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By Juan Valera, author of k*Pepita Ximenez," "Dofta Luz," etc. Town and Country Library. 12mo, paper, 50 cents; cloth, $1.00. 44 There is no doubt at all that 4 Pepita Ximenez' is one of the best stories that have appeared in any country in Europe for the last twenty years."—George Saintsbury, in the A'eir Review. "Valera's 4Dona Luz' has the distinction and purity of style that mark all the writings of that Spanish classicist. The story he has to tell almost gains importance by his exquisite manner of telling it."— New York Evening Post. No. 110.-STORIES IN BLACK AND WHITE. A volume of short stories by Thomas Hardy, W. E. Nob- bis, Mrs. Ouphant, Grant Allen, J. M. Barbie, W. Clabk Rubsell, Mrs. E. Lynn Linton, and James Payn. With 27 illustrations. 12nio, paper, 50 cents; cloth, $1.00. No. 100.-IN THE SUNTIME OF HER YOUTH. By Beatrice Whitby, author of "The Awakening of Mary Fenwick," "Part of the Property," "One Reason Why," etc. 12roo, paper, 50 cents; cloth, SI.00. "The story has a refreshing air of novelty, and the people that figure In it are depicted with a vivacity and subtlety that are very attractive." — Boston Beacon. "Miss Whitby is far above the average novelist."—Xctc York Cota- mercud Advcrhter. No. 108.-A COMEDY OF ELOPEMENT. By Chbistian Reid, author of " Valerie Aylmer," "Morton House," etc. 12mo, paper, 50 cents; cloth, $1.00. For sale by all Booksellers, or will be sent by mail, on receipt of price, by D. APPLETON & CO., Publishers, 1, 3, & 5 Bond Street, New York. THE DIAL a Stmi.JHmttfjlg Journal of ILitrrarg Criticism, Ih'scuasion, ano Information. THE HI A I. {founded in WHO) is published on the 1st anil Kith of each month. Terms of Subscription, S-J.tnt a year in adrance, pottage prepaid in the United Stales, Canada, and Mexico; in other countries comprised in the Postal Union, SO cents o year for erlrn postage must be added. Unless otherwise ordered, subscriptions irill Itegin icilh the current number. Remittances should be by check, or by express or postal order, pat/aMe to THE MAI.. Special Rates to Clubs and for subscriptions with other publications will he sent on application; and Sample Copy on receipt of Jft cents. Advertising Rates furnished on application. All communications should Ite addressed to THE DIAL, So. 24 Adams Street, Chicago. No. 101. MARCH 1, 1893. Vol. XIV. COX'I'KNTS, PASE RICHARD JEFFERIES iPoerni. Newton Marshall Hall 129 THE CULT IN LITERATURE 129 CHRONICLE AND COMMENT 131 IBSEN'S "COMEDY OF LOVE." Hjalmar Hjvrth Boyesen 132 COMMUNICATIONS 134 The Teaching of Literature at the Universities. C. Children's Literature in the Schools. S. W. E. Tennyson as a Creator. John J. Halsey. A Closing Word on Tennyson. Hiram M. Stanley. *' Autograph Confidence Men M Outconfidenced. W. W. A. THE RUINED CITIES OF MASIIONALAND. E. G.J 137 AN OVERGROWN BIOGRAPHY. C. A. L. Richard* 140 NEW GLIMPSES OF A FAMOUS OLD DIARY. Anna B. McMahan 14ii RECENT BOOKS OF POETRY. William Morton Payne 143 Palgrave's Amenophis. — Weir Mitchell's Francis Drake.— Weir Mitchell's The Mother. — Moore's A Book of Day-Dreams. — Egan's Songs and Son- nets.— Roberts's Ave.— Watson's Lachrymal Mus- ii mil.— Watson's Lyric Love.— Caine's Love Songs of English Poets.— Mexican and South American Poems.— White's Deutsche Volkslieder. — The Col- lected Poems of Phillip Bourke Marston.— Landor's Poems, etc. BRIEFS ON NEW BOOKS 14!) Character and genius of French Art.—Sooty sketches of London life and manners.— Among the Southern negroes in the Civil War.—Interpretation of Shelley's Prometheus Unbound. Introductory Studies in Me- diaeval History.— A new edition of a favorite scien- tific work.—A famous German sculptor. BRIEFER MENTION 131 LITERARY NOTES AND NEWS 132 TOPICS IN LEADING PERIODICALS 163 LIST OF NEW BOOKS 134 RICHARD JEFFERIES. 'I wonder hou- they will manage without me."— Field and Hedgerow. The birds will miss him, and the summer breeze That lifts the meadow grass he loved so well, The flying cloud, the modest blooms that dwell In secret nooks, his stately murmuring trees; And all his friends of field and wood, the bees. The cuckoo, and the lark, will chant his knell; For him the pines will lift their mournful swell And join the solemn roar of breaking seas. Perchance the hand of God for him unbars The mysteries divine of life and death; Perchance he walks through endless fields of light: And yet he too must miss, beyond the stars, The April rain, the hedgerows' fragrant breath, The dreamy stillness of the summer night. Newton Marshall Hall. THE CULT IX LITERATURE. The great poets are all dead now, and appear- ances indicate that the twentieth century will begin its course undoininated by any commanding figure bequeathed to it from the literature of the nine- teenth. No Goethe will loom above that new hor- izon as in the early dawn of the present century; no Scott is likely to brighten the morning clouds of the new era with the radiance of his genius. We cannot, of course, make any such predictions with absolute confidence that the future will justify them, for the individual manifestations of genius are as incalculable as are the flashings out of new stars, or the appearance within the solar system of unfamil- iar cometary visitors; but we cannot, on the other hand, set aside the manifest lesson of literary his- tory, the lesson that all great creative periods must end; that, viewing the whole course of thought, such periods are but few and far apart in the annals of mankind. And. however ingeniously theories of environment and ripeness for intellectual activity may explain the creative epochs of the past, no such theory is likely to receive formulation sufficiently precise to make it an accepted organon for the uses of forecast. The creative period of German literature would have ended abruptly with the death of Goethe had not the genius of Heine given it fitful renewal of life for another quarter-century. In France, the modern creative period was clearly over when Hugo died. And in our own literature, it seems almost equally clear that the death of Tennyson has closed the Victorian age of letters, an age prolonged beyond the limits of most such periods of intellectual ex- THE DIAL [March 1, pulsion, and one that, if our assumption be just, has "made a good end." What may be expected to follow the period thus terminated? Whatever the literature to whose his- tory we turn, we receive the same answer. After the creative age comes the age of reflection, the age of interpretation and analysis, of grammat- ical and rhetorical subtleties, of formulations and classifications, of scientific and imitative work. It was so with Greece and Rome, with fifteenth cen- tury Italy, with seventeenth century France and Spain, witli post-Elizabethan England and post- Goethean Germany. That it will be so with the com- ing age, for France and the English-speaking na- tions, is a proposition at least as reasonable as many historical inductions that pass unquestioned. But if we are passing into such an age we need not look upon it altogether with dismay. Those who live in such an age are far from conscious that theirs is a period of decadence. Intellectual activ- ity seems to be heightened rather than depressed. Works of all sorts are produced and find no lack of readers. The Alexandrians thought the •• Argo- nautica " quite as good a poem as the "Odyssey," and the Florentines were doubtless perfectly sin- cere in their admiration of Poliziano. For those whom the Zeitgeist does not deceive, there remain for study and enjoyment the great works of the past, and there are enough of these for the lifelong contentment of any rational soul who finds his way to them. The art of criticism flourishes, but, al- though stiffened into a body of dogmatic precept, often enough goes hand in hand with genuine appre- ciation. It is not true that, to properly enjoy liter- ature, an age must produce literature of its own. If the coming generation of English letters were to prove one of sterility, the wise should have slight cause for regret. It will be a long while before our race outgrows the ideals of Shelley and Words- worth and Tennyson; some of them, it is to be hoped, neither our race, nor mankind, will ever out- grow. Indeed, the prospect of new masterpieces in uninterrupted succession would be rather appall- ing than otherwise. We should despair of catch- ing up, and the works made classical by the infalli- ble test of time would suffer more neglect than they do now. The real interests of culture almost de- mand such breathing-spells as, by a natural law no less beneficent than mysterious, follow upon the periods that have exhausted themselves in giving expression to the struggles of the spirit in its as- cent from •• the sloughs of a low desire." But the critical and reflective age has its dangers, and chief among them is the encouragement it gives to the ascendancy of the cult. The literary cult has two principal forms: it ap- pears as the unintelligent (because unsympathetic) worship of a really great writer, or it takes the shape of laudation, both undue and uneven, of a writer of only secondary importance. In the first case, it converts the object of its adoration into a fetich, worshipping it as such rather than as a liv- ing spiritual force. In the second case, it raises a private altar for the exclusive use of the elect, and develops in its adherents a sort of intellectual prig- gishness, as satisfactory to them as it is amusing to others. A great deal of the modern study of Homer and Dante and Shakespeare illustrates the first form of the literary cult; the second form re- ceives illustration at many hands, the devotees of Browning and Meredith, of Baudelaire and Ver- laine, of Ibsen and Tolstoi, offering a few of the later examples. We have said that the cult of such writers as these takes the shape of a laudation that is both undue and uneven. It is upon the second of these characteristics that stress should principally be laid, for the most astonishing feature of the Browning or the Baudelaire or the Ibsen cult is its deliber- ate neglect of the really great qualities of these men, and the emphasis given the accidental and I inartistic aspects of their work. Nobler poetry than may be found in the work of Browning hardly occurs in English literature, but the work of the Browning societies would not often lead us to sus- pect its existence. Baudelaire touched with a mas- ter hand some of the deepest chords of human feel- ing, but those who magnify his name are apt to fix our attention upon the charnel-house elements of his verse, and almost make us sympathize with the recent suggestion of M. Brunetiere, that the pro- posed statue of the poet should be placed at the mouth of a sewer. Ibsen, in his deeper moods, speaks with an ethical fervor that seems to his readers the very bread of life, but those who sing his praises in the public ear only ask us to admire the trivialities or the morbid features of his analysis of modern society. It is not surprising that a writer like Mr. Frederic Harrison, having, to begin with, but little sense of humor, should allow his indigna- tion at such critical antics to get the better of amuse- ment, and indulge in the following outburst: " Iknow that, in the style of to-day, I ought hardly to venture to speak about poetry unless I am prepared to un- fold the mysterious beauties of some unknown gen- ius who has recently been unearthed by the Chil- dren of Light and Sweetness. I confess I have no such discovery to announce. I prefer to dwell in 1 Gath and to pitch my tents in Ashdod; and I doubt the use of the sling as a weapon in modern war. I decline to go into hyperbolic eccentricities over unknown geniuses, and a single quality or power is not enough to rouse my enthusiasm. It is possible that no master ever painted a buttercup like this one, or the fringe of a robe like that one ; that this poet has a unique subtlety, and that an undefinable music. I am still unconvinced, though the man who cannot see it, we are told, should at once retire to the place where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth." To the first form of the literary cult, the form which attaches itself to a really great name, our at- tention is called by a letter from Friedrich Spiel- hagen, on the Goethe-Schiller cult in Germany, pub- 1893.] 131 THE DIAL lished in a recent number of the New York "Na- tion." The cult in question has been going merrily on for more than half a century, and Herr Spielha- gen tells us, in substance, that it has been fruitful enough in science, but hardly at all in literature. "I consider," he says, "as being two very different things, learned inquiries about the acts of a hero of genius, and the noble, broadening influence and ef- fect of these actions on the life and blood, so to speak, of his country. The most painstaking and ingenious commentaries on the 'Iliad ' and ' Odys- sey' were ind'ted at Alexandria, a whole library was filled with them, and yet Homer's sun set, and not all this flattering learned art could start it on its course again. I fear that much the same thing might be said of our Goethe-Schiller cult. The old text holds good here: 'By their fruits ye shall know them.' Where, I ask, are the fruits in our art and literature which have ripened in the Goethe-Schiller sun? Where do we find in our poetry of to-day Goethe's delicate and sure feeling for the beautiful in form? where his really living in the things which he describes? where Schiller's flights of fancy which wafted him high above the mean and vulgar, 'which enslaves us all'?" The true cult of a great poet is very dif- ferent from the form that is commonly practiced. When the day of that cult dawns, to quote once more from Herr Spielhagen, " it will be understood that —■ always mutatis mutandis ■— one must do as Goethe and Schiller did. Till that day comes, let the disciples of Goethe and Schiller go on spread- ing wider and wider their silent influence. But, while they keep alive the sacred fire, let them have a care not to weaken their cause by crying, ' Lord, Lord.' For nothing is worse than publicly pro- claiming one's self high-priest of the Father in Heaven and then sacrificing to Baal." These words permit of a far wider application than their author gives them, for they indicate the eternal dis- tinction between the true cult and the false in the domain of literature. CHRONICLE AND COMMENT. A writer in the Rivista d'Espaila complains that Spanish literature is practically dead, and that Cas- telar is the only living Spanish writer known outside his own country. From an American standpoint we should say that Galdos and two or three other novelists have a wider reputation (as men of letters) than Caste- lar. The writer goes on to account for the dearth of native Spanish literature by saying that the best minds in Spain expend their talents upon journalism, although not journalists by bent or inclination. This is, of course, quite as true of other countries as of Spain. Journal- ism offers the only means by which a professional writer can make a decent living, and so into journalism he goes, to the dulling of his finer sensibilities and the ulti- mate loss of a public that fancies itself the gainer by the sacrifice. In the particular case of Spain, as " The Bookman" points out, the competition of translations from the French greatly discourages Spanish literature. The French originals cost nothing and translation is cheap. Our own period of literary subservience to an- other country, hardly yet ended, although the Copy- right Act of 1891 probably marks the beginning of the end, puts us in a position to realize the situation of the Spanish author. Two recent actions for libel, one English and one American, have a curious literary interest. The former arose from a criticism, in " The National Observer," of a recently published novel. The novel was written by a woman, and dedicated to her husband with some sort of expression of gratitude for encouragement given by him to her work. Now the critic of the paper in ques- tion, not liking the novel, thought that no one should have encouraged its production, and consequently called the author's husband an "objectionable and foolish per- son." The gentleman thus referred to promptly brought suit against the paper, and a verdict for £100 dam- ages was given the plaintiff. The plea of the defend- ant, that the person who accepts the dedication of a book becomes the legitimate prey of the ravenous critic, found no favor with the jury. The New York "Evening Post " comments upon the affair to the fol- lowing effect: "It will doubtless be a relief to many excellent gentlemen whose names have a way of ap- pearing in the dedications of their friends' volumes of verse, to have it legally settled that they can be laughed at for their good-nature or their vanity only in private." "The Evening Post" itself appeared as defendant in the second of our two cases. About two years ago a New York publisher, who was also a clergyman, began to handle an unauthorized reprint of the " Encyclopaedia Britannica." For this questionable proceeding he was arraigned by the "Evening Post," and accused of " pi- racy " and "theft." It was furthermore affirmed that "theft committed by a Doctor of Divinity was aggra- vated theft." Suit was brought against the paper for 8100,000, that being the plaintiff's estimate of the in- jury done by the charges to his "character as a Chris- tian gentleman." The case came up for trial a week or two ago. It was claimed by the plaintiff "that it was no worse for a minister to steal than any other man," and that profitting by the sale of an unauthorized edition of the "Britannica" was not stealing, anyway, because "the eighth commandment did not cover liter- ary property not protected by statute." The defense of- fered evidence that the term " piracy " was of legitimate application to the publication, without permission, of works copyrighted in other countries, and a number of publishers testified that the terms "rascal " and "rob- ber" were properly used to describe the people who did such things. It took the jury about fifteen minutes to agree upon a verdict for the defendant. The case is an interesting one, as being the first of its kind on rec- ord. The legality of " piracy" has often come before our courts, whose decisions, owing to the defective con- dition of the law prior to 1891, have generally sus- tained the practice. But in the present case the mor- ality of " piracy " was on trial, and it is satisfactory to learn that from this standpoint the practice has been judicially condemned. The number of new publications in Great Britain in 1892 was greater by about five hundred works than in the previous year. The largest numerical increase was in the novels, but the largest proportional increase was in works on the arts and sciences and political economy. After these came novels, voyages, and poetry, each of 132 [March 1, THE DIAL which gained about twenty-five per cent. Theology and medicine .show a slight increase, education a pro- portionally slight decrease, while there was a considera- ble falling off in history and belles-lettres and a large decrease in juvenile and legal works. It is interesting to compare these facts with the, corresponding ones for this country. Here the number of publications for 1892 (including new editions) was only two hundred more than for 1891, an increase of less than four per cent. In the case of fiction there was no appreciable increase. But there was an increase in poetry and the drama of over thirty per cent, and a still greater in- crease in ImxiIcs of travel. A considerable increase is also to 1m? credited the departments of law, political science, history, and medicine. Theology, on the other hand, exhibited a noticeable falling-off, as did also lit- erary history and the department of illustrated books. A committee has just reported to the French Acad- emy in favor of a series of spelling reforms in the next edition of its dictionary. Hyphens are to be abolished in such compounds as eau-de-vie, the apostrophe in such words as entr'aider; foreign words, such as "break" and "spleen," are to be written brec and spline. Latin plurals like errata are to take an "s ". Saur and paon are to become seur and pan; "ph " is to become " f," and in plurals " x " is to be changed to " s." These re- forms, if approved by the Academy, will of course be adopted into the language. It would Ik- a happy thing for the English language if there were some like body to settle authoritatively the disputed questions regard- ing its orthography, and substitute a uniform and con- sistent method for the confusion and inconsistency that now prevail. / IBSEN'S "COMEDY OF LOVE." "The Comedy of Love" is one of the few re- maining plays of Ibsen which have not yet been trans- lated into English. It was the first of his distinctly satirical works, and was published in 1862 when he was thirty-four years old. The Norwegian press received it with a howl of indignant protest; and its author was denounced as a ruthless iconoclast "de- void of ideality." A high authority at the Univer- sity of Christiania declared, when Ibsen applied for a stipend, that the person who had written "Love's Comedy " deserved a stick rather than a stipend. The play was not only "immoral," and "unpoet- ical, as must be every view which is unable to rec- oncile the real to the ideal," but it was pronounced to be " provincial " and '• a pitiful product of liter- ary trifling." This chorus of censure, though it does not rival in coarseness and stupidity the extracts from the London journals on the production of '• Ghosts" (collected by Mr. Bernard Shaw in his "Quintes- sence of Ibsenism " ), is yet significant as sounding the first note of alarm in the Philistine camp at Ib- sen's attacks upon its "ideals." •• The Comedy of Love " is indeed an attack upon the institution of marriage; but, for all that, it is not immoral. It does not, even by inference, recommend license; but as his biographer, Henrik Jaeger (" Henrik Ibsen, a Critical Biography," translated by W. M. Payne ) happily puts it, it "scourges love in love's own name," and holds up an ideal which, by contrast, makes the reality, as we know and see it. repulsive. The situation is briefly this: Mrs. Halm, a lady of good family, has two daughters, Anna and Svan- hild. The former engages herself to a theologi- cal student named Lind, and the latter is loved by a gifted young poet named Falk. Lind, who had, or fancied he had, a heroic strain in him. had as- pired to lead a life of noble renunciation, and. to prove the lofty sincerity of his faith, had resolved to go as a missionary to preach the gospel to the Norwegian emigrants on the American prairies. But now, when he is betrothed, all the cousins and aunts and the whole swarm of female busy-bodies rush in upon him and insist that as an engaged man he has obligations to his fiancee and to society; he has no right to talk of sacrifice and renunciation, which would now also include her. Lind. it must be admitted, is not averse to entertain this view; and after a mere sham resistance, he surrenders all thought of heroism, and applies for a place as teacher in a girls' school. In the case of the department clerk. Styver. and Miss Sjajre, we have the same story, though with modifications. These two have engaged themselves, many years ago, when they were young and ro- mantic; but Mr. Styver has never been able to scrape together enough to marry on. In the mean- while they have grown middle-aged and practical; all the bloom of youthful sentiment has been rubbed off ; every vestige of poetry has vanished from their relation; and the constant theme of their thought and their speech is money — money — money. They need a certain sum in order to enable them to go to housekeeping in a respectable manner; and now they are only concerned about loans, interest, and chattel mortgages. A third instance, and a glaring one, of his trans- lation of the poetry of love into the prose of matri- mony, is the Reverend Mr. Straamand and his wife Maren. The pastor had in his youth been some- thing of a genius,— had played the guitar, com- posed music, and published " Seven Sonnets to My Maren." He had even had the courage to marry this lady (who was "the daughter of a lumber firm ") without the consent of her parents, and had bravely set up housekeeping in a garret, with su- preme disregard of the world's opinion. Presently, however, Mr. Straamand had gotten a ministerial charge and a country parsonage. He had grown comparatively prosperous, and in the course of time had become the father of twelve children. '• with a near prospect of the thirteenth." Through the door of wedlock he and his Maren had plunged into a slough of direst prose, having lost all individual life and surrendered all higher aspirations in the mere effort to provide for their numerous offspring. Like many of the lower animals who have scarcely any conscious life,—who are born, breed, and die.—they have become mere mechanical instruments in the hands of Fate for the propagation of their species. 1893.] 133 THE DIAL It is in order to escape this lot, or anything re- sembling it, that Falk and Svanhild, after having tasted the pure bliss of love's avowal, resolve to separate, rather than face the certainty of being gradually swamped and smothered in the slowly torturing and disillusionizing trivialities of matri- mony. For who manages, amid the cries of teeth- ing children, the monthly rain of bills and duns from butcher and baker and candlestick-maker, to preserve his equanimity of temper, his spiritual freedom, his fidelity to his loftiest purpose? How can a man do the greatest that is in him to do, when he is obliged to grind out so many hundreds or so many thousands at the demand of his wife, who is perhaps accustomed to a higher style of liv- ing than he, and would rather give up her life than sacrifice an inch of her social position? How can she help losing the wild ideal charm which once invested her lovely face, when she becomes to him the incorporation of a cruel necessity which forces his nose to the grindstone — compels him to do, not what his soul impels him to do, but what is for the moment most profitable, most marketable, and to himself, perhaps, most contemptible? How •can he continue to love and cherish her with the old ardor, when he feels that she is virtually re- sponsible for this calamity which makes him in his own eyes (whatever he may be to the world) a des- picable failure? The other side of this question, which will occur to every reader, is not here worth presenting. Ib- sen's lovers are by no means blind to it, but, like the author himself, they are more deeply impressed with the disadvantages than with the advantages of the married estate. The representative of life's prose, the wholesale merchant Guldstad, is, cu- riously enough, the most estimable and sympathetic character in the whole play, and it is into his mouth that Ibsen puts the defense of matrimony—not the love-match, but the mariage de convenance: Ah no, there yet is something which is better. It is the tranquil, gentle, cordial flow Of warm esteem, which must its object honor. As ranch as rapture in a blissful trance. It is the feeling of delight in duty, The joy of care, the blessed peace of home, Of two wills fondly yielding to each other, Of watchfnl outlook, lest no stone should hurt Her foot, the dear one's, where in life she treads. It is the gentle hand which heals all wounds. The virile force which bears on willing shoulders. The peace of mind extending through the years; The steady arm which props and lifts securely ; — That, Svanhild, is the contribution I can offer Toward the building of your happiness. Falk, with his uncertain temper, his ecstacies and despairs, and the excessive sensitiveness peculiar to poets, is fully conscious that he can offer nothing equivalent to this secure comfort, peaceful equanim- ity, and tender protection. But it is not this con- sciousness which primarily makes him resolve to re- nounce his beloved; it is the fear that his love, which now is glorious in its perfect bloom, will and must, like all mortal things, fade and wither under the slow tooth of time. It will endure long, he says, but he cannot in sincerity prqmise that it will last forever. Svanhild, considering the matter in this view, exclaims: Oh, "long," "long," poor miserable word! To " long " endure, oh, what is that to love? It is its doom,— the mildew on the seed. For " love must count upon eternal life." That song is silenced now; some day instead It shall run thus: "I lored thee, love, last year," Nay, never thus shall wane our day of bliss. Perish with weeping sunset in the west; Let now our sun be quenched, a fair mirage, At its high noon, while gloriously it shines. Falk ifrightened). What wilt thou, Svanhild? Svanhild. We are spring's bright children; Behind it there shall come no dreary autumn, When in thy breast the bird of song is silent. And never yearneth thither whence he came. Behind it never shall the wintry pall Enshroud the chill white corpse of all thy dreams. Our love, the glad, all-conquering, victorious, No blight shall touch, no age shall wither. Die shall it. as it lived, strong, young, and rich. Falk (in an agony of grief). And far from thee — what worth has life to me? Svanhild. What were it near to me, when love were dead? Falk. A home! Svanhild. Where strove the elf of happiness with death? Falk (with strong resolution). Throw the ring away! Svanhild [with enthusiasm). Thou wishest it? Falk. Throw it away! Full well I understand thee. In this way only, Svanhild, do I win thee.' Far as the grave doth lead to life's bright dawn, Thus love is consecrated unto life, When, purged of yearning and of wild desire. It flees delivered to the spirit home Of memory. Svanhild (joyously, as she throws the ring far out into the fjord). Now I have lost thee for this nether life, Now I have won thee for eternity! It would be a mistake, I fancy, to interpret this as an act of religious asceticism. Ibsen's conception of renunciation is that it steels and braces the per- sonality, and brings out. as by a fiery test, whatever latent strength and virtue there may be in it. The bitter but salubrious cup of woe which he has himself drained to the dregs he puts to the lips of every soul who is virile enough to endure the wholesome discipline of sorrow. Slothful ease and the joy of possession cause in time satiety and a weary dis- content; then, when love begins to wane, and even passion to subside, comes the necessity to feign and to lie, first to the once-beloved, then to our- selves, and finally, when the ideal is hopelessly shattered, we find a shabby consolation in the re- flection that our lot is not exceptional — that, in fact, we cannot expect perfection in this world, but must put up with things as they are. It is to save THE his lovers from this fate that Ibsen makes them voluntarily renounce each other. It is with a dim prevision of this danger that Falk, in the first act, exclaims: With blight of blindness smite mine eyes' bright mirror. I'll sing the glory of the radiant skies. Send me but anguish, crushing, torturing, For but a month,— a vast gigantic sorrow,— And I'll sing the jubilant joy of life. Hjalmab Hjorth Boyesen. COMMUNICA HONS. THE TEACHING OF LITERATURE AT THE UNIVERSITIES. (To the Editor of The Dial.) It is evident that there is a growing interest in the subject of the teaching of literature, and particularly of English literature. Recent articles in your journal are significant of it. The great efforts being made in re- cent years by the colleges, and especially by Harvard, to advance the study, are significant of it. The new University of Chicago in its turn will doubtless have many difficult problems to face in attempting to organ- ize this study; problems more difficult indeed than any that have yet been attempted. For the greatest diffi- culties in the way of teaching and studying literature, or any other art, arise in the advanced classes, and ad- vanced instruction of a serious nature in this subject has really been little attempted as yet. Harvard is the only institution where any considerable number of courses in pure literature has been offered to advanced students. The work to be done is practically new work. The Dial is right in asserting that there is such a thing as "the literary spirit," and that literature as such should be taught in this spirit. In primary and secondary instruction this is not so difficult a task, and even the best of the college work to-day is done in this spirit. But in organizing the work of post-graduate instruction, the work of special investigation and indi- vidual studies, the problem becomes more complicated. Special work means definite research on certain nar- rowly chosen lines, and organized study necessarily im- plies method, system, and classification of knowledge,— that is, "scieutific " investigation. It is difficult to be- lieve that work done in the literary spirit is necessarily incompatible with work done in this spirit also, and that the literary spirit, the synthetic spirit, the spirit of art, will not be greatly fortified by the association and the discipline of the scientific spirit. The English universities, it is true, have given up the problem in despair. The spirit of reaction has gone so far in England, indeed, that it is even proposed to abandon the last glorious remnant of the old human- ities and abolish the professorship of poetry at Oxford. It is evident