of
it in their wicked hearts. For, ere
they had gone many steps they halted
in their mad pursuit, arrested by a
sight that would have melted a heart
of bronze.
In the dusk of early evening a little
group knelt around an alta~ in a quiet
chamberthe child, her baby hands
clasped and her eyes turned heaven-
ward; on one side of her the young
Chevalier, with a look of earnest en-
treaty on his delicate, saintly counte-
nance, and on the other side old Jacques,
with silvery head bowed in prayer.
330 In the Day of Terror.
Thus they had gathered at the close of
each day to beseech the grace of heav-
en for the safety of their beloved ones.
They rose as the men entered the room,
and the little one clung to the Chevalier
as she met the grim stare of the in-
vaders.
What manner of game have we
here ? cried one of the leaders in a
surly voice; but he laid not hand upon
-any one. He seemed to shrink like a
snail within its shell as the Chevalier
-de la Br~te turned upon him.
But poor game, indeed, responded
he, for such as you, who value your
prey according to the feathers of the
victims. We are but humble people
with just this roof over our heads, and
no power on earth save that which God
gives us to succor one another.
Ha, ha, thou art a fine! a fine! I
know thee by thy white hands and thy
sleek tongue! shouted several angry
voices.
A fine, if thou wilt have it so, re-
joined the Chevalier; we are not here
to deny you. But think not that we
shrink from paying the penalty of be
ing born with an escutcheon. Noblesse
oblige.
Art thou not, then, afraid of death?
asked the Jacobin, marvelling at his se-
renity.
Wherefore should we fear? Behold
these three lives. This, and he laid
his hand on the fair head at his side,
hath scarce had time to learn the full
value of it. And yonder gray head hath
well-nigh run its course. Mine, hang-
ing by so slender a thread, is hardly
worth the living. Hast thou not
thought, man, that to souls free from
perjury death is bnt the gateway to a
brighter and sinless world? It comea
to us all, soon or late. And may thoci
and thy fellows meet it as calmly when
your own hour is near. We were but
this moment commending our souls to
God, and are prepared. Little one, he
said, bending over to her, thou wilt
follow me gladly to Paradise, wilt thou
not?
The dhild nestled to him and covered
his face with caresses.
Thou art my La Br~te; I will go
with thee everywhere, she said, not
comprehending the meaning of his
words.
His spiritual strength at length
yielded to his bodily weakness. He
fell into his chair. The light of the
half-burnt tapers shed a flickering glow
upon the frail reclining figure, with its
white transparent face, and upon the
rosy healthful child bending over him
and still holding him close. There fell
a deep silence for an instant. Then
a stifled sob from the heart of old
Jacques broke it.
To the cart with them! cried one of
the hardened wretches.
Hold thy tongue, thou infernal!
commanded the chief among them. This
man, who had been a leader in so many
brutal deeds, felt a cold pressure about
his heart. For one short second a
gleam of celestial light penetrated his
soul, and he was moved to human com-
passion.
Turn your ways from this place,
he said; it is the abode of a saint. And
the wrath of heaven be upon us if but
a hair of his head perish!
And they departed in silence from the
home of the Chevalier.
The Smooth Bore.
THE SMOOTH BORE.*
Josiah served in one or another of
the Vermont regiments until the end
of the war, and was retired from the
service with the rank of captain. He
bought a right of land under a Vermont
charter in the then almost uninhabited
township of Danvis, and again began
pioneer life in the heart of the wilder-
ness.
Again the quick resonant strokes of
his axe were echoed from side to side
of a widening clearing. He rejoiced in
the conquest of the forest giants, yen-
crable patriarchs, concerning whose
fate he felt no sentimental emotion. He
let a flood of sunlight down upon fresh
acres of virgin soil, and out of their
roughness moulded grainfield and
meadow. He reared the log walls of a
new home, soon made truly a home by
the presence of his wife.
Josiah was again an owner of oxen,
also of cows and a horse, and a flock
of long-legged, bare-bellied sheep that
ranged the woods as untamed as deer
except when fear of wolves and bears
became more terrible than fear of man,
or deep snow and starvation made
shed, fold, and fodder more desirable
than freedom. The sheep and the young
cattle were turned out to range the
budding and blossoming woods, and
their owner was out one day with his
rifle to look after their welfare, when
he heard the scared bleating of the
flock, mingled with the spasmodic jan-
gle of the leaders bell. As they came
tearing down the mountain path, close
upon the heels of the hindermost, the
cause of their flight, a gaunt she-bear,
galloped at top speed, her faded, rag-
ged coat fluttering like the tatters of a
beggar. The sheep swerved aside to pass
* From A Danvis Pioneer. By Rowland E.
