Philadelphia, where he
was placed in a mercantile house. The young-
er Morris was a daring speculator, and took
delight in great commercial enterprises; and,
as might be expected from such a person, he
was somewhat lavish in the display of such
wealth as he possessed. The chief peculiar-
ity of his public career is that when Superin-
tendent of Finance he exercised for the benefit
of the public treasury the same sort of ability
that marked his career as a merchant, and his
reputation was so great that notes which he is-
sued passed current rather because of his signa-
ture than because the Continental Congress
promised to support them. It was his willing-
ness to assume risks and his command over ex-
pedients —- those characteristics which are sure
to bring a man to the front in Wall Street spec-
ulations — that gave Morris his preeminence as
a financier.
Morris was appointed Superintendent of


74 THE DIAL
[J uly,

Finance in 1781. Congress had up to this
time maintained direct control over the finan-
cial alfairs of the country, and only after re-
peated failures was the thought impressed that
the administration of a public treasury is
an executive and not a legislative function.
Though an officer of Congress, Morris always
conducted himself as though he were at the
head of a responsible executive bureau. In
one sense it was fortunate that the finances of
the country were in so confused a state when
he assumed control ; for the credit of the coun-
try having been all but lost, the proposals of
the Superintendent were considered more can-
didly and adopted more readily than would
otherwise have been the case. The history of
the finances of the Revolutionary War from
1781 is the history of a series of temporary
expedients. Still, there are certain clearly-
defined steps by which the lost credit of the
country was finally restored, and they are sum-
marized by Professor Sumner as follows:
The first important step was the formal rec-
ognition of the collapse of paper currency,
which occurred shortly previous to the time
Morris assumed office. This, while doubtless for
the time it influenced unfortunately the public
credit, provided a clear field for other financial
transactions; and it is to the praise of Morris
that no further reliance was placed upon inse-
cure paper notes. “ Anticipation of taxes and
funds,” he wrote in his first communication to
Congress, “ is all that ought to be expected
from any system of paper currency.” The
second important step was the establishment
of what Morris always called a National Bank.
“ I mean,” he said, in speaking of the bank,
“ to render this a pillar of American credit.”
This bank, as established by Morris, was rath-
er a peculiar institution, judging by the modern
standpoint of what a bank is.
a means of obtaining subscriptions for public
necessities, partly a means for funding debts
which had previously been contracted, and
partly an institution for placing the loans of
the government among the people. It, how-
ever, served its purpose, and one cannot fail
to be struck with the great ingenuity of the
man who planned it and for all practical pur-
poses directed its policy. In the third place,
Morris took steps towards introducing a system
of taxation ; and although the effort produced
trivial results, it yet exerted an influence upon
public credit. And, finally, it was through
the vigor which he infused into the financial
transactions of this country that Holland was
It was partly _

brought to loan money to Congress without a
guarantee from France.
It is impossible to determine very accurate-
ly the cost of the Revolutionary War. The
amount expended “ at the Treasury,” reduced
to a specie basis, was $92,485,693; but be-
sides this there was expended away from the
Treasury enough to cause the total cost to
the American States to amount to $135,000,-
000. Besides this sum, the expenditures of
France are estimated by Professor Sumner to
have been not less than $60,000,000. And
the net amount received by Congress as the
result of taxation on which to float so large
expenditure was but $2,025,099.
The career of Morris after he resigned his
control of the treasury is not especially in-
structive. He served as Senator from Penn-
sylvania during the first six years under the
Constitution, but his interest in the develop-
ment of the newly-founded city of Washing-
ton was greater than in public questions. He
was a speculator by nature, and therefore
could not be a statesman; and it is a curious
commentary that the man who by his personal
credit carried the finances of the Continental
Congress through its greatest crisis should
have suffered reverses when operating on his
°“’n "‘°°°““t' HENRY C. Anams.
Tun Evo1.U'r1o.\' or ANTIQUE AR'r.*

M. Georges Perrot, the eminent French
archaeologist who more than ten years ago set
out upon an investigation of the art of Greece,
has now arrived within sight of his promised
goal. It was a herculean task he proposed to
himself, of tracing from its sources the evolu-
tion of that antique art which in the regular
line of development culminated in the glori-
ous achievements of Hellenic genius. He be-
gan with an exhaustive research among the re-
mains of Egyptian architecture, painting, and
sculpture, and, carefully following the path as
it opened before him, embraced in his survey
the records found in the ruins of the chief na-
tions of anterior Asia, Chaldaea, Assyria, Phoe-

* Hlsronr or Anr IN Pzasu: From the French of Georges
Parrot, Member of the Institute, Professor in the Faculty of
Letters, Paris; and Charles Chippiez. Illustrated with 254
engravings in the text, and twelve steel and color plates.
New York : A. C. Armstrong & Son.
Hrs-roar or Am IN Pnnvom, LYDIA. CABIA, AND Lvcu.
From the French of Georges Perrot, Member of the Insti-
tute, Profe§mor in the Faculty of Letters, Paris; and Charles
Chippiez. Illustrated with 280 engravings. New York: A. C.
Armstrong & Son.


1892]
THE DIAL 75
nicia, Sardinia, J udaea, Syria and Asia Minor,
Persia, Phrygia, Lydia, Caria, and Lycia.
The results of this enormous preliminary
work are enclosed in ten imperial octavo vol-
umes, which are a noble monument to the con-
scientious, ably-directed, and fruitful industry
of their author. The two numbers of the se-
ries recently placed within the reach of the pub-
lic contain, in one, the story of the art-life of
Persia; in the other, that of the four nations
la.st named in the catalogue given just above.
They are of the same texture as the volumes
preceding them—minute, comprehensive, com-
pact, masterly treatises, awakening in an equal
degree interest in their subject and respect for
the talents of one who has so splendidly under-
taken and executed an arduous enterprise.
The history of Persian art covers but a brief
period. The career of the nation was swiftly
run. Upon the foundations laid by Cyrus the
Great, in 558 15.0., there rose, like a. brilliant
dream, a civil structure which became the
most powerful in the world and the centre of
the civilization of its time. Twelve kings, in-
cluding the usurper Smendis, sat in the order
of their inheritance upon the throne erected by
Cyrus, and revelled in the oriental might and
magnificence he had established. Then the
dynasty abruptly terminated. The armies of
Alexanderand of Darius IIL, known as Code-
mannus, met on the fatal field of Arbela, and
the unhappy Persian commander perished a
year later, 330 B.C., at the hand of one of his
own satraps. Thus was the existence of one
of the proudest of the great Asiatic monarchies
compressed into a term scarcely exceeding two
centuries.
Prefacing his main account with a sketchy
outline of the physical features of the country
surrounding the seat of empire in ancient Iran,
of the striking points in the history of its kings,
and of the tenets of the national religion. M.
Perrot proceeds to a critical examination of
the testimonials relating to Persian art that
are at present accessible in the archives of lit-
erature and in the few remains of once popu-
lous cities which still stand on their original
sites or have been unearthed by resolute ex-
plorers. He leaves to the future exposition of
M. Dieulafoy, a fellow countryman and archae-
ologist, the scanty materials lately obtained
from the long-lost city of Susa, the Shushan of
the book of Esther, whose wealth and extent
when captured by Alexander were almost be-
yond description. But from Pasargadae, the
residence of Cyrus, and Persepolis, enriched

by the palaces of Xerxes and Darius Hystas-
pis, and from a few less important ruins, he
gathers every rescued fragment, and with won-
derful patience and skill fits one to another and
reads from their obscure surfaces a connected
history as impressive as it is ingenious.
A few rock-cut tombs are found near the
sites of the royal cities. They are mausoleums
attesting the grandeur of despotic sovereigns.
No burial-places of the people have been dis-
covered. Indeed, none ever existed; as, in ac-
cordance with their religious teachings, inhu-
mation was avoided, and the bodies of the dead
were exposed, as by the Parsees of to-day. to
the obscene ravages of birds of prey. Neither
were there temples for the worship of their
gods. Sacred rites were performed in the
open air, before altars on which a flame of pure
fire was kept burning as a symbol of the su-
preme deity, Ahfira-Mazda, the source of light
and life. These Atesh-yak, or fire-places, in a
ruinous state, are scattered over the land, the
sole representatives of the religious architect-
ure of the old Persian empire. _
To the royal residences of Pasargadae and
Persepolis we must look almost exclusively for
examples of Persian art. There were no walled
towns—at least in the time of Alexander,—
their defense being entrusted to fortresses ; and
the dwellings of the people were built of wood.
These last have utterly perished. The life of
the nation was bound up in the king and the
officials and attendants ministering to his will.
On colossal mounds of artificial construction,
his halls of state and private palaces, with the
homes for his women, were erected; and here
were expended all the inventions of his own
and tributary nations, ‘to surround him with
the pomp and luxury befitting a barbarian
monarch of unexampled wealth and boundless
authority. The famous edifice at Karnak can
alone compare in size with the wonderful Hypo-
style hall of Xerxes at Persepolis, the roof of
which was supported by a hundred lofty col-
umns. This probably served the purpose of a
throne room ; while the palace, dedicated to the
king’s personal uses, was even more magnifi-
cent, exceeding in dimensions and lavish adorn-
ment any structure of any age built of wood or
stone. In its main apartment seventy-two pillars
lifted their airy and elegant shafts to the ceiling,
and the walls of the entire interior were en-
crusted with ivory, precious woods, and gleam-
ing metals, and hung with the costliest tapes-
tries. Reproductions of theseisumptuous edi-
fices, in their supposed original splendor, are


76 THE DIAL
[J uly,
_ _, ,,___t_[ _,

shown by M. Perrot’s collaborator, the architec
Charles Chippiez, whose name has been associ-
ated with Perrot’s throughout the course of his
researches, and has an equal place on the title
page of each published volume. Without the
help of the exquisite drawings of M. Chippiez,
it would be impossible to gain a full concep-
tion of the vast extent and rich detail of the
special creations of the art peculiar to Persia.
It was imposing, it had various original fea-
tures, and yet M. Perrot tells us it was imita-
tive, taken as a whole. He even questions if
foreign artists were not employed at the bid-
ding of the king, to construct works which
illustrated his greatness but could not have
sprung from the genius of a people enslaved
from generation to generation. He finds in
the monotony of design and treatment charac-
terizing the monuments of every sort, in the
absence of spontaneity and natural vigor, abun-
dant proof that they who planned, as they
who wrought, in the various departments of
Persian art, toiled to gratify the pleasure of a
sovereign master, and not to give expression
to ideas that were the heritage and outgrowth
of the popular mind.
The history of art in Phrygia, Lydia, Caria,
and Lycia, is treated by M. Perrot with his
unvarying knowledge and fidelity. Less impor-
tant than that of Persia, it is less inviting;
nevertheless, it could not be spared from the
general connection. It supplies links in the
chain the author has been slowly welding to
unite the art products of the oldest histor-
ical nations in one unbroken series with those
which in ancient Greece became the crowning
glory of the classical world. The two volumes
are prodigally illustrated with full-page and
minor engravings of the best workmanship.
That dealing with Persia contains, in addition,
twelve steel and colored plates of extreme
beauty‘ SARA A. HUBBARD.
EN'GLAND’S lNuUs'1'ni.-an AN!) COMMERCIAL
l!Is'ron1'.*

As the later methods of economic study have
tended to lead investigators away from ab-
stract theories to the analysis and interpre-
tation of industrial facts, it is very desirable
that competent authors select and arrange the
leading facts of economic life, statistically and

*Trm Innusrman AND Conmicnci/u. HJSTOBY or Ex-
GLAND. By the late James E. Thorold Rogers. Edited by
his son, Arthur G. L. Rogers. New York: G. P. Putnam's
Sons.

historically. For the preparation of books of
this kind, probably no man of the present gen-
eration has been better equipped than was the
late Professor Thorold Rogers. In his great
work on the “ History of Prices in England,”
and in his_“Six Centuries of \Vork and \Vages,”
he laid a basis of fact for the testing of many
of our economic theories and for the working
out of new ones. His posthumous work on
“The Industrial and Commercial History of
England,” consisting of two courses of lectures
delivered at Oxford, is not to be considered as
of so much importance as either of the two
preceding works; but nevertheless, written by
a man so competent to discuss the question in
hand, it is one that is very valuable and inter-
esting. I say interesting, for two reasons. The
details of the development of industrial skill
in England, of the making of new inventions,
of progress in population, of the development
of credit agencies and of means of transit, of
chartered trade companies, joint stock com-
panies, etc., cannot fail to interest anyone who
has any taste for the study of economics or for
business. When to this is added the author’s
love for a good hit at one of his contempo-
raries of whose economic doctrines he disap-
proves, or for an entertaining story, the inter-
est is increased.
Rogers’s lecture writing is not of the digni-
fied dry style that some consider essential for
the statement of scientific doctrines or scientific
facts. A new story of Arkwright, in telling
which he trusts that he is not anticipating “the
excellent Mr. Smiles,” not merely illustrates,
as he says, “ how active the minds of English
inventors in the North were during the period
which followed on the peace of Paris, when a
new world was opened to the energy of the
British shop-keeper and merchant,” but it illus-
trates his manner as well. When Arkwright
had almost perfected his first power-loom, “ he
found that the yarn as it was delivered from
the rollers had a queer and fatal trick of curling
bac .” Calling in a local blacksmith to his aid,
the latter told him that he thought he could
cure the trouble; but his terms for the service
were “ten years’ partnership and equal profits.”
“This was too much for Arkwright, who, like Nnaman
of old, turned and went away in a rage; but still the
yarn curled and dashed his hopes. At last, he reluc-
tantly yielded to the blacksmith. Then occurred an-
other scene. The blacksmith thought the deed of part-
nership should be executed and enrolled. Arkwright
stormed, and, I regret to say, swore violently ; hut the
local Vulcan was firm. When the deed was signed, the
blacksmith went behind the rollers and apparently
rubbed one of them with his hand. Instantly the yarn


1ss2.]
THE DIAL 77

was delivered as was wished, and the astonished and
enraged Arkwright found that his new partner had only
rubbed one of the rollers with a piece of chalk; in
other words, proved that one of them should have a
different surface from the other. The execrations of
the enraged manufacturer were unspeakable; but the
compact held, and in the end the blacksmith became
Lord Belper.”
The second course of lectures gives us more
economic doctrine, treating the subjects of
Waste, Rent, Bimetallism, Trade and Compe-
tition, etc., closing with a brief review, in two
chapters, of English Economic Legislation
from 1815 up to the present time.
Though the book is devoted to the industrial
history of England, the author gives us much
valuable information with reference to the de-
velopment of industry in other countries of
Europe—Holland, Belgium, France, Germany,
—their experience being cited wherever it can
throw light upon the causes of English devel-
opment or add pith to the matter by comparison.
This book shows, as do the other works of
Professor Rogers, his remarkable learning in
facts, his intolerance toward those who differ
from him in method, his sense of humor, and
his sound judgment on many important ques-
tions of the time. The lectures on Waste, Con-
tracts for the Use of Land, Competition, etc.,
contain much excellent material for every-day
political and family life.
A few sentences from the close of his first
lecture give us a specimen of his habit of
wholesale praise or blame — usually blame,—
with a touch of his political wisdom and a hint
of his opinion of our wisdom.
“ Even though Europe has profited by peace during
two-thirds of a generation, I see no reason to think
that British industry and invention are losing their hold
on the world’s progress, or that, as was the case some
centuries ago, our people have to be taught by foreign-
ers. On the contrary, the German has not got beyond
the position of an imitator, and not an over-honest one
either. The United States have made no great discov-
eries. And so with the rest of the nations. Nor is the
cause far to seek. These political communities had de-
liberately adopted protection. Governments have been
too weak or too dishonest to be sensible, and are conse-
quently crippling the‘ intelligence of those whose affairs
they administer, by pandering to the foolish, dangerous,
and wholly unjust dictum, that private interests are
public benefits.”
The last sentence of the book adds to this a
sample of his humor, and shows that he thinks
as little of English political methods as of our
own. Speaking of the income tax and of his
own efforts to have the tax system of England
modified, he says:
“ I am not conscious of any bias in what I have said
or say, when I allege that the extraordinary expendi-

ture of government seems likely to be provided, as it has
been in recent years, from the most unfair, indefens-
ible, and nearly the most mischievous tax that can be
devised. But as the Patriarch said, Issachar is a strong
ass, and if, as some say, we are descended from the lost
tribes, I make n shrewd guess at the particular tribe to
which we must assign our origin.”
The work is a valuable one, and will be used,
doubtless, in many of our colleges as a work
of reference for students of history and econo-
mics. Indeed, for a special course in our larg-
est institutions, it will by many be considered
the best text-book obtainable on the subject.
JEREMIAH W. J1-mas.
SOME R1s(;1~:1\"r DIS(:L'SSlONS OF RELIGION
AND l"lIILOSOPlIY.*
The liberal movement in religious thought
represents the vital religious impulse of the
time. It is not a movement away from relig-
ion, it is a movement towards religion — a.
searching of the true religious spirit for a
more adequate expression of itself. This move-
ment is, of course, but a part of the larger
movement towards freedom, which shows itself
also in politics and philosophy. It is every-
where the attempt to bring the spirit and vital
truth in the place of forms and formulae. Men
want the reality, as never before; and they
want it as little as possible encumbered with
outer wrappings. Whatever be the “ breadth ”
of our individual opinions, it is important that
all should recognize that the liberal demand
for a re-statement of religious truth is serious,
sober, determined, and an expression of the re-
ligious spirit. One of the evidences of this
may be found in the number of strong books
of a liberal tendency that issue in these days
from the press. A few of them are grouped
together here.
A frequent criticism of the “ New Theolo-
gy” is that it does not define its position.
Men say that they cannot tell whether to accept
it or not, as they do not clearly know what it is.
Ex-President B-ascom’s book, “ The New The-
ology,” makes a good point right at the outset

‘THE NEW THIOIDGY. By John Bascom. New York:
G. P. Putnam’s Sons.
ANTHROPOLOGICAI. RELIGION. The Gifford Lectures for
1891. By F. Max Miiller. New York : Longmans, Green & Co.
WHAT is R1-:/u.1'rY? By Francis Howe Johnson. Bos-
ton: Houghton, Mifiiin & Co.
EVOLUTION AND 1-rs RELATION -ro Rsuoxous Tnouom-.
By Joseph Le Coute. (New edition.) New York: Appleton
& Co.
Tun Srmrr or Mommy PHILOSOPHY. By Josiah Royce.
Boston: Houghton, Mifilin &' F0.