that a fine triumph is reserved for the Amer- ican university which succeeds in making the advanced study of literature a serious and worthy pursuit. Literature in a certain sense is a composite of all arts and all sciences, and the study of all arts and all sciences illustrates and enforces the study of literature. Any given work of literature consists of form and of sub- ject-matter. As regards its form, it is susceptible of treatment grammatically or aesthetically. As regards its subject-matter, it is susceptible of treatment from the point of view of morals and metaphysics, wherein of its interpretation of life; or from the point of view of psychology, wherein of the author's mind and soul and of the minds and souls of his characters; or from the point of view of history, wherein of time, place, and literary circumstance; or from the point of view of myth and folk-lore, wherein of the sources and meaning of story or plot; or from the point of view of almost any other branch of knowledge, as it may happen. None of these things must be disdained by the special student of literature, and yet over-insistence on some one point of view has always been the bane of literary studies; and it is chiefly against such over-insistence on the spe- cial point of view until the text becomes subservient to the topic, I take it, that The Dial is protesting. But perhaps the systematic and orderly knowledge of litera- ture, the true scientific method, is quite another thing and offers no such objection. It is true that schools of literature thus far tend to fall into one danger or the other — the danger of dille- tantisin, or the danger of over-specialization. In the older universities philology has swallowed up literature. In the newer coteries mere aesthetic criticism and stylis- tic appreciation on the one hand, or ethical studies and systematic interpretation on the other, are all the vogue. It rests with the American universities of the new type to rescue the study. The example of the few great teachers of literature which The Dial mentions is a very uncertain help in the premises, for the reason that the problem of the universities is one of organization, and the personality of great teachers cannot be counted upon as a constant factor in the organization of higher university and post- graduate work. Personality, indeed, is the gist of teaching, and it was doubtless personality which gave such rare force to the work of one of these great teachers — to the work of the late Mr. Lowell in the years when he used to lecture from the chair at Cam- bridge on the Charles. But great men are rare, and others have to make progress relying on method and on organization. The fact is that the methods of our universities in America are ill-adapted for the development of the literary spirit. There is too much university instruc- tion and too little university life. The English system was a better pattern — the English system before the English began to ape the Germans. In the English universities it was possible to grow, to live, to read, and to acquire literature, without being so drilled and driven from lecture-ball to class-room and from class- room to examination-room as in the American colleges. The system has not produced German professors or American pedants; but, strangely enough, most of the great writers of literature in England—and most of the readers of literature as well—for three or four cen- turies running, have been university men; and there has been an English literature! And then in the old days at the English universities all the work was so largely done in the literary spirit, under the fine influence of the feeling for the classics as literature! A similar spirit was at one time, perhaps, more characteristic of Harvard than of any other American college; and Emerson, Lowell, Holmes, Motley, Prescott, and Park- man are some of Harvard's products. But are we to despair of the teaching of literature and of organized and systematic work in the study of it? No; the matter is too important, and the demand will produce men and methods fit for the work. Litera- 1893.] DIAL 135 THE ture is the subtle union, the natural meeting-point, of all studies. Literature is essentially creative, con- structive, and synthetic,— a positive interpreter of life. In this its interest differs from the analytic interests of the human mind, from science and from criticism. This wide sympathy and touch with all branches of knowl- edge is what should give the teacher of literature his power and his opportunity. The study of literature should be the synthesis of all knowledges. Q Chicago, Feb. 4, 1893. CHILDREN'S LITERATURE IN THE SCHOOLS. (To the Editor of The Dial. ) "Having at hand the ample literature which gives expression to the childhood of the race, the literature of myth and fable, of generous impulse moving to heroic deed, how can a teacher be justified in substituting for this the manufactured and self-conscious twaddle that is the staple of most modern writing for children?" There is solid sense in this suggestion, quoted from The Dial's leading editorial of February 1. The writer goes to the root of a serious, a portentous defect in our national development. "I have no imagination left," said a friend the other day,—one of the busy men of the world of practice and of letters, a student of so- cial science, the director of a vigorous educational in- stitution, and the editor of a high-class technical maga- zine, all in one. "Facts, facts, facts, all the time; I study them until my brain is bursting. I used to en- joy poetry, art, the exercise of fancy; now it's all gone. I have no imagination left!" Don't let us rob the children of that glorious power. Who was it that in the presence ol wonderful natural beauty reverently cried out, " Oh, what an imagination God must have!" And we have done much, are doing much, to kill out of our lives every appearance of ap- proach toward this attribute of divinity. We do njt think much of sentiment, we care little for beauty: we ask only, What can you do with it? How much is it worth? So I repeat: let us not rob the children of their birthright of fancy, lest we not only confirm one more generation in its too apt tendency toward materialism, but (an inevitable sequence), commit our race to a dis- graceful and disastrous heritage — a preference for the tasteless, the ugly, the unworthy, in place of the beau- tiful, the artistic, the ideal. I am aware that this all may sound very whimsical and high-flown; but I verily believe that the fine taste for art in painting, in music, in song,—- the national love of sentiment, too, if you please,— which we regard as an hereditary trait among the Germans, is largely fos- tered and maintained among that people by the influ- ence of the poetic fancies in children's stories. What child could resist, for example, the warming spirit of a tale like Andersen's Der Tannenbaum, which, if it be not a story of purely German origin, is nevertheless a classic in the German home. And more yet might be said of the stories of Siegfried, of Parzival, of Wotan, — an inheritance in which our children also have a right to share. I was much amused the other day by having a stu- dent who was translating Beowulf ask in great perplex- ity: "Why did Beowulf come to the assistance of Hrothgar?" Why, that was the usage in the golden age of heroes. Hercules, Thor, Beowulf,—incarnations of the true-heroic,— looked for those who needed aid, and helped them. It never occurred to this practical youth of the last decade that any motive other than self- interest could enter into the acts of men. Imagination, sentiment, ideality,— they are needed in our lives; the love of the artistic, a reverent devotion to the beauty which is truth,— these are certainly worthy to be fos- tered. Childhood is the period of easiest absorption;, not only does the child enjoy and remember the stories of the heroes, he sympathizes readily with the motives men have glorified in the heroic. There is no dearth of real literature which can confirm these appreciations and these tastes. Here certainly is an opportunity which, true educators will improve. Tff. E. Minneapolis, Feb. S, 1S03. TENNYSON AS A CREATOR. (To the Editor of The Dial.) The impossible attempt of my friend Mr. Stanley * to schedule genius has been fruitful, in that it has elic- ited for the last number of The Dial the admirable criticisms of Professor Hale and Professor Shorey—ad- mirable despite the latter's somewhat disparaging ref- erence to Wordsworth and Browning. True it is, as Professor Hale suggests, that "Tennyson would prob- ably have been content to rank with Keats," his artis- tic father. Mr. Stanley's characterization of Tenny- son as "more translator and interpreter than creator" in the "Idylls " is far from happy. If ever man trans- formed and breathed a new life into earlier materials, that man was Tennyson as he wrote his "Idylls." Shakespeare did not more completely re-create the ma- terials drawn from Plutarch, or Belleforest, or Lodge, than did Tennyson the old Arthurian tales which came to a focus in the work of Malory. Hamlet and Rosalind are not more the children of the brain of Shakespeare than are Tennyson's Arthur and Merlin and Gareth, Enid and Guinevere and Elaine, his own creations. Even the Lancelot and Percivale and Galahad of the old ro- mances are placed in an absolutely new atmosphere, and transfigured thereby. Indeed, it is the principal con- tention of those materialists who are never weary of girding at the "Idylls " that Tennyson has brought the old romantic material into touch with the ideas of the nineteenth century. The romances, as untouched by Tennyson, give us characters that are typical rather than individual, delineations that are frequently con- ventional rather than idiosyncratic, and wrong conduct is displayed rather for our condonation than for our con- demnation. True to the ideal of a middle age, they do not go beyond it. Tennyson's genius has re-created them without spoiling them, has borrowed their forms for artistic purposes and irradiated them with a true and high conception of the ends of living, and has given them a new future. In reply to the statement (in which I introduce italics not in tbe original), "In general, Tennyson is too cold and thoughtful, too reserved and constrained, to give pure lyric force to a complete long poem," a sufficient answer is—Who has done this? In reply to the state- ment that "in dramatic and epic he as rarely rises above third rate," let " Guinevere " be recalled, and the judg- ment of a great American critic — himself a singer of no mean rank. Edmund Clarence Stednian says: "His greatest achievement still is that noblest of modern ep- isodes, the canto entitled 'Guinevere,' surcharged with tragic pathos and high dramatic power. He never has * In The Dial for Feb. 1. 136 [March 1, so reached the passu) vera of the early dramatists as in this imposing scene." "When this idyll first appeared, ■what elevation seized upon the soul of every poetic as- pirant as he read it! What despair of rivalling a pas- sion so imaginative, ail art so majestic and supreme!" Alongside the judgment expressed in The Dial, that "Tennyson is not the expression of his age: he is not the apostle of modernity "— let us place again words of light from Stedman. "It seems to me that the only just estimate of Tennyson's position is that which declares him to be, by eminence, the representa- tive poet of the recent era. Not, like one or another of his compeers, representative of the melody, wisdom, passion, or other partial phase of the era, but of the time itself, with its diverse elements in harmonious con- junction. Years have strengthened my belief that a future age will regard him, independently of his merits, as bearing this relation to his period. In his verse he is as truly 'the glass of fashion and the mould of form' of the Victorian generation in the nineteenth century, as Spenser was of the Elizabethan court, Mil- ton of the Protectorate, Pope of the reign of Queen Anne. During his supremacy there have beeu few great leaders, at the head of different schools, such as belonged to the time of Byron, Wordsworth, and Keats. His poetry has gathered all the elements which find vital expression in the complex modern art." Mr. Stedman's words express but the fact for those who have breathed long and deep the atmosphere of the last to leave us of England's greatest singers. No man of the nineteenth century has more fully entered into the thought and the life of the English-speaking race — for counsel, for comfort, for inspiration — than Alfred Tennyson. j0HN j. Halsf.y. Lake Forest University, Feb. 17, 1S0S. A CLOSING WORD ON TENNYSON. (To the Editor of The Dial.) It was, of course, not possible in a column and a half -of The Dial to particularize or make detailed compar- isons as to Tennyson's place in poetry, and now, stimu- lated by the comments, in your last issue, upon my for- mer letter, I can only add a general remark or so towards elucidating the summary criticism of my previous note. It has always appeared to me very desirable to con- duct literary criticism upon some common objective basis without any regard to subjective bias and preference; and I endeavored—not very successfully, it might seem — to discuss Tennyson from such a point of view. I am an ardent Tennysonian; my debt to him for aesthetic pleasure, intellectual stimulation, and moral inspiration, is great; and if for a long residence on a desert isle I were restricted to the companionship of two poets, Ten- nyson should be one. But, as I understand it, scientific criticism should ignore the personal and temporary, and, like philosophy, should look at its object sub specie eternitatis. The critic should ask, not, What has the poet done for me and my age ?— every poet is the greatest for his own age, and Tennyson for twoscore years wielded a greater influence than all the pre-Victorian poets put together, leaving out Shakespeare —• but he should inquire, What is permanent and universal in his works to delight all men in all ages? Possibly such an inquiry is useless; but, if it is to come to any result, it must be by patiently setting forth and applying as tests those elements which have conferred immortality in the past. My main suggestion was that the first and chief test was individuality. The poets who through the cen- turies have kept the highest seats of honor are they who reveal most fully an unmistakable distinctiveness and distinction, an originality and uniqueness forever fresh and forceful. The very great poet, whether of the first or second ranks, belongs to no school; he is simply himself, sui generis. How many such poets have we, and does Tennyson belong with these? Is Tennyson so much more than Romanticist-Classicist as to deserve a place among the Dii Majores of Parnassus? Is his art, so beauteous in its external perfection, original on so large a scale as to put it forever with the greatest cre- ations of poetic genius? I would be the last to answer dogmatically and finally, but I have recorded it as my present impression that Tennysou does not belong to the highest order of poets. I may add further that from one point of view Ten- nyson's very strength is a source of weakness. That irreproachable elegance of diction, that glossy perfec- tion of style, after a time palls on the taste. The sweetness of the most delicate honey is cloying, the sheen of a perfect polish at length wearies the eye; so this elaborate, conscious, studied art, often wonderfully deft and subtle, cannot forever please and charm. Moreover, Tennyson speaks less to us than to himself. His musing monologue becomes monotonous in its meas- ured beauty, and we long for speech more direct, blunt, bold, and simple. These are riot, of course, faults, but they are limitations in the nature and art of Tennyson which must be taken into account in any final estimate of his work. Hiram M. Stanley. Lake Forest University. Feb. C'l, 1S9.I. "AUTOGRAPH CONFIDENCE-MEN" OUTCONFIDENCED. (To the Editor of The Dial I. I am tempted by a paragraph in a recent issue of your journal, dealing with the "autograph crank," as well as by the letter of A. H. N. on the same subject, to give you an experience 1 had while serving as pri- vate secretary to a noted United States Senator from a Northern State, whose reputation I will shield by with- holding his name, as he still lives to cheat this species. Scarcely a day passed upon which one or more letters did not come asking for autographs; but I never knew him to write his name in answer to such a letter. He was not so incapable a politician as to forget to say to me that I could, if I wanted to, write his name and send it. It happened that a certain cabinet official, who also still lives, was in the Senator's office one day, and in talking upon this subject said that he never saw let- ters of this kind that were sent to him, as his secretary always opened his letters and did the autograph act. At a rough estimate I should say that in the twenty- four months of my stay with the Senator of whom I write, not less than seven hundred unsuspecting auto- graphists were appeased, as far as he was concerned, by receiving seven huudred pen-scratched bits of paper, not one of which had been sanctified by the touch of greatness; and the other conscienceless statesman, during the four years of his autographically ignoble public service, pro- bably ran the number up to nearly as many thousands. The above is merely statistical. I have no comment. W. W. A. Velasco, Tex., Feb. S3, 1S9S. 1893.] THE DIAL 137 (ZEfje Xrto Books. The Ruined Cities of Mashoxalaxd.* In his "Ruined Cities of Mashonaland" Mr. Theodore Bent has given us an interest- ing and decidedly novel book of African travel. The existence in southeastern Africa, in the high-land region between the Zam- besi and Limpopo Rivers, of extensive ruins, ancient, massive, mysterious, standing out Sphinx-like in dramatic contrast to the primi- tive huts and kraals of the surrounding savages, has long been a matter of vague knowledge and surmise. Chance Nimrods and pioneer travellers in this land of the Kaffir and Bush- man have confirmed each other in their tales of vast granite labyrinths choked with the impen- etrable jungle growth of centuries, of round tow- ers, pits still fifty feet deep, massive gateways, cyclopean walls " thirty feet thick at the base," and hinting, in their mystic ornamentation and architectural adjuncts and disposal, at an ad- vanced cult and civilization. Prior to the expedition chronicled in the present volume no attempt has been made at a thorough and scientific exploration and exca- vation of the Mashonaland ruins; and while the results obtained by Mr. Bent are not quite decisive as to the origin of the mysterious builders, they are extremely rich and suggest- ive, and sufficiently demonstrate that in the very heart of the dark continent lies an ample field for the archaeologist, almost the last person who a short time ago would have thought of pen- etrating its fastnesses. Quid novi ex Africa? will evidently not be an obsolete phrase for many generations to come. We may note here parenthetically that the author has by no means confined himself to the somewhat dry and spe- cial details of antiquarian research. The inci- dents of his journeyings to and fro, his observ- ations of the natives and their habits, the story of his embassy to the remote country of King 'Mtoko, etc., combine to make the volume one of the most varied and graphic of African travel books. The expedition headed by Mr. Bent was lib- erally aided by the Royal Geographical Society, the British Chartered Company of South Af- rica, and the British Association for the Ad- vancement of Science. Mr. Bent's chief aids were his wife, to whose efficiency and endur- * The Ruined Cities of Mashonaland: Being a Record of Excavation and Exploration in 1891. By J. Theodore Bent, F.S.A. Illustrated. New York : Longmans, Green, & Co. > ance he emphatically testifies, and Mr. R. M. II. Swan, the cartographer of the expedition, who contributes a valuable chapter on the ori- entation and measurements of the great ruins at Zimbabwe, besides notes upon the geography and meteorology of the district. The party left England at the end of January, 1891, and returned to it again at the end of January, 1892, having accomplished, says the author, "a record rare in African travel, and of which we are justly proud — namely, that no root of bitterness sprang up amongst us." The journey to the interior was made by rail from Cape Town to Mafeking, and thence to Mashona- land by wagon, a three-months' "trek," Mr. Bent preferring this route to the shorter one by river largely because it led through the cap- itals of all the principal chiefs. During Mr. Bent's stay in Mashonaland he visited and carefully examined the sites of several ruins, which are spread over a large area of the country, and he gives a minute description of them. We must content our- selves with extracting a few general facts con- cerning the remains at Zimbabwe, the most ex- tensive and best preserved, where the chief excavations were made. The prominent fea- tures at Zimbabwe are, first, the large circular ruin with its round tower on the edge of a slope of the plain below; second, the mass of ruins in the valley beneath this; and third, the intricate fortress on the granite hill above, serving as the acropolis of the ancient city. These general features our author discusses in detail. The circular ruin—or rather elliptical, a familiar Sabajan form—is a temple, 280 feet in greatest diameter, with three entrances, an altar and two round towers, one of them thirty- five feet high, standing within the sacred en- closure to the southeast. By digging below the towers, and pulling out stones from the sides, the author demonstrated that they were solid; and their religious purport and kindred significance to those constructed by the Phoe- nicians would seem to be proved, by the nu- merous finds in other parts of the ruins, of a phallic nature. Accurate measurements were made of the towers, and it was found that the circumference of the smaller one corresponds exactly to the diameter of the big one, and the diameter of the big one is equal to half its original height, and its circumference again is equal to the diameter of the round building on the Lundi River. One cannot, observes the author, lay too much stress on the symmetry of the courses and the accuracy with which 138 [March 1, THE DIAL these towers have been built. The wall of the circular ruin is, at its highest point, thirty-five feet alxive ground, and its greatest base thick- ness is sixteen feet. A noticeable feature in the structure of the wall is that the portion to the southeast is thicker and higher and very much better built, besides showing on the out- side an ornamental pattern coinciding in length with the sacred sub-enclosure inside. The con- nection of this feature with the cult of the builders is obvious, and is fully discussed by Mr. Swan in his chapter on the orientation of the temple. The masonry throughout is of small stones of rough granite, laid without mor- tar, "and built witli such evenness of courses and symmetry that as a specimen of the dry builder's art it is without a parallel." "The large blocks of cut stone used in Egyptian, Greek, and Roman masonry must have been compara- tively easy to deal with as compared with these small stones of rough granite, built in even courses in a cir- cular wall of immense thickness aud height. The idea at once suggests itself that the people who erected these walls had at one time been accustomed to build in bricks, and that in the absence of this material they had perfected a system of stone-building to represent as nearly as possible the appearance of brick." The form of nature-worship practiced at Zim- babwe found one of its expressions in the wor- ship of the sun; but the temple was evidently constructed with reference to practical as well as religious astronomical purposes, the arrange- ment of towers and monoliths, passage-ways, holes in the wall, upright stones for the noting of transits, etc., providing the means of observ- ing the passage of the seasons and of fixing the limits of a tropical year, and thus provid- ing the elements of a calendar. No less imposing than the temple is the hill fortress, approachable from the valley below through a narrow slit in the granite boulder, and protected at every turn by traverses and ambuscades. The position is in itself of great natural strength, protected on one side by huge granite boulders, and on the south by a preci- pice seventy to ninety feet in height, while on the only accessible side the ancient builders constructed a massive wall, thirteen feet thick on the summit, with a batter of one foot in six, thirty feet high in places, having a broad flat causeway on top decorated on the outside edge with a succession of round towers and mono- liths. Says the author: "The redundancy of fortification all over this moun- tain, the useless repetition of walls over a precipice it- self inaccessible, the care with which every hole in the boulders through which an arrow could pass is closed, prove that the occupants were in constant dread of at- tack, and lived like a garrison in the heart of an ene- my's country. . . . Such is the great fortress of Zim- babwe, the most mysterious and complex structure that it has ever been my fate to look upon. Vainly one tries to realize what it must have been like in the days before ruin fell upon it, with its tortuous and well- guarded approaches, its walls bristling with monoliths and round towers, its temple docorated with tall, weird- looking birds, its huge decorated bowls, and in the innermost recesses its busy gold-producing furnace. . . . When taken alone this fortress is sufficiently a marvel; but when taken together with the large circu- lar building below, the numerous ruins scattered around, one cannot fail to recognize the vastness and power of this ancient race, their great constructive ingenuity and strategic skill." Much light might have been thrown on the question of the origin of the Zimbabwe build- ers by the discovery of a cemetery ; but though careful research in every direction was made, not a single tomb was discovered, nor any trace of the manner in which this ancient race dis- posed of their dead. That they were from the north is plainly indicated by the fact that their temples were constructed with reference to the observation of northern stars alone, though they must have known that the southern con- stellations would have served equally well to regulate their calendar. Their occupation was undoubtedly gold-mining. The Mashonaland ruins are always near ancient mines, and the most interesting finds at Zimbabwe were those relating to the manufacture of gold—a smelting furnace, rejected casings from which the gold- bearing quartz had been extracted, clay cru- cibles, burnishers, a soapstone ingot-mould which corresponds suggestively in shape to a Phoenician ingot found in Falmouth harbor, etc. After comparing these Zimbabwe imple- ments and the processes implied by them with the implements and processes depicted on Egyptian tombs, and citing in further evidence the account of Egyptian gold-working given by Diodorus, our author reaches the following in- teresting conclusions: "Hence it is obvious that the process employed by the ancient Egyptians for crushing, smelting, and form- ing into ingots was exactly the same as that employed by the ancient inhabitants of Zimbabwe; which fact, when taken in conjunction with the vast amount of evi- dence of ancient cult, ancient construction, and ancient art, is, I think, conclusive that the gold fields of Mash- onaland formed one at least of the sources from which came the gold of Arabia, and that the forts and towns which ran up the whole length of this gold-producing country were made to protect their men engaged in this industry. The cumulative evidence is greatly in favor of the gold-diggers being of Arabian origin, before the Sabaio-Hituyaritic period in all probability, who did work for and were brought closely into contact with both Egypt and Phcenicia, penetrating to many coun- 1893.] 139 THE DIAL tries unknown to the rest of the world. . . . The tes- timony of all travellers in Arabia is to the effect that little or no gold could have come from the Arabian pen- insula itself; it is, therefore, almost certain that the country round Zimbabwe formed one at least of the spots from which the 'Thesaurus Arabum' came. Egyp- tian monuments also point to the wealth of the people of Punt, and the ingots of gold which they sent as trib- ute to Queen Hatasou. No one, of course, is prepared to say exactly where the kingdom of Punt was; the consensus of opinion is that it was Yemen, in the south of Arabia. But suppose it to be there, or suppose it to be on the coast of Africa, opposite Arabia, or even sup- pose it to be Zimbabwe itself, the questiou is the same: where did they get the large supply of gold from, which they poured into Egypt and the then known world? In Mashonaland we seem to have a direct answer to this question. It would seem to be evident that a prehis- toric race built the ruins in this country, a race like the mythical Pelasgi who inhabited the shores of Greece and Asia Minor, a race like the mythical inhabitants of Great Britain and France who built Stonehenge and Car- nac, a race which continued in possession down to the earliest dawnings of history, which provided gold for the merchants of Phoenicia and Arabia, and which eventu- ally became influenced by and perhaps absorbed in the more powerful and wealthier organizations of the Semite." Mr. Bent devotes a chapter to the discussion of the objects found during the excavations in the ruins, and these seem to throw a fair amount of light on the cult, occupation, and degree of civilization of their constructors. A remarkable feature in connection with these finds is that ev- erything decorative is made of soapstone—for- tunately a very durable material. First come the great birds, over five feet in height, perched on tall soapstone columns which would appear to have decorated the outer wall of the hill tem- ple. 'These, intended evidently to represent hawks or vultures, are highly conventional in design, with stiff dentelle pattern at the edge of the wings, necklace with brooch in front and continued down the back, raised rosette-shaped eyes, and are evidently evolved out of some sacred symbolism of which the birds were the embodiment. Mr. Bent concludes that they are closely akin to the Assyrian Astarte or Venus, and represent the female element in creation. "Similar birds were sacred to As- tarte amongst the Phoenicians and are often represented as perched on her shrines." Among the emblems of the worship of the reproduc- tive powers of Nature were found a number of soapstone objects representing the phallus either realistically or conventionally, and indi- cating, in addition to their general symbolism, that circumcision was practiced by this primi- tive race. An interesting series of objects are the nu- merous fragments of decorated and plain soap- stone bowls found near the fortress temple and evidently once used in the temple service. Seven of the bowls were over nineteen inches in diameter, and the work displayed in their execution, the careful rounding of the edges, the fine pointed tool-marks, and the objects chosen for representation, indicate a race well advanced in artistic skill. Near the same place were found various fragments and specimens pointing to an extensive commerce once car- ried on at Zimbabwe — bits of Celadon pot- tery from China, of Persian ware, a specimen of Arabian glass, Egyptian glass beads of the Ptolemaic period, etc. "The pottery objects," thinks the author, "must have been brought here by Arabian traders during the middle ages, probably when the Monomatapa chiefs ruled over the district and carried on trade with the Arabians for gold, as European trad- ers do now with objects of bright appearance and beads." Besides the foreign pottery, how- ever, were found various specimens of native ware, notably some black fragments of excel- lent glaze and bevel, showing that the Zim- babwe builders had reached a high stage of pro- ficiency in the ceramic art. Though fired with the antiquarian enthusiasm of a Monkbarns, Mr. Bent is a conservative guesser thoughout; and he declines to say anything definite as to the tools and weapons of bronze and iron found at Zimbabwe. The ruins have been, as he says, for centuries overrun by Kaffir races possess- ing a knowledge of iron smelting, and the shapes and sizes of many of the iron objects found correspond closely to those in use among the natives now. Some of these relics, how- ever, are "quite unlike anything which ever came out of a Kaffir workshop," notably the curious double iron bells, three of which were found near the hill temple. Similar bells are found now on the Congo; and the author con- cludes that either they are ancient, and were used by the old inhabitants of the ruins, or that some northern race allied to the Congo races have swept over the country at some time or other, leaving this trace of their occupation. Scarcely less interesting than the details touching the ruined cities themselves, is Mr. Bent's account of the surrounding country and the natives. Mashonaland is, he says — "A strange weird country to look upon, and after the flat monotony of Bechuanalaud, a perfect paradise. The granite hills are so oddly fantastic in their forms; the deep river-beds, so richly luxuriant in their wealth of tropical vegetation; the great baobab trees, the ele- phants of the vegetable world, so antediluvian in their aspect. Here one would never be surprised to come [March 1, across the roc's egg of Sindbad or the golden valley of Rasselas; the dreams of the old Arabian story-tellers here seem to have a reality." Mr. Bent is not very explicit as to the ma- terial outlook and possibilities of Mashona- land. The country is mostly fertile and well- watered, and the climate good: whether gold still exists there in paying quantities, or was ex- hausted by the pre-historic inhabitants, is a ques- tion for future empirical solution. His opin- ion of the natives is unusually favorable. He found them honest, capable, and above the or- dinary Kaffir in intelligence; and those he employed in excavating at Zimbabwe proved to be, contrary to expectation, careful workmen, rarely missing a thing of value, "which is," he adds, "more than can be said of all the white men in our employ." Iron smelting is a time-honored industry in Mashonaland, whole villages devoting themselves to it ex- clusively, tilling no land and keeping no cat- tle, but exchanging their iron-headed assegais, barbed arrow-heads, and field tools for such commodities as they require but do not pro- duce themselves. This international division of labor seems to be carried to a surprising de- gree, place and people considered; and Mr. Bent was told of other villages which, after the same fashion, have the monopoly of pottery. What we have given in the present review is of course but a meagre skimming of Mr. Bent's interesting work — enough we hope to tempt the reader to the original. The volume may be characterized as a happy blending of description, adventure, and scientific discus- sion, with a suggestion throughout of the mar- vels of Mr. Haggard. Paper, print, and bind- ing are good, the maps and charts are suffi- cient, and there are a great number of capital illustrations. e, q, j. An Overgrown Biography.