Robinson. Copyright, 1900, by Houghton, Muffin
& Go. Price $1.25.
Josiah when they saw him, but she
held straight on, and when he fired,
inflicting a slight wound in her head,
she charged furiously upon him. He
swung the gun aloft and brought it
down with all his might. By good luck
that he was truly thankful for he
struck the beast a blow on the skull
that checked her onslaught. Another
brought her down quite stunned, so
that he had no trouble to dispatch her,
but it was the last service of the rifle.
The barrel was bent, the stock broken
past mending, so that it was only a
question of a new gun of some sort.
Arguing the question with himself,
his wife the audience, he said: If I
got tu be sech a blunderin ol numb-
skull I cant git a bead on a bears
head three rod off, I better git me su -
thin I can shoot buckshot ina ol
Queens arm or a pateraro, mebby. By
the Lord Harry, she want three rod,
an a-comm stret at me! But she was
a-bobbin up an down, ju~ loke a saw-
mill gate. It dont signify, though. Id
ort tu ha fetched her. Fact ont is, I
guess I cant shoot a rifle no more
dont practyce none. Guess Ill giL me
a smooth-boreitll be handy for pig-
ins, an shoot a ball well nough for
what bear an deer an varmints I run
on tu naowerdays. If the was any
sech thing as fixin up ol Sartin Death
I wouldnt think o nothin else, but
shes past prayin for, he sighed rue-
fully, regarding the bent barrel, the
broken lock, and splintered stock.
The result was that after fully set-
ting forth the case of each weapon, he
made a pilgrimage to the shop of
Thomas Hill in Charlotte, the most fa-
mous gunsmith of the region; and after
long consultation with that cunning
craftsman, he ordered the building of
a sixteen-gauge smooth-bore, with four-
331
832
foot barrel, brass mountings, curled
maple stock of rifle pattern, with patch
box. He awaited the appointed time
of completion with the degree of pa-
tience that usually attends the gun lov-
er while he waits possession of a new
weapon, and, knowing the value of a
craftsmans promise, added a weeks
grace thereto.
Then he haltered the two-year-old
heifer that was to be the price, trade
being chiefly conducted by barter, and
set forth on foot, leading the heifer.
The gun proved to be all that was
j)romised and more than was expected.
It was a beauty, according to the
fashion of the day; it made a target al-
most as good as a rifle at twenty rods,
and patterns with both coarse and fine
shot that were all that could be desired.
Josiah Hill was pleased enough with
the gun to give it ungrudged praise,
and proud to have so skilful and hon-
est a workman as its maker for a name-
sake. So treading more lightly with
this easiest of burdens on his shoulder,
he set forth on his homeward journey,
now making a target of a white patch
on a beech trunk, now of an unwary
crow, now of a pigeon just arrived
from so far south that it had green wild
grapes in its crop, while in Danvis
woods the vines were but just in bloom.
He was at the beginning of the last
mile, when he brought down one of
these travellers from afar, and debat-
ing a moment whether he should re-
load with shot or ball, decided on the
latter, so that he might, as soon as he
reached home, show Ruby how well the
tiew smooth-bore could fill the place
of the rifle. As he was returning the
ramrod to its pipes, his roving eyes
caught the movement of some animal
where the next turn of the road closed
the forest vista. His first thoughts
were that it was a deer, and that it
was out of season. Then he saw that,
though it was of the color, it was not
ot the form of a deer. It was a panther
sneaking along at a loose-jointed, cat-
like trot, halting now and then to look
backward with intent, alert eagerness;
then resuming its slouching advance.
Josiah brought the gun to his shoul-
der, but could not find a certain aim at
the distance, though that was not more
than twenty rods. So he waited, with
his head a little raised and gun muzzle
lowered, for the animal to come within
closer range. At fifteen rods it halted
and looked backward again, and then
as Josiah aimed at the curved side just
behind the shoulder, it sprang lightly
to the roadside, faced about, and swift-
ly climbed the trunk of a great maple
to the first large limb that stretched
out above the road, upon which it
crouched, eagerly watching in the di-
rection from which it had come.
~~A-layin for suthinone o my idgit
yerlins mebby, Josiah whispered to
himself, the eye and aim following
every movement, only diverted for an
occasional quick glance down the road.