78 THE DIAL
[July,
by insisting that the New Theology is not a
creed but a tendency. It consists, indeed.
“ largely in breaking old bonds and in refus-
ing to accept new ones” (p. 1). It cannot,
therefore, fairly be asked to define its position.
Movements in thought, like the Kingdom of
God, come not with observation; their char-
acter is discernible only by those who feel and
know them within themselves. Still, some ex-
pression can be given of its general spirit. By
the New Theology, Dr. Bascom understands
“An awakening in religious thought which leads it to
seek for more flexible, less rigid; more productive, less
barren; more living, less dead forms of expression and
action, and by means of them to come fully under the
progressive movement which belongs to our time as
one of enlarged knowledge and renewed social life"
(r- 2)-
A corollary of the inwardness of new move-
ments of thought is the fact that accounts of
them are necessarily somewhat subjective. No
one man can hope to make entirely his own a
great contemporaneous movement. He sees
only phases of it, and most clearly those that
have affected him, or that he shares. We must
not be surprised, therefore, to find that Dr.
Bascom’s conception of the New Theology —
his criticisms of the old ways of thinking, and
especially his ideas as to what considerations will'
best help us over our present theological diffi-
culties—is strongly colored by his personal
philosophy, and by what has been transpiring
within his own inner consciousness.
The book consists of an Introduction and five
Essays, entitled respectively, “ Naturalism,”
“ The Supernatural,” “ Dogmatism,” “ Piet-
ism,” and “ Spiritualism.” The Introduction
shows a wide-awake appreciation of many of the
religions characteristics of the present time—-
the alienation of the masses from the churches,
the diminished importance of dogmas and
creeds, the moralization of religion, etc. The
main thought running through the essays
seems to be that the situation brought about
by the advancement of science calls especially
for a new definition of the spheres of the natural
and supernatural, and that from a just settle-
ment of their relation religious thought should
go on, after appropriating the good and reject-
ing the evil in Dogmatism and Pietism, to the
form of a true Spiritualism. Were it possible,
it would be a pleasure to follow through the
argument of these chapters. They each eon-
tain very much that is excellent and that is
well said. Only a few points can be noted.
The author contends for the extension of the
sphere of law to the spiritual world. The

truths of revelation would then no longer be
understood as received contrary to reason. In
the natural and necessary formation of dog-
mas, it is essential to allow for change under
the advancement of knowledge. The mistake of
dogma is to claim absolute certainty and final-
ity. Putting thoughts in formulae, in finally
fixed forms, is the death-blow of progress.
Dogmas are necessary and very helpful, but
only when held loosely and susceptible of modi-
fication with increasing experience. The fault
of Pietism is its narrowness. It is a heated
centre. It misses the breadth of life. It is
other-worldly. It fails to see that salvation
consists in a dutiful life. It thinks to remedy
the loss of the chnrch’s power, because of its
dogmatic inflexibility, by mere lung-power ex-
pended upon the few most important doctrines.
The Spiritualism of a higher life is the condi-
tion of progress and true salvation. It is a
“subjection of the entire life to the higher
laws which spring up in apprehension of the
true, the beautiful, and the good ” (p. 196).
This is the life of the Spirit. lt gives us, by
true penetrative insight, the tlioughts and
principles of Christ, without a dogmatic theol-
ogy. Somewhat after the manner of “Ecce
Homo,” the author then lets the chief teach-
ings of Christ speak for themselves.
Perhaps the book as a whole wants strong
and clear outlines. It shows much vigor
of statement and skilful argument, but still
hardly coherent presentation. And, together
with much freshness in his way of putting
things, it is to be feared that the author retains
enough of the old phraseology to prejudice at
times his reader’s chance of getting his thought.
There are few more striking evidences of
the progress made in the free discussion of re-
ligious questions than are to be found in the
terms of the munificent bequest of the late Lord
Gifford, of Scotland, which established lecture-
ships in Natural Theology at the four Scot-
tish Universities. As an expression of reli-
gious toleration, the entire trust-deed is a
highly interesting document: perhaps the pro-
vision respecting the qualifications of the lec-
turers is sufiiciently noteworthy to warrant be-
ing quoted in full. It reads:
" The lecturers appointed shall be subjected to no test of
any kind, and shall not be required to take any oath, or
to emit or subscribe any declaration of belief, or to make
any promise of any kind : they may be of any denomi-
nation whatever, or of no denomination at all (and many
earnest and high-minded men prefer to belong to no
ecclesiastical denomination) ; they may be of any reli-
gion or way of thinking, or, as is sometimes said, they


18922.]
THE DIAL 79

may be of no religion, or they may be so-called sceptics,
or agnostics, or free-thinkers, provided only that the
‘patrons ’ will use diligence to secure that they be able,
reverent men, true thinkers, sincere lovers of and earn-
est inquirers after truth.”
Professor Max Miiller was appointed, in
1888, to the lectureship at Glasgow, and deliv-
ered, in that year and the following, two courses
of lectures upon “Natural Religion” and “Phys-
ical Religion ” respectively. Being reappointed
for another two years, he has now followed
with the lectures upon “ Anthropological Reli-
gion,” and promises to conclude with a series
upon “ Psychological Religion.” These series
of lectures are of course continuous, each in
turn unfolding some important part of the gen-
eral subject of Natural Religion. They ought,
accordingly, to be taken together. Their con-
nection may be briefly indicated as follows:
The volume on “ Natural Religion ” lays the
foundation for the rest by a full discussion of
(1) the definition of Natural Religion, (2)
the proper method of its treatment, and (3)
the materials available for its study. The lec-
tures on “Physical Religion” undertake to
show that from the contemplation of nature
man inevitably comes to believe in an invisible
cause of nature; and, similarly, those on
“ Anthropological Religion " seek to show that
from the contemplation of himself man as in-
evitably comes to believe in the existence of
his own soul, and in its immortality. The au-
thor declares that the purpose of the whole
series is to show that religion is natural to man
by historical investigation rather than by Z1
priori reasoning. The question whether he has
succeeded in all the details of the attempt must
be left to specialists in the fields of philological
and ethnological research. Certainly no one
who believes that all revelation has really been
through the human consciousness —elevated,
to be sure, at the time by so rare and supreme
an insight as to be properly called “ divine ”— j
would have any Z1 prim-i difficulty with the au-
thor’s general thesis. Some allowance must of
course be made for the circumstances of a pub-
lic lectureship; but none the less it seems a
misfortune that so much of the space of a se-
rious scientific book should have to be given
up to controversy and mere recapitulation.
On the whole, “ Anthropological Religion ”
presents very little of philosophical interest,
and, in the opinion of a layman, not much that
is new. The concluding course on “ Psycholog-
ical Religion,” may perhaps be expected to ofier
more that is suggestive to the philosophical
student.

A book of far greater philosophical ambition
is “ What is Reality ? ” by Francis Howe John-
son. The sub-title more nearly indicates its
purpose —“An Inquiry as to the Reasonable-
ness of Natural Religion, and the Naturalness
of Revealed Religion.” The Preface declares
that the object of the book is “ to show that
the premises of religion are as real as any part
of man’s knowledge ; and that the method by
which its vital truths are deduced from these
premises are no less legitimate than those em-
ployed by science.” If it shall prove that Mr.
Johnson had carried out this important under-
taking to the satisfaction of large numbers of
thinking men, the present generation will cer-
tainly owe him a very large intellectual debt.
The present writer, however, cannot think that
he has been altogether successful. The intro-
ductory chapter is progressive, courageous,
clear-sighted, and intellectually honest; and,
especially by its swift and apparently master-
ful movement, fills one with high and confi-
dent expectation. But the subsequent hand-
ling of the argument hardly justifies this ex-
pectation.
The first point to make clear is the relation
of the problem of reality to the author’s spe-
cial thesis. Stated in a word, it is this: If the
faith of religion is to be able to claim an equally
verifiable basis with the “ truths ” of science,
it must be shown that spirit is a reality. VVhat,
therefore, is Reality? Mr. Johnson at once
answers this question, and develops the prin-
ciples which he wishes to apply to timely the-
ological matters, somewhat as follows: The
ego as active immediately knows itself as real.
This is the “complex ego of experience; the
ego, plus all the relation that it sustains to all
other forms of being.” This human ego, “ the
largest, most comprehensive reality of experi-
mental synthesis,” is the “ reality from which
all man’s knowledge takes its start,” the basis,
therefore, of all safe philosophizing (pp. 138,
227, 241). This fundamental reality, the con-
crete human ego, is a dual reality. It exhib-
its a two-fold aspect. It is both one and many.
First, it is the chief unit in the physical or-
ganism, “ the intelligent and supreme head of
a great and diverse multitude of organically
connected living agents ” (p. 241), the centre
and even creator of its own world of manifold
activities (pp. 137, 138). Yet, on the other
hand, it is an aggregate of individuals, it
“embraces within itself an untold multitude
of beings.” We may find a symbol of its be-
ing as a many in a “ combination of atoms ”


3° THE DIAL
[J uly,

(p. 195). Hence the ego is a “unity in mul-
tiplicity.” We must conceive of it as “ em-
bracing a diversity of beings, that are distinct
yet inter-related, and comprehended in the
higher personal unity ” (Contents, p. xiv.).
The ego is- at once transcendent -— a distinct,
separate, overruling being; and immanent—
the very life of the subordinate beings them-
selves. But this fact of “ being within being,”
of “ life within life,” is wholly unintelligible.
How it is that one being can consist of many,
will forever remain a mystery. We are ac-
cordingly obliged to employ these principles in
turn, to look first on one side of this “ double-
faced fact,” and then on the other. The two
cannot be united in thought (pp. 222-4,
243). If asked whether the principles of tran-
scendency and immanency are not contradic-
tory of each other, the answer is that we can-
not prove that they are not ; we can only point
to the fact that they are combined in expe-
rience (p. 252).
Now the conception of the human ego, as a
mysterious unity in complexity, becomes in
Mr. J ohnson’s hands a master-key for unlock-
ing all problems. Extending it by analogy to
the Divine Being, God may be thought of as
the ego of the universe, at once immanent and
transcendent (p. 251); and our relations to
Him and to each other are therein to find their
explanation. Moreover, by this conception of
combined immanence and transcendence the
author finds it possible to assimilate evolution,
and progressive views of revelation, miracles,
etc., to one religious faith.
With the author’s main conclusions, so far
as they are positive, we have no quarrel. Our
complaint is rather with their incompleteness
— with that unsolved, mysterious, perhaps self-
contradictory “ double-faced fact,” “ these two
realities, coexistent, but not harmonized in our
experience" _(p. 224),— and with the method
by which they have been reached. Mr. John-
son frequently uses the term organic unitg, but
plainly has in mind a half-mechanical, half-
chemical unity. Had he been fortunate enough
to study the great Idealists without the assist-
ance of Lotze, and especially of Mr. Seth, he
might have got a clear grasp of this conception,
which he seems always on the point of getting,
but never fairly gets, and which would have ena-
bled him to conclude without supposed mystery
and contradiction in his fundamental princi-
ple. He might then have learned that the ego
as unity, as transcendent, is not distinct and
separate, not a chief unit, or master monad,

among the others, but the ideal whole, the law
of the whole. The unity of transcendency
and immanency means that the law of the
whole is at once indwelling in the members
and dominant over their life, and yet the law is
nothing but the working together of the mem-
bers themselves. And, moreover, it would then
have ceased to be a matter of difliculty that
the “ how of this combination ” can never be
conceived. “ How ” is an empirical problem.
It has to do with spatial and temporal order.
There is no “ how” of spiritual activity (but
this does not imply that it does not follow
law). The “how” connected with spiritual
activity can refer only to the order of the phys-
ical aspect correlated with the spiritual. To
ask the question, then, shows that the mind is
set on a mechanical problem — is thinking in
terms of space and mechanical causation. It
must be admitted, however, that organic unity
as conceived by Mr. Johnson is mysterious
and unintelligible, because it implies a direct
contradiction.
This failure to grasp the real nature of or-
ganic unity is fundamental, and leaves a log-
ical blemish upon nearly all of the author's
work. Thorough minds, moreover, will proba-
bly not be satisfied with his appeal to man’s
immediate consciousness in determining the
prime reality which is to furnish the starting-
point, with the fact that he does not tell us
definitely and fully what the characteristics of
reality are, and most of all with his reliance
upon an analogy for the nerve of his whole argu-
ment as to the nature of the Divine Being and
the reality of the world. Why rely on an
analogy, when a necessary conclusion from
given facts yields the result with certainty?
Human self-consciousness implies the Absolute
Spirit with a necessity that can be demon-
stated. But this criticism ought not to be al-
lowed to obscure the fact that Mr. Johnson
has produced a well-written. strong book, which
will be suggestive and helpful to many minds,
even though it fails, as we think, in method,
and in leaving a residual mystery.
Perhaps no hypothesis in the whole history
of thought has been of a more profoundly rev-
olutionary character, as regards religious be-
lief, than the modern doctrine of Evolution. If
it has not disturbed thought so violently as
other innovations, that is because the rapid
succession of great scientific discoveries in
modern times has accustomed the world to re-
ceive new and startling truths with more com-
posure. Of its emphatically revolutionary


1892]
THE DIAL 81
character, when we consider all that properly
goes with it, there can be no doubt. Under
these circumstances, it was but natural that the
world should be flooded with the attempts of
peace-makers. And to such an extent was it
flooded, that people came to have an instinc-
tive, and in many instances well-founded, aver-
sion to books proposing to “ reconcile Science
and.Religion.” Quite superior to most of the
books of this class, in its grasp of the full
meaning of the new truth, was Professor Joseph
Le Conte’s “ Evolution and its Relation to Re-
ligious Thought,” which has now appeared in
a second and revised edition. The book has a
logical arrangement in three parts, devoted
respectively to answer-ing_ the questions, What
is Evolution? What are the evidences of
its truth? VV hat is its relation to religious
thought? Evolution is defined as, “ (1) con-
tinuous, progressice change, (2) according to
certain laws, (3) and by means of resident
forces ” (p. 8). The account of the nature and
evidences of the truth of Evolution contained
in the first two parts is perhaps the best con-
cise account in English. The discussion omits
nothing of importance; the material is pre-
sented with remarkable clearness, and is thor-
oughly accessible to the general reader. The
critical discussion of the empirical evidences of
Evolution is of course a special field, and we
must not be understood as commenting, favor-
able or otherwise, upon the author’s position
on controverted points.
Of chief interest in this connection is, of
course, part three, on the bearings of the doc-
trine of Evolution upon religious thought. The
key to Le Conte’s handling of this question —
the thought that constantly reappears on his
pages — is that Evolution is cr-eation by r1 pro-
cess of law. It will be seen, therefore, that he
believes equally in Evolution and Creation.
There are three views which may be taken of
the origin of organic forms. They may be
thought of, (1) as made without natural pro-
cess, (2) as derived simply, or (3) as created
by a process of evolution. “ The first view as-
serts divine agency, but denies natural process;
the second asserts natural process, but denies
divine agency; the third asserts d1'.m'ne agency
by natural process” (p. 292). The first two
views are at once right and wrong,— right in
what each asserts, wrong in what it denies;
the third combines and reconciles the other
two. By 9, strange perversity, we no sooner
find out how a thing was made than we forth-
with declare that it was not created at all.

Evolution is the divine process of creation.
The old notion qf creation is mythological. Its
explanation is entirely arbitrary. It points
out no series of causes and effects, the connec-
tions between which canbe followed in thought.
It is therefore, in reality, no explanation at all.
On the other hand, materialism is a hasty in-
ference. Because a natural explanation can
be given of every event, we are not to conclude
that Nature needs no God. For what is Nature
herself? What is necessary is that we recon-
struct our conception of the Divine Being, and
of creation. We must substitute for the thought
of God as separate from the world, and as
dealing arbitrarily with it, the thought of the
Divine immanency; and for the notion of an
arbitrary, unintelligible creation out of nothing
by mere _/int of will, the thought of a creation
by a process of law. That God brings things
into existence by a process of law should no
more seem to exclude his divine agency than
the fact that He sustains the created universe
by the law of gravitation, does so. “ If evo-
lution be materialism, then is gravitation also
materialism ” (p. 295). God is immanent in
creation, and manifests his divine creative
agency in and through natural processes.
After the defense of the general theistic char-
acter of Evolution, the most difiicult point is,
of course, the problem of the origin of the self-
conscious spirit of man. The chapter on
“ The Relation of Man to Nature,” in which
this question is discussed, the author accord-
ingly regards as the most important in the
whole book. The view which he maintains,
and which is foreshadowed in the general view
of Evolution already indicated, can fortun-
ately be concisely stated in its own words:
“ I believe that the spirit of man was developed out
of the anima or conscious principle of animals, and that
this, again, was developed out of the lower forms of
life-force, and this in its turn out of the chemical and
physical forces of nature: and that at a/certain stage in
this gradual development, viz., with man, it acquired
the property of immortality precisely as it now, in the
individual history of each man at a certain stage, ac-
quires the capacity of abstract thought” (pp.3l3-14).
On the whole, considering its scope and
the variety of questions discussed, Professor
Le Conte’s book does ample justice to its
title. It is heartily to be commended to the
general reader for the remarkably clear and
forcible style in which the matter is presented,
and for the general soundness of the philo-
sophical principles which underlie its interpre-
tation of the great law of Evolution.
The same attempt to get a closer hold upon


32 THE DIAL
[July,
reality, and to attain a simpler expression of
spiritual possessions, that characterizes the
movement toward reconstruction in religion,
shows itself also in the sphere. of philosophy
proper “ The Spirit of Modern Philosophy,” by
Professor Josiah Royce, signalizes the successive
triumphs of modern thought in its attempt to
win rational freedom. The readers of Pro-
fessor Royce’s “ Religious Aspect of Philoso-
phy ” will expect nothing else from ‘him but a
book of suggestiveness and solidity. We think
that they will not be disappointed. To a se-
ries of most felicitous expository essays on the
representative modern thinkers, he appends a
Second Part —— “ Suggestions of Doctrine ”—
presenting what is at present tangible in his
own philosophical creed. The value of these
suggestions-— chief of which, perhaps, is the
thought that we are now to return, enriched by
the conquests of Idealism, to a patient study of
the outer order (pp. 268, 30-5—7),—— it will be
impossible here to discuss. But in publishing
the series of historical sketches which consti-
tute Part First, Professor Royce has unques-
tionably performed a real service. Original
work in the History of Philosophy has been
a desideratum in this country. And thorough-
ly readable, entertaining accounts of the His-
tory of Philosophy have been a desideratum
the world over. Professor Royce writes with
real style. He possesses the faculty not only
of embuing his account with a fulness of vivid
human interest, but of making the difiicult
points wonderfully simple, without in the least
impairing the statement of the full, hard truth.
A good instance of this is the account of Kant.
Especially noteworthy is the summary on page
131. Particularly felicitous, in the Second
Part, are the author’s account of the larger or
universal self (p. 373), and the development
of the world of appreciation (pp. 407-10).
W11.1.1sToN S. Hovcn.
BRIEFS ox New Booxs.

FEW characters in history have more often at-
tracted the biographer than Sir \Valtcr Raleigh.
That the subject still holds its fascination is shown
by the recent large octavo of four hundred pages
by lVilliam Stebbing, M.A., called “Sir \Valter
Ralegh: A Biography" (Macmillan). The author
has evidently desired to avoid being beguiled into
describing an era as well as its representative; has
striven to refrain from writing history and to re-
strict himself to the presentment of a life. Raleigh's
multifarious activity, with the width of the area in

which it operated. constantly involved him in a web
of other men’s fortunes and in national crises. And,
even within the strictly biographical province, the
difficulties are very great; it is a confusing task to
keep at once independent and in unison the poet,
statesman, courtier, schemer, patriot, soldier, sailor,
freebooter, discoverer, colonist, castle-builder, histo-
rian, philosopher, chemist, prisoner, and visionary.
Another confusion results from the discovery that
not an action ascribed to him, not a plan he is reputed
to have conceived, not a date in his multifarious
career, but is matter of controversy. Posterity and
his contemporaries have equally been unable to agree
on his virtues and his vices, the nature of his mo-
tives, the spelling of his name. and the amount of
his genius. He had a poet's inspirations, and the
title to most of the verses ascribed to him is con-
tested. He was one of.the creators of modern En-
glish prose; and his disquisitions have for two cen-
turies ceased to be read. He and Bacon are cou-
pled by Dugald Stewart as beyond their age for
their emancipation from the fetters of the 'scl1ool-
men, their originality, and the enlargement of their
scientific conceptions; yet a single phrase, " the
fundamental laws of human knowledge," is the only
philosophical idea. connected v\'ith him. But amid
all the tangled threads of this wonderfully versatile
existence, our author has succeeded in unravelling
so much of its secret that we agree with him that
“if less various, Ralegh would have been less at-
tractive. If he had shone without a cloud in any
one direction, he would not have pervaded a period
with the splendor of his nature. and become its
type. More smoothness in his fortunes would have
shorn them of their tragic picturesqueness. With
all the shortcomings, no figure, no life, gathers up
in itself more completely the whole spirit of an
epoch; none more firmly enchains admiration for
invincible individuality, or ends by winning a more
personal tenderness and affection."