* Dr. Storrs's lectures on Bernard of Clairvaux bear marks of laborious and loving study. They seek to be, and mainly succeed in being, scrupulously fair. The descendant of the Pil- grims is in sensitive sympathy with the mediae- val saint. He looks at him all round, as a product of the preceding period, as a person, as a member of a monastic order, as a theo- logian, as a preacher, as a controversialist, and as a pervading influence upon the whole range * Bernard of Clairvacx: The Times, the Man, and His Work. An historical study in eight lectures. By Rich- ard S. Storrs. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. of public affairs in the Europe of the twelfth century. You feel that the author is an en- thusiast in relation to his theme, that he has spared no pains in its treatment. You wonder how a pastor of a great city congregation, a leader in the ecclesiastical affairs of a great de- nomination of Christians, has found time, or made time, for so exhaustive a performance. You admire the effort. You envy the assid- uity, the power of utilizing the odd fragments of leisure, the wide range of reading, the copi- ous flow of language. And then you scold yourself for not being more grateful. You would like to praise, but your pen hesitates. It blurs your compliments, and sets sharply down your dissatisfactions. For dissatisfied you are, and there is no avoiding saying so. The Dial is an open court, and honest criti- cism is a duty not to be put by. The book errs by bigness. Six hundred closely-printed pages upon an ecclesiastic dead six centuries ago is large measure. We might call it pulpit measure. Dr. Storrs has always been copious in utterance. He once began a sermon to a country congregation with six con- secutive striking similes rather fully elaborated. One, or at the utmost two, would have quite sufficed for all purposes of illustration. But they bubbled up in the great preacher's mind and tumbled headlong out of it. M. Angelo defined sculpture as "the Art that works by force of taking away." The art of literary style works in a similar fashion. Dr. Storrs pours out his superabundant rhetoric from the pulpit, and audiences are borne on upon the flood and forget to criticize. Perhaps they ad- mire more than they are convinced, are thrilled rather than persuaded: but still they are swept on by the torrent of voluble speech. Headers are more critical. They prefer that the author should revise his own text and run his pen through his superfluous adjectives. They pre- fer the omission of the purple patches which in public delivery bring down the house. They are of the mind of the Harvard professor who blighted the promise of a brilliant divine (we have his word for it) by passing over the splen- did passage with which his college theme was opened, and at the close of the paragraph pen- cilling the words, "Begin here." We have no doubt these were brilliant lectures, and that the audience went home in a glow from most of them. But they lie before us a printed vol- ume, and we feel tempted to say "End here" on several favorable occasions before the five hundred and ninety-eighth page is finished. For 1893.] 141 THE life is short, and the twelfth century is a good while ago, and there is the art of "taking away," and the half is more than the whole, as Hesiod said. The volume is swollen with a good deal of irrelevant matter. Economy of adjectives, of rhetorical flourishes, of some- what commonplace moralizing, would have ma- terially reduced its hulk. There is little in the first twenty pages that might not have been sufficiently said in two. "A few words at the outset on the general usefulness of studies like these " are quite unanswerable and equally un- necessary. Fresh from the study of mediaeval amenities, Dr. Storrs sees, in what we have vainly imagined our amiable and tolerant age, a period "confused in thought, full of haste and violence in opinion and action, with an acrid and vehement controversial temper prevalent in it, a temper almost equally moved to sharpness of discussion over matters fundamental and mat- ters superficial." Perhaps this lack of perspec- tive, this equal stress on things relevant and things irrelevant, affects the mind of the writer. He too unconsciously is of his time. It is going a good way back for jumping room to begin with "the fracturing of the Western Empire by Odoacer, A.D. 486," or the " shattering victory " of Charles Martel in A.D. 732, or the fifty great military expedi- tions of Charlemagne. The discussion of the Feudal System might have been spared, and the story of the Popes in the ninth and tenth cen- turies. It is at page 58 that the author strikes the theme of his first lecture, " the extreme de- pression and fear" in the tenth century. The depicting of that strange panic which seized upon Christendom at the close of its first mil- lennium is not essential for the comprehension of a saint who lived two hundred years after- ward. We echo Dr. Storrs's words with more than his own fulness of meaning, when, at the beginning of his second lecture, he speaks of "the sense of relief " with which " one emerges from the fetid gloom " of that earlier period. But we are still sixty pages distant from our hero, with our heads indeed above the sod, but still "pawing to get free our hinder parts" from that inchoate world. We are made to realize, as by a vivid object-lesson, the slowness of the dawn, the weary incubation that pre- ceded the birth of the modern era. We have a copious treatmentof Hildebrand, and a highly- colored picture of the submission of Henry at Canossa. We have a sketch of the first Cru- sade and of the rise of Gothic architecture; portraits of Damiani, of Lanfranc, and of An- selm. At last, on the one hundred and thirty- third page, we come upon Bernard of Clair- vaux, his personal characteristics. That is what we are after. We are a little out of breath with our long journey, but fill our lungs and are ready to begin. The instruments are tuned and we listen for the overture. To be sure, the third lecture begins with a recapitu- lation, but after two or three paragraphs St. Bernard — miracle-worker that he was—man- ages to get born. A pleasant page tells us of the bright men and women who managed sub- sequently to get born in the same province. Burgundy is a wide range, and Bossuet, Buf- fon, Crebillon the Elder, Piron, Diderot, Mad- ame de Sevigne, Lamartine, Edgar Quinet, and the Order of the Golden Fleece, have nothing whatever to do with Bernard,— but their names brighten up the page, and suggest to the reader that having been led well up to his subject and well past it, the time has come for him to lay hold of it in earnest. Let him not be too sure. Apropos of Bernard's mother, were there not the saintly women Ma- tilda the friend of Hildebrand and Beatrice her mother, and Agnes the mother of Henry the Fourth, and Ida of Bouillon, and Matilda of England, and Hildegarde of the Ruperts- burg, and Ermenberga the mother of Anselm, a nameless lady the mother of Eberhard, and "the venerated mother of Peter the Venerable," and must not the biographer of Bernard linger fondly upon each of their several perfections? When we reach Aletta herself, one would not stint the penstrokes or economize the pages. "Not many incidents are recorded of the devout and modest life of this elect lady," but "one can hardly avoid feeling," and " it seems clear enough," and "it seems natural to infer," and "if this were so we can trace," and " I cannot but think," and "it is at least not improbable," and " I am as sure as of anything,"— phrases like these, with the accompanying guesses and imaginations, easily occupy us for a dozen a pages more. But really preliminaries are now past, and Bernard is actually before us, and not quite a third of the volume has been gone over. It is very encouraging! The name of Bernard is famous in Church history. In the tenth century Bernard of Aosta founded the two monasteries, the great and little St. Bernard, which still receive trav- ellers within their hospitable doors. Bernard of Tiron was the founder of a new congrega- tion of Benedictine monks in the eleventh century. In the thirteenth, was Bernard of 142 [March 1, THE DIAL Sienna, the founder of the Olivetans. Each of four successive' ages had its Bernard, the founder of abiding institutions, on the Church's "Eternal bead-roll worthy to be filed." The twelfth century, with Bernard of Clairvaux, was the most favored of the four. His saint- hood was not a mere matter of ecclesiastical recognition, but something owned and read of all men. It was no perfume caught only by the men of his own time or order or com- munion, it retains its charm and freshness for those far removed by habit and training after more than six hundred years. Under all the encrusting embroideries of his mediaeval vest- ments we can still discern much of the sim- plicity which is in Christ. Bernard was of noble family. He was the third son of Tescelin, a knight of experience and distinction descended from the Count of Chatillon, and of Aletta his wife, "connected ancestrally with the Ducal house of Burgundy." He was born at his father's castle of Fontaines, near Dijon in France, in the year 1091. He died sixty-two years later, August 20, 1153. Very early he embraced the cloistered life. His eager enthusiasm swept his whole household, six brothers and a sister, after him. He was but just of age when, with his brothers and two dozen companions more, he betook himself to the monastery of Citeaux. The next year he led a colony of the Cistercians to Clairvaux and became their abbot. His rare qualities could not long be hid. His fame, as a man of deep piety, a preacher of peculiar fervor and per- suasiveness, a fearless and effective administra- tor, and a subtle theologian, rapidly spread it- self over Europe. Feeble in body, sensitive in spirit, he was of tameless energy, unsparing in labor, resolute of purpose, lavish of himself in behalf of God and his fellows. One hundred and sixty houses of his order remained a mon- ument of his efficient work. His own abbey was a model of the most rigorous monastic life. He fostered the infancy of the Knights Tem- plar and prescribed their rule. He resisted the restless intellect of Abelard and crushed that brilliant schoolman's already broken heart. Dr. Storrs's sympathies lean a little too much to the side of the champion of orthodoxy, as Dean Milman's perhaps to that of the mediaeval Broad Churchman. But Bernard could con- tend as valiantly with foes of the other wing. He was the sturdy opponent of the early at- tempts to bind upon the Church the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin. He urged the Second Crusade upon princes and people, and sent a million and more of men to their utter wreck. He claimed divine inspiration for this cause and prophesied its success, and rather ignobly evaded honest con- fession of its failure. He had a keen scent for heresy, and secured the condemnation of the aged Bishop of Poitiers, upon " a mere dialectic dispute whether the divine nature was God." The discussion wearied out two councils, and, by his own acknowledgement, baffled the com- prehension of one Pope. When the Jews were violently persecuted, Bernard rose above his age and went nobly to their rescue. In his exposure of the corruptions of the Papacy he took almost Protestant ground, declared the Pope only primus inter pares, and no Lord over his brethren. He rejected works of superero- gation, and held views opposed to the doctrine of transubstantiation. "Spiritually not corpo- really, the food of the soul not of the body," was his teaching as to the reception of Christ in the Lord's Supper. He was intensely an eccle- siastic, a man of institutions, yet not a man without ideas. He was a great preacher. His sermons, said Sixtus of Sienna, are "at once so sweet and so ardent that it is as though his mouth were a fountain of honey and his heart a whole furnace of love." He was single- hearted in his self-consecration, though he could not always distinguish between Bernard and orthodoxy, between the claims of Christ and the pretensions of the Church. He was an ascetic without bitterness, though excess of zeal led hiin sometimes to play the persecutor's part. But Luther could justly say of him, "If ever there was a pious monk who feared God, it was St. Bernard." He was the fore- most churchman of the first half of the twelfth century, the typical exponent of all that was best in mediaeval devotion. One excellence of Dr. Storrs's lectures maybe found in the abundant quotations which he gives from the sermons and letters of Bernard. The translation is always fresh and spirited, and you get at the burning heart of the old saint. You do not wonder at the author's tribute: "Person- ally I know that I owe him much for uplifting from depression, for tranquillizing influence in times of disturbance, for encouragement to duty when it seemed unattractive, for the fine in- spirations of spiritual thought." He well re- minds us "how Dante saw Bernard in Para- dise: "An old man habited like the glorious people, O'erflowing was he in his eyes and cheeks With joy benign, in attitude of pity As to a tender father is becoming." 1893.] 143 THE DIAL Dr. Storrs is very admirable in his sympathy with this altogether unmodern character, in his comprehension of the mediaeval institutions which he himself has left far behind, and in his understanding of just how much and just how little Bernard was a reformer before the reformation. His chapter upon Bernard as a theologian, while not devoid of Anselmic bias, and not as clear as fewer words had made it, is still a model of catholic appreciation. In the controvci y with Abelard, perhaps the scales are held less even. But, for substance through- out, the book presents itself as a singularly fair and generous recognition of a hero of a de- parted age and a bygone conception of Chris- tianity. If only our author would read his proofsheets in a sterner mood and cut out much admirable but cumbersome material, if he would reflect a little upon the saying of Sheri- dan and distinguish between the luminous and the voluminous, his subject woiild stand forth in clearer light, and his readers would be more grateful. C. A. L. Kic HARDS. New Glimpses of a Famous Old Diary.* In these modern days, when few persons keep diaries, and those few are ashamed to own it, the publishers' lists seem nevertheless to indicate a continuous demand for the diaries and letters of our ancestors. Frances Burney (1752-1840) was one of the latest as well as one of the best of the famous English diarists. The three handsome volumes which comprise Messrs. Warne & Co.'s new edition of the best portion of her "Diary and Letters" nearly corresponds to the three important epochs of this interesting woman's career. The first epoch begins with the publication of " Evelina," when "Fanny" (as she is al- ways called by her present editor) was twenty- six years old. At the age of nine, owing to the death of her mother and the negligence of her father, her education was left to take care of itself; the various and brilliant society that was accustomed to assemble under Dr. Burney's roof took little notice of the small, shy, silent, rather plain girl, who was with them rather than of them; nor did any of them, least of all the father himself, think of connecting her with the fascinating new novel that everyone was discussing. When the secret could no •The Diary asd Letters of Madame D'Arblat (Frances Barney.) With notes by W. C. Ward, and prefaced by Lord Macaulay's essay. New York: Frederick Warne & Co. longer be kept, the timid and obscure girl found herself the most sought and the most praised person in the set. She was speedily taken up by Mrs. Thrale, and this was prac- tically an introduction to the most brilliant lit- erary circle of the day. Literary lions of all sizes, from the monarch Johnson downwards, were wont to resort to the house of Mr. Thrale, te eat his dinners and to enjoy the conversa- tion of his lively wife. Fanny was soon domes- ticated for a long visit in the household, and the diary gives us frequent glimpses of its bright talk and varied interests. Many of the passages have a perennial sort of freshness that may justify quotation to an age that per- haps knows not Fanny as well as she deserves. Here is a sample tea-table sketch: "The P. family came in to tea. When they were gone Mrs. Thrale complained that she was quite worn out with that tiresome silly woman, Mrs. P., who had talked of her family and affairs till she was sick to death of hearing her. "' Madam,' said Dr. Johnson, 'why do you blame the woman for the only sensible thing she could do — talking of her family and her affairs? For how should a woman who is as empty as a drum, talk upon any other subject? If you speak to her of the sun, she does not know that it rises in the east; if you speak to her of the moon, she does not know it changes at the full; if you speak to her of the queen, she does not know she is the king's wife;— how then, can you blame her for talking of her family and affairs ?'" The second volume covers a period of five years — the most unhappy, although in the short-sighted eyes of Fanny's immediate fam- ily the most honored, portion of her life. Miss Burney's fame as the author of two popular novels—" Cecilia " having appeared about four years after " Evelina "—had attracted the no- tice of the King and Queen, George III. and his wife Charlotte. It was the Queen's wish to attach so important a person to her house- hold; and accordingly Fanny was appointed a keeper of the robes, entering upon her duties in the month of July, 1786. A more unsuit- able selection could hardly have been made. Dress had always been one of the last subjects about which she had troubled herself; she had not the physical strength for the assiduous at- tention, the unremitting readiness for every summons to the dressing-room, the frequent and long readings, and the perpetual sojourn at the palace; she detested cards, and indeed knew nothiug about them, but was expected to pass her evenings at the card-table in order to be agreeable to her colleague, Mrs. Schwel- lenberg, who seems fully to have justified Macaulay's description as "an old hag from 144 THE Germany, of mean understanding, of insolent manners, and of a temper which, naturally savage, had now been exasperated by disease." To Fanny herself the consequences were thor- oughly disastrous. Her almost constant at- tendance upon the Queen was incompatible with literary pursuits, and her pen was per- force idle; she had renounced the prospect of competence for a salary which was barely suf- ficient for the expenses of her wardrobe; she had been more than usually happy in her domestic life and social connections, and found that she had exchanged her intimacy with such men as Edmund Burke and Sir Joshua Rey- nolds, and such women as Mrs. Thrale and Mrs. Montagu, for the empty society of his majesty's equerries; the severe strain of court ceremonial soon began to tell cruelly on her health. However, ever faithful to her diary, we now reap the reward of her sufferings as we read the brilliant pages in which her humour and penetration have invested with an interest not its own the frivolous tattle of her commonplace companions. Her account of the royal family is on the whole favorable. The princesses appear to have been really amiable, and, so far as etiquette would per- mit, sensible young women. To the credit of the King and Queen be it said, they seem to have inspired Fanny with a sincere regard. But even Fanny, with all her loyal partiality, could make no more of them than that they were a well-meaning couple, whose conversa- tion never rose above the commonplace. Few events occurred to relieve the wretched monot- ony of her life. One of these, however, took place when she made one of the party on a royal visit to Oxford. That neither the monot- ony of her official duties, nor the insipidity of her associates, nor even the odious tyranny of her colleague, could wholly subdue in the au- thor of " Evelina" and "Cecilia " her bright and humorous disposition, is apparent when she comes to describe some of the incidents of the tour of the colleges. "The last college we visited was Cardinal Wolsey's — an immense fabric. While roving about a very spa- cious apartment, Mr. Fairly came behind me and whis- pered that I might easily slip out into a small parlor, to rest a little while; almost everybody having taken some opportunity to contrive themselves a little sitting but myself. . . . Mr. Fairly there produced from a paper repository concealed in his coat pocket some apricots and bread, and insisted upon my eating; but I was not inclined to the repast, and saw that he was half famished himself; so was poor Miss Flanta; how- ever, he was so persuaded I must both be as hungry and as tired as himself, that I was forced to eat an ap- ricot to appease him. Presently, while we were in the midst of this regale, the door suddenly spread, and the queen came in !—followed by as many attendants as the room would contain. Up we all started, myself alone not discountenanced, for I really think it quite respect sufficient never to sit down in the royal presence, with- out aiming at having it supposed I have stood bolt up- right ever since I have been admitted to it. Quick into our pockets was crammed our bread, and close into our hands was squeezed our fruit; by which I dis- covered that our appetites were to be supposed anni- hilated, at the same time that our strength was to be invincible." At last the time came when Fanny was no longer capable of supporting the fatigues of her situation. Her friends were seriously alarmed; even her fellow-slaves at court com- miserated her and urged her retirement. The Queen's reluctant consent was gained, a suc- cessor was appointed, and the unfortunate vic- tim of royal selfishness found herself once more free to return to her father's household. Travel, freedom, friendship, domestic affection, soon restored the shattered frame and spirits; and at the beginning of the third volume, the Diary reveals her in the midst of a brilliant company of French refugees who had settled at Juniper Hall in Surrey, not far from which was the house of Mr. Locke, where Fanny was visiting. From a historical point of view, this closing portion of the Diary will probably be counted as the most valuable. It gives us authentic glimpses of some of the actors in that Revolu- tion, "the Death-Birth of a World," which was getting itself transacted with such terrible accompaniments across the channel. Among these notables were the Duke de Lioncourt, M. de Talleyrand, ex-minister of war Narbonue, Madame de Stael, and last but not least inter- esting to the readers of the Diary, General Alexandre D'Arblay, whom Fanny presently falls in love with and marries. Love in a cot- tage, on an income of one hundred pounds a year, was exactly suited to Fanny's retiring and affectionate nature; and the early years of wedded life were probably the happiest she had ever known. To these years belong also the completion and publication of her third novel, "Camilla," dedicated by permission to the Queen. In 1802, the establishment of peace between England and France determined M. D'Arblay to revisit France and to endeavor to obtain from the First Consul the half-pay pension to which his former services in the army had en- titled him. His wife and son, now eight years old, soon joined him; and the next ten years were spent in France. Her impressions of that isas.] THE DIAL 145 country, and of its distinguished men, are, as might be expected, well worthy of citation. We select one describing her first sight of Na- poleon: "Had I not been placed so near the door, and had not all about me facilitated my standing foremost and being least crowd-obstructed, I could hardly have seen him. As it was, I had a view so near, though so brief, of his face, as to be very much struck by it. It is of a deeply impressive cast, pale even to sallowness, while not only in the eye but in every feature care, thought, melancholy, and meditation are strongly marked, with so much of character, nay, genius, and so penetrating a seriousness, or rather sadness, as powerfully to sink into an observer's mind. » "Yet, though the busts and medallions I have seen are, in general, such good resemblances that I think I should have known him untold, he has by no means the look to be expected from Bonaparte, but rather of a pro- foundly studious and contemplative man, who 'o'er books consumes' not only the 'midnight oil,' but his own daily strength, ' and wastes the puny body to de- cay' by abstruse speculation and theoretic plans, or rather visions ingenious but not practicable. But the look of the commander who heads his own army, who fights his own battles, who conquers every difficulty by personal exertion, who executes all he plans, who per- forms even all he suggests; whose ambition is of the most enterprising, and whose bravery is of the most daring cast; — this, which is the look to be expected from his situation, and the exploits which have led to it, the spectator watches for in vain. The plainness, also, of his dress, so conspicuously contrasted by the finery of all around him, conspires forcibly with his countenance, so 'sicklied o'er with the pale hue of thought,' to give him far more the air of a student than a warrior." Madame D'Arblay's last years were spent in England, where she lived to be eighty-eight years old, surviving both husband and son. Toward the close of her life, her intercourse with society was usually confined to that of her relatives and of old established friends. She was, however, pleased to receive Sir Walter Scott, who was brought to her by Mr. Rogers. And since we have had from her so many of her impressions of others, it is interesting to know what impression she herself made, as shown in an extract from Sir Walter's diary, under date November 18, 1826: "I have been introduced to Madame D'Arblay, the celebrated authoress of 'Evelina' and 'Cecilia'—an elderly lady with no remains of personal beauty, but with a simple and gentle manner, and pleasing ex- pression of countenance and apparently quick feelings. She told me she had wished to see two persons —- my- self, of course, being one, the other George Canning. This was really a compliment to be pleased with — a nice little handsome pat of butter made up by a neat- handed Phillis of a dairy-maid, instead of the grease fit only for cart-wheels which one is dosed with by the pound. I trust I shall see this lady again." Anna B. McMahan. Recent Books of Poetry.* In "Amenophis and Other Poems" Mr. Francis Turner Palgrave has collected his verses of the last quarter-century, and gained a new title to the grati- tude of his fellow-men. For in poetry of the con- templative sort he stands almost alone among living writers in the sincerity of his feeling and the simple perfection of its expression. He finds his truest inspiration in the religious sentiment, and his hymns and lyrics of devotion are among the best in the language. Let us make a selection from the fine poem which sings the "Quatuor Novissima" of Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell. The general argument of the poem is to the effect that God has mercifully hidden from mortal vision "The sacred terrors of the final day." The complex problems of the modern world make the holy life a very different thing from what it was in the earlier ages of faith. Looking backward to those days, the poet's vision finds such beautiful expression as this: "I see the climbing road Which from Isere he trode, Bruno, while on the heights a home he seeks: Rock-sown the vale and rude, The soul of solitude; Gray shiver'd walls around, and Angel-haunted peaks. "There in the twilight low The white-robed brothers go, And meet and pass.— no sign, no look, no word: Only they lift their sight Tow'rd the loved cross-crown'd height, And pierce beyond the blue, and see the ascended Lord. * Amenophis, and Other Poems, Sacred and Secular. By Francis T. Palgrave. New York: Macmillan & Co. Francis Drake: A Tragedy of the Sea. By S. Weir Mitchell, M.D., LL.D., Harv. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin A Co. The Mother, and Other Poems. By S. Weir Mitchell, M.D., LL.D., Harv. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. A Book of Day-Dreams. By Charles Leonard Moore. New York: Henry Holt & Co. Sonos and Sonnets, and Other Poems. By Maurice Francis Egan. Chicago: A. C. MeClurg & Co. Ave: An Ode for the Centenary of the Birth of Percy Bysshe Shelley, August 4, 1892. By Charles G. D. Roberta. Toronto: Williamson Book Co. Lachrtm* Musarum, and Other Poems. By William Watson. New York: Macmillan & Co. Lyric Love: An Anthology. Edited by William Watson. New York: Macmillan & Co. Love Songs of English Poets, 15O0-1S00. With notes by Ralph H. Caine. New York: D. Appleton & Co. Mexican and South American Poems (Spanish and English I. Translated by Ernest S. Green and Miss H. von Lowenfels. San Diego: Dodge & Burbeck. Deutsche Volkslieder: A Selection from German Folk- songs. Edited by Horatio Stevens White. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. The Collected Poems of Philip Bourke Marston. Ed- ited by Louise Chandler Moulton. Boston: Roberts Brothers. Poems, Dialogues in Verse, and Epigrams. By Wal- ter Savage Landor. Edited by Charles C. Crump. In two volumes. London: J. M. Dent & Co. 146 [March 1, THE '* There in dim granite cave. To Fancy's eye the grave Of some forgotten far-off warrior wild, Circling the saintly head The light of Heaven is shed, As in the Mother's arms he sees the Eternal Child. "And though the final Fear Gloom near and yet more near As days from life's fast-falling rosary slip; Yet in that Faith and Friend Secure, he sights the end,— God's pardon and award from his Redeemer's lip." But the saint of the modern world may not rest satisfied with this easy solution of the dark problem of life. u Not in the wild, not so Our later footsteps go, Doom'd to the garish world, the vulgar sphere! The dull worn ways, the strife And highway-dust of life. Such is thy lot, 0 Man ! — thine heritage is here!" There is in this more than a touch of Arnold's re- gretful yearning, but neither poet has quite learned Goethe's lesson, "Dem Tiichtigen ist diese Welt nicht stumm," or attained to his serenely contemplative mood. There is no little mysticism in Mr. Palgrave's (as in all) religious song, but it does not for that lose touch with life. The following stanzas are the first half of a poem called "Quia Dilexit Multum." 