The last of these revealed a glimpse of
a checkered blue and white sunbonnet
and the flutter of a brown homespun
gown, and then Ruby appeared in full
view, picking her way along the edge
of a muddy road, not thirty yards be-
yond the tree where the panther
crouched, watching her with cruel ea-
ger eyesears pricked, the end of the
tail twitching nervously, and hinder
paws nestling under the belly for the
leap.
Ruby! Ruby! Stand still where you
be, for Gods sake ! he cried out in a
sharp, strained voica that compelled
her to stand stock still before she com-
prehended whose it was or whence it
came.
The panther turned the glare of its
yellow eyes full upon him at the sound;
the long barrel trembled a little as it
was brought to an aim, then became
steady as a rock under the strain of
the, tense muscle, and obedient to the
flash of priming spat out its shaft of
The Smooth Bore.
Books and Authors. 333
fire. A yell of pain and rage shot
through the boom of the report and
echo as the panther, pierced through
the heart, lurched aimlessly from its
perch and came down a-sprawl and
half-lifeless midway between Josiah
and his wife.
Still calm and collected, he began re-
loading as he stepped forward a pace,
closely watching the great cat blindly
liting and clawing the earth, and
writhing and rebounding in all the
contortions of feline death throes. The
last snarling gasp went out, and the
muscular limbs stiffened, quivered and
telaxed, but he did not go nearer the
motionless tawny form until his piece
was reloaded. Then, with thumb on
the cock and finger on the trigger he
advanced and stirred it with his foot.
Not a muscle gave a responsive twitch,
and he went over to Ruby, sitting in a
dumb gaze, clutching the leaves with
rigid hands, never moving until, when
she saw her husband so near the ter-
rible beast, she made an involuntary
warning gesture.
Thank the good Lord, Ruby! he
cried, all of a tremble now, and his
voice shaking as he knelt down beside
her; and she, with her head on his
shoulder, fell to weeping.
I do know what made me, but I
consaited youd be a-coming; an I was
a-comm aout tu meet you.~~
An I was a-comm jest in the nick
o time, an blessed be this gun, for she
saved ye. Well call her Deliverance.
Ju look what a beauty she be! There
dont ye cry ontu hersalty tearsll rust
her.
BOOKS AND AUTHORS.
M. Israel Levi of Paris is preparing
an edition of all the known fragments
of the Hebrew Ecciesiasticus. Alto-~
gether, considerably more than half
the text has now been recovered.
The Alpine Journal for May printed
a number of letters by Mr. Ruskin,
written years ago, when he was an en-
thusiastic member of the Alpine Club.
Among unpublished manuscripts which
Mr. Ruskin left were portions of the
lives of Reynolds and Turner, which he
intended to write.
The late Mr. Andrew W. Tuers col-
lection of childrens books of the sev-
enteenth, eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, and his series of horn-books,
which The Athena~um pronounced the
largest and most interesting collection
of childrens books which had ever ap-
peared in a sale-room, was sold at Lon-
don last month. The horn-books were
chiefly of the eighteenth century.
The Rev. J. M. Rodwell, who died
recently at the age of ninety-five, was
a distinguished Orientalist. He trans-
lated the Koran forty years ago, and
he also published translations of the
Book of Job and of Isaiah.
Will Carleton, Josh Billings, Eugene
Field, Bret Harte and Rudyard Kip-
ling are favorite poets, one guesses,
with Mr. Holman F. Day, whose vol-
nine of verses Small, Maynard & Coin-
pany publish under the title Up im
Maine. These Stories of Yankee
Life, as their author calls them, con-
tain some shrewd bits of practical wis
334 Books and Authors.
horn along with some clever character-
drawing. The shiftless Eph, who kept
three dogs, i~ particularly well hit off.
One of the most fascinating of the
Nugget series, for which Fords,
Howard & Hulbert are to be thanked,
is the latest, Quaint Nuggets, which
consists of quotations from Elizabethan
sources. The compiler, Eveline Warner
Brainerd, has been particularly happy
in her choice of selections from Thomas
Fuller, and the reader would gladly
have a bookful of just such alone. But
as Hall, Selden, Herbert and Walton
do not need commendation at this day,
it suffices to say that the entire volume
is delightful.
The second volume of Prof. Elisha
Grays much-appreciated popular
science series, Natures Miracles,
proves to be even more in-
teresting than its predecessor.