THE swelling tide of books of Asiatic travel has
recently been acceptably increased by Julius M.
Price's “ From the Arctic Ocean to the Yellow
Sea," a handsome English publication imported by
Messrs. Scribner’s Sons. Mr. Price, as special cor-
respondent of the “Illustrated London News.” ac-
companied a tentative expedition despatched by the
“ Anglo-Siberian Trading Syndicate ” across the
Kara Sea and up the river Yenesei to the city of
Yeneseisk in the heart of Siberia, whence he jour-
neyed independently through Mongolia, the Gobi
desert, and North China, touching en route Krasnoi-
arsk, Irkutsk, Durga, and Peking. The writer tells
his story in a lively journalistic way, with a plenti-
ful peppering of French phrases, and occasional
lapses into rather slip-shod English. Mr. Price is
a capital observer. It was no part of his plan in
entering Siberia to ferret out Russian barbarities
with a view of harrowing the souls and tickling the
sensibilities of a humane British public. He touches,
however. en passant, on the Russian prison and ex-


1892.]
THE DIAL 33
ile system, which he had a. fair chance of observing,
and his conclusions would seem to gain some a pri-
ori trustworthiness from the fact that the purveying
of horrors was not his special mission as a c0rrespond- '
ent. “ Words,” says Homer, “may make this way
or that way." So may statistics; and a touring Rus-
sian who should confine his English observations to
Whitechapel might not unreasonably tell his grati-
fied countrymen that “ wife-beating is the common
diversion of the English people.” \Ve cannot go
into the details of Mr. Price’s readable book. As to
political prisoners in Irkutsk, he observes: " It was
easy to distinguish which were the ‘politicals,' for
they were in ordinary civilian costume. and had no
chains on. as far as I could see . . . To my aston-
ishment— for I had always read to the contra.ry—
I noticed that all these political prisoners were not
only allowed books to read. but in most cases were
smoking also. and in every instance had their own
mattresses and bedding: so their cells, at any rate,
looked cleaner and more cheerful than those of or-
dinary criminals, to whom filth seemed indifferent."
One is glad to know that the Siberian picture has a
brighter side than is usually shown us. Mr. Price’s
account of the perilous passage of the Kara sea,
and of the trip up the Yenesei and across Mongo-
lia, and his sketches of social life in Yeneseisk, Ir-
kutsk, etc., are very entertaining; and the numer-
ous illustrations (reproduced by permission from
the “London News") are unusually vigorous and
well-chosen.
AUGUSTINE BmnELL’s “ Res J udicatae ” (Scrib-
ner), a compact volume of reprinted lectures and
essays which are mostly brief literary causeries in
the style of the author’s popular “ Obiter Dicta,” is
a capital book for the impending dog-days, a season
wherein the most savagely-serious student makes
concessions in the way of “ summer reading." Most
of our readers are familiar with Mr. Birrell’s pleas-
ant, lively way of chatting about books and authors.
It is not his critical humor to probe very deep or to
carry analysis to the brink of distraction,-— his
author being to him not so much a “subject” for
dissection as a pretext for pleasant fancies and ap-
posite allusion and quotation. With the respectable
but rather trying family of the Gradgrinds, Mr.
Birrell has little in common. Not that we mean to
imply that he is the mere sayer of good things, the
delightful but futile “agreeable rattle ”; his literary
appreciations are usually sound and suggestive and
imply a considerable gift of touching intuitively the
salient features of a performance or a. talent. Few
writers of to-day have a better average of good
things to the page than Mr. Birrell. He thus neatly
touches off, in an effective paper on Cardinal New-
man, a. perhaps not unimportant aspect of Angli-
canism : “ If the Ark of Peter won’t hoist the Union
Jack, John Bull must have an Ark of his own, with-
a patriotic. clergy of his own manufacture tugging
at the oar, and with nothing foreign in the hold
save some sound old port.” “Sound old port! ”
IrVhat a finely orthodox, ultra-clerical ring that has !
What an august tang of lawn sleeves, Hooker's
“Polity,” and the Thirty-Nine Articles! For that
acute. vigorous. too-little-read author, William Haz-
litt, Mr. Birrell has some handsome words: “ It is
true he does not go very deep as a critic, he does
not see into the soul of the matter as Lamb and
Coleridge occasionally do—but he holds you very
tight—he grasps the subject, he enjoys it himself
and makes you do so. Perhaps he does say too
many good things. His sparkling sentences follow
so quickly one upon another that the reader’s ap-
preciation soon becomes a breathless appreciation.
There is something almost uncanny in such sus-
tained cleverness.”
A CERTAIN happy distinction of style is a qual-
ity we have learned to expect in all that comes
from the pen of Robert Louis Stevenson, and
his latest volume, “Across the Plains ” (Scrib-
ner), does not disappoint us. For the secret of his
art, we have his own confession made years ago:
“ Nobody had ever such pains to learn a trade as I
had, but I slogged at it day in and day out, and I
frankly believe (thanks to my dire industry) I have
done more with smaller gifts than almost any man
of letters in the world." Admitting this view of
the case, we have to congratulate ourselves on this
devotion to the “trade ” of writing, when it became
clear that he had noaptitude for the family calling,
and that he was not likely to add fresh laurels to
the name in the direction in which it was already
illustrious, namely, lighthouse construction and illu-
mination. The first of the twelve sketches which
make up the present volume, and from which it
takes its name, is the story of Mr. Stevenson’s own
travels from New York to San Francisco, in an
emigrant train, thirteen years ago; this is followed
by a description of “The Old Pacific Capital” and
another of Fontainebleau. The later essays have to
do rather with the inner than the outer life. “ A
Chapter on Dreams,” in which Mr. Stevenson fur-
nishes an account of his own mental processes dur-
ing sleep, does much to discredit the author’s own
theory of his degree of indebtedness to “ dire indus-
try” in the mastery of his art, and reveals how
large a factor in the matter must be his most unus-
ual and fanciful order of mind.
Tar: “ Great Educators Series,” published by
Messrs. Scribner’s Sons, begins fitly with “ Aristotle
and the Ancient Educational Ideals”; also, most
fitly, it is to Mr. Thomas Davidson, the thorough stu-
dent of Aristotle, that the theme has been entrusted.
It has been often said that Aristotle’s greatness was
not recognized till the Middle Ages. By a strange
accident, his principal works disappeared from view
for two centuries, till brought to Rome by Sylla
and edited by Andronicus; in the turmoil of bar-
barian invasion, and during the building up of the
Catholic Church, his name was almost forgotten.
Averrhoes and the Jew Maimonides were his prin-


34 THE DIAL
[I-Iuly,
cipal introducers to the-Western world. The growth
of positive science during the last three centuries
has brought new insight into Aristotle’s power. It
has come to be recognized that in many fields of
thought he was not merely the first to introduce
positive method, but attained results by it to which
thinkers of our own times have recurred, and will
yet recur, with profit. Thus, Mr. Davidson's work
is nmch more than a mere re-statement of what
Aristotle says on the subject of education; it is a
treatise showing Aristotle's relation to ancient ped-
agogy as a whole. It traces briefly the whole his-
tory of Greek education up to Aristotle and down
his theories. and the future which was conditioned
by them. It exhibits the close connection that ex-
isted at all times between Greek education and
Greek social and political life, a connection which
lends to the subject of Greek education its chief in-
terest for us. In these days, when Church and
State are contending for the right to educate, it
cannot but aid us in settling their respective claims,
to follow the process by which they came to have
distinct claims at all, and to see just what these
mean. The concluding chapters of the book deal
with the period that passed between the loss of
Greek autonomy and the triumph of Christianity,
thus paving the way for the consideration of the
rise of the Christian schools. Not one of the least
valuable portions of the book is the Appendix de-
voted to the Seven Liberal Arts.
THE second volume in the series of “ Great Edu-
cators” is on “Loyola and the Educational Sys-
tem of the Jesuits." The author is the Reverend
Thomas Hughes, of the Society of Jesus, and his
exposition of the principles and methods of his
order is a very able and eloquent one. The book
is divided into two portions,— the first, a bio-
graphical and historical sketch, having for its chief
subject Ignatius Loyola, the second, a critical an-
alysis of the Ratio Studiorum, or System of Stud-
ies. The author explains the rise of the Jesuit sys-
tem as resulting from two elements in the educa-
tional condition of Europe,— the fallen splendor of
the great developed system of university learning
in the sixteenth century, and the decline therein of
the essential moral life. Had the universities of his
time continued still to do the work which originally
they had been chartered to do, the founder of the
Society of Jesus would not have been impelled to
draw out his system as a substitute and an improve- ;
ment; he would have used what he found and have
turned his attention to other things more urgent.
As it was, he devoted himself to a plan of educa-
tional reform that proved to have such vitality that
during two and a half centuries the vast majority
of the secular schools of Catholic Christendom had
passed into the hand of this powerful religious order.
The author looks forward to a time when, gathered
to the other remains which moulder in the past,
the Jesuit system of education can look down from

a grade and place of its own in evolution and look
out. like others, on a progeny more favored than
itself, the fair mother of fairer children. To the
less partisan reviewer the prophecy seems some-
what bold; for has it not thus far conspicuously
failed in the development of great men? -has it not,
when left to work freely, often shown its incompat-
ibility with the best spirit of modern life and society ?
IT is forty-three years since Auguste Comte pub-
lished his concrete view of the preparatory period
of man’s history, calling it the Positivist Calendar.
Therein he arranged a series of typical names, il-
from Aristotle; it shows the past which conditioned 1 lustrim in all derwlllents of thwsllt and P°“'°l"
beginning with Moses and ending with the poets
and thinkers of the first generation of the present
century. These names, 558 in all, were distributed
into four classes of greater or lesser importance;
they ranged over all ages, races and countries; and
they embraced religion, poetry, philosophy, War,
statesmanship. industry, and science. A collection
of condensed biographies of these 558 persons has
now been issued under the title “ The New Calen-
dar of Great Men" (Macmillan), with Frederic
Harrison as editor. The book does not enter into
competition with works on biography of a volumin-
ous and miscellaneous kind; the names are not
given in alphabetical order but in historical sequence;
the various biographies form a connected series of
studies, being grouped in order of time within that
branch of human progress to which their lives were
dedicated. Consequently, each separate section of
the book may be read in a. continuous series as a
distinct chapter dealing with a special subject. As
a biographical manual of the general course of civ-
ilization, it serves an admirable purpose, and could
hardly be bettered unless by going outside of
Comte's list as a. basis; and this is something that
the writers and editor have disclaimed any wish
to do.
P0ssEss0Rs of Professor David Masson's recent
admirable edition of De Quincey will hardly find
it worth while to buy Mr. James Hogg's edition of
“ The Uncollec-ted Writings of Thomas De Quincey ”
(Macmillan). Its title is in fact misleading. since
it contains little or nothing of importance that can-
not be found in Masson. The articles not found
there are the following: In Vol. I., “The Lake
Dialect," “ Storms in English History," “The En-
glish in India”; in Vol. II., “ The English in
China,” “ Shakespeare's Text," “ How to \Vrite En-
glish." These articles cover but 140 pages out of a
total of 700, and are probably the most ephemeral
of the writings, which have yet been resuscitated.
of this most sketchy and fragmentary of great auth-
ors. The volumes contain some spirited and ex-
tended essays, and will be found to supplement all
editions of De Quincey except Mass0n’s.
THE eighth volume of Professor Henry lVIorley’s
-~ English Writers ” (Cassell) brings the story down
to the year in which Spenser published his “ Shep-


1892.]
85
THE DIAL
herd's Calendar" (1579). The author modestly
entitles this work "An Attempt towards a History
of English Literature.” This chronicle history is
full of materials to serve, and its author lays all
future writers upon the subject under a great debt.
The great philosophical and critical history is yet
to come, but this work is likely to hold its place as
the most copious source of information for the stu-
dent. This eighth volume treats of Surrey, Wyatt,
and the other "courtly makers” in the reign of
Henry VIIL; of the rise of the drama; of the
great reformers and Bible translators; and of the
_ busy and varied literary activity of the first twenty
The ninth volume will ‘
years of Elizabetlrs reign.
be on Spenser and his time. It is much to be hoped
that Professor Morley will be spared to complete I
the work as far, at least, as to the date of Shake-
speare’s death (1616), which will be reached in the
tenth volume.
ONE of the recent numbers in Sonnenschein’s
convenient "Social Science Series” (Scribner) is
M. Rocquain’s account of “ The Revolutionary
Spirit Preceding the French Revolution,” con-
densed and translated by Miss J. D. Hunting. The
original has for some time been recognized as a
valuable contribution to the history of the eighteenth
century. The author holds that “the state of pub-
lic opinion which gave rise to the French Revolution
was not the outcome of the teachings of the philoso-
pliers," who only “ united in a Code of Doctrine the
ideas that were fermenting in all minds. From the
middle of the century the spirit of opposition had
become the spirit of Revolution." In describing
this spirit of opposition, M. Rocquain really traces
the historyof public opinion in France from 1715
to 1789, bringing to light much new information
and presenting it clearly and impartially. The work
of translation has not been well done, and the
trans-lator’s explanatory notes are by no means sat-
isftu-tory. The book deserves a better, and una-
bridged. translation.
THE collection of papers by William
\Vinter, calle( “ Shakespeare's England” (Macmil-
lan), have nearly all had previous publication either r
in books or magazines. Yet they are well worth
their new and dainty setting, being a sympathetic
study of English scenery as hallowed by the spirit
of English poetry and letters. Beside the lVar-
wickshire portions, which occupy the chief space,
there are pleasing chapters on such subjects as
" Literary Shrines of London,” “ A Haunt of Ed-
mund Kean,” “Stoke Pogis and Thomas Gray,"
and “A Glimpse of Canterbury.”
T0 GIVE one's days and nights to the volumes of
Addison seems both less attractive and less feasible
than when Dr. Johnson advised it for the acqui-
sition of English style. Nevertheless, everyone de-
sires some acquaintance with Addison, and the vol-
ume of ‘- Selections from The Spectator” Dutton)
made by A. Meserole. LL.B.. is a very convenient aid

l
in that direction. Although the larger number of the
papers included in the present volume are from the
pen of Addison. a considerable number are by
Steele, while Budgell, Hughes, and others, are also
represented. A comparative study is hardly favor-
able to Macaulay‘s famous verdict that “ Addison's
worst essay is as good as the best of any of his
coadjutors." The volume is beautifully printed and
bound, and contains a fine etched portrait of Addi-
son printed on India linen, as a frontispiece.
THE DIAL-—CHANGE OF OIVNERSHIP.
Messrs. A. C. McClurg & Co. beg to announce to
the friends and readers of THE DIAL that with the
present issue their interest in the paper is trans-

, ferred to Mr. Francis F. Browne. who has been its
editor and a part owner since its connnencement.
This change, which is the first since the founding
of the paper in 1880, is made for business reasons,
with which the public is concerned only so far as to
know that the change looks wholly to the good of
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by its publication as a separate and independent en-
terprise. Those who know anything of the history
of THE DIAL know that it has from the start aimed
singly at the position of a high-grade and wholly
independent journal of literary criticism; and they
know, too, how absolutely and unvaryingly, and
with what scrupulous freedom from constraint
through publishers’ or booksellers’ influence, it has
Yet it
is perhaps but natural that a critical literary jour-
nal like THE DIAL should be to some extent misun-
derstood through its connection with a book-publish-
ing and book-selling house. To relieve the paper from
this disadvantage, and to make its literary indepen-
dence hereafter as obvious as it ever has been real,
lived up to its high ideals in this direction.
is the prime object of the present change. The re-
tiring publishers are glad to be able to ofi'er to the
readers and friends of THE DIAL their assurance
that, so far as the conduct of the paper is concerned,
the change is but nominal. It will remain in the
same experienced and judicious hands that have
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edged position as " the foremost American critical
journal," will remain a matter of pride to its orig-
inal publishers, who now part from it with the most
hearty good-will and best �ishes for its future.
A. C. McCLuae & Co.
CHICAGO, June 30, 1892.


86 THE
[J uly,
DIAL
'I‘0r*1(‘s IN LEADING PER101)l('Al.S.
July, 189?.
Abyseinia. Illus. Frederick Villiers. Century.
Almonds in California. H. J. Philpott. Popular Science.
America, A B1-iton’s Impressions.
American Chemists. Illus. M. Benjamin. Chautauquan.
American Idealist, The. Gamaliel Bradford. Jr. Atlantic.
American Spelling. Brander Matthews. Harper.
Anthropology in America. Illus. F. Starr. Pop. Science.
Antique Art, Evolution of. Sara A. Hubbard. Dial.

Arabian Horses. H. C. Merwin. Atlantic.
Architecture at the Fair. Illus. H. Van Brunt. Century.
Aristot.le’s Tomb. Illus. Charles Wnldstein. Century.
Bacon vs. Shakespeare. Edwin Reed. Arena.
Base Ball. Illus. J. H. Mandigo. Chautauquan.
Black Forest to the Black Sea. Illus. F. D. Millet. Harper.
Chautauq’n.
Bnrne-Jones. Edward. Illus. C. M. Fairbanks.
Canoeing. Illus. W. P. Stephens. Lippincolt.
(‘anoeing in California. Illus. \V. G. Morrow. Overland.
Cheltenham College, England. Illus. D.Sladen. Cosrnop’n.
Chnla, Lake.
Coal Supply and Reading Leases.
Illus. M. French-Sheldon. Arena.
A. A. McLeod. Forum.
Columbus at Court. Illus. Emilio Castelar. Century.
Cowper. J. V. Cheney. Chautauquan.
Cmr‘s Westem Frontier. Poultney Bigelow. Harper.
Daubigny, Charles F. Illus. R. J. \Vickenden. Century.
Declaration’s Reception in the Colonies. C. D. Deshler. Harp.
N 0. Am.
Egypt and Palestine, Prehistoric. J. \-V. Dawson.
England, Industrial and Commercial. J. W. Jenks. Dial.
Europe’s Armies. Theo. A. Dodge. Forum.
Federal Power, Growth of the. H. L. Nelson.
Fiction, Geographical. Gertrude Atherton. Lippincott.
Finances of the Am. Revolution. H. C. Adams. Dial.
Galvani, Luigi. Popular Science.
Gold and Silver. Stewart, Springer, and others. No. Am.
Government and Farmer. A. \'. Harris. Century.
Hay Fever as an Idiosyncrasy. Chautauquan.
Hot \Veather Diet. N. E. Y. Davies. Popular Science.
Hypnotism and Suggestion. B. O. Flower. Arena.
Isabella at Segovia. Illus. H. Pierson. Cosmopolitan.
Italian Situation. Signor Crispi. North American.
Japanese Gardening. Lafcadio Hearn. Atlantic.
Kindergartens, etc.
Labor in the Campaign. S. Gompers. North American.
Lady Jeune on London. “L H. Mallock.
Landor, \Valter Savage. M. B. Anderson. Dial.
Leather-Making. Illus. G. A. Rich. Popular Science.
Lincoln as Strategist. A. Forbes. North American.
Ilarper.
Literary Independence of U. S. Brnnder Matthews. Casmojfn.
London’s Great City Companies. Miss Bislnnd. C0s'mopol.
Lynch Law in the South. Fr-ed‘k Douglas. No. American.
J. R. Lowell. Harper.
Marlowe. Julia. Illus. Mildred Aldrich. Arena.
Marriage in Nanking. Harriet Beebe. Chautauquan.
McClellan, General. Eben G. Scott. Atlantic.
Natural Selection. Illus. St. Geo. Mivart. Cosmopolitan.
Newspaper Illustrators. Illus. Max de Lipman. Lippin.
Northwest's Needs. Gov. of Minn. North Ameriéan.
Overland by the Southern Pacific. Illus. Chautauquan.
Owls. Illus. Frank Bowles. Popular Science.
Peary’s No. Greenland Voyage. Illus. Lippincott.
Physiology and Disease. J. M. Rice. Popular Science.
Poetry. Beauty of. E. C. Stedman. Century.
Political Assessments. Theodore Roosevelt.
Marlowe.
Atlantic.
Politics and Pulpit. Bishops Donne and Mallalieu. No. Am.
Presidential Campaign. The. Rep. Springer and others. Aren.
Presidential Candidates. J. R. Hnwley, C. F. Adams. Forum.
Quebec, Historic.’ Illus. Edith Topper.
Chautauquan.
Religion and Philosophy. Recent. Discussions.W. Hongh. Dial.
A. F. Jaccaci.
Illus.
Rico, Martin. Illus.
Riverside Hospital.
Cosmopolitan.
J. A. Riis. Cosmopolitan.
Russia's Land System and the Famine. W. C. Edgar. Forum.
State and Forest. Illus. J. B. Harrison. Cosmopolitan.
State Laws, Uniform. J. F. Colby. Forum.
Wonien and the Alliance. Illus. Annie Diggs. Arena.
J. F. Mnirhead. Arena.
Mrs. H. M. Plnnkett. Popular Science.
North American.


liooxs or Tm: .\lo.\"ru.
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HISTOR Y.
The Livery Companies of the City of London: Their Ori-
'n, Character, Development, and Social and Political
mportance. B W. Carew Hazlitt. Profusely illus., large
Svo, pp. 692, 'It top. .\Iacmillan at Co. $10.50.
Lancaster and York: A Centur of English History IA.D.
1IiiI‘.I —l485). By Sir James Ramsey. In ‘.5 vols., livo,
gilt top, with maps and illustrations. Macmillan & Co. S0.
~ The Puritan in Holland, England. and America: An Intro-
duction to American History. By Douglas Campbell,
A.M. In ‘Z vols., Svo, gilt tops, uncut edges.
Brothers. 5-">.00.
BIOGRA PH Y.
Life and Letters of Charles Keene, of “Punch." By
George Somes Layard. \"ith mrtrait, large Svo, pp. -NH.
gilt top, uncut edges. Macmi lan & Co. -S-‘$.()0.
Harper &
= The Life of Thomas Paine, with a History of his Literary,
Political, and Religious Career. By Moncure Daniel Con-
way, author of "George \Vashington and Mount Ver-
non." Also, a Sketch of Paine by \'illiam Cobbett. In
‘.2 vols., with frontispieccs. tivo. gilt tops, uncut edges.
G. P. Putnam's Sons. $5.00.
Isaac Casaubon, 1669-1614. By Mark Pattison. Sec-
ond edition, with portrait, Svo, pp. 504, gilt top. Mac-
millan & Co. $4.00.
The Earl of Derby. By George Saintsbury, with portrait,
fines, pp. 2'23. Harper's “ The Queen’s Prime Ministers."
Walt Whitman. By \Villiam Clark, M.A. With rtrait,
llimo, pp. 132. Macmillan's “ Dilettante Library. ’ 90 cts.
James Russell Lowell: An Address by George William
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ESSAYS AND GENER.-iL LITERATURE.
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Ree Judicatm: Papers and Essays. By Augustine Birrell,
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The Reflections of a Married Man: By Robert Grant.
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Goethe's Faust: The First Part. VVith the prose transla-
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Seventeenth Century Lyrics. Edited by George Saints-
bury. 2~imo. pp. 326, uncut. Maomilla.n’s “ Pocket Li-
brary.” $1.00.