11 Yes, she is outcast from the world; The decent crowd of rich and good With scorn or silence pass her by, Or bid her search the streets for food : — Yet when the jewels are made up. She shall be ransom'd, yet: For she has loved Him more than all, And He will not forget. "'Tis not He does not prize the pure, Or disesteems the holy heart. Or judges each the same as all. Or fails to take His liegemen's part: But that He sees us as we are With calm of perfect eyes; Heads sorrow hid in reckless mirth. And smiles beneath our sighs." Mr. Palgrave's verse is not all religious in theme. There is a noble ballad, "The Lost' Eurydice,'" in which the poet of " The Visions of England " speaks once more. "Amenophis" (written as early as 1868) is a long narrative of Egyptian fable, written in heroic couplets. "Dead in a dying city, Through her silent water-ways sped Toward the misty West, and the place of rest And gray home of the mighty dead," are lines taken from a poem in memory of Brown- ing, a poem which carves this epitaph for its subject: "For he, Star-crested, Hope-armour'd, Struck straight at a swelling tide; In the valley of doubt, with clarion shout, Chased coward and doubter aside." One more quotation must be made, to illustrate Mr. Palgrave as a poet of nature. Autumn has been invoked by earlier poets with more of passion, but when in more faultlessly grave and simple strain? "With downcast eyes and footfall mild, And close-drawn robe of lucid haze The rose-red Summer's russet child. O'er field and forest Autumn strays: On lawn and mead at rising day Tempers the green with pearly gray; And 'neath the burning beech throws round A golden carpet on the ground. "And oft a look of long regret Her eyes to Summer's glory throw; Delaying oft the brand to set That strips the blossom from the bough: And where in some low shelter'd vale The last sweet August hues prevail, Her eager frosts she will repress, And spare the lingering loveliness." For a man whose chief distinction has been won in a very different profession from that of letters, Dr. S. Weir Mitchell is producing literary work re- markable both for amount and for quality. Two volumes of verse are the latest of his publications; one a dramatic episode, the other a collection of mis- cellaneous pieces. The subject of " Francis Drake" is taken from the story of the great seaman's voy- age around the Cape to the Pacific, and deals with the disaffection of Thomas Doughty, that curious character whose conduct has baffled the historian, although the evidence of his treachery seems, on the whole, sufficient to justify his execution. The drama is in sober and dignified blank verse, and contains many passages of marked beauty. Dr. Mitchell's other volume is entitled "The Mother and Other Poems." Among the best things in this rather uneven collection are the pieces inspired by Italian scenes, and of these "The Decay of Venice" is a noteworthy example. "The glowing pageant of my story lies A shaft of light across the stormy years. When 'raid the agony of blood and tears, Or pope or kaiser won the mournful prize. Till I, the fearless child of ocean, heard The step of doom, and, trembling to my fall, Remorseful knew that I had seen unstirred Proud Freedom's death, the tyrant's festival; Whilst that Italia which was yet to be, And is, and shall be, sat a virgin pure. High over Umbra on the mountain slopes, And saw the failing fires of liberty Fade on the chosen shrine she deemed secure, Where died for many a year man's noblest hopes." Mr. Charles Leonard Moore, the "new j>oet" whose advent was recently heralded by Dr. Weir Mitchell, has republished for general circulation the " Book of Day Dreams " that called forth Dr. Mitchell's praise. The praise does not seem, on the whole, to have been greatly overwrought, for Mr. Moore has the large utterance that makes even good ordinary poetry seem trifling, and transports us to an ether unbreathed by versifiers with whom technical excellence is the sole aim. Technical excellence, in- deed, Mr. Moore does not always, does not often, exhibit, but he gives us instead powerful imagina- tion and thoughts almost beyond the reaches of our 1893.] THE DIAL 147 souls. His book contains exactly one hundred short poems, sonnets in the Shakespearian form—a venturesome undertaking ! — forming a sequence suggestive of "The House of Life." The passion and the peace of these remarkable poems are well exemplified by the following finely contrasted " son- nets": "The Spring returns! What matters then that War On the horizon like a beacon burns. That Death ascends, man's most desired star. That Darkness is his hope? The Spring returns! Triumphant through the wider-arched cope She comes, she comes, unto her tyranny, And at her coronation are set ope The prisons of the mind, and man is free! And beggar-garbed or ovei^bent with snows, Each mortal, long defeated, disallowed, Feeling her touch, grows stronger-limbed, and knows The purple on his shoulders and is proud. The Spring returns! O madness beyond sense, Breed in our bones thine own omnipotence!" This is magnificent poetry, indeed, and our other selection, if less imperious in its appeal, has a charm no less potent to create and fortify the mood of which it makes eloquent discourse. "Yet if uncaring for the increasing ghosts That throng and beckon where life's paths descend, In turn uncared-for by the human hosts, The soul may lean on Nature as a friend. Look in her eyes: those shadowed realms are fair. Cling, closer cling to her deep-cloven breast: Her cool arms thrill, her eyes do seem to wear The very secret of the sweetest rest. Sink, sink to sleep, so choosing to believe Thou hast a balm for all the hurt without, A consolation for the thoughts that grieve. An answer to the unconquerable doubt. Day shall wait on thee, and the twilight pale. The stars shall thicken and the leaves shall fail." In these two poems, at least, there is hardly a flaw; their faultlessness is somewhat exceptional, it is true, but the very defects that the others exhibit give evidence of strength rather than of weakness. With the greatest of poets, imagination sometimes outgrows the restraints of style, and untamed energy gives the false effect of slovenly construction. The " Songs and Sonnets " of Mr. Maurice Fran- cis Egan embody the religious sentiment, as well as others of more earthly origin, and show an acute sense of natural beauty. But they are marred by many verbal infelicities, and careless or common- place lines. In "Oh, let's float back to where the roses tremble," for example, the "let's " is very unhappy, and the line might easily have been improved. "This dark December All gloom the mistress of," is surely a most lame and impotent stanzaic con- clusion. In "The lilacs burst and filled the air with incense, Then roses crowded in the way of June, Beauties well guarded by their thorns and leaves dense," the verse begins prettily enough, but the rhyme is shocking. The sonnet "Golden Noon" may be taken as an example of Mr. Egan's best work, and very fair work it is, up to the weak ending: "Adonis has come back; cicadas sing. Through twelve months silent, for July is here; And thou, 0 Aphrodite, void of fear, Dost sport in gold; and thou, gold-hearted thing, O wateMily, drink'st (where reapers fling Their serried loads of many a barbed spear) The scent of new-mown hay; and vague, yet near, The voices of the noonday chirpers ring. The sky is blue and gold and pearl-besprent, High blazes color, larkspur, poppy, pink; The air is incense; it is joy to live; Yet only soulless creatures are content. Alas! in all this splendor we must think, Beyond this beauty what has earth to give?" Professor Roberts, of King's College, Windsor, N. S., has published in a thin volume an ode for the Shelley centenary that takes high rank among the poems called forth by that occasion. It is in thirty-one ten-line stanzas of nearly conventional form (two quatrains and a couplet), and, beginning with a lengthy invocation to the familiar landscape of the author's own country — the marsh-meadows of Tantramar—passes gracefully into a contempla- tive analysis of Shelley's life and ideals. The fol- lowing stanza marks the transition: "And now, O tranquil marshes, in your vast Serenity of vision and of dream, Where through by every intricate vein have passed With joy impetuous and pain supreme The sharp fierce tides that chafe the shores of earth In endless and controlless ebb and flow, Strangely akin you seem to him whose birth One hundred years ago With fiery succor to the ranks of song Defied the ancient gates of wrath and wrong." One of the most beautiful of the stanzas that fol- low is this: "Thyself the lark melodious in mid-heaven; Thyself the Protean shape of chainless cloud. Pregnant with elemental fire, and driven Through deeps of quivering light and darkness loud With tempest, yet beneficent as prayer; Thyself the wild west wind, relentless strewing The withered leaves of custom on the air, And through the wreck pursuing O'er lovelier Arnos, more imperial Koines, Thy radiant visions to their viewless homes." The poem has a few minor defects, but is, on the whole, a sustained and worthy production, almost on the level of the author's best work. Mr. William Watson's "Lachrymae Musarum," from which The Dial has made some quotations in its "Tennysoniana," is now published, with a few other poems, in a thin volume. It remains, to our mind, the best of the many poetical tributes that the death of Tennyson has evoked. For its noblest passage, which we have not quoted before, we may here find space: "For lo! creation's self is one great choir, And what is nature's order but the rhyme Whereto the worlds keep time. And all things move with all things from their prime? Who shall expound the mystery of the lyre? In far retreats of elemental mind Obscurely comes and goes 148 [March 1, THE DIAL The imperative breath of song, that as the wind Is trackless, and oblivious whence it blows. Demand of lilies wherefore they are white, Extort her crimson secret from the rose, Bnt ask not of the Muse that she disclose The meaning of the riddle of her might: Somewhat of all things sealed and recondite, Save the enigma of herself, she knows. The master could not tell, with all his lore, Wherefore he sang, or whence the mandate sped: Ev'n as the linnet sings, so I, he said ; — Ah, rather as the imperial nightingale. That held in trance the ancient Attic shore. And charms the ages with the notes that o'er All woodland chants immortally prevail! And now, from our vain plaudits greatly fled, He with diviner silence dwells instead, And on no earthly sea with transient roar, Unto no earthly airs, he trims his sail. But far beyond our vision and our hail Is heard forever and is seen no more." Mr. Watson also reprints in this volume his poem on the Shelley centenary, thus linking together the two great names of our century's song. These are the closing stanzas of the poem: "A creature of impetuous breath, Our torpor deadlier than death He knew not,— whatsoe'er he saith Flashes with life: He spurreth men — he quickeneth To splendid strife. "And in his gusts of song he brings Wild odors shaken from strange wings. And unfamiliar whisperings From far lips blown, While all the rapturous heart of things Throbs through his own,— "His own that from the burning pyre One who had loved his wind-swept lyre Out of the sharp teeth of the fire Unmolten drew, Beside the sea that in her ire Smote him and slew." Mr. Watson also figures among this season's an- thologists, his collection being styled " Lyric Love," and published in the "Golden Treasury" series of volumes. He has done more than to bring together the best love lyrics of the language, for his collection includes many things that are not lyrical except in feeling. It includes, for example, ex- tracts from the longer poems of Shakespeare, Pope, and Milton. This, with the fact that Mr. Watson's range of reading is exceptionally wide, makes his collection unlike any other with which we are ac- quainted. The old familiar songs are here, of course, but there are also many comparatively un- familiar. He is certainly right in claiming that "there is in this book nothing that is not good poetry, and little that is not very fine poetry in- deed." But the best of us have our limitations, and Mr. Watson brings his own to view in a pre- face, which, accounting for the omission of many Elizabethan lyrics, confesses his failure to ap- preciate those loveliest flowers of English song. Mr. Watson here quite unnecessarily lays himself open to criticism, for we should have expected so small a volume to omit much that is dear to us, and should certainly have had no quarrel with him on that score. But since he goes out of his way to attack Campion and Barnefield, we must enter a distinct protest. And what can we say of the man who describes the verse, "Nay, I have done, you get no more of me," in Drayton's greatest sonnet, as " coarse in feeling" and "rude in expression "? Mr. Ralph H. Caine's "Love Songs of English Poets" is an anthology collected upon more conven- tional lines than the one last mentioned; it does not studiously slight the Elizabethan song-books, nor does it make the somewhat rash experiment of selecting from living poets. The years 1500 to 1800 are given upon the title-page in designation of the volume's scope, but the latter date merely means that the poets included were all born before the present century, and one so recently among the living as WTells (who died in 1879) finds a place. Shakespeare, Jonson, and Herrick are the English love-poets par excellence, according to Mr. Caine, for which saying no one will quarrel with him, especially as he gives abundant space to Campion, Coleridge, Landor, and a number of others. A volume of "Mexican and South American Poems" gives us the Spanish text and English translation on opposite pages. As there are nearly four hundred of the pages, there is space for a con- siderable collection of Spanish-American verse. The Mexican poets, Acufla, Carpio, and Calderon, are represented by numerous selections; a score of other poets (mostly South American) have one or two numbers each. The editors have also included, on account of its great popularity in Mexico, SeHor Gaspar Nuilez de Arce's long poem, "La Selva Oscura." Most of the translations are line-for-line versions of the baldest description, but even these are superior to the occasional attempts to translate into English rhymed measures. A triplet from "La Selva Oscura " may serve to show of what the translators are capable when they are not content with being literal: "Lleno de admiration vile delante De mi, llore\ con voz conmovedora Grite1, cayendo prosternado: — Oh Dante!" This passage takes form as follows: "I saw him stand before me and mine eyes did chant His praise, and weeping fell I prostrate and did pant With deep emotion and with touching voice: O Dant'!" It is safe to say that no reader of the English alone can get from this volume the slightest notion of the grace and beauty not infrequently characteristic of the Spanish. Here is a pretty stanza descriptive of a tyrant: "Sus ojos cansados Anhelan el Uanto; Mas nunca su encauto Probd la maldad: Al cielo levanta La diestra horaicida, Con voz dolorida Clamando: Piedad!" 1893.] 149 THE DIAL And here is the English that stands for it: "His weary eyes Crave for tears; Yet iniquity their charm Never tasted. To heaven he raises His murderous right hand, Exclaiming ' Mercy!' In a dreadful voice." We fear that our translators have a defective sense of humor. Taking for text Rttckert's "Das schiinste ward gedichtet Von keines Dichter s Mund," Mr. Horatio Stevens White, of Cornell University, has edited, with all the necessary apparatus of in- troduction and notes, a selection of •• Deutsche Volkslieder." Most of the old favorites are in- cluded, although the rule of admitting nothing of known authorship has kept out many songs, from Luther's hymn to "Die Wacht am Rhein," that would otherwise be among the first thought of for such a collection. The book takes the pleasing form of a •• Knickerbocker Nugget." Mrs. Louise Chandler Moulton, who for many years enjoyed the friendship of the late Philip Bourke Marston, has now paid to his memory a crowning tribute in her edition of his collected poems. The saddest, perhaps, of all stories in the literary biography of England is once more told by Mrs. Moulton in an introduction of exquisite sympathy and tenderness, and is followed by all the published verse of the poet, as well as by a score or more of pieces hitherto kept in manuscript. This •• Aftermath " consists mostly of sonnets, and makes no perceptible extension of the poet's range. In- deed, the chords struck within all these four hun- dred pages of song are few in number, but they are of harmony so pure that they must always "be dear to whoever loves what is loveliest and truest in literature." It seems to us. as to Mrs. Moulton, that Marston reached his highest level in "Wind Voices," his third volume. The music of such po- ems as ■• Pure Souls" and •■ Thy Garden" can never be forgotten, nor the cry of one despairing soul to another in the sonnets to James Thomson. This beautifully printed volume, with its portrait frontispiece, is a welcome accession to the shelf upon which is assembled the goodly company of Victorian poets. A still more welcome accession to that shelf (for the volumes may as well go there as anywhere else) is Mr. Crump's edition of the poems of Lan- dor. For this gift, indeed, we can hardly find words to thank both publisher and editor. It has been to us for many years the most astonishing of facts that no collection of Landor's poems was ac- cessible to the general reader. Only in the eight- volume edition of the author's works (long out of print and very expensive ) were they attainable in anything like their entirety, and this was true in a period characterized, more than any earlier one, by reprints of all sorts of writers, the unworthy quite as frequently as the worthy. So grateful are we for the present edition that we are not disposed to censure the editor very severely for his omissions, grievously as we note them. How could an editor, with any feeling for poetry at all, abridge the im- mortal "Hellenics," or, having resolved upon the ruthless work, how was it possible for him to leave out that perfect tragic idyl, "Iphigeneia and Aga- memnon "? The editor's introduction gives evi- dence (we say it with regret) that he has but im- perfect sympathy with the poetry of the writer whose prose he has edited with admirable taste and discrimination. For his sins of omission he makes, however, a certain reparation by reprinting the fragment "From the Phocaeans," which even Forster neglected, and which has remained un- printed since 1802, when it appeared in company with •• Gebir." These two works, at all events, Mr. Crump has given us, and the magnificent se- ries of dramatic poems from -Count Julian" to •• Antony and Octavius," and the glorious " Regen- eration," and most of the "Hellenics," and nearly two hundred pages of the shorter poems. Most of the omissions made are of personal and occasional poems, the best of which are doubtless given us, but the lovers of Landor's verse (and who really knows it that does not love it?) will never be satisfied until they can have it all brought together, and will think it a great pity that the work should have been so nearly done, and yet not done once for all. We "Take what hath been for years delay'd" with regret that it should now be given with grudg- ing measure; but the leaves, we know, as Landor knew, will fall for that no hour the earlier from his coronal. "I shall dine late." he said, "but the dining-room will be well lighted, the guests few and select." William Morton Payne. Uuiefs on New Hooks. , , In respect of the amount and gen- gtuUinof eral excellence of artistic production, ''' France is to the modern world what Italy was to the Renaissance and Greece was to an- tiquity. It becomes essential, then, as an element of general culture, to know wherein the distinctive merit of French art lies, what are its specific aims and limitations, something of the course of its histor- ical and academic development, and something of the great names that illustrate its several epochs. To, Americans, a fair degree of information on these points seems especially desirable. America is fast becoming the leading foreign mart for French paintings. The cheerful abundance of American dollars, and the growing aptitude of their owners to spend them intelligently, draw liberally every year upon the output of the Paris ateliers, and the coming Exhibition will doubtless stimulate 150 the influx. Messrs. Scribner & Co. have issued a little work on " French Art." by Mr. W. C. Brown- ell, that will meet, better than any book we now recall, the needs of those who want to " read up" briefly yet intelligently on French painting and sculpture. It is not too technical, nor is it a book for the mere smatterer. Mr. Brownell is a rarely competent critic and expositor of French ideas and character, and he needs no introduction to our readers. It may be added that "French Art" is very agreeably, as well as instructively, written. The contents are divided under the several heads: "Classic Painting," "Romantic Painting." "Real- istic Painting," "Classic Sculpture," •• Academic Sculpture," and "The New Movement in Sculp- ture." Each division opens with a general discus- sion of the topic proposed, and closes with brief criticism and appreciation of representative works and individuals. Mr. Brownell finds that " More than that of any other modern people French art is a national expression. ... Of almost any Fre"nch picture or statue of any modern epoch one's first thought is that it is French. The national quite overshadows the personal quality. ... As one walks through the French rooms at the Lou- vre, through the galleries of the Luxembourg, through the unending rooms of the Salon, he is impressed by the splendid competence everywhere displayed, the high standard of culture universally attested, by the overwhelming evidence that France stands at the head of the modern world aesthetically — but not less, I think, does one feel the absence of imagination, opportunity, of spirituality, of poetry in a word. . . . The most distinct and durable impression left by any exhibition of French pic- tures is that the French aesthetic genius is at once admirably artistic and extremely little poetic." French painting is essentially an exquisite handi- craft; and Mr. Brownell accentuates throughout what we may term its admirable prose qualities, its lucidity, poise, and entire adequacy of expression. „ , ... Under the title " Round London" Sootn sketches o/ Unuion Ufe Messrs. Macnmlan & Co. reprint from ".Household Words " a sheaf of thumb-nail sketches of London life and manners, by Montagu Williams, Q. C. The volume is in two Parts: "Down East," drawn from the author's experiences while serving as a police magistrate in the "city"; and " Up West," largely a rbchmiffk of more or less malodorous West End scandals. The book is, in its slight way, informing, and may be skimmed over not without entertainment. The prevailing impression one gets from it is that Lon- don, socially, would bear a thorough fumigating, and that Montagu Williams, Q.C., was, for a magis- trate of worth and dignity, rather over-addicted to tattle. Of the two Parts, "Down East" is the more important. During his magistracy at the East End the author was fond of roving about among his " subjects " incognito — after the fashion of the Caliph of Bagdad — and he thus picked up a deal of curious information. He cheerfully bears wit- ness to the unmatched brutality of the English lower classes, and satisfies the American reader that "Bill Sykes" was not an over-drawn monster, but an actual type still flourishing abundantly. For instance: '• If anyone has any doubts as to the bru- talities practiced on women by men, let him visit the London Hospital on a Saturday night. Very terrible sights will meet his eye. Sometimes as many as twelve or fourteen women may be seen seated in the receiving-room, waiting for their bruised and bleeding bodies to be attended to. In nine cases out of ten the injuries have been inflicted by brutal and perhaps drunken husbands. The nurses tell me, however, that any remarks they may make reflecting on the aggressors are received with great indignation by the wretched sufferers. They positively will not hear a single word against the cowardly ruffians." Among the "FlBST Days among the Contra- Souihernnetiroei bands" (Lee & Shepard) is the re- in the C'u<711 nr. cord 0f Klizabeth H. Botume's expe- rience as a teacher of newly-freed negroes during the Civil War. The book, though rather fragment- ary, is readable, and it conveys a good idea of the mental status and capacity of the " intelligent con- traband." On this point, the author thinks. North- ern people were then strangely ignorant: and she furnishes some amusing stories in point which cer- tainly bear out the charge. There was no day. she says, without Northern visitors to the school, and the questions they put to the pupils—most of whom could not tell time by the clock or distinguish the right hand from the left — were " amusing and ex- asperating." One inspired donkey, for instance (possibly'• Mr. Barlow," re-fleshed) solemnly put the query, '• Children, can you tell me what is meant by the Trinity?" Finding the "children" rather foggy in Alexandrian dialectics, he proceeded forth- with to bray most learnedly on his theme for the balance of the hour,— probably what he had been aching to do from the start. Another caller, more rational, asked: "Children, who is Jesus Christ?" "For a moment the whole school seemed paralyzed. Then one small boy shouted out, ' Gineral Saxby. sar.' Upon this an older boy sprang up, and, giving him a vigorous thrust in the back, exclaimed, 1 Not so, boy! Him's Massa Linkum.'" Miss Botume was stationed in the region about Beaufort and Hilton Head. S.C., near the edge of battle, while Charleston was still holding out; and her narrative is enlivened with reminiscences of that stirring time. T , , ,. A new edition of Shellev's "Pro- Interpretatton of Sidney't Pro- metheus Unbound" (Heath) is ed- metheu, Abound. fcy D Scndder> M A &nd is designed to render the poem more widely knowu to the general reader and more available for pur- poses of the class-room. To this end a good crit- ical apparatus is furnished in the shape of notes, extracts from criticisms on the poem, and an in- 1893.] 151 THE DIAL traduction in three parts — " The Drama and the Time," "A Study of the Myth." and "The Drama as a Work of Art." Miss Scudder does not agree with that school of critics who insist that "Pro- metheus Unbound " is simply a succession of shin- ing pictures and lovely melodies. Yielding full admiration to these, she maintains that the drama will be best understood by regarding it as the su- preme expression, in imaginative form, of the new spirit of democracy which entered into human life as a great renovating power, more than one hun- dred years ago. At one moment, and one only, in the evolution of English song since Beowulf, was possible the formation of a myth; and at this moment appeared the man to create it. Only at the beginning of the nineteenth century, only by the man Shelley, could the " Prometheus Unbound" have been written. Without trying to translate the poem into a series of moral maxims, it is quite pos- sible to apprehend something of the broader rela- tions which its imagery bears to the facts of human life, and such an apprehension is essential to the best enjoyment of the drama. A comparison of the drama with the "Prometheus Bound" of JEs- chylus. by Miss Lucy H. Smith, A.B., is a valu- able addition to this very satisfactory volume. introdwioni "Empire and Papacy in the Middle atuditsin' Ages" (Macmillan), is the title of Mtdtiri at iiittory. R little book by Alice D. Greenwood, intended as a school text-book introductory to the study of mediaeval history. Beginning with the barbarian invasions, the author epitomizes the his- tory of the world-church and the world-empire down to the time when tlfcir unity was destroyed by the Reformation. To pack all this into a volume of 220 pages shows rather unusual powers of condensa- tion, and what would be to most writers the exercise of considerable self-denial. In the present case the self-denial must be shared to some extent by the reader, for the style, though direct and nervous, is at times obscure, and the effort for compactness has more than once led to the sacrifice of truth to brevity, not so much by glaring misstatements as by omissions or misleading half-truths. It is scarcely consistent to write Odoacer in one place and Odovakar two pages farther on; and to carry back the name Hungary to the fifth century is to perpetuate an unfortunate historical error. An account of the mediaeval em- pire is certainly inadequate without some reference to those more modern times when the empire, shorn of imperial power, still lived on as a shadow of its former self, "neither holy, nor Roman, nor an em- pire." If Miss Greenwood's book is used in schools it will require, even more than most text-books, to be supplemented and explained by a skilful teacher. .... The very interesting account of the o/a/aroriu voyage of the "Challenger, by the scientific work ^te prof essor H N< Moseiey of Ox- ford, "Notes by a Naturalist, an account of ob- servations made during the voyage of H. M. S. 'Challenger' round the world in the years 1872- 1876," has appeared in a new and revised edition (Putnam), with maps, portrait, and woodcuts, and a brief memoir of the author. The book, which was published for the first time in 1879, is so well known that it is hardly necessary to recommend it here. The new edition is enlarged in several re- spects. It contains now a short memoir of the life of Moseiey by G. C. B. (G. C. Browne, a pupil of Moseiey), his portrait, a list of books, scientific- papers, and monographs published by Moseiey, and a list of papers written by his assistants and pupils- under his superintendence at Oxford. The inci- dents of the voyage are recorded with inimitable freshness and vigor; and in scientific interest the book is scarcely inferior to Darwin's " Voyage of a Naturalist on the Beagle." The German sculptor Christian Dan- tiZZZcutptor. W Rauch, test kn°wn to *he PuMo by his monument of King Wilhelm and Queen Louise at Charlottenburg, has been made the subject of an extended biography by Mrs. Ed- nah D. Cheney (Lee & Shepard). This "Life" is based mainly upon the five-volume work of Eggers, from which, with permission, Mrs. Cheney has made numerous extracts, while her whole book may be described as a condensation of its German prototype. A few of Rauch's works appear as illustrations, and a list of them all is given as an appendix. We cannot say that Mrs. Cheney has made a very readable book, but Rauch certainly deserved an introduction to the American public, and the present one may serve until someone shall prepare a better. BRIEFER MENTION. The new edition of Dr. Henry Charles Lea's " Super- stition and Force" (Lea) embodies a few revisions and a considerable amount of added matter. The essays on "The Wager of Battle " and "The Ordeal" have been extended by matter taken from Patetta's "Le Ordalie " and Neilson's "Trial by Combat"; the two remaining essays, on "The Wager of Law " and "Tor- ture," are left more nearly in their original shape. A new edition of " The Practical Surveyor's Guide" (Baird), by Mr. Andrew Duncan, gives us that popular manual in a materially enlarged and improved form. Dr. Pietsch's "Katechismus der Feldmesskunst" has been mainly drawn upon for the added matter. The title-page of the book informs us that the work con- tains "the necessary information to make any person of common capacity a finished land surveyor, without the aid of a teacher." "The Children of the Poor " (Scribner), by Mr. Ja- cob A. Riis, is a social study no less valuable than " How the Other Half Lives," by the same author. Mr. Riis bases his statements upon close observation of life in the New York slums, and interprets the facts with un- failing sympathy. The book has its share of statistics and other matters of mere information, but it has also its share of amusing anecdotes and character sketches, 152 [March 1, THE DIAL as well as many photographs, and these features make it both pictorially and textually attractive. Arthur Young's " A Tour in Ireland," published in 1780, is a work almost equal in importance to his bet- ter known account of travels in France, and we note with satisfaction its appearance in a modern edition. Mr. Arthur Wollaston Hutton is the editor of the work, which fills two volumes of Holm's Standard Library (Macmillan). The work is reprinted intact, with a con- servative text, all the notes that are needed, and a very full Young bibliography. Mr. Edmund Gosse's "Gossip in a Library " (Lov- ell, Coryell & Co.), of which a second edition has just appeared, consists of "ten-minute sermons" upon cer- tain selected old books of which the author happily pos- sesses first editions. These brief papers were originally written for the New York "Independent " at the sug- gestion of its editor, the late Mr. John Eliot Bowen. We note an error in the preface which should not have crept into a second edition. Mr. Gosse is speaking of our protective tariff, and implies that it taxes the im- portation of old books, such as " first editions of Milton or of Motiere." Our tariff is barbarous enough in its treatment of knowledge and art, but it does not, at least, go to the extreme of barbarism thus indicated. Two pamphlets of considerable historical interest come to us from the press of the University of Mich- igan. One of them contains a paper on "The Pageant of Saint Lusson, Sault Ste. Marie, 1671," by Dr. Jus- tin Winsor, read at the University Commencement last June. The other is a "commemoration address " on "The Discovery of America," by Prof. B. A. Hinsdale, delivered before the University last October. "The Visible Universe" (Macmillan), by Mr. J. Ellard Gore, is a book of popular astronomy, made attractive by many charts and photographic plates, as well as by an orderly arrangement of subject-matter and lucid explanations. The object of the book is "to explain and discuss theories which have been supported by well-known astronomers and other men of science." Beginning with a historical sketch of the nebular hy- pothesis, Mr. Gore discusses the various theories of the universe and of the constitution of matter, and also de- scribes the principal star and nebular groups. •' Ron Roy " is the latest issue of the Dryburgh edi- tion of Scott. The illustrations are by Mr. Lockhart Bogle, and exhibit both spirit and character. "David Copperfield" has been added to the dollar reprints of the more popular novels of Dickens. Both these edi- tions are published by Messrs. Macmillan & Co. The new (third) edition of Mr. Henry Van Dyke's work on "The Poetry of Tennyson" (Scribner) has a portrait of the Laureate, some original verses upon bis death, an enlarged chronology, and a revised estimate of " Maud." Upon the latter point the author remarks: "I should be very much ashamed if I felt any shame at confessing a change in critical judgment produced by the reception of new light. In this case the new light that came to me was Tennyson's own wonderful reading and interpretation of the poem." "The New Testament and Its Writers " (Randolph) is a little handbook of historical criticism, from the or- thodox standpoint, by the Rev. J. A. M'Clyinont. The contents are systematically arranged for easy refer- ence. The book is published in a series of "Guild and Bible Class Text-Books," of which the following are other recent issues: "The Church of Scotland," by the Rev. Pearson M'Adam Muir; "Handbook of Christian Evidences," by Dr. Alexander Stewart; and a volume of brief essays entitled " Life and Conduct," by Dr. J. Cameron Lees. "How Do You Spell It"? (McClurg) is " a book for busy people" by Mr. W. T. C. Hyde. It is a dic- tionary of words so printed as "to stamp correct En- glish orthography ineffaceably upon the visual mem- ory." This is done by using heavy-face type for the letters that are likely to cause hesitation. Mr. Hyde would like to see our spelling reformed altogether, but sees that this is out of the question, and so tries to make the best of a bad matter. "Names and Their Meaning" (Putnam), by Mr. Leopold Wagner, is a new edition of a popular work devoted to curious ety- mologies. Literary Notes axu Nkws. Messrs. Henry Holt & Co. will soon publish " Lit- erary Criticism for Students," a volume of extracts from the great English critics, from Sidney to Pater, edited by Prof. Edward T. McLaughlin. Mr. James Parton, just before his death, completed a biography of Andrew Jackson for " The Great Com- manders " series. The work is about to he published by Messrs. I). Appleton & Co. "American Young People" is the title of a new monthly magazine for boys and girls, published in Chi- cago. It will make a special feature of historical and other articles calculated to stimulate the patriotism of its youthful readers. Messrs. Macmillan & Co. issue a catalogue of works by American authors published by them, and to this is appended a list of foreign works that they have copy- righted in this country under the act of 1801. Over fifty titles are included in the latter category. Mr. Henry C'raik's " English Prose Writers,'* in five volumes, uniform with Ward's "English Poets," and similar in plan, is announced by Messrs. Macmillan & Co. The first volume, running to the close of the six- teenth century, is nearly ready for publication. Sig. Scartazzini has just published an abridged edi- tion of his annotated " Divine Comedy," and promises a revised edition of his Dante manual, under the new name of "Dantalogia." The latter work is the one translated into English by Mr. Thomas Davidson. "The Colossus " is the title of Mr. Opie Read's new novel, which will be published in March by Messrs. F. J. Sehiilte & Co., Chicago. The same firm have also in press a new edition of " A Kentucky Colonel," which has now reached a sale of nearly a hundred thousand copies. Mr. Rudyard Kipling has recently published a story, "My Lord the Elephant," which appealed simultan- eously in most of the English-speaking countries. He has also written an article on his own boyhood for " The Youth's Companion." Nearly twenty thousand copies of his " Barrack-Koom Ballads " are said to have l>een sold. Jose" Zorilla, whose death from pneumonia was an- nounced about a month ago, was a member of the Span- ish Academy since 1885, and probably the most popular of Spanish poets. He was a voluminous writer of poems and dramas, and also made a collection of folklore and legendary poems, published under the title " Cantos del Trovador." 