The sub-title, Energy and Vibra-
tion, will not give to the average read-
er any idea of the wide range of sub-
jects dealt with, from noise and mu-
sic to phosphorescence and shadow,
heat rays and high explosives. The
last part of the book, which treats of
such warlike matters as firing a shot
will be found timely and up-to-date.
There is a brightness and flexibility in
the use of illustrations which gives this
series of familiar talks an uncommon
fitness for the work for which it is de-
signed. Fords, Howard & Hulbert.
Little books about great men are sel-
dom so satisfactory as is Arthur
Waughs study of Robert Browning, in
the series of Westminster Biograph-
ies of which Small, Maynard & Co.
are the American publishers. To
present in one hundred and fifty
small pages an outline of the events of
a long life, and at the same time to
trace the growth of a poets powers
t~nd reputation was a difficult task, but
it has been admirably accomplished.
The criticism of Brownings work, es-
pecially in its relation to that of his
contemporaries, is discriminating and
sympathetic, while the portrayal of his
personality is unexpectedly vivid. The
book is thoroughly readable, and prom-
ises well for the popularity of the at-
tractive series of which it is the initiaL
volume.
A loyal and daring maiden who dons
a troopers dress in order to warn a
prince of his peril, and a lover whom
her somewhat untrooper-like actions
presently bring into disgrace are the
central figures in Roland Macdonalds
i,ovel, The Sword of the King. The
fact that the tale is a first venture of
I)r. George Macdonalds son will give
it an added interest to many, but there
is only a slight recognizable kinship be-
tween the works of father and son.
This is a romance of adven-
ture, full of incident, exciting,
with a kindly and genial touch.
It is told in a sprightly fashion by the
heroine herself, whose lover is active
in the cause of William of Orange, and
the escapes and misadventures and
complications in which it abounds
make it a decidedly lively tale. The
Century Co.
The spirit of Americanism will be
greatly fostered by acquaintance with
a record of the Saving of Oregon,
which A. C. McClurg & Co. publish. In
Dr. McLoughlin and Old Otegon, by
Eva Emery Dye, a detailed account is
given of the faithful and undaunted
labors of the pioneersmissionaries,
many of themto whom this country
owes the wresting of a great territory
from British encroachments. The two
heroes of this tale, which is both story
and history, are Dr. John McLoughlin,
the governor of the Hudson Bay Com-
pany west of the Rockies, and Dr. Mar-
cus Whitman, the American mission-
Books and Authors. 335
ary, whom even the warnings of
friendly well-wishers, You can never
get the women through, couldnt hold
back from the perilous journey across
a continent. The dealings with each
other of rival or warring races, the
diplomatic feats and the superhuman
struggles of those early days are here
carefully and graphically portrayed.
The Berlin papers report the finding
of a hitherto unknown Humboldt cor-
respondence. The collection is bound
in a thick volume, and contains about
two hundred letters, written in A. von
Humboldts fine crows-foot hand-
writing, full of confidential gossip
concerning the Court and political and
military notabilities, and references to
contemporary scholars. They range
from 1830 to 1840, some having been
written from Berlin and some from
Potsdam.
As each addition to the series of Bea-
con Biographies makes its welcome
appearance, one feels the same lively
interest in the sturdy little chronology
which ushers in the more pretentious
Life with such an engaging sense of
its own self-sufficiency. The latest
subject of biography is Cop~modore
Decatur, and the study, by Cyrus
Townsend Brady, does not lack clear
appreciation of the vividly dramatic
incidents in Decaturs history. As a
sketch, also, of national life in the first
part of the nineteenth century it is ex-
tremely interesting. Small, Maynard
& Co.
Lively doubts as to the actual identity
of that personage who is now figuring
as the Czar of all the Russias will be
likely to beset an imaginative reader of
The Black Terror, by John K. Leys.
It is an ingenious and diverting tale,
whose plot turns upon the spiriting
away of a Russian government official,
one Prince Kropenski, by the Coin
mittee of Public Safety, and his at-
tempted rescue by the hero, who is, of
course, in love with his daughter, the
Princess. The heros sympathieshe
is a young English architectare, how-
ever, with the Nihilists, and he be-
comes curiously involved in one of
their most audacious schemes against
the Czar. The story is an exciting one,
rapid in its action and reaching a con-
clusion quite too good to be true. L.
C. Page & Co.
A reaction against the Omar Khay-
yam cult seems to have set in. Mr. A.