1892.]
DIAL
Tl-1E
87
FICTION.
The Venetians: A Novel. By M. E. Brsddon, author of
;Aurora Floyd." 12mo. pp. 442. Harper & Brothers.
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Mount Desolation: An Australian Romance. By \V. Carle-
ton Dawe, author of “The Golden Lake." 12mo, pp.
317. Cassell Publishing Co. $1.50.
Colonel Stsrbottle's Client, and Some Other People. By
gret Harte. llivno, pp. 283. Houghton, Mifllm & Co.
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An Edelweiss of the Sierras, Golden Rod, and Other
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Vesty of the Basins: A Novel. By Sarah P. McLean
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33 THE DIAL [-71115’,


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THE DIAL

V01.. XIII. AUGUST, 1892. N0.148.

CONTENTS.
AN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY CHARACTER.
C. A. L. Richards
FREEMAN’S HISTORICAL I§SAYS. Charles H.
Ilaslcins . . . . . . . . . . 100
RECENT BOOKS OF FICTION. William Moflon
Payne . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
BOOKS ON ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LAN-
GUAGE. Oliuer Farrar Emerson . . . . . . 106
BRIEFS ON NEW BOOKS . . . . . . . . . . 108
Cheney’s The Golden Guess.—Page’s The Old South.
—Trent's Life of William Gilmore Simms.—Pennell’s
The Jew at Home.—Hutton’s Literary Landmarks
of London.—Fruude’s The Spanish Story of the Ar-
mada.——~Saintsbury’s Life of the Earl of Derby.—
Prevost’s Autobiography of Isaac \'illiams.~ Stories
from English History for Young Americans.—South-
wick’s Vllisps of \Vit and \Visdom.
BOOKSOFTHEMONTH. . . . . . . . . .111

AN EIGHTEENTII CENTURY (,‘HARAC'1‘ER.*

Dr. Arbuthnot was a man careless of fame;
he tossed his wealth of good things right and
left, and forgot to claim them. It is hard to
be certain to-day just what is really his. It
was time that his works should be collected,
and time that his life should be written. This
task has been attempted by Mr. George A.
Aitken, in a handsome volume issuing from
the Clarendon Press, Oxford. The hour has
come, but not the man. A little while ago Mr.
Aitken collected the materials for a biography
of Steele, and supposed he had written it. He
has done much the same work in the present
instance. He has the accumulative without the
formative instinct of the biographer. The dry
bones are brought together, but they do not
live. The constructive imagination, which
broods over isolated details until they group
themselves and crystallize into a rounded whole,
is altogether wanting in this painstaking in-
vestigator. It is a pity, for Dr. Arbuthnot was

' Tan LIFE Asn Worms or J om: Aanurnxor. By George
A. Aitken. Oxford: The Clarendon Press. New York: Mac-
millan & Co.

what is called “a character," and a life-like
portrait of him would be a welcome addition
to the gallery of the wits of Queen Anne’s
reign. There is more of him in the frontis-
piece to the present volume than in the life
that follows.
John Arbuthnot was born the eldest son of
a minister of the Scotch establishment, in the
manse of Arbuthnot, and baptized April 29,
1667. It was the year of Swift’s birth and
of the publication of “ Paradise Lost.” There
were several other children. His father, a
High Church Episcopalian, would not conform
when Presbyterianism regained power, and
was deposed from his living in 1689. He re-
tired to a small property of his own in the
neighborhood, and died two years later. The
children were scattered. One became an emi-
nent banker in Paris, and was mixed up with
the affairs of the Pretender. John went up to
London, taught mathematics for his livelihood,
in 1694 entered University College at Oxford
as a fellow-commoner and private tutor to a
younger student, and in 1696 took his degree
of Doctor in Medicine at St. Andrew’s, acquit-
ting himself with distinction. A year later
the young physician made his mark by pub-
lishing a fair and thorough criticism of a re-
cent geological theory put forth by a professor
of Gresham College. He became known in
literary circles, and was a guest at the dinner-
table of Samuel Pepys. How his mischievous
humor must have played about the immortal
diarist!
In 1701 Arbuthnot wrote an able “ Essay
on the Usefulness of Mathematical Learning,”
declaring, and evidencing, “ the advantage
which the mind reaps from mathematical knowl-
edge in a habit of clear, demonstrative, and
methodical reasoning.” Except a few lines of
verse, it is the only serious production among
the works contained 1n this volume. It is a
piece of simple, direct, manly argument. It is
thoroughly readable to-day. It would be hard
to state the uses of mathematics more convinc-
ingly. The author shows the range of his study
in quotations to the purpose from Quintilian
and Plato, Diogenes Laertius and Pliny, Ovid
and Hippocrates, Xenocrates and Aristotle. He
cites with easy familiarity recent French, Ital-
ian, Danish and English authorities in science,
and illustrates his paper from painting, music,


93 THE DIAL
[Aug.,
architecture, fortification, navigation, ship-
building, book-keeping, and astronomy. The
paper contains one memorable sentence :
“Truth is the same thing to the understand-
ing that music is to the ear and beauty to the
e e.”
yArbuthnot became Fellow of the Royal So-
ciety in 1704. Coming in chance contact
with Prince George of Denmark, he was made
physician extraordinary to Queen Anne the
next year, and one of the physicians in ordin-
ary four years later. From that time to the
Queen’s death, at which he was in attendance
in August 17'14, he was constantly about the
court and on terms of intimacy with its poets,
beauties, wits, and statesmen. He was of the
High Church and High Tory faction, as be-
came the son of his Jacobite father. He was
more or less in the secrets of Swift and Har-
ley and Bolingbroke and Lady Masham. His
humorous “ History of John Bull ” is a party
pamphlet levelled at Marlborough. He lacked
Swift’s fierce intensity and thirst for power,
but shared his convictions and championed his
causes in his own more quiet fashion. The
Queen’s death touched him nearly. He was
made to feel what Bolingbroke so vigorously
expressed, “\Vhat a world is this, and how
does fortune banter us.” Readers of “ Henry
Esmond ” remember what a state intrigue was
bafiled by the Queen’s sudden end. How far
the good physician was cognizant of all the
plans of his associates is uncertain. The death
of his royal mistress was certainly a blow to
his personal fortunes. He wrote Swift that he
had not been unprepared for “ the melancholy
scene,” had figured it in advance, and that his
own case was “ not half so deplorable as that of
Lady Masham and other court favorites.” He
had lost the perquisites of his ofiice, but had
his profession, and his bread was in no danger.
Still, he felt the change. One does not breathe
with impunity the atmosphere of court favor.
A little later he writes to Pope, thanking him
for taking notice of “a poor distressed cour-
tier, commonly the most despicable thing in
the world.” There was a rising in behalf of
the Pretender, in 1715, in which two of Ar-
buthnot’s brothers had part; but there is no
evidence that he himself was involved in it. His
philosophic tone in a letter to Swift at the time
implies the contrary : “ I should have the same
concern for things as you, were I not convinced
that a comet will make much more strange
revolutions upon the face of our globe than
can be occasioned by governments and minis-

tries. I consider myself as a poor passenger,
and that the earth is not to be forsaken, nor
the rocks removed for me.” This is not the
mood of a baffled conspirator. His sympathies
were probably with the Stuarts, and his judg-
ment with the house of Hanover. In 1720,
when the South Sea bubble broke, the canny
Scot had evidently kept out of danger, and es-
caped the popular delusion. Hc could laugh-
ingly maintain that “ the Government and
the South Sea Company had only locked up
the money of the people upon conviction of
their lunacy.” Nine months later he was weary
of the all-engrossing subject: “ There is noth-
ing in London but the same eternal question,
when will S. Sea rise.”
In 1726 Arbuthnot was still about the
court, and presented Swift to the Princess of
Wales, the future Queen Caroline, who praised
the Dean's “ wit and conversation.” Arbuth-
not’s reply is a revelation of his own nature:
“ I told her Royal Highness that was not what
I valued you for. but for being a sincere hon-
est man, and speaking the truth when others
were afraid to speak it.” The doctor was at
this time in attendance on the Duchess of
Marlborough, who recognized the worth of the
physician even when wincing from the lash of
the pamphleteer. He himself was suffering
from graver ills, from calculus in the kidneys
and from an abscess in the bowels which nearly
made an end of him. While the event was
uncertain, he sent a sportive message to Swift,
advising him, if cured of his deafness, not to
quit the pretense of it, “because you may by
that means hear as much as you will, and an-
swer as little as you please.” A little later
Pope writes that Arbuthnot is yet living: “ He
goes abroad again, and is more cheerful than
even health can make a man, for he has a good
conscience into the bargain, which is the most
catholic of all remedies, though not the most
universal.” He solaced his pains with cards,
and with music, in which he was proficient.
He knew Handel, and met him often; and
there is an anthem of Arbuthnot’s extant.
VVhen “Gulliver's Travels ” appeared, Arbuth-
not, who was in the secret of its authorship,
recognized at once that it was a masterpiece of
wit, and prophesied “ as great a run for it as
John Bunyan.” He wrote Swift that “ Gul-
liver is in everybody's hands. I lent the book
to an old gentleman, who immediately went to
his map to search for Lilliput.”
The clouds gathered about the good doctor
as the day went on. His health was precari-


1892.]
THE DIAL 99

ous, his family large, his income insufiicient.
His happy home was broken up. He lost his
wife suddenly in the spring of 1730, and his
youngest son in the winter of the following
year. His friend and patient, Gay, died a
twelvemonth later. The world in the main
displeased him. It was not a generous age,
and the air about the court was tainted. He
writes to Swift that things may be brighter in
Ireland. “ In your better country there is
some virtue and honor left, some small regard
for religion. Perhaps Christianity may last
with you at least twenty or thirty years longer.”
It is hardly a triumphant hope. The worn
physician is evidently breaking. He moved
into the country for the summer, and found
some relief. He wrote Pope that “ God Al-
mighty has made my distress as easy as a thing
of that nature can be. . . A recovery in my
case and at my age is impossible. The kindest
wish of my friends is Euthanasia.” That at
least is what Pope chose to print as the words
of Arbuthnot, but in the poet’s wonted fashion
the manuscript was tampered with. His un-
scrupulous pen would meddle even with the
letter of a dying friend.
Then came a little lull in Arbuthuot”s dis-
ease. He looked forward to a return to town,
and, though crippled, to his work, not being in
circumstances to live in idleness. He hardly
rejoiced in the respite which would give him
the trouble of dying all over again. “I am
at present in the case of a man that was almost
in harbor and then blown back to sea; who
has a reasonable hope of going to a good place
and an absolute certainty of leaving a very bad
one. . . However, I enjoy the comforts of life
with my usual cheerfulness.” Swift, in his
strong way, answered: “You tear my heart
with the ill account of your health ”; and then
bore his witness, after five-and-twenty years’ ac-
quaintance, to the moral and Christian virtues
of his failing friend, “ not the product of years
or sickness, but of reason and religion.” It is
not a flatterer’s tribute.
Arbuthnot died on the 27th day of Decem-
ber, 1735, in his sixty-eighth year, at his house
in Cork street, in much pain but devout com-
fort. Pope and Chesterfield were with him
the night before. The latter left an elaborate
sketch of him as his physician and friend. He
praised his great and various erudition, his in-
finite fund of wit and humor, his almost inex-
haustible imaginatippfriis‘ indifference to fame,
his carelessness of fnoney, his purity of char-
acter, his kindness to the poor, his love of man-

kind, and his underestimate of himself. His
contemporaries bore consenting witness. Swift
said that he had “ more wit than we all have,
and humanity equal to his wit.” Pope declared
him “ in wit and humor superior to all man-
kind.” Lord Orrery pronounced him “equal
to any of his contemporaries in humor and vi-
vacity, and superior to most men in acts of
humanity and benevolence. No man exceeded
him in the moral duties of life.” Dr. Johnson,
who had not known the charm of his presence,
called him “ the first man among them, the
most universal genius, being an excellent phy-
sician, a man of deep learning, and a man of
much humor”; “a scholar wit_h. great brill-
iance of wit; a. wit who in the crow'd of life
retained and discovered a noble ardor of reli-
gious zeal.” In our own day still the note of
admiration is caught up, and Thackeray de-
clares Arbuthnot " one of the wisest, wittiest,
most accomplished, gentlest of mankind.”
His writings to-day have lost something of
their original flavor. Only students of the time
are likely to recur to them. Their politics are of
an outworn fashion. The pedantry they mock
at has departed. The allusions require vexa-
tious explanation in endless footnotes. The
humor is less direct and palpable than Swift’s,
the wit less pointed and flashing than Pope’s,
the sportiveness less dainty and delicate than
Gay’s. Yet the “ History of John Bull” a.nd
the “Memoirs of Scriblerus” will long hold
their place in the literature of scholars, for
their pithy English, their manly sense, their
grotesque drollery, their vivid imagination.
Their author had his faults. He was absent-
minded to excess, “ the king of inattention.”
Like others of his profession, he indulged him-
self at the table and took little exercise, while
commending diet, temperance, and exercise to
others. He walked with a slouch or a shufile.
As a Scot, he pretended to believe himself
gifted with the second sight. He was “ a Ja-
cobite by prejudice.” He squandered instead
of economizing his ideas. He took less care
than he should of his fortune. He let his
children make kites of his papers which held
matter for folios. Perhaps in the multiplicity
of folios this should be set down in the cata-
logue of his virtues.
The fine phototype which is the frontispiece
to this volume is from a supposed original by
J ervas. It is full of life and character. The
face is a nearly perfect oval, the forehead is
high, the eyes far apart, the lids full, the iris
large. The nose is strong, with delicate nos-


100 THE DIAL
[Aug.,

trils. The upper lip is long. The mouth is
of rare sweetness and beauty, with a quiet
smile just ready to appear. The chin is long
but rounded, with a marked cleft in the mid-
dle. The hands are of special distinction and
refinement, with long tapering fingers. The
velvet cap and gown, the lawn kerchief loosely
knotted at the neck, the ruffles at the wrists,
the pen between the fingers, the hands crossed
over a book that rests lightly on the lap,
complete a delightful portrait of a playful hu-
morist, a courtly gentleman, a thoughtful, true
and loving man. As you look upon it you
think better of the early years of the eighteenth
century, and of that somewhat dismal English
court which harbored and valued such a man
as 3153- C. A. L. RICHARDS.
FltEE.\IAN’S lIi.~1'r0iucAL EssA\'s.*
The fourth series of Historical Essays by the
late Professor Freeman is larger and more varied
than its predecessors. The essays in the second
series dealt with ancient history, and those in
the first and third chiefly with the Middle Ages
— or, as their author would prefer to say, they
dealt respectively with “the time when politi-
cal life was confined to the two great Mediter-
ranean pen iiisulas ” and the time when the Teu-
tonic and Slavonic peoples also had a part in
the political life of Europe. The twenty-two
papers which make up the present and last
volume touch a wide variety of topics. Car-
thage, Frcnch and English towns, Aquae Sex-
tizc, Orange, Périgueux and Cahors, Augusto-
dunuiii, and the Lords of Ardres, serve as texts
for local studies like the “ Historical and Ar-
chitectural Sketches ” and many of the ear-
lier historical essays. Then come a stray Ox-
ford lecture on Portugal and Brazil, an inter-
esting account of the conflict between Crown
and chapter over the election to the deanery of
Exeter, and a nuinber of short reprints from
the “ Saturday Review.” The other papers
are more distinctively political, treating of the
growth of coiiiiiionwealths, the constitution of
the German Empire, nobility, and the House
of Lords.
These essays indicate fairly well the subjects
and interests that most appealed to Ml‘. Free-
man. His sympathies were strong but not
broad, and the range of his historical ideas was

' HISTORICAL Essznrs. By Edward A. F reeiuaii, M.A.,
Hon. D.C.L. and LL.D., Regius Professor of Modem History
in the University of Oxford. Fourth Series. New York:
Macmillan &'Co.

somewhat limited. His conception of history
was expressed in his well-known dictum, “ His-
tory is past politics, and politics present his-
tory.” To him, history was first of all a. rec-
ord of political events; for a pe0ple’s litera-
ture, for its art — except so far as seen in archi-
tecture—for its economic and social life, he
cared little or nothing. This dominant in-
tcrest in things political shortened, as well as
narrowed, his view of the field of historical
study. No one insisted on the continuity of
history more strongly than he; the unity of
ancient, mediieval, and modern, he was never
tired of proclaiming; yet for him history lie-
gan with the Greeks,— the Orient he quite
ignored. He frequently illustrated historical
continuity by taking up a particular town,
describing its architectural remains, and trac-
ing its history through several centuries. Often
he used the same method in a larger field, eni-
phasizing “ the long-abiding life of the Roman
Empire, Eastern and Western,” and the un-
broken dominance of the Teutonic element in
English history. This influence in England
he probably exaggerated, but his sympathy
for oppressed nationalities kept him from the
extreme views of those champions of “ triumph-
ant Teutonism” who deny political rights to
those not so fortunate as to be born Teutons.
Mr. Freeman was much addicted to the use
of historical parallels. He liked to see analo-
gous causcs producing analogous effects, and
held that if the resemblances between distant
events were not merely superficial, -“ real in-
struction, practical instruction, and not a mere
gratification of curiosity ” could be drawn from
comparing them. Thus, in the first essay in
the present volume he compares Carthage with
other great commercial powers-—Rome, Lii-
beck, Venice, Spain, and England. This may
easily lead to those “ plausible historical anal-
ogies” from which Mr. Bryce says it is the
chief practical use of history to deliver us ; but
in Mr. Fi-ec1nan’s hands the comparative meth-
od proved stimulating and suggestive. His
work on “ Comparative Politics ” is one of the
chief sources of his influence on the younger
students of history. Comparisons between an-
cient and modern events also help to give his
books that strong sense of reality which his
readers always feel.
In discussing current questions, Mr. Frec-
man showed something of the historical senti-
mentalist. Though he was not an extreme
conservative, the changes he most desired were
in the direction of a return to early historic


1892.]
THE DIAL
101

conditions. The Liberals he thought the true
Conservatives. He wished to have the bishops
retained in the House of Lords as a relic of the
old Saxon witan and a protest against the mod-
ern idea of heredity. In a characteristic essay
on “ Alter Orbis,” reprinted in the fourth
series of his essays, he opposed a Channel tun-
nel, not on military grounds, but from a fear
that it might lessen the insular character of
Britain, “ the greatest fact in British history.”
Exact scholarship, political insight, a terse
and vigorous style, and a vivid power of realiz-
ing the past and making it live for his readers,
place Mr. Freeman with Bishop Stubbs and Mr.
Gardiner in the front rank of recent English
historians. His death was a real loss to his-
torical scholarship, and Lord Salisbury showed
scant respect to his memory and to the cause
of sound learning in appointing as his succes-
sor at Oxford one who is conspicuously defi-
cient in the truthfulness and accuracy which
were Mr. Freeman’s strongest characteristics.
CHARLES H. Hasxnvs.
RE(JF.NT BO0Ks or Fl(,'TI()N.*

“ Calmire” is certainly a remarkable book,
although not primarily remarkable as a work of
fiction. Of its seven hundred and forty-two
pages, the odd forty-two would be amply suffi-
cient for all the story that is given us, and the