1893.] 153 THE DIAL Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. have issued a spe- cial catalogue of such of their publications as are fitted for the use of school libraries. Only such books are included as have been recommended by the Boards of Education of American cities as desirable for school reading. The books are fully described, and the grades for which they are fitted are in each case designated. A white marble monument has been sent to Alicante, to be erected over the tomb of the late Professor Free- mau. It bears the following inscription: " To the pious memory of Edward Augustus Freeman, who enshrined in letters for all time the early history of England, the Norman Conquest, and the destinies of Sicily. Fired with a zeal for topographical research, he was struck down in the midst of a journey in Spain by sudden sickness, and died there March 16, 181(2." In addition to the libel suits of which we elsewhere make mention, the following, from the London "Athe- naeum," may be noted: "A case of importance to dra- matic critics was decided last week. Mr. Melford, a play-wright, was awarded by a jury £.50 damages against 'The People' because its critic had said the play called 'The Maelstrom' was 'hooted off the stage,' whereas the evidence went to show that there was no 'hooting,' strictly so-called, only derisive laughter and 'boo-boo- ing.'" The Town Council of Diisseldorf has unanimously decided to forbid the erection of a monument to Heine within the precincts of his native town, although about five years ago it had placed three different sites at the disposal of the Heine Committee. German papers are indignant at the decision of the wise men of Gotham, and the "Frankfurter Zeitung" expresses the optim- istic, or rather malicious, hope that the time may come when a memorial tablet at the Town House of Diissel- dorf will commemorate the fact "that it was in this building that the Town Council refused a site to the memory of the poet of the 'Buch der Lieder.'" Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons announce an "Exhi- bition Number " of their monthly magazine, to be pub- lished when the Exposition opens. They have planned to make it as fine an example of an American magazine as can lie produced. It is not proposed that the text shall relate chiefly to the Fair, but, on the contrary, the writers and artists have been asked to contribute to the number what they themselves think will best re- present them. The pages of text and illustration will be largely increased and the appearance of the number is likely to be looked for with eagerness by all readers interested in the work of American magazines. Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Company will publish next mouth Mr. W. G. Collingwood's "John Ruskiu, His Life and Work." Mr. Collingwood was Mr. Rus- kin's private secretary, and has had access to much un- published material, including both drawings aud let- ters, many of which will be reproduced. Mr. Ruskin's health, periodically made the subject of sensational comment by the newspapers, appears to be about what it has been for some years past. A recent account des- cribes him as rather enjoying the severe weather that England as well as America has been experiencing, taking two brisk walks every day, and seeing a few friends or playing a game of chess in the evening. Apropos of Tennyson, Mr. Theodore Watts makes the following note in " The Athenaeum ": "' The For- resters ' is still being acted in America with great suc- cess, and the sale of the book has reached about three thousand copies, I believe, while that of 'The Death of (Enone' is not far behind. But it is the sale of the col- lected works of Tennyson that his death has sent up so enormously, and from that I think I may say, the fam- ily do not get one penny. In that ideal community of which the author of ' Sigurd' dreams the poet is to get no money payment for his verses, but only love. This is something more than a beautiful dream. Such a Utopia is America for the bard—supposing him always to be a British bard—even in these 'imperfect days,' vulgarized by the prosaic chink of dollars." A writer in "The Bookman" tells the following amusing story of the Rev. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, whose real name is as unfamiliar to readers as his as- sumed name of Lewis Carroll is well known. "It hap- pened that in two houses near together in a London street, dinner parties were being given upon the same night. Just as the guests in one house were about to descend to the dining-room, the door was flung open, and, to the surprise of the assembled company, a gen- tleman entered on all fours. Fortunately, one of the guests recognized Mr. Dodgson in this strange appari- tion, who, realizing his mistake, was able to explain it, to the amusement of all present. It seems that he was supposed to be dining in the other house, where a num- ber of his small friends were waiting to see him in the drawing-room before dinner. In his haste, and con- sidering the strong family likeness between Loudon houses, it is not surprising that he entered the first door which showed signs of a party. Nor did he notice the unfamiliarity of his surroundings till the aghast ex- pression of the butler and the bewilderment upon the faces of the guests, roused him to a sense of the situa- tion. It is easy to imagine the delight of the children in the right house if this very original mode of entrance was repeated for their benefit." Topics ix Leading Periodic als. March, 1803 [First List). African Customs. James Macdonald. Popular Science. Agricultural Revolution, An. Illus. Popular Science. American Fanning a Century Hence. J. Rusk. North Am. Artesian Waters in Arid Region. Illus. R. T. Hill. Pop.Sci. Artist Life by the North Sea. Illus. H. W. Ranger. Century. Banking and the Clearing-House. A.B.Hepburn. No. Am. Bernard of Clairvaux. C. A. L. Richards. Dial. Brooklyn Ethical Association. L. 6. James. Pop. Science. Burroughs, Marie. Illus. Robert Edgarton. Lippincott. Camilla Saint-Sae'ns. Illus. H. E. Krehbiel. Century. Chanler, William Astor. Illus. R. H. Davis. Harper. Chicago. Marion C. Smith. Century. Dagnan-Bouveret. Prince Karageorgeviteh. Mag. of Art. D'Arblay, Madame, Diary of. Anna B. McMahan. Dial. Design. Illus. Walter Crane. Magazine of Art. Earthquakes and High Buildings. N. S. Shaler. No. Am. Emerson, Reminiscences of. W. H. Furness. Atlantic. England in the Orient. Prof. A. Vambdry. No. American. Epileptics, A Colony for. Edith Sellers. Popular Science. Escurial, The. Illus. Theodore Child. Harper. Florida. Blus. Julian Ralph. Harper. Genius, Ancestry of. Havelock Ellis. Atlantic. Glass Industry, The. Blus. Prof. C. H. Henderson. Pop. Sci. Hawaiian Question, The. Capt. A. T. Mahan. Forum. Hawaii. Bins. Edward Wilson. Overland. Jamaica. Illus. Gilbert Gaul. Century. Leech, John. Art-Life of. Illus. Henry Silver. Mag. of Art. Mashonaland, Ruined Cities of. E. G. J. Dial. Medical Men, Fads of. Cyrus Edson. North American. Mining, Profits of. James D. Hague. Forum. 154 THE Missions and Civilization. C. C. Starbuck. Andover. Morality as a Scientific Basis. J. T. Bixby. Andover. "Mourning," Selfishness of. C. H. Crandall. Lippincott. Municipal Corruption. Forum. Napoleon's Deportation to Elba. Illus. Thomas Ussher. Cent. Paleopathology. Illus. R. W. Shufeldt. Popular Science. Panama. Ernest Lambert. Forum. Persian Poetry. Sir Edward Strachey. Atlantic. Phillips Brooks. Prof. Laurence. Andover. Poetry, Recent Books of. William Morton Payne. Dial. Rural Population, Decrease of. J. C. Rose. Popular Science. Sand, George, Recollections of. Madame Adam. No. Am. Sliver, Free Coinage of. John C. Henderson. Overland. Slavery and African Slave Trade. Illus. H. M. Stanley. Harper Spain at the World's Fair. The Spanish Minister. No. Am. St. Vincent, Earl of. A. T. Mahan. Atlantic. Washington Society. Illus. Henry L. Nelson. Harper. Westminister Abbey. IUus. H. B. Fuller. Century. Words. Agnes Repplier. Atlantic. List or New Books. [The following list, embracing 51 titles, includes all books received by The Dial since last issue.] ART AND DRAMA. The Industrial Arts of the Anglo-Saxons. By the Baron J. De Baye. With 17 steel plates and 31 text cuts. Trans, by T. B. Harbottle. Quarto, pp. 13."). Macmil- lan & Co. $7.00. A Greek Play and Its Presentation. By Henry M. Tyler, Smith College. Illus., small 4to, pp. (>5. North- ampton, Mass.: Hill Tyler. $1.00. HISTORY. The Story of the Atlantic Cable. By Henry M. Field. IUus., 12mo, pp. 41.">. Harper & Bros. $1.50. The Fishguard Invasion by the French In 1797. Pas- sages from the Diary of the late Rev. Daniel Rowlands. Illus., 12mo, pp. 234. G. P. Putnam's Sons. $1.50. BIOGRAPHY AND MEMOIRS. Three Generations of English Women: Memoirs and Correspondence of Susannah Taylor, Sarah Austin, and Lady Duff Gordon. By Janet Ross, author of " Italian Sketches." New and enlarged edition, illus., 8vo, pp. 570, uncut. G. P. Putnam's Sons. $2.1X1. John Keble : A Biography. By Walter Lock, M.A. With portrait, 12mo, pp. 245. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. $1.00. Phillips Brooks. By Julius H. Ward. Reprinted from "The New England Magazine." Illus., large 8vo, pp. 34. Office of the Magazine. Paper, 25 cts. ESSAYS AND GENERAL LITERATURE. An Agnostic's Reply, and Other Essays. By Leslie Ste- phen, author of "Hours in a Library." Svo, pp. 380, uncut. G. P. Putnam's Sons. $2.50. Studies by a Recluse, in Cloister. Town and Country. By Augustus Jessopp. D.D. With frontispiece, 12mo, pp. 285, gilt top. G. P. Putnam's Sons. Si.7."). Plato and Platonlsm : A Series of lectures. By Walter Pater. 12mo, pp. 2.V>. Mac-millan & Co. SI.75. Two Satires of Juvenal, with notes by Francis Phillip Nash, M.A. lt'.mo, pp. 128. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. $1.25. The Gentleman's Magazine Library: A collection of the chief contents of "The Gentleman's Magazine." 1731- lKiiS. Part III. 8vo, pp. 353. Houghton, Mifflin . Cavazza s Italian Peasant Stories. DON FINIMONDONE: CALABRIAN SKETCHES. By Elisabeth Cavazza. With frontispiece by Dan Beard. "Fiction. Fact, ami Fancy Series." Cloth, 12mo, 75 cents. •* She succeeds entirely in the effort of communicating a wild native flavor to her romances of Italian peasant Me.'" -Philadelphia Ledger. "She lias made studies of peasant nature, and has caught wonder- fully rlnwly the homely humor and pathos of their talk and lives.'1— Christian Union. "These stories are very delightful, filled with the color and senti- I ment of Italy."—Boston Advertiser. '■Mrs. Cavazza has made a great beginning in these stories, which will bear more than one reading, and which, as the work of a New En- gland woman, are very remarkable.1*—Richard Henry Stotldard in Mail and Express. C. L. WEBSTER & CO., Publishers, 67 Fifth A v., N. Y. 156 [March 1, 1893. THE DIAL Houghton, Mifflin & Co/s NEW BOOKS. SCOTT'S John Keble. A new volume of English Leaders of Religion, written with discrimination and sympathy, by Rev. Walter Lock, Oxford. With a portrait. Crown 8vo, $1.00. Fair Shadow Land. A new volume of Poems by Edith M. Thomas, who is generally recognized as one of the most thoughtful and lyrical of living American poets. 16mo, gilt top, SI .25. At the North of Bearcamp Water. Chronicles of a Stroller in New England from July to December. A charming book of nice observation in the region about Mt. Chocorua. by Frank Bolles, author of " Land of the Linger- ing Snow." 16mo, $1.25. The Gentleman's zMaga^ine Library. Volume 14. English Topography (Part III). Edited by G. Laurence Gomme, F.S.A. 8vo, $2.50; Roxburgh, printed on hand-made paper, $3.50. Large-paper edition, Roxburgh, printed on hand-made paper, $6.00. "Books and their Use. An essay giving the results of large scholarship and experience, to which is added a list of books for students of the New Testament. By J. Henry Thayer, Professor of New Testament Criticism and Interpretation in the Divinity School of Harvard University. 75 cents. ^American ^Marine. The Shipping Question in History and Politics. A book full of facts gained by fifty years of study and practical work, and discussing forcibly the principles involved in this important question, by William W. Bates, late U. S. Commissioner of Navigation; formerly Manager of the Inland Lloyd's Register; author of "Rules for the Con- struction and Classification of Vessels." 8vo. $4. *%*For sale by all booksellers, or sent, postpaid, on receipt of price, by the Publisliers, HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO., Boston. 11 East Seventeenth St., New York. Waverley Novels, Edited by Andrew Lang. New Limited Edition of 1,000 Copies. Sir Walter Scott has stamped his genius on an entire country and language, and by many is considered to stand first of all the world's great novelists. The Waverley novels are read by millions, and in every civi- lized country in the world, but hitherto they have never been properly illustrated. This edition will he enriched at a cost of over $40,000, with proof impressions, on imperial Japanese paper, of 300 original etchings from paintings by celebrated ar- tists, among whom are many members of the Royal Society for the promotion of Fine Arts in Scotland, and such masters as Sir J. E. Millais, R.A., R. W. Macbeth, R.A., Lockhart, Gordon Browne, Pettie, Lalauze, Lefort, Teyssonnieres, etc. It will he edited by Andrew Lang, the greatest English critic and bibliographer, who will furnish criti- cal introductions, glossaries, and notes to each novel, supplementing the author's own notes and prefaces. Mr. Lang was granted access to Scott's private lib- rary at Abbottsford, through the courtesy of the Hon. Mrs. Maxwell Scott, to whom this edition is dedicated. This is the most magnificent edition ever made of the works of any novelist. The type will be large and new, set in a fine open page, the margins ample, and the paper a beautiful natural tint. The volume will be a small 8vo, easy to handle, and the binding vellum cloth, gilt tops, slightly trimmed. Complete in 48 Vols., issued at the rate of about two Vols, per month, at $2.50 per Vol. Also, 500 copies printed on Holland hand-made paper, with 50 additional illustrations, making a total of 350, and bound in half leather, gilt tops, at $5.00 per Vol. Extract from the London Times. It would be difficult to find in these days a more competent and sympathetic editor of Scott than his countryman, the brill- iant and versatile man of letters who has undertak en the task. The illustrations by various competent hands are beautiful in themselves and beautifully executed, and altogether, this edition of the Waverley Novels bidsfairto become the classical edition of the great Scottish classic. Prospectus and specimen pages showing type, page, and paper, with sample illustration, sent on application. ESTES & LAURIAT, Publishers, BOSTOX, MASS. *«* Also, a few sets still remain unsold of our limited editions, uniform with above, of Thackeray, in 30 Vols., Dickens, 48 Vols., Bulwer, 32 Vols., Victor Hugo, 30 Vols., Dumas, 40 Vols., which are offered at an ad- vance above the original price of publication. THB DEAL PRESS. CKICAOO. THE DIAL EDITF.D FRANCIS Jt SEMI-MONTHLY JOURNAL OF Itittrarg Criticism, discussion, anb information. rra> by j Volumexiv. nxirn r\ a T>r0. 14 An admirably arranged book of reference. A most complete and painstaking accompaniment of chronological tables, genealogies, and memoranda give the work peculiar value. It is, as it aims to be, a con- cise compendium of the history of England aud its people."— Christian Advocate, New York. HINDU LITERATURE; Or, The Ancient Books of India. By Elizabeth A. Reed, Member of the Philosophical So- ciety of Great Britain, and Member of the International Congress of Orientalists. 1 vol., 12mo, cloth ; price, $2.00. "There is bo much in the current literature of the day referring to India, aud the sacred books of its people, gray with the centuries, that any one book giving an accurate and fairly comprehensive account of them ought to be eagerly welcomed. . . . Mrs. Reed's statements may be regarded as thoroughly trustworthy, and the grace of her style ren- ders her book an eminently interesting one. There is no other work in the language which in so short a space conveys so clear an idea of this vast subject."—The Pacific Churchinun, San Francisco. A SYLLABUS OF PSYCHOLOGY. By William M. Bryant, author of " World Energy," etc. Paper, 60 pages; price, 25 cents. 11 It presents a systematic, birdVeye view of the subject whose value cannot be overstated."—The Independent, Xrw York. For sale by all Booksellers, or sent, postpaid, on receipt of price, by the Publishers, S. C. GRIGGS & CO., Nos. 262 & 2ti4 Wabash Ave., . . CHICAGO. 162 [March 16, THE DIAL Houghton, Mifflin & Co.'s New Books. ^Abraham Lincoln. In the Series of American Statesmen. By John T. Morse, Jr., editor of the series, and author of the volumes on John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, and Ben- jamin Franklin. With a portrait and a map. 2 vols., 16mo, $2.50. [April.] An admirable account of Lincoln's public career, the im- portant questions he discussed before the War, and the far more imperative questions that confronted him during the War, illustrating the marvellous wisdom, good sense, sagac- ity, self-forgetfulness, and comprehensive patriotism, con- trolled by a lofty moral purpose, which gave such force to his judgments and made the people trust him so fully. John T{uskin: His Life and Work. A biography of this illustrious man by W. G. Colling wood, for many years Mr. Ruskin's private secretary. It will contain letters by Buskin, Carlyle, Browning, etc., and much other matter never before published, and will have several portraits and other illustrations. It will be a most welcome work to all who appreciate Ruskin's unique great- ness as a writer on art and ethical questions. 2 vols, 8vo. John Keble. A new volume of English Leaders of Religion, written with discrimination and sympathy, by Rev. Walter Lock, Oxford. With a portrait. Crown 8vo, $1.00. Fair Shadow Land. A new volume of poems by Edith M. Thomas, who is gener- ally recognized as one of the most thoughtful and lyrical of living American poets. Her verse is always musical, and always the fit expression of high, or grave, or tender thoughts, while the play of her fancy brightens and adorns all that she writes. 16mo, gilt top, $1.25. Tbe Dawn of Italian Independence: Italy from the Congress of Vienna, 1814, to the Fall of Ven- ice, 1849. A peculiarly welcome work on account of its marked ability and picturesqueness, and as covering an im- portant period in Italian history which has hitherto been inadequately treated. By William R. Thater. With maps. 2 vols., crown 8vo, $4.00. Dr. Latitner. A novel of Caaoo Bay, including three stories, or a story of three interested couples. By Clara Louise Burnham, author of "Miss Bagg's Secretary" ($1.25), "The Mistress of Beech Knoll" ($1.25), " Next Door" ($1.25), " Young Maids and Old " ($1.25), and other entertaining stories. It is told with the vivacity and freshness which make all of Mrs. Burnham's novels so readable. $1.25. [April.] Tools and tbe {Man. A book of great importance and interest, discussing Property and Industry under the Christian Law. By Rev. Dr. Washington Gladden, author of "Applied Christianity" ($1.25), "The Lord's Prayer" ($1.00), and " Who Wrote the Bible?" ($1.25). This is a valuable contribution toward the solution of many perplexing questions relating to Labor, Competition, Cooperation, Socialism, concluding with a chapter on Christian Socialism, an effort to formu- late the growth of a new social condition under the sway of genuine Christian principles. $1.25. Tbe Story of (Malta. A graphic account of this famous island. By Matukin M. Ballou, author of "Equatorial America" ($1.50), "Due West" ($1.50), "Due North" ($1,501, "Due South" ($1.50), "The New Eldorado" [Alaska] ($1.50), "Under the Southern Cross" ($1.50), and " Aztec Land" ($1.50). Mr. Ballou made a long visit to the island, studied care- fully on the spot the many interesting features of its his- tory, and now tells the engaging story. $1.50. Tbe Interpretation of U^aiure. A book of equal value and interest, treating with full knowl- edge and admirable candor several important questions re- lated to both natural history and theology. By N. S. Sha- ler, Professor of Geology in Harvard University, author of "Illustrations of the Earth's Surface," etc. $1.25. Susy. A novel by Bret Harte, narrating in Mr. Harte's character- istic style the adventures and experiences of the young lady who was the heroine of his story, "A Waif of the Plains." $1.25. Horatian Echoes. An excellent translation of eighty-seven of the Odes of Horace. By John 0. Sargent. The shrewdness, culture, blithe- ness of spirit, and modernness of Horace, as well as the more distinctively poetical qualities of his genius, are ex- cellently represented in Mr. Sargent's translation, to which valuable notes are added. A biographical sketch of Mr. Sargent is prefixed, and a characteristic Introduction by Dr. Holmes lends additional interest to the book. [April.] Greek Toets in English Verse. 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Unless otherwise ordered, subscriptions will begin with the current number. Rrmittanchs should be by check, or by express or postal order, payable to THE DIAL. Special Ratss to Clubs and for subscriptions with other publications will be sent on application; and Sample Copt on receipt of 10 cents. ADVu-ruma Ratis furnished on application. All communications should be addressed to THE DIAL, Xo. 2-/ Adams Street, Chicago. No. 162. MARCH 16, 1893. Vol. XIV. Contexts. PASS HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE 168 BIOGRAPHY AND BIBLIOGRAPHY OF TAINE 1(57 CHRONICLE AND COMMENT 167 WHITMAN'S AND TENNYSON'S RELATION TO SCIENCE. John Burroughs 168 SOME FURTHER ASPECTS OF REALISM. Ed- ward E. Hale, Jr 10!) COMMUNICATIONS 172 Experiments in the Teaching of Reading. Mary E. Burt. Realism and the Real.— A Suggestion, not a Reply. William Siward Edmonds. Some Uses of " Like." George Hempl. 'THE STORY OF THE ATLANTIC TELE- GRAPH." E.G.J 175 PREHISTORIC ANNALS OF AMERICA. Frederick- Starr 178 IN THE KEV OF BLUE. W. Irving Way .... 180 LODGE TALES OF THE BLACKFOOT INDIANS. E. L. Huggins, U.S. A 182 URIEFS ON NEW BOOKS 183 Mr. Shadv/ell's literal verse translation of Dante.— Representative English literature from Chaucer to Tennyson. — A timely discussion of the Real and Ideal in literature.— English " Stories " from the old Greek comedians.— Notes and comments on Japan- ese Art and Industry. Dr. Karl Heineniann's mono- graph on "Goethe's Mutter."—Mr. Freeman's last work: "The Story of Sicily." — Uncle Remus's "good-by" volume.— A volume of essays and ad- dresses by the late Canon Liddon.— An admirably precise rendering of Aristotle's Ethics. — Breezy pen pictures of seven English Statesmen. BRIEFER MENTION 187 LITERARY NOTES AND NEWS 188 ANNOUNCEMENTS OF SPRING BOOKS .... 18!> TOPICS IN LEADING PERIODICALS 1!I2 LIST OF NEW BOOKS 192 HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE. The death of Taine, which occurred on the fifth of this month, has removed a writer clearly the foremost among Frenchmen of letters since the loss of Renan. There are some, indeed, who would have claimed for him the highest place even dur- ing the lifetime of the great philologist and relig- ious historian. For excellence of style, all would probably have conceded to Renan a higher place than to Taine, but for knowledge, for industry, for the orderly marshalling of facts, and for the exer- cise of a profound influence upon the thought of his age, one might have claimed with much show of reason that the author of " Les Origines de la France Contemporaine" was of like stature with the author of "L'Histoire des Origines du Chris- tianisme." Both men were brilliant exemplars of the scientific method in historical criticism, and both were singularly free from the spirit of provincial- ism that has characterized, in a notable degree, so many of the best French writers. In the work of the one as of the other, there is no more striking feature than its generous recognition of foreign, es- pecially German, scholarship; than its catholic outlook upon the world of thinkers, and its readi- ness to accept the best that was offered, holding the Republic of the intellect to be an organization of more real and enduring significance that any po- litical or racial group of the forces that make for solidarity among men. As regards versatility, while it is possibly unfair to say that Taine had a wider range than Renan, it is still true that his activity found expression in a greater variety of forms. History, literature, phil- osophy, and art had in him an interpreter of in- sight and sagacity. In each of these fields he showed himself a master, and made important con- tributions of thought. We might almost mention travel as a fifth among these, for he was one of the keenest of observers, and the records of his sojourn in England, in Italy, and in the Pyrenees, belong to the small class of books of travel really instruc- tive and of permanent value. That he kept active, even when at home, the faculty of the thoughtful traveler, is made evident by his " Notes sur Paris." In this book, disguised under the name of a certain M. Graindorge, he illustrated anew the objectivity of liis critical standpoint, and earned for himself a gratitude not altogether unmixed. The various manifestations of Renan's activity had philology for a starting-point, and his work was thus given the unity that comes from a funda- mental subject common to its separate parts. "The ti'ue philologist," he said, "must be linguist, his- 166 [March 16, torian, archaeologist, artist, and philosopher at once." The unity of Taine's work, on the other hand, is based upon method rather than upon sub- ject. Few writers have ever developed so early, and kept so consistently in view, a distinctive method of critical investigation. His life wo'rk was an en- deavor to establish criticism upon a scientific basis, to provide it with axioms and postulates, to give it a certainty approximating to that of a mathemat- ical demonstration. This endeavor was never ab- sent from his work, whether it was engaged with ancient historians or modern philosophers, with Italian art or English literature, with the French life of to-day or the French life of the Revolution- ary epoch. Taine's critical method has excited much controversy, and few have been willing to give it acceptance in its entirety. In its applica- tion, it broke down more than once, yet its fruitful- neas is no less evident than the fact that it could not accomplish all that its author claimed. The tendency of modern criticism is unquestionably towards a scientific method; in history and philos- ophy it has already reached such a basis; that in art and literature it will eventually come to such a basis we may hardly doubt. Taine's work, what- ever its shortcomings, moved with the main cur- rent of progress, and quickened that current in its flow. Taine's work in art criticism is mainly contained in the five small volumes that were the immediate fruit of his professorship at the Paris "Ecole des Beaux-Arts." These books are delicate in style and penetrating in thought. They treat art, not as a matter of technique, but as a factor in the history of culture. The " Voyage en Italie" also has many passages of the subtlest sort of art criticism. In philosophy, Taine made his dSbut with a work upon "Les Philosophes du XlXme Siecle en France," an attack upon the "Philosophieprofes- soren" that must have delighted Schopenhauer, if he chanced to read it. The impersonal subject of Taine's attack was eclecticism, the philosophical method — if we may call it a method — aptly described by one of Taine's biographers as "that rhetorical spiritualism which in the eyes of the au- thorities had the advantage of giving no umbrage to the clergy, in the eyes of thinkers the disadvant- age of tripping airily over the difficulties which it undertook to clear up and do away with, or else of evading them altogether." Personally the attack was mainly upon Cousin, the leader of the eclectics, who took his revenge, some years later, by successfully opposing the bestowal of a special Academy prize upon the famous "Histoire de la Literature An- glaise." Taine's principal philosophical work was his treatise " De l'lntelligence," characterized by himself as "l'ouvrage auquel on a le plus reflechi," and published at a much later date than the one previously described. Although a quarter-century has elapsed since the work was written, and although the period has been one of remarkable activity in experimental psychology and philosophical criticism. the book remains one of the best and most instruc- tive discussions of the subjects that we possess. Taine's philosophical standpoint is often stated as that of a follower of Hegel and Spinoza, but he has himself stated that his special indebtedness is rather to Montesquieu and Condillac. It is in his treatment of literature that the pecul- iarities of Taine's critical method become most ap- parent. His first publication of any importance was a work on " Lafontaine et Ses Fables," and in this book we find fully developed his theory of race and environment as the essentially determining fac- tors in literary production. In the "Essai sur Tite-Live" these principles of criticism were ap- plied a second time. They found their most thor- ough-going exemplification in "L'Histoire de la Literature Anglaise," and the opposition they en- countered has mainly taken this work as the ob- jective point of attack. When Ste.