H. Miller, in an English journal, puts
this perplexing question:
What can one make of a poem (or
set of verses) whose supposed author
may have died either in 1090 or 1126,
whose poetical writings were absolute-
ly unknown in the Eastin his native
Persia as well as in Indiauntil the
present century; whose text is so in-
definite that it varies from 632 lines to
2064 lines, and the oldest copy of whose
verses was confessedly written nearly
four centuries after his death? The
most devoted professor of Higher
Criticism would give up such a prob-
lem in absolute despair.
Apropos of the question whether
Dickens is still read, the Bookworm
of The Academy says:
I find among the conventionally ed-
ucated members of the new genera-
tion a large ignorance of Dickens. I
find, moreover, among the educated
members of the elder generation a
marked disinclination to read Dickens
over again. On the other hand, you
have this undoubted demand for Dick-
ens among the class which takes out
books from public libraries. The con-
clusion is obvious. Dickens is read,
but mainly by the people. Your cul-
tured person prefers Thackeray. I
do myself. But I can quite believe
that Dickens, if he is conscious of his
present vogue in England, is quite sat-
isfied with the direction it has taken.
BOOKS OF THE MONTH.
Ulen, Grant: a Memoir. By Edward Person in the House, The. By G. B..
Clodd. Grant Richards. Burgin. Hurst & Blackett.
Bachelors, A Book of. By A. w. Fox, Quaint Nuggets. From Fuller, Hall,.
M. A. Archibald Constable & Co. Selden, Herbert, Walton. Gathered
by Eveline Warner Brainerd.
Battle of Dorking, The New. By Fords, Howard & Hulbert. Price
Grant Richards. $045
Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Dalmatia,
Rambles and Studies in. By Robert
Munro, M. A., M. D., F. R. S. E.
Win. Blackwood & Sons.
Browning, Robert. The Westminster
Biographies. By Arthur Waugh.
Small, Maynard & Co. Price, $0.75.
China: The Long-lived Empire. By E.
R. Scidmore. Th~e Century Co.
Price, $2.50.
Darwinian Armor, More Loose Links
in the. By P. Y. Alexander, M. A.
John Bale.
Hamlets, Some Notable. By Clement
Scott. Greening & Co.
Holy Spirit, The Work of the. By
Abraham Kuyper, D. D., L. L. D.
Translated by Rev. Henri de Vries,
and authorized and approved by the
Author. Funk & Wagnalls Company.
Price, $3.00.
Images of Good and Evil. By Arthur
Symons. Win. Heinemann.
Lexicography, English, The Evolution
of. The Romanes Lecture. By James
A. H. Murray, M. A. Henry Frowde.
Mafeking: A Diary of the Siege. By
Maj. F. D. Baillie. Archibald Con-
stable & Co.
Natures Miracles. Familiar Talks on
Science. Vol. II, Energy, Sound,
Heat, Light and Explosives. By
Elisha Gray, Ph. D., L. L. D. Fords,
Howard & Hulbert. Price $0.60.
No Room to Live. By George Haw.
Introduction by Sir Walter Besant.
Wells Gardner.
River of Pearls, The. A Chinese Ro-
mance. By Ren~ de Pont-Jest. John
Macqueen.
Robert Orange. By John (mver
Hobbes. T. Fisher Unwin.
Russian Empire, The Rise of the. By
Hector H. Munro. Grant Richards.
Sanskrit Literature, A History of. By
Arthur A. Macdonnell. Win. Heine-~
mann.
Son of the State, A. By W. Pett
Ridge. Methuen & Co.
Spendthrift, The. By Francis Dods-
worth. Grant Richards.
Sword of the King, The. By Ronald~
Macdonald. The Century Co. Price,
$1.50.
Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, The Early
Poems of. Edited with critical intro-
duction by John Churton Collins.
Methuen & Co.
Things Seen. By G. W. Steevens. Se-
lected and edited by G. S. Street..
With a Memoir by W. E. Henley..
Win. Blackwood & Sons.
Up in Maine: Stories of Yankee Life
Told in Verse. By Holman F. Day.
Small, Maynard & Ce. Price, $1.00.
Village Notes. By Pamela Tennant..
Win. Heinemann.
Voices in the Night. By Flora Annie
Steel. Win. Heinemann.
War and Labor. By Michael Anitch-
kow. Archibald Constable & Co.
Yangste Valley and Beyond, The. By
Mrs. J. F. Bishop. (Isabella L..
Bird.) John Murray.