' CALMIRE. New York: Macmillan & Co.
THE QUALITY or Mnnov. By W. D. Howells. New York:
Harper &. Brothers.
MARIONETTES. By Julien Gordon.
Publishing Company.
A Mnnnnn or rm-: Tunzn Housa. By Hamlin Garland.
Chicago: F. J. Schulte & Co.
Tun CHEVALIER or PENBIERI-VANI. By Henry B. lhiller.
New York : The Century Company.
COLONEL S'r.
so'rrmz’s CLIENT, and Some Other People.
By Bret Harte. Boston: Houghton, Mifiiin & Co.
Tm; Govnnnon, and Other Stories. By George A. Hib-
bard. New York : Charles Scribner’s Sons.
A CAPILLAIIY Cams, and Other Stories. By F. D. Millet.
New York : Harper & Brothers.
VAN Bunsen AND Ornsns. By Richard Harding Davis.
New York: Harper & Brothers.
Dos Frslmonnonaz Calabrian Sketches. By Elizabeth
Cavazza. New York: Charles L. “lobster & Co.
Tar. NAULAHKA: A Story of West and East. By Rud-
yard Kipling and Wolcott Balestier. New York : Macmillan
& Co.
THE “IRECKER. By Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd
Osboume. New York : Charles Scribner’s Sons.
Tun Mxsronruuss on Enrnnr. Mun Manun, Cnorcnsr
CASTLE, Guru. Grumos. By Thomas Love Peacock. In
five volumes. New York: Macmillan & Co.
THE DOWNFALL. By Emile Zola. Translated by E. P. Rob-
ins. New York: Cassell Publishing Company.
New York : Cassell
other seven hundred are devoted to philosophi-
cal and religious discussion. Vile deem it only
fair to warn the reader of this fact at the out-
set, but it would be unfair not to state also that
the discussion is so fascinating that it absorbs
the attention quite as fully as do the dramatic
features of the narative. After all, one is
tempted to ask, since a work of fiction is neces-
sarily made up largely of the conversations of
its characters, why should they not be permit-
ted now and then to converse upon serious
subjects? The chief characters of the book are
the two Cahnires, uncle and nephew, and Miss
Nina Wahrilig, who, with her mother, is spend-
ing the summer at the country house of the
Calmires, somewhere on the Hudson. The two
Calmires embody, each in his own way, the ad-
vanced philosophical thought of the modern
world, while Miss Nina, to begin with, repre-
sents the conventional ideas of the average young
person who has never reflected seriously about
anything. Under the combined influence of
admiration for the uncle and a more tender
feeling for the nephew, her mind becomes sym-
pathetically attuned to the new world of ideas
to which she is introduced by their companion-
ship, and, since at bottom she has an earnest
and receptive nature, there follows for her the
usual enlargement of horizon and revolution of
thought, although the broader view to which she
attains still keeps the emotional tinge due to
her sex. Of course, the elder Calmire, in whom
the author evidently speaks for himself, has
things beautifully his own way, and the intel-
lect of the young woman is plastic as wax in his
hands. The reader who is aftera story and noth-
ing else will at once call Calmire a prig and im-
patiently put the book aside. But we have
warned such readers that the book is not meant
for them in any case. The author, whoever he
may be ‘(and his strikingly individual man-
ner compels to conjecture), is a man who has
thought long and well upon the deepest subjects
of inquiry, who has realized the absurdity of
many or any “ systems,” who has safely weath-
ered the period of indignant and passionate re-
volt (here illustrated by the impetuous nephew),
and who has gained at last the most peaceful
and rock-protected of ethical havens. He seems
to bc. a practised writer, yet one wholly unpra.c-
tised in the form that he has here chosen as a me-
dium of expression. But he must havehad much
practise in the d ifficult art of elucidating abstruse
matters, for his success in this particular is very
marked. He commands resources of apposite
illustration and metaphor which make his expo-


102
[Aug.,
THE DIAL
sitions simply brilliant, while at the same time
they are as far as possible from being stilted and
otherwise unnatural. “ Calmire ” is distinctly
a helpful book ; that is, for those who want to be
helped. The author does not shrink from en-
visagement of the sternest problems of the uni-
verse, nor is he turned to stone by their Gor-
gonian gaze. Those who are not strong enough
to look nature in the face, but, Perseus-like,
view her only as reflected in the mirror of their
childish creeds, will do well to avoid such books.
And yet, for those who can comprehend it, the
work offers a faith as far transcending that of
our childhood as the wide world itself trans-
cends the nursery. And it is not a faith that
quarrels needlessly about terms, for it recog-
nizes to the full whatever inspiration the dogma
may conceal. The lesson of the book is all
slimmed up in such a passage as the following:
“ \Vell, really, dear, I believe the great secret of calm
is the realization of the pettiness of all that can disturb
our lives, in contrast with the immensity that includes
them.”
" Is that another name for faith in God ‘?” she asked.
" Faith in God is one of the names for it.”
“ The Quality of Mercy ” hardly needs to be
strained to permit our welcome of the novel to
which Mr. Howells has given this apt Shake-
spearean title. The author has so long so-
journed in the strange tents of those realists who
conceive themselves impelled by duty to exer-
cise their art upon the most uninteresting or
even repulsive material obtainable, that we
feared to have lost forever the old Mr. How-
ells of “ Indian Summer ” and “ A Woman’s
Reason.” But the Mr. Howells of old, the Mr.
Howells who knew how to tell in artistic man-
ner a story of real human interest, has come
back to us again, and has brought with him
from his artistic aberrations a shrewder humor
and a more deeply spiritualized insight than
he took away. There is abundant analysis in
his new work, probably more than there ought
to be, but it no longer impresses us as being
mainly introduced for its own sake; it is con-
sistently applied, for the most part, to the
development of a. distinct and desirable psy-
chological type. A man like the defaulter
Northwick, though narrow his range and im-
perfect his sympathies, is presumably possessed
of something in the nature of a soul, and this is
what, with admirable success, Mr. Howells has
set himself to discover. He even reconciles us
to Hatboro, which community, since its life was
shadowed forth in “ Annie Kilburn,” has stood
as the symbol or embodiment of all that is
dull and devoid of interest. It seems that even
in Hatboro there may be lives whose inner as-
pects are worth scrutinizing, and we may take
heart of grace once more to believe that no
aggregation of human beings is without its
possible appeal to the universal sympathy with
which literature is concerned. There is in this
new book all that is best of Mr. Howells; and
all that is worst, or nearly all, is conspicuously
lacking. In its ethical proportions and envis-
agement of life, it is as true as “ A Hazard of
New Fortunes” is false. Finally, its minor
types of character are carefully worked out
and generally kept within their limits. A hun-
dred pages at a time are not given, for exam-
ple, to the humors of village gossip or to the
trials of fiat-hunting in a great city. When
the work of Mr. Howells shall have been duly
threshed by time, this work, at least, will not
be left with the chafi.
The admirable qualities of style and char-
acterization evinced by Mrs. Cruger’s novels
have a distinct value of their own, however
trivial the incidents and artificial the world
that she describes. That world, of course, is
not the real world of human life and passion
at all, but a world of a very narrow and hot-
house sort, although to its exotic dwellers it
doubtless makes up the sum of essential human
existence. “ Marionettes” is at least as good
as anything that the author has heretofore
done,—perhaps it is a trifle better. It has
occasional faults of style, and occasional pages
of essay-writing that had been better omitted,
but its figures are incisively outlined, and its
ethical tone (bearing in mind the relative na-
ture of ethics) is all that could be expected
under the conditions.
If Mr. Hamlin Garland continues to pro-
duce works as strong as “A Member of the
Third House,” he will make himself a distinct
literary force. In this book he keeps his econ-
omic vagaries well in the background, and sur-
renders to the white-hot passion of indignation
-at the corruption of American legislatures.
His expression taking the form of a compactly
knit and strikingly dramatic narrative, he holds
the attention almost breathless, and leaves the
reader no opportunity to reflect upon his faults
of style. His story is of a young man who,
with steadfast devotion to principle, puts aside
all considerations of self-interest in a single-
handed struggle with the powers of evil as rep-
resented by an unscrupulous corporation, an
infamous lobby, and a venal state legislature.
Mr. Garland does not pause to woo the literary


1892.]
103
THE DIAL
graces, and his strongest pages are but slightly
adapted transcripts of what may be seen and
heard to-day in any political barroom or lobby-
ist’s den in any great city or state capital.
The proceedings of his investigating committee
are grimly real, and might be paralleled ahnost
word for word in many a public record. He is
terribly in earnest, and his earnestness is con-
tagious. Such books are social forces rather
than stories ; they do but masquerade in the
novelist’s disguise, and the sun itself shines on
the mirror which they hold up to nature.
“ The Chevalier of Pensieri-Vani ” has been
reissued in an improved form, improved consid-
erably by a new chapter and a revised text of
the old ones, and more than considerably im-
proved by its new typography, its charming
chapter initials, and its tasteful binding. Per-
haps the best tribute to its excellence is fur-
nished by the fact that its forbidding first ap-
pearance could not wholly disguise its charm,
and that so many competent critics penetrated
the disguise to discover the real literary in-
stinct at the heart of it. Those who contrived
to read the book under the old conditions will
need no urging to re-read it in a form that
ofiers no offense to any sense.
Volumes of short stories in the usual sum-
mer variety occupy a conspicuous place in this
season’s fiction. The cloyen of our short story
tellers, Mr. Bret Harte, certainly deserves to be
mentioned first. There are nine stories in his
latest collection ; three or four of them trifles,
the others almost novelettes. They deal in
the accustomed surprises, and have the unvary-
ing quality of interest. “ Colonel Starbottle’s
Client ” is probably the best, unless we give that
distinction to “ The Postmistress of Laurel
Run.” In “ The New Assistant at Pine Clear-
ing School,” the writer handles a favorite theme
in so novel a manner that he may be forgiven
for taking it up again.
Mr. Hibbard’s stories offer as complete a con-
trast as possible to Mr. Harte’s. The latter
skims lightly over the period of action ; the for-
mer concentrates his attention upon the “ psy-
chological moment” of the action, and makes us
retrospectively acquainted with what goes be-
fore. There is little choice between these six
stories, except that the first three are more
elaborate in their analysis. For intensity of
force, “ As the Sparks Fly Upward ” is proba-
bly the most admirable, but this adjective fits
“ The Governor ” and “ A Deedless Drama ”
almost equally well. Mr. Hibbard’s style has
a straightforward simplicity that makes his

work very attractive. Such sobriety of diction
is not too common a virtue with our younger
writers.
Mr. l\Iillet’s stories, also six in number, are
more or less about artists, but they are com-
paratively free from the professional jargon
into which artists so frequently fall when they
abandon the brush for -the pen. In a preface
placed at the end of the volume (if the bull be
permissible), the writer lets us into some of the
secrets of his literary workshop ; in other words,
he tells of the actual experiences that suggested
the stories. This is particularly interesting, for
they are related with a minuteness of detail that
gives them a marked air of probability, and one
is naturally tempted to ask what may be their
basis in actual fact. Aside from their artistic
associations, their dominant note is one of
mystery, or, rather, of uncanniness, which is es-
pecially noticeable in “A Faded Scapular” and
“The Fourth Waits.” The latter is about a black
poodle, who seems to exercise a baleful influ-
ence over the destiny of a group of four artist
friends, marked out for destruction one after
another by this canine fiend. The “fourth ”
who “ waits ” is naturally the survivor, who
lives to tell the story. On the whole, Mr. Mil-
let gives evidence of a very pretty talent for the
art in which Poe was a master.
The stories in Mr. Davis’s volume are shorter
than those before mentioned—there are no less
than fifteen of them—but they are full of meat.
As the title suggests, they are mainly about
our old friend Van Bibber, whose experiments
in economy, amateur philanthropy, and other
pursuits, never fail to prove diverting to him-
self and to us. Some of the stories are the
merest sketches, but they are of the best in the
book. VVithin their limits, it would be diffi-
cult to match “ The Hungry Man VVas Fed ”
and “Mr. Travers’s First Hunt.” Mr. Kipling
is the only other writer who can compress so
much incident, humor, and general interest into
so small a space. Mr. Davis seems in a fair
way to make the streets of New York his own
domain. This volume is a distinct advance
beyond the point reached in “ Gallegher,” and
compels the most careful attention from its
readers.
In Mrs. Cavazza’s “ Calabrian Sketches ”
we have a very remarkable example of insight
into the modes of Italian peasant life on the
part of one herself Italian only in her married
name. Her simple villagers, with the little
interests that constitute their world, and their
homely proverbial sayings, possess an extraor-


104
[Aug.,
THE DIAL
dinary vitality, and their presentation is artistic
in a very high sense. The stories of “ Don
Finimondone ” (so called from his dismal pre-
dictions of future and final disaster) and of “A
Calabrian Penelope ” have a quiet and pathetic
charm that make them the best of the half
dozen included. “ Princess Humming-Bird ”
alone is not a peasant-tale; its characters are
aristocratic Neapolitans and an American girl,
thus bringing it into the class of international
tales, for the American girl comes, sees, and
at once eonquors, not only an interesting scion
of the nobility, but all of his relatives as well.
lt is as charming a story as the others, only in
a different way.
“ The Naulahka ” is as preposterous a tale
as has often been told, but Mr. Kipling’s vivid
depiction of the East Indian native, and (we
assume) Mr. Balester’s characterization of his
own fellow countryman in the far West, tri-
umphantly bear up the burden of the story
until near the end. when it breaks down with
its own weight. In other words, the story is
carried on until its authors were evidently un-
able to straighten out its tangled threads, and
so took the heroic course of breaking them off.
We shall probably never learn whether the
three C.’s came to Topaz, or how Tarvin got
out of his scrape with the jewel-loving wife of
the railway president. The American part of
the story is a rather weak imitation of Mr.
Bret Harte, and the reader is glad when the
scene is permanently transferred to Gokral Sec-
tarun. The N aulahka, it should be mentioned,
is a necklace of gems, which makes the moon-
stone of Mr- VVilkie Collins’s imagination in-
significant in comparison. Tarvin’s object is
to get possession of this treasure, and, after a
series of surprising adventures, he is successful.
Then, to the consternation of the reader, he
tamely relinquishes the prize. What is left in
the reader’s mind, aside from his recollection of
the story, is a deepened sense of the immense
difference between the oriental and the western
mind. This has been Mr. Kipling’s message
(as far as he has had such a thing) in most of
his work, and he has presented it with a force
quite beyond the reach of the mere essayist or
historian.
No misplaced ethical scruples on the part of
the authors prevent them from allowing the
characters of “ The ‘Wreckers ” to act out their
parts according to their several natures. They
would not have returned an ill-gotten Naulahka,
— not they Y Mr. Stevenson (for his collabora-
tor can be hardly more than a figure-head)


has written a story of the most exciting de-
scription without being deserted by the style
that would bear up any kind of a story that
he might choose to write. It is very long,
but a good story cannot be too long. Of this
one we are bound to say that it has one or two
wearisome digressions ; so intent must a reader
be upon the development of the main plot that
he is impatient of side-issues that would other-
wise fascinate. There is all the latitude of
scene that could be desired : Paris, Edinburgh,
San Francisco and the South Sea Islands dis-
solve bewilderingly one into another. The
plot is tremendously involved, but things get
straightened out at last, and the strains upon
credulity are few. Most of the characters have
hopelessly muddled standards of right and
wrong ; the author is wise enough to know that
the fault is Nature’s, not his. A story with no
ulterior purpose whatever, we are inclined to
call “The VVrecker ” the best of the season.
The new edition of Peaoock’s novels, so
judiciously edited by Dr. Richard Gamett, is
now complete. In “The Misfortunes of Elphin,”
the author found a rich mine of material in the
Mabinogion and other lore of old-time VVales,
and created a distinct character of the Falstaff-
ian type in the person of Seithenyn ap Saidi,
whose drinking feats excite to such admira-
tion. A selection of the Welsh triads provides
the story with chapter-headings, and \Velsh
lyrics, original or imitated, enliven its pages.
Of this book. Dr. Garnett says: “Its posi-
tion among the author’s novels is unique; in
the charm of romantic incident it surpasses
them all; the humor, though less exuberant
than where the writer is more thoroughly
at home, is still plenteous and Peacockian.”
Readers of “ Maid Marian” will perhaps dis-
sent from the opinion that any other of the
novels can surpass this one in “ the charm
of romantic incident.” The fact that its inci-
dents are the more familiar does not really les-
sen their charm, and certainly their variety is
sufliciently great. Dr. Garnett is at some pains
to establish the fact that “ Maid Marian ” was
written, although not published, a full year
before the appearance of “ Ivanhoe.” The
similarity of the two works is, of course, slight,
and it is not at all a similarity of spirit; but
Peacock’s invention might sufi'er some discredit
from the fact that his romantic idyl was pub-
lished three years later than Scott's romantic
epic. A far closer resemblance is to be found
between “ Maid Marian” and “ The Forest-
ers,” Lord Tennys0n's lovely play. Here,


1892.]
105
THE DIAL
there is similarity of both spirit and incident,
and all the more so because in “ Maid Ma-
rian ” Peacock often forgot that he had set out
to be first of all a satirist, while in “ The For-
esters” Lord Tennyson has for once drama-
tized English history in a less heroic vein than
usual. Perhaps we should not say history, af-
ter all; for Robin Hood has gone the way of
William Tell, but his character and exploits
are still a permanent possession of our race,
thanks to the three men of genius who have
given them literary immortality. “Crotchet
Castle,” which was published in 1831, is the
most genial, and in many ways the most nearly
perfect, of Peacock’s tales. “ It is equally free
from the errors of immaturity and the infirm-
ities of senescence,” says the editor. With
added experience of the world of men, Peacock
came to regard the intellectual vagaries of his
fellows more indulgently, perhaps because he
was growing half-conscious of the fact that he
had developed a few hobbies of his own. The
volume is provided with a motto aptly sugges-
tive of this fact.
" Le monde est plein cle fous, et qui n’eu veut pas voir,
Doit so tenir tout seul, et caaser son miroir.”
In the character of the Reverend Doctor F ol-
liott, the author produced a closer study in
self-portraiture than is elsewhere to be found
in his gallery. Utilitarianism and the new sci-
ence of political economy are made the object
of Peacoek’s keenest satirical shafts ; and Mr.
Ruskin, if he has ever read the book, must
have taken a sympathetic delight in many of
its pages. The volume is particularly notice-
able for the flexibility and grace of its dia-
logue, and for the peculiar excellence of its
poetic interludes. Even in the matter of style,
the author seems for once to have surpassed
himself. The Reverend Doctor Opimian, in
“ Gryll Grange,” is really Doctor Folliott un-
der a new name, and embodies anew the au-
thor’s epicureanism, his literary lore, and his
genial conservatism. “ Gryll Grange,” which,
like “ Melincourt," is long enough to make two
volumes of the new edition, was written in
1859, and was the last of Peacock’s novels.
Its scene is another of those delightful country
houses, abounding in good cheer and good
company. As a story it is the slightest of Pea-
cock’s seven; but we read these books for
something better than their stories. It would
be impossible to characterize the book in more
fitting terms than those of the editor, who says :
“ The septuagenariau has lost the buoyancy of mid-
dle age; his animal spirits no longer eifervescc, and

need to be husbauded; he retains the capacity of laugh-
ter for himself, but has well-nigh lost his command
over the springs of merriment in others. In fine, ‘Gryll
Grange ' is rather amusing than humorous. . . . . The
years which have incoutestably eufeebled the satirist
have widened the knowledge and matured the wisdom
of the scholar. We still have to do with a classic, but
Lucian has given way to Athemeus. . . . . Ethically,
indeed, ‘Gryll Grange’ is an advance upon Peacock’s
former writings. There is more tenderness, more con-
siderateness, a deeper sense of the underlying pathos of
human life.”
VVe suspect that the moralists who have so
long been denouncing the immorality of war-
fare have found an unexpectedly powerful ally
in the novelists who have set themselves to de-
pict warfare in its actual colors. The horror
that may be created by the phrases of rhetoric
is but feeble and short-lived in comparison
with that which accompanies a vivid realiza-
tion of what battlefields really are. This reali-
zation has been given to ours as to no earlier
generation, by such works as Tolstoi’s “VVar
and Peace, ” the Baroness von Suttner’s “Ground
Arms”; and, we may now add, M. Zola’s
“ The Downfall.” After all, morality, as has
so often been said, is merely the nature of
things; let things be shown as they are, and
they convey their own lesson; nothing explicit
is needed. For once, we are almost disposed to
defend and to praise M. Zola’s realism. He
spares us none of the horrors of his subject;
nor in such a case should they be spared.
“ La Débacle ” is the expressive name that he
has given to the cataclysm of 1870, and the
tremendous events that led up to and followed
upon the fatal day of Sedan are described
from the standpoint of the private soldier. We
doubt if the conditions of that struggle have
ever received a more careful and masterly an-
alysis than M. Zola has here given them. The
complete rottenness of that empire of fraud,
the utter ineptitude of the sham Emperor,
whose career was one lolg and blood-stained
carnival of crime, and the ignorant and insane
fatuity with which the French nation rushed
to its doom, are most impressively presented
in these pages. It was patriotism in a very
high sense that dictated this stern record, the
patriotism that sees a nation’s virtues all the
clearer for not being blind to its faults. To
those who read history aright, the expiation of
that année terrible was a blessing in disguise,
for it quickened the sluggish pulse of the na-
tion, and made possible the chastened new
France whose resurgence has ahnost marked a
new epoch in the growth of the human spirit.
VVILLIAM Monrozv PAYNE.