-Beuve suggested that the work should have been called "L'Histoire de la Race et de la Civilization Anglaises par la Lit- erature " he gave a succinct description of Taine's method. That method consists, when applied to the study of a whole literature, ill analyzing the conditions of soil and climate under which the lit- erature was produced, the prevalent political and social conditions that attended its development, and the ideal tendencies of the race that gave it birth. The method, in its application to the individual, takes further account of his special circumstances, of his ancestry, his place of birth, and his educa- tion, and of the particular tendencies of the age into which he was born. The whole, or nearly the whole problem is one of heredity and environment; individuality, in the sense of spontaneous or incal- culable manifestations of power, finds little place in this scientific system; genius, in whatever spir- itual isolation it may seem to appear, is really the necessary product of forces whose origin we may trace and whose effects we may determine with considerable accuracy. This theory of literature, we need hardly say, has not met with general ac- ceptance, in spite of the life-long advocacy given it by Taine. The persistence, the learning, and the eloquence with which he defended it have not proved convincing, although they have made it impossible for us wholly to ignore the factors whose influence upon literary production Taine believed to be par- amount. To win acceptance, a scientific method must show itself productive of similar results when employed by many different observers, and it must fulfill the supreme test of enabling us to forecast the future with certainty. Tried by the first of these tests, the method has already been found wanting; that it will meet the second there is no good reason to believe. Whatever future the method may have will be found in its application to the general course of national literary developments. It will never foretell the individual manifestations of genius as it never fully accounted for such phe- nomena as they occur in the past. For that task we shall need a deeper psychology than Taine, or 1893.] 167 THE DIAL any other thinker of the present century, has had at his command. Rut the fact that we cannot ac- cept Taine's literary method should not prevent us from giving full credit to the many brilliant quali- ties of the work in which it had its most forcible expression. A journal devoted, like The Dial, to the interests of English literature, should bestow no grudging praise upon the most magnificent history of that literature ever written. For Taine's work, with all its defects, is a better book than has yet been produced upon the whole of our literature by any one to the manner born. Every man has his limitations, and they sometimes appear most unex- pectedly: in the finest of critical writing we come upon such grotesque vagaries as Taine's estimate of Tennyson, and Arnold's estimate of Shelley. We accept these things as we do the spots on the sun's disc, and do not for that say that the light is but darkness. Had Taine been an English writer, we should have been surprised at the infrequency in his work of defective sympathies and untenable literary judgments. When we reflect that to know our literature he had first to learn our language, surprise gives place to wonder, and we think, not of the few cases in which he has failed to grasp the significance of our writers, but of the many whom he lias discussed with penetrating sympathy and deep discernment. We think, for example, of his treatment of Swift, whom no critic, English or for- eign, has better understood than he; we think of his treatment of the Elizabethan dramatists, and ask if it be possible that Voltaire lived but a cen- tury before. The work of Taine's latest years will probably be accounted the greatest of his life. The writing of " Les Origines de la France Contemporaine" was begun about twenty years ago. During that period we have had, at intervals of a few years, "L'Ancien Regime," dealing with the antecedent causes of the Revolution; "La Revolution," in three volumes; and the first of the two volumes in which the author proposed to deal with the Napoleonic period and its influence upon nineteenth century France. This great work is open to criticism on the score of its unfairness to the ideas and the leaders of the Revolution; it undoubtedly exagger- ates the merits of the old order of things, and as un- doubtedly fails in doing justice to the moral forces that made the Revolution triumphant for years, with all Europe armed against it. But in spite of these shortcomings the work gives us a more com- prehensive array of facts and a more scientific sift- ing of evidence than has been given us by any pre- vious historian of the subject. The legend of the Revolution can never again be what it was before Taine's merciless exposition of its intimate history. As for the Napoleonic legend, Taine has given that its coup de grace; he has put Napoleon upon rec- ord for the brigand that he was, and once for all voiced the sane judgment of posterity upon his character and his career. The concluding volume of this great historical work, promised but not yet published, was designed by the author "to treat of the church, the school, and the family, describe the modern milieu, and note the facilities and obstacles which a society like our own encounters in this new milieu." The volume thus described could not fail to be of the greatest interest and value, and it is to be hoped that the author lived to complete its preparation for the press. A dying man can have no greater consolation than the consciousness of having finished the work of his life; we trust that Taine's last hours, like those of Re nan, were solaced by this reflection. BIOGRAPHY AND BIBLIOGRAPHY. Hippolyte Adolplie Taine was liorn April 21, 1828, in the town of Vonziers, between Champagne and the Ar- dennes. His parents were in prosperous circumstances, and his father was a highly educated man. From an uncle, who had lived in America, he learned English at an early age. In 1842 he was taken to Paris, and placed at school. In 1847 and 1848 he won three prizes in rhetoric and philosophy, and obtained admis- sion to the Eeole Normale. Here he remained for ■ three years, and acquired, under the enlightened regime : of tliat institution, the habits of intellectual indepen- dence that always remained with him. After leaving the school in 1851, he sought advancement in government employ, but this was the year of the coup d'etat and the clerical reaction, and he was not regarded with favor by the authorities. For a few months he occupied small posts at Toulon, Nevers, and Poitiers, then withdrew from government work, and became a professor in a pri- I vate school in Paris. He was soon driven from this po- sition by government persecution, and forced to gain his 'livelihood as a private tutor. In 1853, he took the ! doctor's degree, his thesis being " De Personis Platou- icis." At the same time he published "Lafontaine et Ses Fables." In 1854, his « Essai sur Tite-Livc" was awarded a prize by the Academy. Soon after this, los- ing his health, be spent nearly two years in the Pyr- enees, publishing in 1855 his " Voyage aux Pyrenees." j In 1856 he produced "Les Philosophes Francais an [ XlXme Sieele." In 1858 he published a volume of j "Essais de Critique et d'Histoire." In 1861 he made his first visit to England, and published his " Notes sur l'Angleterre." In 1863 he was appointed examiner at Saint-Cyr, and in 1864 professor at the Paris Ecole dcs Beaux-Arts. These two years witnessed the appear- ance of his " Histoire de la Litterature Anglaise." A committee of the Academy judged this work deserving i of a prize, but the award was not made, in consequence of opposition from Mgr. Dupanloup and Cousin. In 1865 he published some " Nouveaux Esais de Critique et d'Histoire," and from 1865 to 1869 his five small vol- i umes on the philosophy of art. In 1868 he married the daughter of a wealthy merchant, and thus secured his intellectual independence. In 1870 he published "De ■ 1 Intelligence," in 1871, received a D.C.L. from Oxford, and in 1878 was elected to the Academy. Two other works of importance were the "Voyage en Italic " and | the "Notes sur Paris." Of the "Origines," the first instalment, "L'Ancien Regime," appeared in 1876, the ! three parts of "La Revolution" in 1878, 1882, and I 1885, and the first part of "Le Regime Moderue " in 1891. His death this month terminated a year of ill- ness, and resulted from a complication of diabetes with I pulmonary phthisis. 168 THE DIAL CHRONICLE AND COMMENT. The Authors' Club of New York celebrated, about two weeks ago, the tenth anniversary of its organ- ization. The celebration took the form of a dinner, and such after-dinner speeches as were to be expected from so distinguished a gathering. Dr. Edward Eggleston, who occupied the chair, expressed some doubts as to the manner in which the Club originated, but was quite sure that its ten years had done much for American letters, in ways indirect as well as direct. He also commented upon the talent of editors for perversely excising the best things from the contributions offered them. Among the exercises that followed were a poem by Mr. Richard Henry Stoddard, some genial remarks by Mr. Joseph Jefferson (who has taken to public speaking late in life, surprising his friends much, and himself more), Mr. Parke Godwin, who spoke of literary life in early New York, and Mr. Andrew Carnegie, who truthfully said "that he could claim no part worth mentioning in the great circle of authorship." The speech of the evening —a maiden speech at that—appears to have lieen made by Mr. John Burroughs, who pleaded for a kind of realism about which those who discuss that vexed ques- tion are usually silent, the realism which Ibsen persis- tently preaches, that of being yourself. "And in this distracting age," the speaker went on, "it is not so easy to be one's self as it might seem. There are ten thou- sand agencies and influences at work to make us some- thing else. Our fathers call to us from their graves to be like them. Our teachers, our favorite authors, call to us to be like them. A man must tight for his life. To the poet the air is full of the ghosts of the great poets which would enter into him and use him for their own puqioses. I find it the hardest matter of all to get down to ni}' real self, and speak from that, instead of from some assumed or fictitious self, or from what books or custom has done for me. We all share in the general intelligence of the age, but we must speak from something deeper and more real than that." According to the New York "Evening Post," the following five solutions of the problem of the mean- ing of Ibsen's latest play, " Bygmester Solness," have lieen offered up to date: (1) It is an allegory of Ibsen's life, Mrs. Solness representing deserted Norway, and Hilde the intelligence of Western Europe, to which the poet appeals in exchange for that of his Scandinavian home. (2) It is an allegory of the evolution of Ibsen's dramatic art from poetical dramas through social plays to the drama of the future ("Castles in the Air"). (3) It is an allegory of the artistic life. Every artist in devoting himself to his ideal has to sacrifice domes- tic happiness, and when he finds his ideal he dies. (4) It is an impeachment of the married estate—a dra- matic treatment of the problem whether matrimony is or is not a failure. (5) It is a parable of the eternal contest which conscience and the sense of duty wage with the artistic impulse and artistic irresponsibility. The collector of these theories wickedly adds a sixth of his own—that the play has no meaning at all. It will be remembered that Tiik Dial of February 1 contained the first account and analysis of this work published in the English language. Not long ago, a literary paper published in New York undertook to correct a current inisre|H>rt of the title of Mr. Blackniore's forthcoming novel. This would have been very well, had not the writer of the note of correction coupled with his statement the wholly gratu- itous information that Mr. Blackmore's " Tess of the D'Urbervilles" was in process of translation into Rus- sian. Apologies for this blunder were made in a sub- sequent issue of the paper, but not liefore the remark- able piece of information had been appropriated by a San Francisco journal, in which it appeared as an origi- nal literary note. In due course of time, the San Fran- cisco journal found its way to London, and the blunder in question was promptly seized iijmiii by one of the English literary weeklies as an illustration of the way in which Americans get things mixed up. As the San Francisco paper got full credit for the mistake, the moral to be drawn from this story of a wandering error is quite obvious. WHITMAN'S AND TENNYSON'S RELA- TIONS TO SCIENCE. Whitman and Tennyson were the only jwets of note in our time who have drawn inspiration from modern sciences, or viewed the universe through the vistas which science opens. Renan thought the modern poetic or imaginative contemplation of the universe puerile and factitious compared with the scientific contemplation of it. The one, he said, was stupendous; the other childish and empty- But Whitman and Tennyson were fully abreast with science, and often afford one a sweep of vis- ion that matches the best science can do. Tenny- son drew upon science more for his images and illus- trations than Whitman did; he did not absorb and appropriate its results in the wholesale way of the latter. Science fed Whitman's imagination and made hiin bold; its effects were moral and spirit- ual. On Tennyson its effects were mainly intellect- ual; it enlarged his vocabulary without strength- ening his faith. In his poem to Fitzgerald, the nebular hypothesis is drawn upon for an image: "A planet equal to the sun Which cast it, that large infidel Your Omar." In "Despair" there crops out another bold infer- ence of science, the vision "of an earth that is dead." "Tlie homeless planet at length will he wheel'd thro' the silence of space. Motherless evermore of an ever-vanishing race." In the "Epilogue" he glances into the sidereal heavens:— "The fires that circle this dusky dot — Yon niyriad-worlded way — The vast sun-clusters' gather'd blaze, World-isles in lonely skies. Whole heavens within themselves, amaze Our brief humanities." As our American poet never elaborates in the Tennysonian fashion, he does not use science as material, but as inspiration. His egoism and an- thropomorphic tendency are as great as those of the early bards, and he makes everything tell for the 1893.] THE DIAL 169 individual. Let me give a page or two from the "Song of Myself," illustrative of his attitude in this respect: — "I find I incorporate gneiss, coal, long-threaded moss, fruits, grains, esculent roots. And am stuccoed with quadrupeds and birds all over, And have distanced what is behind me for good reasons. And call anything close again, when I desire it. "In vain the speeding or shyness, In vain the plutonic rocks send their old heat against any approach. In vain the mastodon retreats beneath its own powdered bones, In vain objects stand leagues off, and assume manifold shapes, In vain the ocean settling in hollows, and the great monsters lying low. In vain the buzzard houses herself with the sky, In vain the snake slides through the creepers and logs, In vain the elk takes to the inner passes of the woods, In vain the razor-billed auk sails far north to Labrador, I follow quickly, I ascend to the nest in the fissure of the cliff. "I am an acme of things accomplished, and I an endorser of things to be. My feet strike an apex of the apices of the stairs. On every step bunches of ages, and large bunches between the steps. All below duly traveled, and still I mount and mount. Rise after rise bore the phantoms behind me. Afar down I see the huge first Nothing — I know I was even there, I waited unseen and always, and slept through the lethargic mist. And took my time, and took no hurt from the fetid carbon. "Ixrag I was hugged close — long and long. Immense have been the preparations for me, Faithful and friendly the arms that have helped me, Cycles ferried my cradle, rowing and rowing like cheerful boatmen, For room to me stars kept aside in their own rings, They sent influences to look after what was to hold me. "Before I was born out of my mother, generations guided me, My embryo has never been torpid — nothing could overlay it. For it the nebula cohered to an orb, The long slow strata piled to rest it in. Vast vegetables gave it sustenance, Monstrous sauroids transported it in their mouths, and de- posited it with care. All forces have been steadily employed to complete and de- light me, Now I stand on this spot with my Soul. "I open my scuttle at night and see the far-sprinkled sys- tems. And all I see, multiplied as high as I can cipher, edge but the rim of the farther systems, Wider and wider they spread, expanding, always expanding, Outward, outward, and forever outward, My sun has his sun, and around him obediently wheels, He joins with his partners a group of superior circuit. And greater sets follow, making specks of the greatest inside them. There is no stoppage, and never can be stoppage. If I, you, the worlds, all beneath or upon their surfaces, and all the palpable life, were this moment reduced back to a pallid float, it would not avail in the long run. We should surely bring up again where we now stand, And as surely go as much farther — and then farther and farther. A few quadrillions of eras, a few octillions of cubic leagues, do not hazard the span or make it impatient. They are but parts — anything is hut a part. See ever so far, there is limitless space outside of that. Count ever so much, there is limitless time around that." In all cases, Whitman's vision is as large as that of science, but it is always the vision of a man and not that of a philosopher. His report of the facts have an imaginative lift and a spiritual significance which the man of science cannot give them. In him for the first time a personality has appeared that cannot be dwarfed and set aside by those things. He does not have to stretch himself at all to match in the human and emotional realm the stupendous discoveries and deductions of science. In him man refuses to stand aside and acknowl- edge himself of no account in the presence of the cosmic laws and areas. It is all for him. it is all directed to him; without him the universe is an empty void. This is the "full-spread pride of man," the pride that refuses to own any master outside of itself. "I know my omnivorous words, and cannot say any less, And would fetch you, whoever you are, flush with myself." It is said of some poets that they have a fresh meaning for every age. I doubt very much if this will prove true of Tennyson. Tennyson was not one of those inexhaustible poets; his genius is not of the inimitable, incalculable sort. I think it much more likely to prove true of Whitman, because this poet has a different meaning to nearly every reader, and a different meaning to the same reader in dif- ferent moods. He by no means yields up his best on the first perusal, or on the second, or third. He will bear, yea demands, many readings, and admits of many interpretations. He is "fluid as Nature," which is perhaps the reason it is so difficult to bring him to book. To one critic he is the poet of reality, to another the poet of democracy, to an- other the poet of personality, or the poet of nature, or of life, the poet of immortality, etc. An En- glish critic has considered him as the poet of joy. He may profitably be considered from many differ- ent standpoints, but will yield up his fullest mean- ing from no one of them. Every reader of him will do well to consider the poem in "Calamus," beginning "Whoever you are holding me now in hand." John Burroughs. SOME FURTHER ASPECTS OF REALISM. A year or so ago one heard not uncommonly, as well on the other side of the water as on this, that Realism was dead. The moral writers for papers of a mediocre plane of literary criticism breathed more freely and expressed excellent sentiments. Others, more interested in art than in practical ethics, shrugged their shoulders and acknowledged that Realism had given the last nouveau frisson that one wanted, but said that they were wearied of it ■ 170 [March 16, THE DIAL now that it had been analyzed and explained. By this time, our moralist and others having turned their attention to other things, Realism reappears calmly as a new king of men, fortified just at pres- ent with all the epigrammatic Sclat of an undeniable formula. When Pontius Pilate asked " What is truth?" he was not by any means, as Bacon would have it, in jesting mood. He really wanted an answer. In many matters one might not care to ally oneself with Pilate: in this case he was seriously puzzled over a matter that seems to most people so plain that it is hardly worth trying to make it plainer. But however excellent be truth in itself, the word "truth" is but a dull weapon with which to hack at gordian knots in literary criticism. It may seem foolish at first hearing, but really there is some ex- cuse for the inquiry as to whether the modern real- istic writers are the only ones who have truth for their end and aim. One might so inquire, assur- edly; and that with some show of reason. Yet on the whole the common answer would be that a steady desire for truth was practically a note of the realist — one of the things by which he may be distinguished from idealists or romanticists or other people. The realistic formula of method points to truth, and that with more singleness of purpose than other formulas. But still, what is truth? There is a common opinion that truth consists of the facts of life. The realist, then, busies him- self with the facts of life. Usually he deals with the most obvious of them: he tells how people looked, and what they did, and so forth. Or from external acts and facts he proceeds to reason as to what they thought and why. Zola for the first, say, and then Bourget. Here Realism is of course most apparent; still, there are other kinds. Flaubert once wrote what may seem to many like a pure fantasy—" La Tentation de Saint Antoine." So also Balzac, in "La Peau de Chagrin." "La Tentation de Saint Antoine " certainly is not realistic, in the usual sense of the word. Flaubert makes little effort to confine himself to any vision that the hermit in the The- ba'id might have had. In that book are such ideas as could never have passed through St. Anthony's mind in one single night. Indeed, they could never have passed through the mind of any man in one night,— till the book was written. Flaubert, it would seem, does not attempt to be realistic. And as to the novel of Balzac, one may well inquire if it be realistic to found a novel upon the adventures of a young man who is engaged in enjoying his life and shortening it by the help of a magic skin. At first sight the two books do not seem abso- lutely realistic. But it is hardly to be thought that two such pillars of the faith as Balzac and Flaubert could ever have gone over to the Romanticists. In effect, both books are realistic. In each case the author had a fact of life to present; not a fact to be seen, heard, touched, tasted, or smelt, per- haps, but a fact all the same, or what he held as such. Flaubert considered the world and its his- tory, and saw, or thought he saw, that through all time man's longing to rise in worship to the feet of God has resulted only in his falling even beneath the beasts of the field. And Balzac considered the world of Paris and of France, and saw that the mere realization of passion in mankind turns life to death through the very energy of its enjoyment. Not being philosophers, neither could be contented with mere categoric statements. They needed lit- erary form to present their facts in all the fulness in which they saw them. Balzac chose a fairy-tale, to which he gave the guise of a reality. Flaubert chose a reality, to which he gave the guise of a fairy tale. Neither left their principles behind. A sort of idealistic Realism this; but yet it seems to be Realism. The object was to present the truth. Facts of life may be of one kind or another : let us say spiritual or material. To some men, one kind are most real; to some, another. But if the term "Realism " be so extended, it may be thought that every novelist will be held a realist. Doubtless it would be apparent that some are possessed of as firm a devotion to truth as others. Yet probably even so there would still re- main a number without the gates,— such as would desert the truth for a joke, for instance; such as would desert her for a tear. There will still be enough others to make it a distinction to be a fol- lower of the young king. Indeed, there will be those who will contest his title. Criticism is haunted by the idea that the aim of art is not truth but beauty. As to truth and beauty, there are many minds. There are not a few who delight to remove the words of Keats from the place which gave them meaning, and inscribe them in some other place where they are not so pertinent. On the other hand, a modern admirer of Keats has of late gone so far from the master of his earlier days as to as- sert that beauty is untruth, untruth beauty. Phil- osophers find little difficulty in showing that the two are one. Language furnishes us with an un- deniable argument that the world has as a rule con- ceived of them as different. Nor is this in any way remarkable. As commonly conceived, beauty is the proper predicate of a thing, truth of a judgment. In the usual sense of the adjectives, we do not say that a thing is true nor that a judgment is beautiful. Keats himself fur- nishes us with an example. "A thing of beauty" is something that we can easily apprehend; not, however, a thing of truth. The sun, moon, daf- fodils, and the mid-forest brake rich with a sprink- ling of fair musk-rose blooms,— all these we read- ily conceive of as beautiful; but the common sense of mankind refuses to call them true, until it has altered the meaning of the adjective. A truthful beauty (except in the case of some favored women ) is not easily imagined. On the other hand, we do speak, and that rather too often, of a beautiful truth. Keats again sup- plies us with an example. Last among the things of 1893.] 171 THE DIAL beauty come "All lovely tales that we have heard or read." Now, a tale may be both beautiful and true as well. But in such a case the beauty and the trutli are not the same things, but different tilings. Take any tale for instance, or part of one: "The bride kissed the goblet —" The bride may be, or have been, beautiful. So the goblet. The bride's kissing the goblet, also. The thought conveyed in the statement may be beauti- ful. But it is the statement itself that is true, and it is beautiful only when considered not as a state- ment but as a thing or an idea. Of course this brings us back to the things which are beautiful. In art we are concerned not so much with the things themselves as with the representa- tions. And each representation is of course an im- plied statement. As an object, then, it may be beautiful; as a statement, true. But the things are not the same. Take Miranda and Caliban, and paint pictures of them — pictures in which they shall be truly represented according to whatever canons of art happen to be regnant. Both pictur.es are true: will both be beautiful? Hardly, accord- ing to any current conception of the word. Beauty and truth, as commonly conceived, are different things. If we wish them to mean the same thing, we must' re-define them. Truth de- pends upon the certainty with which the objects in question are conceived, and upon the necessity of the relation predicated of them. Beauty depends upon neither of these things. To say that truth and beauty are the same, destroys the particular meaning of the one or the other. Doubtless uni- versal truth and universal beauty may be conceived of as one, but the common conceptions are particu- lar and not universal. Being, however, such as they are, it seems rather as though the world had been gradually coming to care more for what it has called truth and less for what it has called beauty. Truth has, indeed, always been sought for by men and highly prized, just as beauty is even now sought by some and highly prized by such as find it. Yet on the whole, we of the modern world feel that in our day the current sets more strongly toward truth than it ever has before. Be this so or not, we certainly have a modern way of getting at the truth that we desire, and a way that in many branches of science has proved very successful. Whether Bacon were the first even to bring forward prominently the in- ductive method, seems still to be matter of dis- pute among those who know best. But certainly the modern turn for Empiricism in philosophy comes chiefly from Locke. Even to a student of literature the history of the philosophy of Locke is of interest. His position that knowledge rises from experience and observation was maintained in a measure by followers who from that standpoint propounded strange doctrines. Berkeley and Hume, whatever excellences their opinions may have had, at least put the views of Locke into a certain dis- credit in the minds of English philosophers, and of 'many others as well. Though it might seem neces- sary to allow that the external world was ideal, or I that our notion of cause and effect was based solely on custom, both lay and learned felt that the Com- mon Sense of mankind was squarely against such theories. On the Continent, the ideas of Locke found no wide acceptance in Germany which was I shortly to be blessed with Immanuel Kant. In France, however, there were not a few philosophers of note who found them more acceptable than the doctrines of Rousseau, then popular. But though banished in one form from the land of its birth, empiricism in a manner found refuge in another shape. It is rather dangerous to imagine i that men of letters are strongly influenced by the j philosophic notions of their time. Still it is a little | curious, if nothing more, that the very time when i philosophy proclaimed that knowledge had its basis in observation and experience, should have been also the time of De Foe, Richardson, Fielding, and Smollet. Roughly realistic were these: they held that the experience and observation of a common Englishman was a matter of more interest than the remarkable adventures of a romantic Clelia or a great Cyrus. As it was in France that the philosophy of Locke found rest for the sole of her foot, so was it in France that modern realism in fiction first appeared, and that not long afterward. Whether the spirit of empiricism was actually breathed from the phil- osophers into the novelists, would be hard to say. One remembers Stendhal and the many notes in his Journal on the Ideologie of Destutt de Tracy, the follower of Helvetius and Condillac. One thinks of Zola, in his early days, taking his motto from Taine, who, though somewhat eclectic in gen- eral tendencies, offered in those words, at least, somewhat of the leaven of empiricism. Certainly the realists cannot be said to be devoted to any one school of philosophers; Bourget is most catholic,— not only Taine and Hegel, but Spinoza and "les I grands Ecossais." Still, although the analogy is not perfect, the method of realism is on the whole the empirical method. By observation and experience and re- flection we are led to truth. Whatever be the ac- tual ancestry of the realistic formula, it may fairly be held to be not many removes in descent from the sheet of white paper. From such considerations as these one is rather better able to determine what may be the superior rights of Realism over Idealism, Romanticism, Clas- sicism, and whatever other claimants there may be to the field of modern fiction. If Realism means •• Let only truth be told, and not all the truth," it has still to maintain its title against such as prefer I to believe that beauty is the aim of art. If it means also that observation and experience ace the only means of coming to truth, it has yet other opponents to consider. Ej}WXJU) R Halb> Jfc State University of Iowa. 172 [March 16, THE DIAL COMMUNICA TIONS. EXPERIMENTS IN THE TEACHING OF READING. (To the Editor of The Dial.) A real teacher must of necessity work, as does a chemist in his laboratory, to see what results will be obtained under new conditions. Each child lives his own life and is quite different from every other child, each school is different from every other school, and each separate environment in life calls for its own dis- tinct literary experience. Two years ago I tried the experiment of going to St. Louis once a month to organize a course of