106
[Aug.,
THE DIAL
BOOKS on ENGLISH LITERATURE AND
LANGUAGEJ‘

It is a pleasure to take up the little volume
Professor Corson so modestly styles “A Primer
of English Verse.” Or rather, I may say, it
is a pleasure to find the primer no dry-as-dust
statement of the mechanism of verse, as are
most books on prosody, but an aesthetic treat-
ment froln the standpoint of sympathetic ap-
preciation of its beauties. In fact, almost no
attention is given to metre in the classical
sense, the book being devoted exclusively to
those subtler characteristics of poetry that
make it appeal to the love of the beautiful.
The book contains, among others, chapters on
“Poetic Unities,” “Exceptional and Varied
Metres,” and studies of some of Tennys0n’s
stanzas, the Spenserian stanza, and blank verse.
Under “Poetic Unities” Professor Corson takes
up “' rhythm, metre, stanza, rhyme, assonance,
alliteration, melody, and harmony,” each of
these being considered in its aesthetic rela-
tions. These chapters are introductory, and
give the standpoint of all the criticism that
ollows. In discussing Tennyson, special at-
tention is paid to the stanzas of “ In Memo-
riam,” “ The Two Voices,” and “ The Palace
of Art.” All these are treated in their adap-
tability to the subject matter, as the stanza of
“ In Memoriam ” to continuity, and the stanza
of “ The Two Voices,” with its closely bound
rhyme-scheme, to the interrupted dialogue of
which the latter poem is composed. Another
excellent example of the way in which Profes-
sor Corson deals with metre is shown by his
chapter on the Sonnet. The relation of the
English sonnet to the Italian model is pointed
out, as well as the changes made by English
poets both in the rhyme-scheme and in respect
to the octave and sestet. Copious examples
are given (this is one of the best features of
the book), illustrating the sonnet of Milton,
Shakespeare,W0rdsworth, Mrs. Browning, and
others. The treatment of blank verse, and

"A Piurnm or Exousn Vrmsa, Chiefly in its Esthetic
and Organic Character. By Hiram Cor-son. Boston: Ginn
& Company.
Tm: STUDY CLASS. A Guide for the Student of English
Literature. By Anna Benneson Mclllahan. Chicago: A. C.
MeClurg & Co.
Llwrumcs ON Enousn Ponrsv.
New York: Dodd, Mead & Co.
Porvmn S'rumr.s or NINETEENTH CENTURY Poxrs. By
J. Marshall Mather. New York : Frederick Wame & Co.
Bsownmr, an Ar~'or.o~SAxox EPIC Poem. Translated by
Jno. Leslie Hull. Boston: D. C. Heath & Co.
THE Exmmsn Laxouaoa Arm Ezsousn GRAMMAR. By
Samuel Ramsey. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons.
By William Hazlitt.

other portions of the book, are equally in-
teresting; so that, it may be said, not only
does this primer occupy a unique place, but it
is indispensable to a right knowledge and ap-
preciation of the best in English verse.
One of the most remarkable facts of the
present age is the intellectual eagerness of
women. For not only are young women de-
manding education of the most advanc‘ed char-
acter, but matrons as well as maids have felt
the impulse toward knowledge and have been
trying to make up the deficiencies of early
training. It is to direct such efiort that “ The
Study Class” has been written by Mrs. Anna B.
McMahan. We cannot commend too highly
the aim and plan of this handsome little book.
“These outlines,” the author tells us, “con-
cern themselves with literature itself rather
than with the history of literature. In general,
their questions can only be answered by direct
study of the author in hand.” It is plain from
this that the author’s aim is the only true one.
The book is introduced by five short essays, of
which those on “ Methods in Study ” and “ In-
terpretation of Literature ” are especially to be
commended. These are followed by general
divisions on Shakespeare, the English Drama,
English Poetry, Robert Browning, the En-
glish Essay. Shakespeare is represented by
outlines on “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream,”
“Merchant of Venice,” “Macbeth,” and “Ham-
let.” The student is aided by the indication
of difficult passages, the explanation of which
is to be sought, and by suggestive questions
as to the interpretation of plot and character.
In addition occur references to some of the
best books, so that the student cannot be at a
loss as to what or how to read. The same plan
is taken in the other general divisions, each of
which deserves special comment. It is note-
worthy that one section is given to a study of
English prose as exemplified in the Essay.
This is particularly to be noticed because the
study of prose is so often neglected both in and
out of schools. Here we have outlines on Sid-
ney, Bacon, Milton, Dryden, Addison, John-
son, besides the rise of the newspaper and
periodical, and the later criticism. An “Af-
terword” on books, with a helpful bibliography,
closes a useful little manual that we hope may
find its way to study-classes in many parts of
our country.
The reprint of Hazlitt’s “Lectures on the
English Poets” is valuable for two reasons:
first, as the opinions of a keen critic for his
generation, and next in its relation to the his-


1892.]
107
THE DIAL
tory of literary criticism. Perhaps the latter
is more important at the present time. For,
while the essays on the older poets -—Chaucer,
Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton—are of
interest on their own account, even these are
not seldom inaccurate from the standpoint of
present knowledge, and are therefore some-
times an unsafe guide. But it is especially
in his criticism of contemporaries that Hazlitt’s
judgment is now of least value. In his day,
Worrlsworth, Byron, Coleridge, Moore, and
Southey were writing, and Ha.zlitt’s opinion of
these poets accords in few particulars with the
judgment of posterity. Speaking of the poets
livingin 1818, he says: “I cannot be abso-
lutely certain that anybody, twenty years
hence, will think anything about any of them.”
Starting with such a belief, it is hardly to be
expected that Hazlitt’s estimate would be of
present value, except as it may be placed be-
side the similar criticism of the great reviews,
whose judgment of the Revolutionary poets is
one of the wonders of that interesting but
erratic age.
“Popular Studies of Nineteenth Century
Poets,” the author tells us, “ were prepared for
a class of workingmen, with the sole aim of
rousing their interest in, and provoking them
to a study of, our nineteenth century poets.”
Judged from this standpoint,— and this is but
fair to the author,— the studies deserve suc-
cess with “ a wider section of the same commu-
nity for whom [which ?] they were originally
prepared.” The chapters here given, how-
ever, are not profound criticism; indeed, there
is little that is original: but they do take up
in a pleasing way some characteristics of the
poets considered. The seven chapters are on
“VVordsworth the Naturalist,” “Shelley the
Idealist,” “ Coleridge the Mataphysician,”
“ Byron the Pessimist,” “ Hood the Humorist,”
“Tennyson the Moodist,” “ Browning the
Optimist.” It will be seen at once that the
terms chosen are in most cases only partially
descriptive, and in some instances misleading.
Tennyson and Browning are least profoundly
treated, perhaps ; a blunder being made in the
interpretation of the latter’s beautiful poem,
“VVanting is —What‘?” from the desire of
reading too much philosophy into it. Still, to
one taking up one of these poets for the first
time the book would serve as a helpful intro-
duction; and this is its real purpose.
One of the best signs of the time in educa-
tion is the new impulse to the study of our old-
est poetry and of the language in which it is

written. It is now ten years since Professor
Garnett published his translation of Beowulf,
which has already gone through four editions.
The next year appeared the first volume of his
“ Library of Anglo-Saxon Poetry,” and the re-
maining years of the decade have been equally
fruitful. Now we have come round to Beo-
wulf again, in a new translation by Professor
Hall of William and Mary College. The ques-
tion how Beowulf should be translated will re-
ceive various answers, no doubt, until another
Matthew Arnold shall settle it by such an essay
as that “ On Translating Homer.” Professor
Ha.ll’s translation difiers from Professor Gar-
nett’s in being metrical throughout, and it will
therefore appeal more strongly to the ordinary
reader, although it is not always so literal. Pro-
fessor Hall has also preserved the alliteration
in most cases ; and this is a distinct advantage
as representing the older metre, although it be-
comes a distinct disadvantage when obtained
by introducing a word not preserved in modern
English, as is sometimes done. On the other
hand, some of the words in the list “ not in
general use ” hardly require an explanation to
readers of English; such are barrow, beaker,
bight, boss (of a shield), brand, eke, erst. etc.,
But notwithstanding minor criticisms, we hope
with the author that the book will hasten the
day when the story of Beowulf will be familiar
to English-speaking peoples, and if it shall
serve as an introduction to the study of our
earlier English, this alone will be sufiicient
reason for its existence.
In the preface to his bulky volume on “ The
English Language and English Grammar,”
Mr. Ramsey says the book is not intended “ for
those who are already familiar with all the re-
sults of past labors, and who, therefore, can
find nothing here to add to their present ample
stores of knowledge, there being no claim to
original discovery or invention.” Scholars are
therefore warned that they have nothing to look
for in this work. The question then comes,
has the book been so prepared as to give a cor-
rect idea of present knowledge in respect to the
English language and its grammar? Unfortu-
nately for Mr. Ramsey, this question cannot
be answered in the affirmative. Many things
here stated are true, but in scarcely a chapter
is everything true, and many points are incom-
pletely treated. For example, from the chapter
on “ Grimm’s Law ” no one would get an ac-
curate conception of either consonant-change,
while “Verner’s Law,” a necessary complement
to the law of Grimm, is not mentioned. In the


108
[Aug.,
THE DIAL
same way, when the statement is made that
bleed, feed, /ride, etc., “have the essential fea-
tures of strong verbs,” it shows that the author
has no correct idea of the essential differences be-
tween weak a.nd strong verbs. On the otherhand,
the writing of Mr. Ramsey is clear, forcible, and
suggestive; so that, considered from the stand-
point of essays on subjects connected with En-
glish language and grammar, this volume may
be read with interest.
OLIVER FARRAR Emsason.
Bmrzrs ox NEW BOOKS-

IN the volume of essays upon poetry and the
poets, entitled " The Golden Guess” (Lee & Shep-
ard), Mr. John Vance Cheney, already known as a
poet, makes some welcome additions to the always
too slender stock of sound criticism. In his es-
says entitled “The Old Notion of Poetry” and
“ \Vho are the Great Poets?” Mr. Cheney collects,
canvasses, and coordinates the most memorable
definitions of poetry. Much in these two essays is
a-dmirable; all is deserving of being carefully
weighed. Mr. Cheney has a noble faith in the
value and the destiny of poetry; he is in these mat-
ters a conservative of the school of Matthew Ar-
nold. Yet one is forced to doubt whether this critic
has himself quite realized the vast scope of the art
whereof he discourses. He is of course far in ad-
vance of the old bloodthirsty school of Jeffrey and
the rest, with their Procrustean bed of definitions
and standards; still his definitions are too narrow
for a poet of the robust proportions of Browning.
In dealing with Browning and with Matthew Ar-
nold, the critic is not quite sure of his ground.
Matthew Arnold was a poet, it seems, and one of
the best, yet not a “ born poet ”-—— whatever the dis-
tinction may mean. Considering the mortal length
of the “eternal bead-roll” of English poets whose
verses seem less profound and memorable than
Matthew Arnold’s, would it not have been as well
had some of the rest been granted this happy ex-
emption from “birth’s invidious bar "P As to
Browning, the critic does admit that he_was a poet
-—presuma.bly a born one,-— but the admission
seems made only to be vigorously retracted. All
this fumbling and groping, this saying and unsaying,
is due to the fact that poetry is much too large a thing
for Mr. Cheney's definitions to surround. So, after
imprisoning himself, he is obliged to pick the locks.
His own verse has shown that he has learned for
himself the old lesson that art is long; he has yet
to learn that it is at least equally wide,—a les-
son for the critic still more important. He gives
us some very just negative criticism of Browning.
but it does not advance us, simply because it is not
the fruit of the vision which is born of sympathy.
Mr. Cheney is at his best where his sympathy has

full play, for here his standards and definitions do
not restrict him. For Arnold as a. critic, for Ten-
nyson, for Hawthorne, for Shakespeare, for the
Hebrew poets, for “music, or the tone poetry.” he
has a sympathy that opens his eyes and enables
him to give happy expression to many truths worth
speaking or repeating. Thus, in the essay on Mu-
sic, he says of Shakespeare’s poetry that no other
comes so near as his “ to slipping back from articu-
lation into the mother sound.” Hawthorne, contrary
. to all his principles, he virtually classes among the
poets, where of course he belongs. “ His charming
books are of the poet’s sort,-— the blossom, not
the root, of conviction.” lvhen Mr. Cheney likes
a poet, as in the case of Tennyson, he judges
him by his best, and the result is excellent criti-
cism; when he dislikes a poet, as he does Brown-
ing, he judges him by his worst. and reverses
the result. But after all deductions have been
made, the volume has the very unusual merit of
dealing in a serious, single-hearted way, sometimes
with considerable insight, with the noblest of the
arts. It should be very useful in giving readers a
more religious conception of poetry than that gen-
erally current.
THE drift of Mr. Thomas Nelson Page's volume
of essays, “ The Old South" (Scribner), is indi-
cated in the chapter-headings : “ Authorship Before
the War,” “ The Old Colonial Places,” “Social
Life in Old Virginia Before the War,” “ The Old
Virginia Lawyer,” “ The Negro Question," etc. In
his retrospections, Mr. Page pleasantly illustrates
the tendency of gentlemen from his “ section,” when
dwelling upon the halcyon period “befo' the wa ,”
to soar away from the plain facts of a rather crude
and prosaic reality, and to paint their former selves
as in some sort a survival of the days of chivalry,
—the conservators of the high-flown sentiments
that addled the brains of Don Quixote. A cooler
fancy finds it pretty hard to see in the young peo-
ple of the sugar and tobacco plantations a belated
race of Tristans and Calidores, or even to accept as
“ a delicious, low, slow, musical speech” a harrow-
ing drawl and accent, caught, like the measles, from
“darkey” nurses and playmates. The most im-
portant paper in the volume is a thoughtful and
temperate presentment of the Southern side of
“ The Negro Question." Premising not very log-
ically) that although the right of secession, having
been adjudicated by the war, is no longer an issue,
“ it is important, however, to make it clear that the
right did exist, because on this depends largely the
South's place in history,” Mr. Page goes on to ar-
gue that the Southern whites, in the face of the
physical and moral peril resulting from the over-
crowding among them of an ignorant and hostile
race, are. in their evasion of the law as to the ex-
ercise of the elective franchise, obeying the impera-
tive instinct of self-preservation,— acting. in short,
(g though he does not make the comparison), as their
Northern brethren would act if matched or overs


1892.]
109
THE DIAL
_,_
whelmed at the polls by a. horde, say, of enfran-
chised and politically “ solid " Chinese. Without
altogether admitting Mr. Page’s facts, we may at
least admit the force of his logic. He stoutly combats
the notion that the South “ brought the negro here
and bound him in slavery" or that it “ still desires
the re-establishment of slavery,” sketches the early
history of the institution in America, triumphantly
shows that “ Massachusetts has the honor of being
the first community in America to legalize the slave
trade and slavery by legislative act,” that she most
violently opposed and persecuted the ea.rly emancipa-
tors. and cites an imposing array of cases tending to
show that “ scientifically, historically, and congenit-
ally the white race and the negro race differ," that the
latter, despite exceptions, and in the face of golden
opportunities, has “ never exhibited any capacity
to advance," that, as a race, negroes are organically
and, in great measure, irremediably inferior. Let
us then, urges Mr. Page, the negro being here and
irremovable, deal with the question philosophically
and humanely. \Ve have, of course, but faintly
indicated the leading points of Mr. Page’s case—
which is undeniably a strong one. \Vhile it is highly
improbable that he and those who think with him
are wholly right, it is at least as improbable that
they are wholly wrong; and it is certainly time for
us in the North to inquire just how far they are
right on this menacing question. The other papers
in jhe volume are, allowing for certain florid ten-
dencies already noted, of interest as descriptive of
Southern ante-bellum manners.
IN writing his life of \Villiam Gilmore Simms for
the “American Men of Letters” series (Hough-
ton), Mr. William P. Trent has done a genuine bit
of biographical work, and has carefully examined
and sifted for his purpose all the available material.
He has so well avoided all appearance of partisan-
ship, that it is hard to judge from the tone in which
the book is written whether the author is a South-
erner or a. Northerner. The limits prescribed for
volumes of the series are somewhat too brief to per-
mit Mr. Trent to carry out fully his plan of treat-
ing Simms’s life as that of a typical Southerner to
be explained by the history of the South during the
first seven decades of the nineteenth century. In-
deed, the life led by Simms had so many phases and
relations. and was so full of work of many different
kinds, that often, owing to lack of space, the book
ceases to be a narrative and becomes a mere cat-
alogue of the various irons he had in the fire. To
explain his career his biographer is obliged, how-
ever, to treat quite fully of Southern life and litera-
ture, and to say many things that are helpful in
rendering the Southern attitude of mind intelligible
to Northern readers. As James Fenimore Cooper
was a robust and prolific American Scott, so was
Simms a robust and prolific Southern Cooper. Coop-
er is inferibr to Scott in no greater degree than
Simms is inferior to Cooper. Simms resembled the

two great romancers mentioned, in the careless ra-
pidity of his work and in treating chiefly native
scenes and characters. Like Scott, he made his first
attempts in verse; but he would have been wiser
if, when he found his true field in prose fiction, he
had abstained, as Scott did, from writing poetry,
and wiser still if, like Cooper, he had never pub-
lished verses. Lacking a proper sense of his own
limitations, Simms attempted almost everything,
and set up by turns as poet, editor, romancer, dram-
atist, orator, historian, biographer, politician, re-
viewer, geographer, planter, and military adviser.
He lacked also the sense of humor so conspicuous
in Scott and to a less degree in Cooper. Had Simms
possessed this sense it might have saved him from
publishing much of his prose and most of hisverse.
It would at least have saved him from belated at-
tempts to improve upon the rude rhymes of Mother
Goose. Simms was a writer of great energy, great
versatility, great indefatigability, great talent for
producing speedily an indefinite amount of “ copy,”
great powers of imagination and narration, but he
does not rank with our great writers in any depart-
ment of literature. He stands highest in romance-
writing; and in a few works of this kind, such as
“ The Yemassee " and “The Partisan,” he deserves
the epithet Mr. W. P. Trent gives to Legaré, “just-
not-great.”
J osnrn P1<:mvr:r.1.’s new book “ The Jew at Home ”
(Appleton) is the result of a recent trip to south-
eastern Europe during which the opportunity was
“thrust upon" him of observing the Polish, the
Austro-Hungarian, and the Russian Jew in all his
squalid loathsomeness. “I am neither a Jew hater
nor a Jew lover,” says the author in his preface.
“ What I did see I have simply put down in black
a.nd white." \Vhat Mr. Pennell saw is assuredly
enough to make the meanest Gentile blush for his
species. One is loth to believe that a human crea-
ture can reach such depths as Mr. Pennell’s Jew
reaches. He is certainly not to be touched with
anything so short as the tongs, and would make
“Uncle Toby ” himself a J ew-baiter. Seriously, we
think —— and hope — that Mr. Pennell has laid on his
darks too heavily, our own observation arguing that
much may be made of the Russian or the Polish Jew
if, like Dr. Johnson's Scotchman, “he be caught
young.” Mr. Pennell sketched his first type in
Carlsbad — “ a miserable, weak, consumptive look-
ing specimen of humanity, a greasy cork-screw ring-
let over each ear, head bent forward, coat-collar
turned up, hands crossed on the stomach, each buried
in the opposite sleeve, coat reaching to his heels, and
a caricature of an umbrella umler his arm.” In
Vienna. Mr. Pennell “ began to hear a great deal
about him— not only from the philanthropists who
knew him not, and therefore longed to take him
into their midst, but from those who, knowing him,
long to get rid of him for evermore." Of the Aus-
tro-Hungarian Jew, he says: “ He produces nothing,
he lives on nothing, and apparently he wants noth-