Literature or Reading in a fine private school for girls. The teachers were unusually intelligent and well-read, and, what was better, Socratic in their methods. All school- readers were banished from the school,— unless, in- deed, one primary teacher, much younger than the others and less venturesome in educational experiments, clung for a while to the deluding little first-reader. What a pleasure it was for those teachers to watch and help the progress of the work! Taking as our watch- word Froebel's law, "The economical education of the child lies along the line of the world's development," we bent our energies to the work. "The line of the world's development!" "What does that mean?" "Where did the world begin iu literature?" "Where is it now?" Beginning, as did the primitive man, with the study of the concrete, the study of objects,— the study of earth, air, fire, and water,— we fitted such simple myth- stories to the lessons in nature-study as best we could, and proceeded as rapidly as possible to the "Odys- sey" stories iu the second grade. These stories were read to the children, or told by the teacher, while they used for independent reading "The Adventures of a Brownie " by Miss Muloch, or such books as "Fairy- Know-a-Bit." At the end of the year we had proved that the read- ing-book was of no earthly use—unless to make good material for bonfires. We had satisfied ourselves that reading-books made children timid toward real books, and thwarted the intention of the schools to teach " the essentials "— or at least one of the essen- tials, namely, "readin'." We had found fifth-grade children delightfully interested in Baldwin's "Sieg- fried " and " Echoes from Mistland," while a younger class sitting in the same room could hardly keep at their studies, so eager were they to listen. In the highest class—an eighth-grade or ninth-grade group — the girls discussed with perfect intelligence Plato's "Phffido," Matthew Arnold's "Sohrab and Rustum," Addison's "Cato," and other books required for admis- sion into colleges and universities. Although the school was a "girls' school," little boys were allowed to attend in the lower grades. There were four of them iu the third grade, aud their faces fairly beamed over " Daffy- downdilly " and other of Hawthorne's tales. I tried "John Barleycorn " as a study with them one day, aud they were so amused at the fine humor in it that they went off into explosive chuckles. I suspected them of affecting this fun, and thought they really were laugh- ing at.some under-the-desk diversion; but the princi- pal, who was in the room, assured me that it was a genuine case of literary appreciation. She was herself convulsed with laughter to see their amusement. The children did the reading themselves. The same chil- dren roared out one day when they were reading " Fez- ziwig's Ball," from Dickens. At the end of the year something pleasant happened. To please the little folks, the teachers proposed mak- ing up an original dialogue, or school-drama, to be called "The Beautiful Daughters of Memory"; and the children in the fourth and fifth grades heartily sec- onded the motion. The play soon came into good shape. Jupiter (a pretty girl from an upper grade, with hair in hyaciuthine locks) appeared on the top of Mt. Olym- pus, and the nine Muses with their fair mother made the world tolerable to him. The costumes were most exquisite, and a photograph upon my table tells me that those little Muses must have been most bewitching in their Greek dresses. The "reading"— that is, the word-calling — the oratorical side, was much better iu that school than in any school I have yet seen where reading-books are used. Children resent it, they fight it,— being asked to "speak louder," and "goback and read it over again," as the stock phrases go,— when they are expected to read some commonplace in fine style, as if it were a noble passage they were trying to express adequately. I never can resist making a new experiment. I never feel satisfied that I have reached the best result. When, last summer, Dr. White, of New York, asked me to organize or direct a new course of English in his school, I determined to give a few days out of each month to it, to see what would happen. There was already a good course of reading in the school, a course far above the average,— for, as everybody knows, Dr. White has long stood among experts in college prepar- atory work. The Berkeley School presents new literary phases which are intensely interesting. I am fast losing my faith in "Books for Children," even the best of them. I used to believe iu Church's "Stories from Homer," Church's "Stories from Virgil," Church's "Stories from King Arthur," and so on. Perhaps I believe in them yet; but I am less certain of it than I was form- erly. They are certainly far better than any school- reader. But the boys of the Berkeley School have taught me a new lesson. They do not wince at any- thing. They can read any book that comes under the head of "English Literature." If I had any faith left in reading-hooks before I made my first visit there, that faith is gone. One morning I gave a class of ten- year-old boys Bryant's translation of the "Odyssey." We had three copies to thirty children. They read it as well as any child reads from the reading-book; yes, better. I gave the same boys "The Story of the Ger- man Iliad" in October. They read it with perfect ease, and then begged for Hiawatha. We discussed it — the regular teacher of the room and myself—before the boys, and coaxed them to be satisfied with an easier book. So they took Howells's new book of Christinas Stories for a reader. They read it appreciatively, en- joyed the rich wit in it, but rather resented the fact that we chose "easy " reading for them. So we shall hereafter put the Howells boot a grade lower, and the boys will have Hiawatha for the next experiment, with now and then one of Ulysses's adventures from Bry- ant's "Odyssey" and an occasional story from Haw- thorne. These boys have less time in regular reading lessons than do ten-year-old boys in the Chicago schools, where they are kept for the most part on reading-books. They do a great deal of reading in class with their reg- 1893.] 173 THE DIAL ular teacher, in United States history, and in geography also. In the second grade, the children have finished Scudder's "Folk Lore" and "The Adventnres of a Brownie." One little fellow has presented his room with a library in which are ten copies of " Six Popular Tales," ten copies of Eliot's "Arabian Nights," five copies of Eliot's "Poetry for Children," five copies of "Queer Little People," and we shall add to it ten copies of Kingsley's "Water Babies," ten copies of Ruskin's 41 King of the Golden River," and other books which are not yet decided upon. It is a good thing for the United States that there are schools not under the rule of any Board of Educa- tion, schools which can be managed and controlled by people who can reason on fundamental and universal principles instead of dogmatically asserting personal opinions as is the habit of the unorganized mind, people who have read educational works and who can draw conclusions from the history of the rise and fall of nations. The private schools of the country will save it — if there is any salvation for it —- from the ma- chinery that grinds out uneducated, nervous, helpless beings. One day Mr. and Mrs. John Burroughs came into the school to hear the little fellows read. For the fun of it, I gave the ten-year-old children one of his books, and they did fairly well with it. Then Mr. Burroughs told them one of bis delightful woodsy stories, and they got to be pretty good friends. The visitors came again the next day, and the next. Mr. Burroughs was particularly interested in hearing a class of twelve-year- old boys tell their opinions of one of Mr. Warner's stories. Mr. Burroughs made a careful study of two classes, and gave it as his opinion that the day of school- readers had gone by, and that a school-reader could only stand in the way of a child's becoming proficient in reading. The reading matter which "experts " "prepare for children " is purely trash. It is only a trick for put- ting money into the pockets of school-book publishers. Even the great Cffisar's dust, it is said, might per- chance serve to stop a hole; why, then, should not eight years of a child's life be poured out and wasted to All the pocket of a publisher? Is a child better than Ca?sar? I held a conversation, one day, with a class of boys fifteen years old, on the development of philosophy. They were reading the "Phffido" for me, and I thought best to put them on the track of the whole subject — namely, the Immortality of the Soul, what led up to the philosophy of Socrates, and what has been the leading away from it. After the recitation was over, several of the boys came up and talked with me about the difference between what reaches us externally and what we gain through innate power. The essays from these boys are not so good in external appearance as are the essays in our Western schools, but they are far more independent. They strike out boldly, and say what they think. The originality of the thought is greater; the latent power, the reserve force, is surer. The mind has not been hampered by the everlasting search for " good form." I attribute this to their great independence in the choice of books, and to the fact that they have fine libraries at home, most of them, and well-chosen books at school from which to browse. In the fifth grade the boys have this year read the "Stories of King Arthur," "Rip Van Winkle," « The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," and have begun Shakes- peare's "Midsummer Night's Dream." We have made some experiments also with Bryant's "Odyssey " and Hawthorne's stories. They are to have whatever they like to read of choice literature, after sufficient experi- menting to be sure that they like it. There ought to be in every school iu the land thirty copies — or enough to "go around "— of the "Iliad," "Odyssey," "jEneid," Dante, ^Eschylus, Sophocles, Plato, Shakespeare, Browning, Plutarch, Marcus Aure- lius, Longfellow, Hawthorne, Tennyson, "Robinson Crusoe," "The Nibelungen," Hans Anderson, and sev- eral other standard works. And teachers should l>e al- lowed to choose what they please inside the limits of standard works. The notion that a school library should contain a thousand books — single copies — is fallacious. School-readers should be supplementary, and seldom used. The child should never be compelled to buy a reading-book. He should buy only what is desirable to keep through life iu a library. Chicago, March 4, 1893. MaRY E" BdRT- REALISM AND THE REAL. —A SUGGESTION, NOT A REPLY. (To the Editor of The Dial.) "Let only truth be told, and not all the truth." Why? Because many things though true are trivial, and perhaps as many more are pernicious — are vile. Major Kirkland's recipe for fiction differs radically from that propounded by his great exemplar, Mr. How- ells. "We must ask ourselves before we ask anything else, Is it true — true to the motives, the impulses, the principles that shape the life of actual men and wo- men?" "This truth given," says Mr. Howells, "the book cannot be wicked and cannot be weak." Major Kirkland has given us an interesting if not very scientific resume of our evolution as story-lovers from the infancy that lived in dreamland to the matur- ity that recognizes only flesh and blood. But there are some points in this article which seem open to objec- tion. We say nothing of the remarkable reduction of Tolstoi's heroic figure to the dwarfed proportions of a Chinaman: the transformation is too amusing, and, besides, the logic is so invincible. Our quarrel would be rather with his disposal of our French contempo- raries. It is apparently difficult for an advocate of Realism to remain perfectly consistent when he makes comparisons of men. This may be due in part to a con- fusion always imminent in the application of his terms. Now he means the method of dealing with details, and now a certain characteristic view of life, the world, mankind. But a realistic method and a so-called real- ist philosophy are two entirely different things; and even were the world at one upon the matter, there would ever be discordant echoes roused by the inevitable "moral" of each tale so long as men's eyes see the uni- verse through glasses of infinitely varying focus. "Daudet seems infallible, Maupassant inimitable." Alas! if Daudet had but proved infallible and de Mau- passant remained inimitable! The Daudet—our old friend, Daudet, author of " Jack," of " Le Nabab," of "Numa Roumestan,"—yes, he was infallible; but if ever there were a romanticist at heai t busily plying a realist's quill, Daudet was the man. Why, he was true yoke-fel- low and half-brother of Charles Dickens; and one of the best things he ever did was to weave into the dark web of that same Nabob history the golden threads of the 174 [March 16, THE DIAL Joyeuse episode, records of a family, French cousins of some people Dickens knew, whom the young hero dis- covers when heart-sick with the realities of Parisian life. "There was here for de Gery an entirely new Paris, courageous, domestic, very different from the one he already knew, a Paris of which the newspaper re- porters never speak." Even Henry James, while de- nouncing the episode as fatal to the unity of this par- ticular story, declares that Daudet's characteristic is this mixture of the sense of the real with the sense of the beautiful. A novel must always prove impressionist work. It is more than a study of character,— it is a study of life. I can conceive of no novel which has not a ten- dency,— that will be inevitably fixed by your phil- osophy. By all means be realistic in your method, but remember that truth is something infinitely above de- tails; that truth in the large conception of it is always beautiful; and that the real artist will show us how the true and the beautiful are one: he will create for us a work of art and it will doubtless attain the immor- tality of genius. "Let only truth be told," says Major Kirkland, "and not all the truth." Let nothing but the truth be told, and all the truth, say we. We have no special quar- rel with the elemental Tolstoi' (Mongolian Tartar though he be if scratched !); his faults are rather the failings of his generation than his own. Ibsen we have listened to with wonder. From us, Zola even shall receive more than scanty praise. These writers are titanic in their power, and if they have failed it is because they have come short in this: their look at life was angular — they saw with a squint. I don't believe they tell life's story truly. I know their pictures in detail are as true to phases of existence as the photographic plate: I've seen such phases. But it was ouly half the truth. Gen- tlemen, give us the other side. Omit newspaper re- porting, and give us glimpses of that other Paris which is just as real. We are not quarreling over the faith- ful accuracy of your drawing; but make the picture beautiful, make it complete. Tell nothing but the truth, and tell us all the truth! William Siward Edmonds. Chicago, March 7, 1893. SOME USES OF "LIKE." (To the Editor of The Dial. ) It is doubtless well to have the fact reiterated that the use of "like " as a conjunction is neither newly come nor vulgar; but F. H. in "The Nation " for Aug. 4, 1892, omitted to call attention to articles similar to his own, one by Dr. Furnivall in "The Academy" for Jan. 15, 1887, and one by Prof. Zupitzn in Herrig's "Archiv," 1891, p. 64 ff. It does not seem at all improbable that "like " as a conjunction is short for "like as," as Dr. Furnivall as- serts; but Mr. Hall offers us a strange explanation for the change when he suggests that it might have been the quaintness of the expression "like as " that led to its abandonment. Was it felt to be quaint when still in common use? There is something else that leads to or encourages the use of "like" as a conjunction; namely, the confusion of the constructions "like you" and "as you did." This is very apt to happen in such sentences (to take a case like that which Dickens stumbled on) as, "Nobody will miss her like you." When the speaker gets as far as this, he feels that his sentence is ambiguous and adds "do" to show that " you " is compared with "nobody " and not with "her." The usage has long been cried down by teachers and others, who seem to think they have settled the matter when they state as a proof what they are trying to prove, namely, that "like" is not a conjunction. It cannot, however, be denied that constant condemnation of the usage has made it offensive to many educated people, in this country at least. It would be interesting if F. H. could give us more instances in British writers of "like he was" = " as though he were." He has really furnished but one, "like the rede rose had been set on the whyte lyly." "Trembled like to have gone all to peces " is hardly parallel. I know of no other case just like it, but it re- minds one of "had like to have" (cf. Century Diction- ary) = " came near," or " like to [have]," sometimes im- properly analyzed "liked to," as in the quotation from Walpole in the Century Dictionary. The vulgar speech hereabouts uses "like to" as an adverb, = " nearly," with the simple past tense: " I trembled so [that] I like to went all to pieces." F. H.'s other examples—" like on a stage," "like in sickness," "like on fire," " like dropsy-fed,"— must be kept distinct. These are not ellipses of " like [= as if] I were on a stage," etc. (any more than " He acted like me " is an ellipsis of " He acted like [= as if] he were me "), but extensions to adjectives and prep- ositional phrases of the use of "like " with a noun or pronoun. So, "He gets up and raves around like a madman," or "He gets up and raves around like mad" (cf. Century Dictionary under "mad"); "It is so warm £that] it feels like summer," or " It is so warm [that] it feels like in summer"; "How cool and pleas- ant it is here; it seems just like out on the water." The use of like = "as though," with a finite verb (for example, "He acted like he was drunk "), I have been able to find ouly in our Southern States and neigh- boring portions of adjacent States; like with a prep- ositional phrase, less frequently with an adjective, may be heard anywhere in the North. In the article referred to above, Prof. Zupitza (like Hoppe before him) seems often to miss the force of " to feel like —ing." He translates," But, with all that he had to do before he could fairly win Helen before him, he felt like giving in " (Francillon, "One by One," etc.) "es war ihm, als mttsste er die Biichse ins Korn wer- fen," instead of "er hatte grosse Lust," etc. And "Mrs. Brookes was too old to blush externally, but certainly felt like blushing," he renders " es war ihr, als ob sie crrotete," that is," she felt as though she were blushing"! Nor is " He did not feel like returning to his solitary room," "Ihm war nicht so, als sollte er," etc., as Zupitza quotes with apparent approval from Hoppe, but "Er hatte keiue Lust," etc. The construc- tion, with the identical illustration, had been explained in the Century Dictionary when Prof. Zupitza pulw lished his article. He admits " wollen " and "miissen as often the correct translations of "feel like — ing," but seems to regard " sollen " as the noraal rendering. On the contrary, "sollen" (though perhaps near the original force of the phrase) would now rarely be the correct rendering, while "ich hatte [grosse] Lust," "ich hiitte keine [rechte] Lust," " ich habe keine Nei- gung," "ich biu nicht [besonders] geneigt," generally hit the mark. Georgk Hkmpl. University of Michigan, March 5, 1898,' 1893.] 175 THE DIAL &(je Neto ISooka. "The Story of the Atlantic Telegraph." * The recent death of Mr. Cyrus W. Field recalls attention to the great enterprise with which his name is inseparably connected, and makes a just-issued Memorial by his brother an especially timely one. The laying of the Atlantic cable is certainly one of the most strik- ing practical results of the scientific activity of our century, and no more fitting popular historian of the undertaking could be found than the brother of the man to whose unceas- ing toil, self-sacrifice, and almost fanatical zeal its final success was largely due. The Atlantic telegraph has become a familiar and unfelt fac- tor in our daily lives and calculations, and cus- tom has staled its pristine novelty. We have grown so used to finding the European news of yesterday in our morning newspaper, that it calls for some effort of the fancy to grasp the marvel of the thing; to realize that before the wonders wrought by the slender inter-conti- nental nerve line stretching thousands of fath- oms deep in the Atlantic, from Ireland to New- foundland, the necromancies t>f the Arabian tales, the enchanted carpets, flying horse's, space-defying genies, sink into clumsy com- monplaces. In a work of such magnitude as the laying of the Atlantic cable there were necessarily' many actors. It was essentially an interna- tional undertaking; and while the_records show that the scheme owed its inception^ in the main, to the energy and foresight 5f«n American, it is also patent throughout? Dr. Field's narra- tive that his efforts would have been of no avail but for the science, seamanship, and com- mercial enterprise of Englishmen. But when all these conditions were supplied, it is, as our author notes, the testimony of Englishmen themselves that Mr. Field's was the spirit within the wheels that made them revolve; that it was his intense vitality that infused it- self into a great organization, and made the dream of science the reality of the world. He was, said John Bright, "the Columbus of our time, who, after no less than forty voyages across the Atlantic in pursuit of the great aim of his life, had at length by his cable moored the New World close alongside the Old." * The Story of the Atlantic Telegbaph. By Henry M. Field. Illustrated. New York: Charles Sorib- ner's Sons. In a similar strain Sir Stafford Northcote said: "I think there can be no doubt in the minds of those who have carefully examined the history of these trans- actions, that it is to Mr. Cyrus Field that we owe the practical carrying out of the idea which has borne such glorious fruit. I am sure there is none to whom we owe more, or whose name stands in prouder connection with this great undertaking, than the name of Mr. Cyrus Field." Perhaps Mr. Field's share in the great work has nowhere been more justly and compactly expressed than in Mr. W. H. Russell's graphic account of the voyage of the " Great Eastern" in 1865: "It has been said that the greatest boons conferred on mankind have been due to men of one idea. If the laying of the Atlantic cable be one of these benefits, its consummation may certainly be attributed to the man who, having many ideas, devoted himself to work- ing out one idea, with a gentle force and patient vigor which converted opposition and overcame indif- ference. Mr. Field may be likened either to the core, or the external protection, of the cable itself. At times he has been its active life; again he has been its iron-bound guardian. Let who will claim the merit of having first said the Atlantic cable was possible; to Mr. Field is due the inalienable merit of having made it possible, and of giving to an abortive conception all the attributes of healthy existence." The history of the Atlantic cable is the story of twelve years of unceasing toil, of a series of battles with the elements and with human scep- ticism, that reads more like a tale of adven- ture than of a commercial enterprise soberly conceived and^methodically carried on. The relation of our author to the prime mover of the*project has not only given him unusual fa- cilities for obtaining fresh and authentic ma- terials, but has quickened his style with a sym- pathy that carries the interest of the reader unabated through the dramatic record of twelve years of alternate failure and partial success, to the denouement, when in 1866 the "Great Eastern " landed the western end of the cord that for a quarter of a century has pulsated with the tidings of two continents. In his opening chapters Dr. Field furnishes some interesting facts as to the inception of the great scheme which his relative so success- fully carried out. In 1850 Bishop Mullock, the head of the Roman Catholic Church in Newfoundland, while making the tour of the western part of the coast in his yacht, be- thought himself how his neglected island might be benefited by being taken into the track of communication between Europe and America. He saw how nature had provided an easy approach to the mainland from the west; how, sixty miles from Cape Ray, stretched 176 [March 16, THE DIAL the long island of Cape Breton, while, as a step- ping-stone, the little island of St. Paul's lay be- tween. So much did the matter weigh upon his mind that, when he returned to St. John's, he wrote a letter to one of the papers on the subject. This letter was the first suggestion of a telegraph across Newfoundland, and may be regarded as the germ of the larger scheme which afterwards ripened in the brain of Mr. Field.* The Bishop wrote: "I regret to find that in every plan for transatlantic communication, Halifax is always mentioned, and the nat- ural capabilities of Newfoundland entirely overlooked. . . . Now would it not be well to call the attention of England and America to the extraordinary capabilities of St. John's, as the nearest telegraphic point? It is an Atlantic port, lying, I may say, in the track of the ocean steamers, and by establishing it as the American telegraphic station, news could be communicated to the whole American continent forty-eight hours, at least, sooner than by any other route. But how will this be accomplished? Just look at the map of Newfound- land and Cape Breton. From St. John's to Cape Ray there is no difficulty iu establishing a line passing near Holy-Rood along the neck of land connecting Trinity and Placentia Bays, aud thence in a direction due west to the Cape. You have then about forty-one to forty- five miles of sea to St. Paul's Island, with deep sound- ings of one hundred fathoms, so that the electric cable will be perfectly safe from icebergs. Thence to Cape North, in Cape Breton, is little more than twelve miles. Thus it is not only practicable to bring America two days nearer to Europe by this route, but should the tel- egraphic communication between England and Ireland, sixty-two miles, be realized, it presents not the least difficulty." Bishop Mullock's suggestion came at the right moment, for about the same time the at- tention of Mr. F. N. Gisborne, a telegraph oper- ator, was attracted to a similar project. Mr. Gis- borne was a man of great quickness of mind, and his enthusiasm, backed by his known prac- tical knowledge of telegraphy, soon awakened leading Newfoundlanders to an appreciation of the ad vantages to the island of his plan, which he afterwards summarized as follows: "My plans were to run a subterranean line from Cape Race to Cape Ray, fly carrier-pigeons and ruu boats across the Straits of Northumberland to Cape Breton, and thence by overland lines convey the news to New York. . . . Meanwhile Mr. Brett's experi- mental cable between Dover and Calais having proved successful, I set forth in my report that' carrier-pigeons and boats would be required only until such time as the experiments then making in England with submarine cables should warrant a similar attempt between Cape Ray and Cape Breton.'" It will be noticed that nowhere in his report does Mr. Gisborne mention the possibility of ever spanning with a telegraphic line the mighty gulf of the Atlantic. Years after, however, when the Atlantic cable was a success, "he or his friends," says Dr. Field, "seemed not un- willing to have it supposed that this was em- braced in his original scheme"; and when asked why he did not publish his large design to the world, Mr. Gisborne answered — with some show of reason, as it seems to us — "Because I was looked upon as a wild visionary by my friends, and pronounced a fool by my relatives for resigning a lucrative government appointment in favor of such a laborious speculation as the Newfoundland con- nection. Now had I coupled it at that time with an Atlantic line, all confidence in the prior undertaking would have been destroyed, and my object defeated." The success of a great enterprise once held to be visionary always calls forth a host of hitherto unheard of claimants to the honor; and if we are to regard the claim of Mr. Gis- borne, we must certainly not neglect the fact that ten years previously Professor Morse had expressed the conviction founded on scientific experiment, that "a telegraphic communica- tion might with certainty be established across the Atlantic Ocean." Mr. Gisborne's honor- able activity in the beginning of the Newfound- land telegraph is a matter of history, as is also the pregnant fact that the ignominious failure of the company of which he was the head sent him in 1854 to New York to seek counsel and relief, and brought him in contact with Cyrus W. Field. Mr. Field had retired from business the year before with an ample fortune, and was not disposed to renew the fatigues and anxie- ties of his former life. There was much, how- ever, in the details of the Newfoundland scheme that appealed to his natural love of enterprise, and he was finally induced to meet Mr. Gis- borne at his house, and to go over with him the details of his plan. The two spent an evening together discussing the route of the proposed line and the points it was to connect; and after his guest had left Mr. Field took the globe which was standing in the library, and began to turn it over. It was while thus study- ing the globe, says our author, that the idea first occurred to him that the telegraph might be carried further still, and be made to span the Atlantic Ocean. The thought was new to him, though it was not original with him, hav- ing long been a matter of speculation with sci- entific minds. Having once fully grasped the idea, it took hold of his imagination with the force of a monomania; and for the next twelve years Mr. Field fought the battle of the At- lantic cable with a persistence, a patience, and an unfaltering faith in his own soberly wrought convictions, that is in itself a lesson and an in- spiration. 