110
[Aug.,
THE DIAL
ing. His home is cheerless, his costume is disrep-
utable, and he stands around doing nothing with his
hands in a country where everyone else of his class
is at work, takes a pride in his home, and dresses
like a picture.” Mr. Pennell’s description of the
Jewish city of Brody-—“a hideous night-mare
of dirt, disease, and poverty ”-— the squeamish
reader would better avoid. Arrived in Russia,
he writes: “No one who has ever seen the Jew
in Russia can wonder that they want to get rid
of a creature who is so clannish and sodirty, who
is so entirely bent on making a little money for
himself, whose shops in all the large commercial
towns are always the meanest.” Out of Russia the
Jew is still worse: “With their liberty they sink
deeper into, instead of seeking to escape from, the
degradation which we are charitable to think entirely
the result of Russian persecution.” Mr. Pennell’s
book is liberally illustrated, and the sketches cer-
tainly go far to bear out the text.
Corvsrnnmne the obvious need for the work, it
seems at first sight rather odd that the credit of
preparing a satisfactory literary guide to London
should fall to an American, Mr. Laurence Hutton;
and, to quote a leading English review, his “Liter-
ary Landmarks of London” (Harper), an eighth
edition of which is now reached, is indeed "a
book of which literary America may be proud, and
literary London ashamed.” It is not, however,
after all so surprising that English writers have
been forestalled in this field, when one remembers
the amazing indifierence of Londoners generally to
what is most interesting to intelligent foreign visi-
tors — the literary and historical associations of the
metropolis. No place in the world is so rich in its
literary shrines as London, and in no place in the
world have they been heretofore so hard to find. Ask
the average Londoner as to the whereabouts of the
stock “ sights ” of the city, the “ Bank," the Crystal
Palace, the great cafés, etc., and he is ready enough
and courteous enough with his answer; but touch him
as to “Will’s Coffee House,” *‘ The Cocoa. Tree,”
"The Globe Theatre” Bankside, the homes and
haunts of Johnson, Goldsmith, Lamb, Addison, Swift,
Thackeray, the scores of hallowed sites laboriously
identified and marked for us by Mr. Hutton. and it is
ten to one he will stare blankly with an obvious effort
to realize what you are " driving at.” Probably he
will put you down as an American, and wonder at
the vagaries of the species. Mr. Hutton’s book is
one which no intelligent tourist to England can
afford to be without. It presents in moderate com-
pass the leading facts relating to the London careers
of British authors, from Addison to Young, and fur-
nishes a ready clue to their homes and resorts in the
metropolis. It has been carefully revised for the
present edition ; a number of supplementary notes
have been added, and. as far as possible, it has been
brought down to the present day. The attractive-
ness of the work has been greatly enhanced by the
addition of seventy-four full-page portraits. The

work seems to be very complete, though we ven-
ture to suggest that some mention might have been
made of George Chapman, whose grave, marked by
alegible inscription. is to be found in the church-
yard of St. Giles’s-in-the-Fields.
MR. FROUDI-:’s latest volume, “ The Spanish Story
of the Armada and Other Essays" (Scribner), con-
sists of two pleasant papers on Norway, a sketch of
the Templars, and three more serious studies in the
history of Spain — rounded fragments of a work in
which the author hoped to reconstruct an important
period in Spanish history. Having rescued the char-
acter of Henry the Eighth from execration, he in-
tended to come to the aid of Charles the Fifth and
Philip the Second and make the “wide correction”
needed in the prevailing opinions about these princes.
Circumstances compelled him to postpone the task,
and the only published results of his researches
are the volume on Queen Catherine's divorce and
the essays on the Armada, Antonio Perez. and Saint
Teresa. The longest and most important of the
three re-tells the story of the Armada from con-
temporary Spanish documents, showing that the
ruin of the great fleet was due not only to the storm
and the valor of Howard and Drake, but to disease,
hunger, and the mistakes of a reluctant and inca-
pable commander. In tracing the tangled history
of Antonio Perez, Philip’s private secretary, Mr.
F roude gives his picture of Philip the Second, " a
painstaking, laborious man, prejudiced, narrow-
minded, superstitious, with a conceit of his own
abilities not uncommon in crowned heads, and fre-
quently with less justification, but conscientious from
his own point of view, and not without the feelings
of a gentleman." Is this very far from the “ prevail-
iug opinions "which Mr. Froude proposed to cor-
rect “ on more tolerant lines"? Certainly every
sober student of the sixteenth century would agree
that it is " as unjust as itis uninstructive " to regard
Philip and his father " merely as reactionary big-
ots.” It would of course be unfair to judge the pro-
jected work by these fragments; so far as they go,
Mr. Froude seems to leave the Spanish princes
about where he found them.
THE latest volume of “ The Queen's Prime Min-
isters” (Harper). a life of the Earl of Derby, is
contributed by Mr. George Saintsbury. In a curt,
characteristic preface, the author states that “in
some considerable reading of books of history ” he
has “ found that the most profitable are usually those
in which the author, while giving his facts as fully
and loyally as he can, makes no secret of his opin-
ions and argues as stoutly as he may for them.”
Coupling this view with the fact that the holder of
it is a stanch Tory, the reader will readily infer the
general tone of Mr. Saintsbui-y’s book -—a forcible,
compact, yet. space considered, fairly thorough re-
view, from the Tory standpoint, of Lord Derby's
public career, with the due infusion of characteristic
anecdote and personal detail. There is nothing per-


1892.]
111
THE DIAL
functory in Mr. Saintsbury’s style, no matter what
his subject may be, and he sketches rapidly and
sympathetically, with a. sufficient mastery of his
facts and a constant eye to their polemical bearing,
the salient events of Lord Derby’s political life, his
part in fighting the Reform Question, his attitude
towards the Corn Law agitation, his first, second,
and third Ministries and the stirring political inci-
dents they covered. Lord Derby's connection with
the turf is not forgotten ; and in an interesting cliap-
ter on his literary work-—notably as to the trans-
lation of the Iliad-—l\Ir. Saintsbury contributes
his quota. to the vexed question, “On Translating
Homer.” Comparing Lord Derby’s version with
those of Hobbes, Dryden, Pope, Cowper, and Soth-
eby—from each of which parallel citations are
made,-— Mr. Saintsbury says: “ Nor am I much
afraid of any competent contradiction when I say
that, if they be compared with each other, and with
the original, Lord Derby's is the only one that de-
serves the name of a translation at all, while it is at
least the equal, poetically, of all but Dryden’s.”
The closing chapter is a careful and not too partial
summary of Lord Derby. Despite certain unpleas-
ant peculiarities of the author’s mannei-,— which is
too often of the snappishly assertive sort that pro-
vokes contradiction irrespectively of the views ad-
vanced,— he has given us one of the best numbers,
so fag, of the series.
Ni-:�MAx's pious and amiable cui-ate of Saint
Mar_v’s, Isaac \Villiains, after retiring to Stinch-
combe wrote out for his children, some years before
his death, his recollections of his earlier and more
active years. He has much to say of the inner
history of the Oxford tractarian movement; and
since a large public now interests itself in this move-
ment, the Rev. Sir George Prevost, brother-in-law
of Mr. Williams, has seen fit to edit and publish
this account as the ~‘ Autobiography of Isaac \Vil-
liams” (Longinans). Mr. \Villiams wrote several
of the " Tracts for the Times.” some poems for
“ Lyra Apostolica,” and numerous other devotional
and poetical works. The present work contains
reminiscences of John and Thomas Keble, Hurrell
Froude. Newman, Pusey, \Vard, Copeland, Robert
and Samuel \Vilberforce. and others. Appended
are several kind letters from Newman, an account
of the dangerous illness from which lvilliams was
said to have been saved by prayer, a statement of
the reasons for Williams's retirement from the can-
didacy for the Poetry Professorship at Oxford. a
characteristic sermon by Thomas Keble, etc. To
show that the tractarian movement did not iieces-
sarily lead to Romanism, Mr. \Villianis points out
that. of the fourteen persons who had any share,
however slight, in writing the “Tracts for the
Times," Newman is the only one who joined the ‘
church of Rome. The book is written in a ramb-
ling and disjointed fashion, and gives no connected
or coherent treatment, either of the life of Isaac
\Villiams, or of the tractarian movement.

A WELL PLANNED and admirably arranged volume
is “ Stories from English History for Young Ameri-
cans,” published by Messrs. Harper & Brothers.
The old stories gain a. fresh interest through their
simple and picturesque telling, the illustrations are
numerous and somewhat unusual, and a. specially
happy feature of the book consists in the introduc-
tion of poems celebrating the various epochs and
incidents. Shakespeare, Scott, Cowper, Southey,
Byron, and many lesser writers, are cited appropri-
ately', so that the young reader's interest in English
literature is naturally quickened along with his
knowledge of history.
A HANDY little manual compiled by Albert P.
Southwick, author of “ Handy Helps," is “ Wisps
of Wit and Wisdom ” (A. Lovell & Co.), in which
the puzzled seeker may find answers to all sorts of
recondite queries, the scope and variety of which
beggars description. The book should be a boon to
harassed editors of the “ Correspondents’ Column,”
and a careful perusal of it may enable ambitious
readers, at little cost, to make a handsome show of
curious erudition.
BOOKS OF 'riii~: .\ION'1‘H.

[The following list, embracing 50 lilies, includes all books
received by Tun DIAL during the month of July, 18.9.-2.]
GENERAL LITEIR./1 TUBE.
The Dialogues of Plato. Translated into English, with
Analyses and Introductions, by B. Jowett, M.A. Third
edition, revised and corrected throughout. In 5 vols.,
8vo, uncut edges. Macmillan dz Co. $20.00.
A History of 1Esthetic. By Bernard Bosan net, M.A.
(sCxon.) Large Svo, pp. 502, uncut. Macnii an & Co.
2.75.
Serampore Letters: Being the Unpublished Correspon-
dence of William Carey and others with John Williams,
1B()0—l8lli. Edited h Leighton and Mornay lvilliams,
with Introduction by homas \'right. Illus., 12ino, pp.
150. G. P. Putnam s Sons. $1.50.
Browning's Criticism of Life. B William F. Revell,
author of “ Ethical Forecasts.” ‘Vith froiitispiece, lblmo,
pp. 116. Macmillan’s “ Dilettante Library.”
BIOGRAPHY AND MEMOIRS.
Dictionary of National Biography. Edited by Sidney
Lee. Vol. XXXL, Kennett——Lanibni-t. Large Svo, pp.
-H8, gilt top. Macmillan & Co. $7l.7."i.
Memoirs of the Prince do Talleyrand. Edited by the
Due de Broglie. Translated by Mrs. Angus Hall, with
Introduction by Hon. lvhitelaw Reid. \/ul. V., illus.,
large Xvo, pp. 432, gilt top. G. P. Putnam's Sons. $2.50.
POETR Y.
City Festivals. By \'ill Carleton, author of “ Farm Bal-
lads.” Illus., square Svo, pp. 16!. Harper & Brothers.
$2.00.
Love Letters of a Violinist, and Other Poems. By Eric
Mackay. Special copyright American edition, newly re-
gised. 1'.Zmo, pp. ‘.377, gilt top. Lovell, Coryell & Co.
1.25.
Told in the Gate. By Arlo Bates. lylmo, pp. 215, gilt top,
uncut edges. Roberts Brothers. $1.25.
Helen 01’ Troy: Her Life and Translation. Done into Rhyme
from the Greek Books, by Andrew Lang. ltimo, pp. ‘.204,
uncut. Macmillan & Co. T5 cts.
Barrack-Room Ballads, and Other Verses. By Rud ard
Kipling. l2mo, pp. 270, paper. United States ook
Company. 50 cts.
90 cts.


112
[Aug.,
THE DIAL
FICTION.
of VVest and East. By Rudyard
12mo, pp. 379. Macmil-
The Naulahkaz A Sto
Kiplin and lvolcott alestier.
lan & $1.50.
The Wrecker. By Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Os-
gorne. Illus., 12mo, pp. 553. Charles Sci-ibner’s Sons.
1.25.
Anthony Melgreve. By Thomas M‘Caleb. 12mo, pp. 203,
gilt top, uncut edges. G. P. Putnam's Sons. $1.50.
Mansfield Perk. By Jane Austen, in 2 vols., ltimo, gilt
tops. Roberts Brothers. $2.50.
The Downfall: (La Débiclul. By Emile Zola. Tran.sla_ted
by E. P. Robins. Illus., 12mo, pp. Camell Publish-
ing Company. $1.50.
Mrs. Keats Bradford: A Novel. By Maria Louise Pool,
author of “ Dally.” 12mo, pp. 309. Harper & Brothers. ‘
$1.25.
The Magic Ink, and Other Stories. By William Black.
Illus.. 12mo, pp. ‘.159. Harper & Brothers. $1.25.
The Average Woman. By Wolcott Balestier. With a
Preface by Henry James. 12mo, pp. 260. United States
Book Co. $1.25.
That Dakota Girl. By Stella Gilmau. 1‘.Zmo, pp. 240. U. S.
Book Co. 81.25.
Manuelita: The Story of San Xavier del Bac. By Marion
Calvert “’ilson, author of “ Renee." With froutispiece,
12mo, pp. 305. U. S. Book Co. $1.25.
The Story of a Penitent Soul. By Adeline Sergeant,
author of “The Luck of the House.” 12mo, pp. Lovell, Coryell & Co. $1.25.
The Slave of the Lamp. By Henry Seton Men-iman, author
of " Young Mistley.” 12mo, pp. 327. Lovell, Coryell &
Co. $1.25.
In the Roar of the Sea. By S. Barinfi-Gould, author of
"Urith.” lfimo, pp. 407. National ook Co. $1.25.
The Man in Possession. By “Rita,” author of “Dame
Durden.” l2mo, pp'. 323. Hoveudon Co. 81.00.
Far from To-Day. By Gertrude Hall. ltimo, pp. 2511. Rob-
erts Brothers. $1.00.
The Master of Silence: A Romance. By Irving Bacheller.
llimo, pp. 176. C. L. Vvebster & Co. 75 cts.
Cynthia ‘Wa.kehaxn's Money: By Anna Katharine Green.
With frontispiece, 16mo, pp. 336. G. P. Putnam's Sons.
Paper, 50 ots.
A Thorny Path (Per Aspere). By George Ebsrs, author of
“ Uarda." Translated from the German, by Clara Bell.
In 2 vols., 18mo, paper. D. Appleton & Co. 50 cts.
NEW VOLUMES IN THE PAPER LIBRARIES.
Harper's Franklin Square Library: A Charge for France,
and other stories, by John Heard. Jr., illus.; A Trans-
lauted Rose. a story of New York society, by M. E. W.
Sherwood. Each, 50 cts.
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THE DIAL
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THE DIAL, I\'n. 24 Adam: Street, Chicago.
No.1./,9. SEPTEMBER 1,1892. Vol.XIII.

CONTEXT&
THE NEW DIAL
THE CHICAGO UNIVERSITY .
A CENTURY OF SHELLEY .
DEATH OF SHELLEY l'Poem|.
COMMUNICATIONS :
Emerson’s Obtuseness to Shelley.
Mahan .
Univemity Extension \Vork in Chicago. ll’. F. Poole 130
\Vho Reads a Chicago Book ? J. K. . . 130
CHRONICLE AND COMMENT .
A New Phase of the Rights of Authors.—Purchase
and Gift of a. Great English Librsry.—Plans for the
Tilden Library in New Yorlr.—The Shelley Memorial
at Viareggio.—Omnr Khayyam.
THE TRUE “TOM” PAINE . . 132
RECENT ARCHITECTURE IN AMERICA. Bryan
Lathrop . . . .136
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. Samuel Willard . 138
THE PRINCIPLES OF MODERN MEDIIEVALISM.
MarI'an Mead . 143
BRIEFS ON NE\' BOOKS . . . . . . . . . . 146
Cuird’s Essays on Philosophy and Literature.—Stud-
ies of Homer as a. Poet and a I’roblem.—A judicial
view of the American Colonial Era.—A father and
daughter in the Swiss IIighlnnds.—A companion to
the “ Reveries of a. Bachelor."—A serviceable volume
about Julius Czesar.—Tl1e life of an American Col-
lege President.—A plea for the Organic Unity of
Christendom. — Recreations of an 0ld—fashioned
Schola.r.——The folk-lore elements of modern culture.
—A boon to Goethe students.—Charles Sumner as a
Maker of An|erica.—An injudicious and one-sided
Kansas History.
BRIEFER MENTION .
LITERARY NOTES AND NEWS . . 151
ANNOUNCEMENTS OF FALL PUBLICATIONS 152
TOPIGS IN SEPTEMBER PERIODICALS .
LIST OF NEW BOOKS . .
W. R. P.
Anna B. Mc-
130
.150
. 156
. 157

.1315
‘ on the first and sixteenth of each Inonth.*
THE NEW DIAL.
When THE DIAL was established, in May, I830,
it was the intention of the editor and publishers to

number. RIIXTIAICB Mould be bu check, or bu erpress or postal make of it a‘ critical review of the first rank! which
should occupy in this country a. field somewhat sim-
ilar to that occupied in England by such papers as
“ The Athenseum ” and “The Academy." At that
time no such review was in existence, or had existed,
in the United States, and the interests of literature
I found but scanty or casual representation. The
success of Tm: DIAL in its attempt was instant and
pronounced. It won recognition from the start, as
< embodying a. higher critical standard than had
hitherto been upheld in American letters, and as
3 dealing with literary interests in a just, dignified,
1 and authoritative manner.
, of its publication it has received cordial commenda-
‘ tion from the most diverse sources, American and
During the twelve years
English ; it has won for itself a permanent place in
the regard of the intellectually disposed portion of
the public; and it has so maintained the standard
with which it set forth that it has found no serious
competitor in its special field of literary criticism.
But gratifying as these evidences of success have
been, we have felt for some time that within our
reach lay an opportunity not fully grasped. On
many occasions friendly critics have hinted that a.
review appearing but monthly could not keep its
readers fully abreast of the stream of literary pro-
duction, and that many literary interests, quite as
genuine as those immediately relating to the ac-
tual publication of books, were ignored by the too
rigid method of devoting our space almost wholly
to reviews of new works. Realizing the force of
these criticisms, we have for a considerable time had
in contemplation plans for the enlargement and im-_
provement of 'I‘IIE DIAL, and these plans we now
have the pleasure of outlining for our readers.
In the first place, THE DIAL, while retaining its
familiar form and size, becomes with this issue a.
semi~monthly publication, and will appear promptly
Having
I thus at our command twice as much space as fol"-
merly, we shall be enabled both to give 0. more ade-
quate treatment than heretofore to current publica-
tions, and to extend the scope of our review by the
inclusion of new, and not strictly critical. depart-
ments. Of these new departments. some indication is
nfi"oI-ded by the contents of the present number, and
their general character may be here summarized.
The new sub-title of Tm; DIAL states its purposes

‘Although double the amount of matter will be furnished,
the annual subscription is raised from $1.50 to $2.00 only.
Subscriptions already paid will be continued for the full period
without extra charge.