1893.] THE DIAL 177 Our author recounts in detail the prelimi- naries of the enterprise, and consultations with Lieutenant Maury and Professor Morse, the enlisting of capitalists, the obtaining of the Newfoundland charter, the completion of the land-line in Newfoundland, and the laying of the cable across the Gulf of St. Lawrence in 1856, and the deep-sea sounding undertaken by the American and the British Governments. The American company was organized in May, 1854, the Newfoundland line — as originally planned by Gisborne — was completed two years later, and now, having reached the farth- est point of the American coast, the bold projectors stood upon the cliffs of Newfound- land, looking out upon the wide sea. Up to this time the Atlantic Telegraph had been purely an American enterprise. "Our lit- tle company," said Mr. Field ten years after, "raised and expended over a million and a quarter of dollars before an Englishman paid a single pound sterling." But now that the time was come for the attempt to carry the line across the Atlantic, it was fitting that Great Britain, whose shores it was to touch, should join the work ; and in the summer of 1856 Mr. Field sailed for England. In a little over five months he had secured substantial aid from the British government, organized a company, and contracted for the manufacture of the cable. The capital of the company, £350,000, was divided into 350 shares of £1000 each. Among the subscribers were Mr. Thackeray and Lady Byron — actuated solely by a noble wish to take part in such a work. Mr. Field's interest was one-fourth of the whole capital of the company. In opening negotiations with the Government, Mr. Field had an interview with Lord Clarendon, touching which our au- thor gives a characteristic anecdote: "Lord Clarendon showed great interest and made many inquiries. He was a little startled at the mag- nitude of the scheme, and the confident tone of the pro- jectors, and asked pleasantly: 'But suppose you don't succeed? Suppose you make the attempt and fail — your cable is lost in the sea — then what will you do ?1 'Charge it to profit and loss, and go to work to lay an- other,' was the quick answer of Mr. Field, which amused him as a truly Americau reply." While in London Mr. Field took counsel' with the highest engineering authorities of Great Britain, among them Mr. Brunei, who made many suggestions as to the form of the cable and the manner in which it should be laid. Mr. Brunei was then building the " Great Eastern"; and he one day took Mr. Field down to see it, prophetically saying, as he pointed to the enormous hull which was rising on the banks of the Thames, "There is the ship to lay the Atlantic cable." When Mr. Field reached home from abroad, in 1856, he hoped for a brief respite, but was soon called to Washington to seek the aid of his own Government to the Atlantic Tele- graph. England had proffered the most lib- eral aid, both in ships to lay the cable and in an annual subsidy of £14,000. He soon found that it was much easier to deal with the En- glish than with the home Government, and that the proposal for aid had provoked violent resistance in Congress. Among other hostile influences, the Lobby began to show itself; and it was whispered in Washington that the New York gentlemen who were at the head of the enterprise were very rich, and that the measure ought to be forced to pay tribute. This was a new experience, disheartening enough after the generous dealing of England. As Dr. Field observes: "The Atlantic cable has had many a kink since, but never did it seem to be entangled in such a hopeless twist as when it got among the politicians." Ten years after, when the cable had proved a glo- rious reality, Mr. Seward thus referred to the ordeal it had to pass through in Congress: "It remained to engage the consent and the activity ef the Governments of Great Britain and the United States. Such consent and activity on the part of some one great nation of Europe was all that remained needful for Columbus when he stood ready to bring a new continent forward as a theatre of the world's civilizations. But in each case that effort was the most difficult of all. Cyrus W. Field, by assiduity and patience, first secured consent and conditional engagement on the part of Great Britain, and then, less than two years ago, he re- paired to Washington. The President and Secretary of State individually favored his proposition; but the jealousies of parties and sections in Congress forbade them to lend it their official sanction and patronage. He appealed to me. I drew the necessary bill. With the generous aid of others, Northern Representatives, and the indispensable aid of the late Thomas J. Rusk, a Senator from Texas, that bill, after a severe contest and long delay, was carried through the Senate by the majority, if I remember rightly, of one vote, and es- caped defeat in the House of Representatives with equal difficulty." Mr. Seward was from the first the firmest supporter of the bill, and it was carried through the Senate mainly by his influence, seconded by that of Mr. Rusk, Mr. Douglas, and one or two others. A measure introduced in Congress for the aid of any commercial enterprise is always objected to as "unconstitutional" by some member who imagines it is to benefit a particular section. In the present case, the 178 [March 16, THE time-honored objection was thus sensibly met by Mr. Benjamin, of Louisiana, who asked: "If we have a right to hire a warehouse at Port Ma- hon, in the Mediterranean, for storing naval stores, have we not a right to hire a company to carry our messages? I should as soon think of questioning the constitutional power of the Government to pay freight to a vessel for carrying its mail-bags across the ocean, as to pay a tel- egraph company a certain sum per annum for convey- ing its messages by the use of the electric telegraph." Behind the ostensible objections of expense, unconstitutionality, etc., however, lurked the real one — enmity to England. It was argued that both termini of the cable were in the Brit- ish possessions, a fact that would place us at a tremendous disadvantage in the event of war. The intelligent class of politicians who are un- able to rid their minds of the delusion that the hostilities of 1812 are still in progress, argued that in this submarine cable England was literally crawling under the sea to get the advantage of us. This note was loudest from the Southerners. Dr. Field observes, "It is noteworthy that men who, in less than five years after, were figuring abroad, courting for- eign influence against their own country, were then fiercest in denunciation of England." Mason and Slidell patriotically voted against the bill. Butler of South Carolina was spe- cially bitter against it — saying, with a sneer, "this was simply a mail service under the sur- veillance of Great Britain"; while an indig- nant patriot, Jones of Tennessee, vindicated his statesmanship by declaring that "he did not want anything to do with England or En- glishmen." Considering that the section of the country from which Mr. Jones "hailed" was relieved yearly by Englishmen of three- fifths of its staple product, his position seems a rather feeble one. The objection touching the hazards of war with Great Britain was ably and humanely answered by Mr. Seward and Mr. Hale; while Mr. Douglas cut the matter short and conciliated the militant spirit of the Congressional Joneses by saying: "I am willing to vote for this bill as a peace meas- ure, as a commercial measure — but not as a war measure; and when war comes, let us rely on our power and ability to take this end of the wire and keep it." The Atlantic Telegraph bill was signed by President Pierce, on the third of March, 1856, the day before he went out of office: but the battle, arduous as it had been up to this date, was only just begun. It was not until years afterwards, when voyage after voyage had been made, when cable after cable had been lost and replaced, tried and found wanting, that Mr. Field was enabled to say, in the fulness of gratitude and triumph: "It has been a long, hard struggle. Nearly thirteen years of auxious watching and ceaseless toil. Often my heart has been ready to sink. Many times, when wan- dering in the forests of Newfoundland, in the pelting rain, or on the deck of ships, on dark, stormy nights— alone, far from home — I have almost accused myself of madness and folly to sacrifice the peace of my fam- ily, and all the hopes of my life, for what might prove after all but a dream. I have seen my companions one and another falling by my side, and feared that I too might not live to see the end. And yet one hope has led me on, and I have prayed that I might not taste of death till this work was accomplished. That prayer is answered; and now, beyond all acknowledgments to men, is the feeling of gratitude to Almighty God." We can heartily commend Dr. Field's book for its style as well as its intrinsic interest. No one should be ignorant of " The History of the Atlantic Telegraph," and Dr. Field has told it well. E. G. J. Prehistoric A als of America.* No encouragement to the idea of a Conti- nental island lying between America and the Old World is given by Sir Daniel Wilson in his opening essay on "The Lost Atlantis." He claims, rather, that America is itself an Atlantis, lost for ages from the knowledge of the world. Most of the essays in his volume deal with American subjects and the native populations; their origin, character, and arts are studied. Sir Daniel did not believe in a single American Race, or at least not in one sprung from a single stock. He long ago sug- gested at least three mighty waves of migra- tion hither — one from an Asiatic cradle-land through the islands of the Pacific into North America; a second, starting from the Old World's Atlantic seaboard, swept across the sea through the Canaries, Madeiras, and Azores, to the Antilles, Central America, and Brazil; the third passed from northern Asia by Behring's Strait and the North Pacific islands. Upon the first of these our author dwells with particular fondness, and brings to its support the evidence of language, of shell money, of arts, and of deformations of the human skull. Various theories which try to deal with the matter in detail are mentioned, but they are said to be "not more substantial than the old legend of Atlantis." That long ago there was contact between America and the rest of the world seems certain; but it ceased. * The Lost Atiantis, and Other Ethnographic Studies. By Sir Daniel Wilson. New York: Mac mi I lan & Co. 1893.] 179 THE DIAL "The evidence derived from language and from other sources points to the isolation of the American continent through unnumbered ages. The legend of the lost Atlantis is true in this, if in nothing else: that it relegates the knowl- edge of the world beyond the Atlantic, by the maritime races of the Mediterranean, to a time already of hoar antiquity in the age of Socrates or even of Solon." The metallurgy of Mexico, the art of Yucatan, the Calendar used in the sacred rights of the Isthmian tribes, all of these may have developed on American soil. If, however, they did arise elsewhere and are migrant to these localities, we must find the evidence by searching study of the archaeology of Central America — as yet too little known. The essay upon " The Lost Atlantis " is fol- lowed by others upon "The Vinland of the Northmen," "Trade and Commerce in the Stone Age," "Pre-Aryan American Man," "The Esthetic Faculty in Aboriginal Races," "The Huron-Iroquois—a Typical Race," "Hy- bridity and Heredity," " Relative Racial Brain- weight and Size." All are interesting and sug- gestive, but some are of particular value. In "Trade and Commerce in the Stone Age " we have an admirable accumulation of facts. The old flint quarries of England yielded mate- rial that was carried far from its source. So did the famous "Flint Ridge " in Ohio. The copper of Lake Superior, the jasper of Missis- sippi, the red pipestone of Minnesota, travelled from hand to hand, and from tribe to tribe. Wilson's Indian guides on the Neepigon River, although eight hundred miles from home, knew where to look for a prized material for their pipes, and carried it with them that distance. Such transfer of good materials was exceed- ingly common. Most Indian tribes have a characteristic form for their stone pipes, yet all types may be found in the red pipestone (cat- linite), and there is no room for doubt that the stone was transported in rough blocks and bartered by the quarriers to distant tribes. Most collections of Indian relics in New York, Ohio, Canada, etc., contain some specimen or two of gorgets or ornaments made of a gray- ish green clay slate with dark streaks. Dr. Bell seems to have located the old quarry from which this material came nearly one hundred miles north of Lake Nipissing. Our author does well to emphasize such facts. Commerce and the beginning of division of labor go very far back into the Stone Age. We are prone to think of that period as one of no accomplish- ment, when in reality it was marked by some most important steps in progress. Man made the stone implement, but it in turn made man. Society has been profoundly influenced by early arts and industries. The thought underlying the essay upon "Pre- Aryan American Man " is this: that he was wonderfully backward. The older man in America proves to be the more startling in his unprogressive character. The "phenome- non of unprogressive humanity, perpetuating through countless generations the same rudi- mentary arts, everywhere presents itself, and seems to me to constitute the really remarka- ble feature in American Ethnology and Ar- chaeology." "From all that can be gleaned . . . the whole condition of the Northern Continent has ever been the same. It might not inaptly be compared to an ever-recurring springtime, followed by frosts that nipped the young germ and rendered the promised fruit- age abortive." Our author finds the reason for this condition in the openness of the conti- tinent from north to south, allowing of easy migrations of wandering tribes into sections where, if isolated, higher culture might have developed. One of the curious facts of ethnography is the capricious distribution of arts among tribes. While the Australian lacks the taste for carv- ing and painting, the Papuan possesses it in high degree. Although barbarians of low grade, the cave-men of Europe were real art- ists, and carved and etched bone, ivory, and horn with spirit. They stood alone in this re- spect in their day. The artistic sentiment of our American tribes presents many points of interest. Variable powers are found among them. The Haidahs and some of their neigh- bors in the far Northwest are carvers of skill. Their totem posts covered with her- aldic designs, and their pipes of blue-black slate are well known. Their passion for carv- ing expends itself upon everything: boxes for clothing, dishes for food, wands, masks, and rattles for the dance, paint-brush and knife handles — all are covered with their quaint patterns. In Mexico and Yucatan we find an equal passion for carving shown in the stone work of magnificent ruined buildings. In the mounds of Ohio and the Mississippi Valley, pipes of stone are found which have the forms of birds and animals and of men's heads. This fondness for imitating natural objects — par- ticularly animal forms—is one of the character- istics of American art, and it reappears in pot- tery and in metal work. Everyone knows of 180 [March 16,. THE DIAL the imitative forms of some clay pipes among the Eastern tribes and of the vessels from the mounds from Mexico and from Peru. The Isthmian tribes were skilled in working gold into the forms of "beasts, birds, and fishes, frogs and other natural objects. The frog is made with sockets for the eyes, an oval slit in front, and within each a detached ball of gold, executed apparently in a single casting." "In- genious toys, birds and beasts with movable wings and limbs, and fish with alternate scales of gold and silver, were wrought by the Mexi- can goldsmiths with so much skill that the Spaniards acknowledged the superiority of the native workmanship over any product of Euro- pean art." In America painting per se was not widespread, although carvings were col- ored and picture-writing was prevalent. There is also at times a rather remarkable talent in map-drawing. A curious point is mentioned: the poorness of art taste among the Algonquins and Iroquois — peoples whose languages are unusually rich and flexible and capable of ex- pressing the most delicate shades of meaning. Lack of space forbids reference in detail to more of these essays: we wish briefly to notice that upon " The Huron-Iroquois." This " typ- ical race" is no particular favorite of Sir Dan- iel Wilson. He admits its tremendous energy, but emphasizes its lack of artistic taste and fondness for war. The early home of the Huron-Iroquois, the beginnings of the Confed- eracy, and the history of the struggles between Algonquin and Iroquois, are discussed. The bulk of the essay, however, deals with linguis- tics. The language of the stock, its phonology, grammatical structure, power and capacity of expression, are interestingly treated, and a plea is made for more study of American languages. The recent works of Major Powell and his fel- lows in the Bureau of Ethnology, and those of Dr. Brinton and Horatio Hale, are examples both of what has been done and of what still remains to do in this field. It must be evident that this book is inter- esting. It is the last work of its honored au- thor, who did not live to see it in print. "The Lost Atlantis" is the last of a series of im- portant and stimulating works. Years ago, the "Prehistoric Annals of Scotland " made its au- thor known to the scientific world. Later on, his "Prehistoric Man"—essays like those in his latest volume, but less distinctively American — appeared. Then came "The Origin of Civilization," and only a few months ago a litr tie book on " Left-Handedness." This last is interesting as being the result of the author himself being naturally left-handed. It is a careful study; in it Sir Daniel shows that left- handedness, although an abnormality, has oc- curred far back in history and even in pre- history. By a study of art-works of ancient primitive man, he claims that some of those old artists were left-handed. There follows a consideration of the various theories that have been propounded to explain why most men are right-handed rather than left-handed or ambi-dextrous. Sir Daniel Wilson was a careful student of Ethnography and Anthropology and a popular writer of books upon his favorite subjects ; but he was much more. He was a teacher of un- usual ability. For years the president of the University of Toronto, he was perhaps the pioneer teacher of Anthropology in America. For a dozen years or so, he gave courses throughout the University year to the senior classes. Because he was a pioneer, and be- cause they show the range of his classwork, the titles of his courses are here given: 1. Ethnology as a factor in History: Science of Lan- guage in its bearings on Anthropology and History. 2. Philological Classification of Races. 3. Succession of Races in the Countries of Europe. 4. Physical Evidences of Diversity in Races. 5. Philological Evidences in Races. 6. Prehistoric, Uuhistoric, and Historic Races. In these courses of class-lectures, Sir Daniel Wilson has exerted an influence upon Amer- ican thought which has had no small part in developing the present interest and activity in Anthropology in this country. His pen rests and his tongue is silent, but his work lives and will live through years to come. „ . .. Frederick Starr. University of Chicago. Ix the Key of Blue.* Madame de Stael has said that the poem must be written to the picture, not the picture painted to the poem. Mr. John Addington Symonds has now given us an exemplification of this dictum in the initial essay of his " In the Key of Blue, and Other Prose Essays." Mr. Stedman assures us that as an "exemplar of taste" Mr. Symonds the author would have succeeded equally well as a painter, sculptor, or architect, and that " his poems are suggest- ive to careful students only." English litera- ture would have been the poorer by Mr. Sy- * In the Key of Blue, and Other Prose Essays. By John Addington Symonds. New York: Macmillan & Co. 1893.] 181 THE DIAL monds's inability to escape from the city of fogs and murky atmosphere from time to time. His little excursions beyond the channel are always to the advantage and delight of his readers, and it was during a summer holiday spent in Venice that he found inspiration for his ingenious study, "In the Key of Blue." In the "glorious City in the Sea," the prob- lem of color gradations under their most subtle aspects presents itself on all sides to the artist, he tells us ; and he is especially attracted by the qualities of the blue in the blouses, sashes, and trousers, with their dirt and stains of labor, and picturesque patchings of harder upon softer tones, combined with flesh-tints whether dark or fair. "Under strong sunlight, against the greenish water of the cauals, the color ef- fects of such chromatic deviations are piquant and agreeable." Lady Archibald Campbell (in "Rainbow Music") gives an account of an ingenious American who invented an instrument a few years ago called a color-organ. In form this instrument is described as similar to the or- dinary musical instrument, but supplied with a set of colored glasses, having shutters behind them which open and close in response to the pressure on the keys. By touching different keys different harmonies of color are produced. With this device in mind, possibly, Mr. Sy- monds was struck by the idea that it would be "amusing to try the resources of our language in a series of studies of what might be termed 'blues and blouses.'" The little symphonies that follow show the author to be a painter, in this instance, quite Whistleresque; though he confesses that as an artist in language he feels the mockery of attempting " effects which can only be adequately rendered by the palette." We make room for the first of these color stud- ies, the figure being afacehino, who posed for the purpose: "A symphony of black and blue — Venice asleep, vast night, and you. The skies were blurred with vapors dank: The long canal stretched inky-blank, With lights on hearing water shed From lamps that trembled overhead. Pitch-dark! you were the one thing blue; Four tints of pure celestial hue: The larkspur blouse of tones degraded Through silken sash of sapphire faded, The faintly floating violet tie. The hose of lapis-lazuli. How blue you were amid that black. Lighting the wave, the ebon wrack! The ivory pallor of your face Gleamed from those glowing azures back Against the golden gaslight; grapes Of dusky curls your brows embrace, And round yon all the vast night gapes." Three extracts from a diary "made in the May month of three several years" form the second of Mr. Symonds's prose essays, "Among the Enganean Hills": "Those famous Enganean hills which bear, As seen from Lido through the harbor piles, The likeness of a clump of peaked isles." The essay entitled "Platonic and Dantesque Ideals of Love" is probably the one that aroused the censure of the compositor on the Ballan- tyne Press, and inspired his letter demurring to the moral tone of the " copy." In the essay on Edward Cracroft Lefroy we have a sym- pathetic critique on a young man of rare merit and promise who died at thirty-five, and the whole volume of whose work was a thin book- let of a century of sonnets, a volume of ser- mons, and a collection of "Addresses to Sen- ior School-Boys." In "La Bete Humaine," Mr. Symonds tells us that Zola is not a real- ist, but an idealist of the purest water. Other essays are on such a variety of subjects as " Old Norman Songs"; "Culture: Its Meaning and its Uses"; "Clifton and a Lad's Love"; "An Altar Piece by Tiepolo"; "On Lyrics from Elizabethan Song-Books," etc. From the brief preface to Mr. Symonds's collection, we learn that several of the essays appear for the first time, while others are re- published from the " Fortnightly" and other magazines; and that there is an interval of more than thirty years between the earliest of the series and the latest. The selection is there- fore fairly representative of the different kinds of work in which the author has been princi- pally engaged. It is hard to make a choice from such a cabinet of gems. "Ideal Love" is an exposi- tion of the doctrine of Plato's "Symposium" and Dante's "Vita Nuova," and is somewhat in " the allusive way"; while the meaning and uses of Culture in its broadest sense are clearly defined. Mr. Symonds has the happy faculty of adorning whatever he touches, and the gates leading into Greek, Italian, and French fields, fast-locked to so many critical writers of the present day, open at his command. A word may be permitted as to the excellent character of the typography of Mr. Symonds's book, and on the striking design of its cover, which is a rather conventional but broad treat- ment of hyacinths and laurel, by Mr. C. S. liicketts, not exactly imitative perhaps, but still a little suggestive of another "exemplar of taste," Mr. Cobden-Sanderson. W. Irving Way. 182 [March 16, THE DIAL Lodge Talks of the Blackfoot Indians.* Amid the increasing swarm of books issuing from the press, one of the few that can claim an unmistakable raison d'etre for more than an ephemeral existence is Mr. George Bird Grinnell's just issued " Blackfoot Lodge Tales." The volume is a handsome one of 300 pages, the first 173 of which contain a collection of Indian legends, the remainder of the book be- ing devoted to the domestic life, customs, superstitions, etc., of the Blackfoot tribe. The stories bear every indication of having been rendered with careful fidelity to the originals, and the author has succeeded in preserving much of the aroma which is so commonly lost during transmutation into a foreign tongue. There are many points of contact between these stories and the legends of other races with which we are acquainted. The medicine man wears many of the familiar features of the wizard and enchanter (we are tempted to add, also, of the clairvoyant and medium of our own day), dreams and omens abound, the were-wolf or loup-garou is distinctly seen, and strange metamorphoses occur. In the preface the author aptly says of these tales: "Their similarity to those curreut among the Ojib- was and other Algonquin tribes is sufficiently obvious and altogether to be expected, . . . but it is a little startling to see in the story of the Worm Pipe a close parallel to the classical myth of Orpheus and Kurydice. In another of the stories is an incident which might have been taken bodily from the Odyssey." But a distinctive flavor pervades the whole. These tales, listened to from dusky lips by the embers of the Blackfoot lodge on long winter nights (many of them must not be told by day), bring back to us the breath of the mountain and prairie and the musky odor of the buffalo herd. Sometimes the same incident occurs in different stories and is told in language which is almost identical. As an example we give the following, which is in two stories: "The sun had set and rain was beginning to fall. Owl Bear looked around for some place where he could sleep dry. Close by he saw a hole in the rocks. He got dowu on his hands and knees and crept in. Here it was very dark. He could see nothing, so he crept very slowly, feeling as he went. All at once his hand touched some- thing strange. He felt of it. It was a person's foot, and there was a moccasin on it. He stopped and sat still. Then he felt a little further. Yes, it was a per- son's leg. He could feel the cowskin legging. Now he did not know what to do. He thought perhaps it was a dead person, and again he thought it might be •Blackfoot Lodge Tales. By George Bird Grinnell. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. one of his relations, who had become ashamed and turned back after him. Pretty soon he put his hand on the leg again and felt along up. He touched the person's belly. It was warm. He felt of the breast, and could feel it rise and fall as the breath came and went, and the heart was beating fast. Still the person did not move. Maybe he was afraid. Perhaps be thought that it was a ghost feeling of him. Owl Bear now knew this person was not dead. He thought he would try if he could learn who the man was, for he was not afraid. His heart was sad. His people and his relations had left him, and he had made up his mind to give bis body to the Snakes. So he began and felt all over the man,—of his face, hair, robe, leggings, belt, weapons, and by and by be stopped feeling of him. He could not tell whether it was one of his people or not. "Pretty soon the strange person sat up and felt all over Owl Bear, and when he had finished he took the Piegau's hand, and opened it and held it up, waving it from side to side, saying by signs, 'Who are you?' Owl Bear put his closed hand against the person's cheek and rubbed it. He said in signs ' Piegan,' and then he asked the person who he was. A finger was placed across his breast and moved across it zigzag. It was the sign for ' Snake.' 'Hai yah,' thought Owl Bear,' a Snake, my enemy.' For a long time he sat still, think- ing." But the sequels to the two stories are very dif- ferent. In one case the Blackfoot and the Snake, hereditary foes, become fast friends and allies; in the other the Blackfoot practises dissimulation, and at daylight slays the Snake. The portion of Mr. Grinnell's book devoted to the customs and domestic life of the Black- feet bears evidence of careful and painstaking observation, and contains some curious facts which it is believed have not heretofore been published. Its perusal must correct some curious misapprehensions concerning Indians. For instance, it would surprise many to learn that suicides were very common among the In- dians of the plains in their primitive state. The suicides were mostly young women, and disappointment in love was usually the cause. The method selected was generally the repul- sive and unromantic one of hanging with a strip of smoky buffalo rawhide. A singular custom among the Blackfeet was that of not permitting a member of the tribe to speak to his mother-in-law, nor were the two permitted to notice or recognize each other in any way. They might live near each other in the same village, but from the day of the es- pousals they were as strangers. It may be ob- served that the same singular rule prevails in other tribes of the plains. Under the head of " Hunting" is a graphic description of an ancient method of taking the buffalo. "The piskun was a large corral or enclosure built out from the foot of a perpendicular cliff or bluff, and 1893.] formed of natural banks, rocks, and logs or brush — anything, in fact, to make a close, high barrier. In some places the barrier might be only a fence of brush, but even here the buffalo did not break it down, for they did not push against it, but ran round and round within the enclosure, looking for a clear space through which they might pass. From the top of the bluff, directly over the piskun two long lines of rock piles and brush extended out on the prairie diverging from each other like the letter V, the opening over the piskun being at the angle." The buffaloes were decoyed into this V and then driven down over the cliff into the corral at the foot of it. This practice was still used by the Blackfeet up to within forty years ago, and older members of the tribe still speak with enthusiasm of the plenty that successful drives brought to the camp. An instructive chapter in Mr. Grinnell's book is one entitled "The Blackfoot of To- day." It is evident that the author does not subscribe to the sentiment," Good Indian, dead Indian." On the contrary, he discerns in the living Indian much that is good, and regards with deep sympathy his pathetic situation, cut off from his happy and romantic past, as seen through the mist of years, and struggling with the inexorable present and future which threaten to sweep him away and submerge him. Mr. Grinnell's book is a valuable contribu- tion to the fascinating study of the folk-lore of our Indian tribes, and no collection of such lore can be complete without it. It is written in a simple, unpretentious, and lucid style. In clos- ing, we wish to note that Mr. Grinnell, perhaps adopting the phrase of white trappers and fron- tiersmen, curiously uses the expression " Buf- falo Rock " to designate the bit of flint or small shell petrifaction used by the Indians in their incantations for success in buffalo-hunting. E. L. Huggins, U. S. A. Bkiefs on Nkw Books. ir c« j „. The preface to Mr. C. L. Shad- Mr. ShadtcelVl mi x-» t-> literal verse well s "The Purgatory of Dante trantationof Danu. jtfgfaA. An Experiment in Literal Verse Translation" (Maciuillan) contains a con- cise and admirably clear statement of his reasons for choosing the metre of Andrew Marvell's "Ode to Cromwell" as an equivalent for Dante's terza rima. Prose translations of the Divine Comedy are unsuccessful, he says, because they frankly or tacitly give up the attempt to reproduce the mu- sical cadences of the original. Terza rima is, however, virtually impossible in English. The prob- lem, therefore, is, what natural metrical form in English affords a favorable opportunity for the close translation which Dante's style and thought demand, and is at the same time the nearest equiv- alent, in effect, of the terza rima. Marvell's ode, the metre of which Mr. Shadwell suggests as a so- lution, consists of a series of stanzas, each of which is composed of a pair of eight-syllabled iambic lines and a pair of six-syllabled iambic lines. The advantages of this metre are as follows. First, Dante's terzine are usually complete in themselves, so far as the verse-form goes; each terzina can thus be rendered by one of Marvell's stanzas, which are equally com- plete. Second, the capacity of the two stanzas is nearly equal, twenty-eight syllables in English to thirty-three in Italian. Third, the two six-syllabled lines may appropriately contain what the last line of Dante's terzina frequently expresses, " a subor- dinate clause, a reflexion, a simile, an illustration, a parenthetic statement of any kind." The disad- vantages of Marvell's stanza as a translation of the terzina Mr. Shadwell does not state. They are, briefly, these. First, in the English metre the effect of rhyme is much more strongly prominent than it is in the Italian. In any nine lines of Dante, for instance, there are three rhyme sounds and eight rhyming words; in the corresponding lines of the translation, however, there are six rhyme sounds and twelve rhyming words. Second, the result of translating the third line of the terzina by two En- glish lines is that frequently a slight addition must be made to the thought of the original; che lascia dietro a sh mar si crudele (I. 3), for instance be- comes "That cruel sea uniinrf For ever left behind." Third, the Italian system links the terzine by a con- necting rhyme; in the English system each stanza is entirely separate from that which follows it. Fourth, the two eight-syllabled lines give as a rule space enough for an adequate rendering of the thought in the first two lines of Dante's terzine; but the two six-syllabled lines, which are usually (and almost necessarily) devoted to Dante's third line, give to it a degree of prominence which cannot but destroy the symmetry of the thought. In spite, however, of these theoretical and practical disad- vantages, Mr. Shadwell's translation is not only in- teresting but good. It has music, it has cadence; it is accurate and at the same time graceful, and, whether it is or is not an adequate rendering of Dante, it shares the merits of Fitzgerald's transla- tions in so striking both the ear and the eye as an independent English poem that it seems, and is, worth reading for its own sake. Of course there are many points of detail which one would like to discuss, but these would be inappropriate in this brief notice. Here it is sufficient to characterize Mr. Shadwell's methods and its results as a whole, leaving to the reading public, which is the final judge in matters of translation, the decision as to its adaptation to the English ear and taste. The 184 [March 16, THE DIAL volume, it should be added, is beautifully printed and bound, contains the Italian text side by side with the translation, and is not disfigured by foot- notes. Representative It would be difficult to say when we f™