128
THE DIAL
as accurately as such narrow limits allow. It is
“ a semi-monthly journal of literary criticism, discus-
sion, and information.” Discussion of matters of
current literary interest, both by editors and con-
tributors, will hereafter be one of its prominent
features, and the paper will assume a distinct voice
upon questions of general intellectual concern. The
lives and works of writers recently deceased will re-
ceive careful attention. A special feature of each
issue will be the leading review, descriptive and ex-
tractive rather than critical, of the most important
book of the fortnight, provided it lend itself to such
treatment. As a journal of literary comment and
information, THE DIAL will give the latest news
about books, their writers and publishers. and other
subjects of allied interest. Its regular bibliograph-
ical features will be retained. and new departments
will be added from time to time as the broadening
field of intellectual activity shall seem to make
them desirable. Tl-[E DIAI. aims to make itself in-
dispensable to educators and librarians, to authors
and their publishers, to book-sellers and book-buy-
ers, and to the intelligent reading public in general.
While its field is thus co-extensive with the field
of culture, the critical review, which in the past has
been Tl-IE DIAI.'s almost sole mode of expression,
will continue to be the principal means of its ap-
peal to the reader. As heretofore, these reviews will
be the work of competent specialists, and the longer
ones will bear the authority of their authors’ sig-
natures. As our readers well know, the list of con-
tributors to T1112 DIAL includes the names of many
scholars of the highest eminence, representing the
universities, the professions, and the ranks of pri-
vate scholarship. This list is being constantly re-
cruited, and is one of which a journal may well be
proud. THE DIAL stands preeminently for object-
ive and scientific criticism; it believes in the ex-
istence of critical canons, and endeavors to discover
and adhere to them. On the other hand, it en-
deavors to avoid that miscalled criticism of the
subjective sort which displays the mood of the critic
rather than the character of the work that he is
handling, and whose flippancy or triviality of tone
seems mainly designed to excite admiration for the
cleverness of its writer. This sort of writing may
be amusing enough to read, but it fails utterly of
the purpose of criticism in the genuine sense.
Again, the constituency of such a journal as T HE
DIAL demands that the specialist reviewer shall not
be too technical in his criticism, that he shall coin-
bine scientific accuracy, on the one hand, with a
readable and generally interesting treatment of his
theme, upon the other. This sort of treatment will
continue to be, as it always has been, the prevailing
note of our criticism.
In closing, a word may be said of Chicago as the
place of publication of such a review as TIII-: DIAL.
In most respects, the place of publication of such a
review matters very little, and its contents should
rarely offer any indication of the particular section

or community in which they see the light. But the
rapid growth of Chicago in other than material
directions is a phenomenon which, although recent,
is rapidly forcing itself upon the attention of the
country. Chicago is in the centre of the great
book-buying and book-reading section of the coun-
try, and as a point of distribution it has already
gained the importance that it is certain to have be-
fore long as a point of publication also; its public
collections of books are in a fair way to rival those
of any other city, and its new university is about to
give a marked impetus to the interests of culture.
In view of these facts it is at least not inappropriate
that the name of Chicago should stand upon the
title-page of THE DIAL.
THE CHICAGO UNIVERSITY.
The educated men and women of the northern
Valley of the Mississippi are looking with keen yet
sympathetic interest toward one of the largest edu-
cational experiments ever undertaken. \‘Vithin two
years President Harper has gathered, upon an ut-
terly bare site. five millions of dollars, and a force
of ninety instructors and investigators, many of
them chosen from the very élite of the world's edu-
cational corps. The work of organization will now
speedily follow, and in a few weeks another great
teaching university will be in active operation.
THE DIAL will have occasion from time to time to
comment upon features of this fairly unique un-
dertaking, which it recognizes as a collaborator for
the advancement of high thinking in this new world
of the mid-continent. Its first word will be one of
friendly welcome, as it seeks to call attention to
what it considers the gain already accrued to this
Chicago-centred section through President Harper's
personality and influence. His institution has yet
to engage in the work of educating the youth of
this wide field; but for two years its head has been
engaged in the even more important work —- which
he will still continue——of educating the business
men of his constituency: of transforming shrewd
money-getters into intelligent money-givers. As
one looks back for thirty-five years over the many
attempts to found and develop educational institu-
tions in and about Chicago —- whether his gaze may
rest upon the old Chicago University, or the uni-
versities at Lake Forest and Evanston,-— the same
phenomena are recalled: an army of \Vestern
youth, too limited in means to attend our Eastern
institutions, yet eager for knowledge, for educae
tional discipline, for culture; small bands of single-
hearted and devoted teachers, putting to one side-
their ambition for investigation and research, and
for slender pay giving themselves to the work of in-
struction ; boards of well-meaning but short-sighted
trustees, expecting the same financial balance to
the debit account as would be looked for in a pack-
ing establishment, and unable to grasp the old-
world truth that education costs in money but pays-


1892.]
129
THE DIAL
richly in a hundred other ways. And so things
went on for years, with presidents and faculties
crippled in their educational plans by a half-hearted
financial support, and everyone who could afford
it sending his sons and daughters to the East for
their education.
But in a happy moment Dr. Harper was called
to establish a university anew in Chicago. Other
presidents had indeed done yeoman service before
he came. The devoted Burroughs of the old Chi-
cago University, Haven and Fowler and Cum-
mings at Evanston, Gregory and Roberts _at Lake
F orest, all helped to prepare the way for Dr. Har-
per. But they were voices crying in a financial wil-
derness, and their persuasions unlocked few pockets
beyond those of their own boards of trust. At last a
better hour brought in a more fortunate man. Much
was said of Dr. Harper’s scholarship, and such he
undoubtedly has in a high degree; yet his peers
in the land are not a few. His teaching facility
Was extolled—and that he is an inspiring and
gifted teacher, teachers can best bear witness,—
but he is here also only one of a large brother-
hood. Had he possessed both scholarship and
teaching faculty in a far higher degree, he might
have come and gone, and, like many another, left
only a reminiscence in the Chicago sensorium. But
something in this man’s personality has taken hold
on the potential benefactors and donors of Chicago,
and has constrained them to do his bidding, and
to do it gladly. For while we do not forget that
over two and a half of his millions have come from
Mr. Rockefeller, and almost another million from
other outside sources, we still note that Chicago has .
paid in a million and a half of hard dollars toward
this enterprise. \Ve do not overlook the advantage
that President Harper has derived from the pioneer
work of his predecessors. Nor do we attempt to
analyse or explain the peculiar power by which
he has been able to unloose the purse-strings of our
rich men. We merely wish to emphasize the fact
that he has done so, and then to indicate the im-
portance of his success to the cause of education in
the \Vest. For what he has done, in our judgment,
has been to produce a change of tissue in the brain
of moneyed Chicago, to set up a contagion in the
financial corpuscles of its social being. He has led
and is leading the wealth of Chicago to view its
obligations to society more seriously,— to realize
that there is more fame in a memorial endowment, or
hall, or scholarship, than in an obelisk at Rose Hill;
to understand more discerningly the need for edu-
cation here in the \Vest, and the cost that it must
entail and should entail on Chicago herself. Under
the stimulus of his purposes and his personality,
men find not only that they cannot refuse to give
to aid his plans, but that they have confidence in his
leadership, which commends to them what it takes
for its aims. He himself says it is easiest to beg for .
a. large undertaking, and he has at last convinced
our Chicago merchants that it is easy to do largely

for education, as well as for public improvements
and Columbiau Expositions.
This awakening of the moneyed classes of Chi-
cago in behalf of the new university will inure to
the benefit of sister institutions. Already there
] are indications that the colleges at Evanston and
Lake Forest are to appeal to a more enlightened
constituency hereafter, when the cause of educa-
tion under denominational control is presented to
the Methodists and Presbyterians of the vicinity.
But all eyes seem to be looking to the plans and
purposes of the new Chicago University for sugges-
tion and instruction. Boards of trust cannot escape
the information on educational matters which the
daily press of the city is giving them so frequently
and so lavishly, and our business men gradually
are accustoming their minds to the thought that
educational institutions are at their doors, are
come to stay, and are to be carried on by their
funds, but along lilies laid down by others more
expert in educational details than themselves. Pres-
ident Harper has at last produced an educational
atmosphere in Chicago, and all workers for culture
and ideas must hail its creation as one of the most
beneficent dispensations that have ever befallen the
city. It is of secondary importance that details of
his plan may be criticised. Time alone can de-
cide how workable a plan it is, but the lapse of
time will only strengthen the conviction that with
his coming a less material epoch began for Chicago.
A CENTURY SHELLEY.
A hundred years have passed since the birth of
Shelley, and the star of his fame seems fairly to
have emerged from the mists of the horizon upon
which it’ rose. The third generation of his success-
ors is now upon the scene, and the judgment of a
third generation is apt to have many of the charac-
teristics of finality. A close observer of the course
of critical opinion can but be gratified at the way
in which Shelley has come to be taken more and
more seriously as the years have passed, and at
last assigned to immortality by an almost universal
consensus. The “inopportune brawler " of whom
Mr. Lang has spoken still lifts up his voice from
time to time, and “chatter about Harriet" is still
heard in Philistine circles; but the one finds few
listeners to-day, and the other excites but a weary
and contemptuous smile. The great but not un-
erring critic who found too little -‘ criticism of life "
in the “ Ode to the West \Vind.” and �ho, enslaved
by a narrow formula, sought to exalt the fame of
\Vordsworth, and even of Byron, above that of the
poet of ‘~ Hellas ” and -' Prometheus Unbound,"
only succeeded in making a displav of his own limit-
ations. and reached the very nadir of his discern-
ment iu the memorable suggestion that the essays
and letters of Shelley might *-' finally come to stand
higher than his poetry.”
And at the same time that the supremacy of


130
[Sept. 1,
THE DIAL
Shelley’s song has received the widest recognition, I
the beauty of his life and the value of his ideals '
have won their share in the general tribute of
praise. That his life, to the penetrating gaze, and
seen in true perspective, was one of absolute devo-
tion to the good, the true. and the beautiful, has be-
come more apparent; that his ideals were better
than his contemporaries knew, is revealed to us when
we compare them with those of Scott, Bryon, and
\'ordsworth, subject in their nature to the out-
wearing process of time. As Mr. Gosse said, in his
address at the recent Horsham celebration, “To-
day, under the auspices of the greatest poet our
language has produced since Shelley died, encour-
aged by universal public opinion and by dignitaries
of all the professions, yes, even by prelates of our
national church, we are gathered here as a sign
that the period of prejudice is over, that England
is in sympathy at last with her beautiful wayward
child, and is reconciled to his harmonious ministry."
It is sadly true, indeed, that the world's great age
has not yet begun anew, nor have the golden years
returned; but Shelley’s prophecy is still the best
inspiration for those who have not, discouraged, v
abandoned hope, and they think of him as no
“beautiful and ineffectual angel, heating in the
void his luminous wings in vain," for they well
know that his ideal, in the imperishable form of his
expression, has not lost, nor is likely to lose, any-
thing of its persuasive power to shape to better ends
the lives of men.

DEA TH OF SHELLEY.
I saw a form all robed in dazzling white,
Floating and waiting o'er a stormy sea;
Dark brooded down the dreadful arch of Night
Over a sail that bent tempestuously;
And through the storm rang out melodiously
Great Shelley’s death-song,_a.s, no help at hand,
The wave onbore him to Eternity,
Dirged by the passion at his own command.‘
Then, as his body sank beneath the brine,
From out the surge his spirit touched the air;
And, hovering low, the form of Keats divine
Seized him away from that condign despair,-—
Part of the Universe, — and far on high
They passed together to the inmost sky.
' w. R. P.
C OJI Ill UNI CA TIONS.

EMERSONS OBTUSENIBS TO SHELLEY.
(To the Editor of THE DIAL.)
Apropos of the Shelley Centenary, can anyone sug-
gest a probable explanation of Emerson's lack of appre-
ciation of Shelley‘! In his essay on “ Poetry and Imag-
ination,” Emerson says, “ When people tell me they do
not relish poetry, and bring me Shelley or Aikiu's I
Poets, or I know not what volumes of rh_vmed English,
to show that it has no charm, I am quite of their mind.”
When one reflects on the similarity of spirit between
Emerson and Shelley, this disparagement seems all the

more unaccountable. Both were passionate worshippers
of nature, both were pantheistic in philosophy, both ar-
dent disciples of Plato. How could Emerson ha\'e
failed to feel a sense of kinship toward one whose vir-
tues were originality in convictions, purity in morals,
generosity of disposition, and high attainments in scholar-
ship? It is true that Emerson further confesses, “I
look in vain for the poet Idescribe”; but, on general
principles, one would think that the author of “ The
Skylark" and the “ Hymn to Intellectual Beauty"
would have been recognized as possessing a very large
number of the qualifications enumerated in this truly
great and generally sound criticism on the art of poetry.
Certain friends have suggested various theories. One
says that Emerson lacked the musical ear, and thus
missed one of Shelley’s greatest channs; another, that
Emerson could not pardon the note of lamentntion run-
ning through Shelley's poetry, since the mission of
poetry in to invigorate and not depress the soul; M. I).
Conway hints that it looks like n theological “survival,”
this failure to recognize the "authentic fire " of Shelley.
Are any of these theories adequate, or can anyone
offer a better? Ass». B. McM.
A.\'.
Quincy, Ill., August 3.3, 18.'I..’.
UNIVERSITY EXTENSION WORK IN CHICAGO.
(To the Editor of T53 DIAL.)
As some iujudicious articles have lately appeared in
Chicago newspapers representing that there was an un-
pleasant competition and rivalry between the various
universities and societies engaged in plans for Univer-
sity Extension work in and around Chicago, the friends
of this important educational movement will be glad to
be assured that there is, fortunately, no foundation for
such statements. There is more work in sight than all
these agencies can do, and their relations in this mat-
ter are most cordial and harmonious. The interest de-
veloped iu the preliminary work begun last winter is a
sure promise of the success which will attend the larger
preparations now nearly completed for lectures during
the coming season. The Newberry Library Centre
during the past season maintained three evening courses
of six lectures each; and the hall was so crowded it
was necessary to repeat the lecture to another audience
the next morning. There were also successful courses
at five other centres, namely: The Athemeum, Union
Park, \Vorkers' Church, Oak Park, and South Evans-
ton. The Chicago L'niversity now appears in the field
with a comprehensive scheme of work which requires
for its execution six executive ofiicers and twenty-five
professors as lecturers. 'I‘hrough the Chicago Society
for University Extension, the University of Indiana of-
fers a scheme of subjects, with seventeen lecturers; the
Northwestern L'nivcrsit_v, with fourteen lecturers; the
University of Illinois, with nine; and Lake Forest Uni-
versity, and \'aba.sh College, with two each. Almost
every subject, in science, art and literature, is repre-
sented in these schemes. Professor Riclmrd G. Moul-
ton, one of the pioneers of and perhaps the most suc-
cessful English lecturer in University Extension work,
will open the Newberry Library Centre course on Fri-
day evening, September 30, upon the subject of English
Literature. As the class will doubtless be large, more
spacious accomodations will be procured than the au-
ditorium of the i\'t-wberry Library. For Monday even-
ings, courses upon Science will be arranged; and for


THE
DIAL
\'ednesday evenings, courses upon History. Tickets
for a single course of six lectures will be -$1.50 and
for five courses The several centres will make
announcements when their schemes are completed.
W. F. Poouz.
Chicago, August 80, 189?.
WHO READS A CHICAGO BOOK?
(To the Editor of THE DIAL.)
I have heard a good deal lately about Chicago as a
literary centre, and the building up of awesterli litera-
ture. Now it seems to me that what is needed to make
a \'estern literature is not so much \‘l'estern writers as
\Vestern readers of Western: writings. In some old
literary centres — Paris, for example — people read al-
most nothing but home productions. In some new lite-
rary centres -- Chicago, for example_-people read
almost no home productions. Both peoples are narro�
and provincial; but the Parisian plan is the more favor-
able to intellectual progress.
It is literally true that the average Chicago reader
steers clear of a Chicago book, unless it chances to be
written by a friend, or a man who has made his name
and fame by Eastern success. What do they read?
Each month, twenty-eight to thirty-one morning papers,
twenty-eight to thirty-one evening papers, two Eastern
magazines, and four Paris novels. The result is, a
muddling of brains, a domestic tint in journalistic
thought, and an alien tint in literary thought. For-
eigners meeting us abroad are prone to think we are
New Yorkers or Bostouians until we touch on daily
news and reviews, when Westeruism comes to the sur-
face at once.
Whenever there shall be, among our millions, a few
thousands, who on seeing any Chicago book announced,
cry, "Hello! What's this? I must buy it and see,”
there will be a Western literature. Then it will be the
second book of a worthless writer which is neglected ;
now it is the -first book of aworthy writer—if he happen
to be "a Wester||er." J. K.
Chicago, August .25, 1892.
CHRONICLE AND COAIMENT.
A case recently decided in the English courts is
of much interest to authors. A firm of publishers hav-
ing become possessed, by purchase of the copyright of

Mr. Sidney Lee's edition of Lord Herbert of Cher- '
bury's “ Autobiography,” reissued the work in a muti-
lated form. Mr. Lee thereupon moved for an injunc-
tion, on the ground that his literary reputation was in-
jured by the publication. The decision of the court
was for the defense, on the ground that the plaiutifi"s
only means of redress was in an action for libel, and
that the Court of Chancery, in which the case was
then up for trial, had no jurisdiction in cases of libel,
which were essentially jury cases. .-\s Mr. Lee has au-
nounced his intention of dropping the matter at this
point, the filial settlement of the question is postponed,
and its temporary settlement is certainly unsatisfactory
from the author-’s standpoint. This sort of treatment
of a purchased copyright is quite common in the Ifnited
States; and. American authors, no less than English,
would be glad to know the exact nature of their rights
in a work with whose copyright thc_v have parted.
l The final disposition that has been made of the
l great .-Xlthorp Library is, on the whole, a more satisfac-
I tory one than was reasonably to be hoped for. Mrs.
Rylands, the widow of a man who was himself no mean
bibliophile, has purchased the entire collection for a.
sum not mentioned, but which could hardly have been
less than a million dollars, and has presented it to the
city of Manchester. In view of the melancholy picture
presented by the dispersion of a world-famous col-
lection of books, it is fortunate that Lord Spencer’s
matchlcss collection should have been spared that fate;
and, although American pride would have been grati-
fied had the treasure been secured for our own coun-
try, yet it will probably prove more useful where it is,-
‘ that is, for those who really have a use for its contents.
That it will be accessible to the public is certainly a.
great boon. Our American libraries, even the largest
of them, have hardly reached the point at which ex-
penditure for such rarities is judicious, and for many
years to come will be better occupied in collecting
books which are the means of scholarship, rather than
in acquiring Caxtons, block books, and similar curi-
osities.
In the September “ Scribner-‘s. ” Mr. John Bigo-
low, one of the trustees of the Tilden Library fund,
discusses the form that should be given to the pros-
pective library. It will be rcmembcrcd that, although
Mr. Tildcn’s will, as far as it related to the library be-
quest, was annulled by the New York courts, the prin-
cipal heir refused to benefit by a decision so manifestly
opposed to the will of the testator, and that conse-
quently a fund amounting to upwards of two millions is
still available for carrying out Mr. Tildeu’s beneflcent
purpose. Mr. Bigelow presents plans for a proposed
building, and suggests Bryant Park, now occupied by a
reservoir, as the most suitable site. The reservoir, he
says, is no longer of any use to the city, and much of
the material of which it is composed might be put to
use in the new structure. He also suggests that the
city of New York ought to provide both site and build-
ing, leaving the endowment intact for the purchase of
books and the support of the library.

The Shelley memorial to be erected on the shore
at Viareggio is the work of Mr. Onslow Ford, and is
said to be his masterpiece. It is tlms described by a
writer in " Ihe Magazine of Art”: “The poet is rep-
resented as he was found on the storm-washed shore of
Viareggio, lifeless, nude, cold, but still beautiful, inex-
pressibly beautiful, in death. A branch, which is a
wreath, and yet is not a wreath, of laurels encircles the
' head. Beneath the figure and the slab ( n which the poet's
figure rests, a youthful and tenderly abstracted muse
bends over her brokcn lyre, while two winged lions and
some delicate leaf tracery complete the accessories of
the monument."
Omar Khayyam, as the author of a famous
treatise on "nl-jebr" rather than as the poet of the
immortal "Rubaiyat," is the subject of an interest-
ing article in a recent “Saturday Review.” The good
old Persian way of winding up a demonstration " with
a laus Deo instead of some barren Q. E. D." is not
5 only more pious than ours, but also a better expression
of the average school-boy's feelings. The full name
of the poet-tentmaker-mathematician was, it seems,
(;i_\~su| ed Din Abfil Fath Omar beu Ibrihiln Alkhay-
_\'fiini of Naisliapfir, which is altogether too bright and
i good for luunan nature's daily food.


THE DIAL
[Sept 1.
Tn:-: TRUE “ Tom” PAL\'E.*
Mr. Moncnre D. Conway has done ample if
belated justice to a curiously misjudged char-
acter.
generally been ignored or understated by his-
torians, and we have heretofore- had nothing
trustworthy or even respectable in the way of
a Life of him,—the sketches of Cheetham and
“ Oldys ” being mere libels, and that of Rick-
man the partial tribute of a personal’ friend._
Mr. Conway has given us a work of much
thoroughness and research, in which the histor-
ical interest fairly vies with the biographical ;
and he has evidently been at so much pains to
secure fulness and accuracy of fact that his de-
fects of manner are the more to be regretted.
His tone throughout is that of the advocate;
he too evidently holds a brief for Paine, and
his constant overrating of his client, coupled
with an unhappy tendency to underrate men
with whom his client happened at any time
to be at odds, not only casts ])Ti"ZGfilCiC sus-
picion upon his general fairness, but defeats
his prime object by breeding a spirit of com-
bativeness and contradiction in the reader.
Thomas Paine has been so generally misunder-
stood that the mere statement of the facts
about him is a sufficient vindication ; and this
necessary result of Mr. Conway’s book need
certainly offend no one in a day when Paine’s
views generally smack more of truism than of
heresy. We are happily past regarding as
outside the pale of decent society a man who
pooh-poohs the “ divine right ” of royal barna-
cles and baccarat-dealing Highnesses, or who
thinks “ it would have approached nearer to
the idea of a miracle if Jonah had swallowed
the whale.” There is something half comic,
half pathetic, in the disparity between the con-
ventional “ Tom ” Paine, the sulphurous her-
etic whose name is still a stench in the nostrils
of the pious, the third in the infernal triad of
“ the world, the flesh, and ‘ Tom ’ Paine,” and
the real Thomas Paine, the God-fearing reform-
er. the humane, rather impractical schemer
whom Danton rallied for “hoping to make
revolutions with rose-water,” of Mr. Couway’s
pages; and we may note in passing that it
is to be placed to our author’s credit that he
rarely allows his zeal as a biographer to tempt
him into acrimony toward his hero’s religious
oppressors. Faith is the parent of persecu-
' Tan LIFE or THOMAS Punn. With s History of his
Literary, Political, and Religious Career. By Moncure Daniel
Conway. Also, a Sketch of Paine by William Cobbett. Two
Volumes, with Frontispiece. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons.
Paine’s services to this country have-

tion, as doubt is the parent of toleration ;
and in Paine’s day the woeful doctrine of ex-
clusive salvation still largely prevailed. The
rigidly orthodox must have looked upon the
author of “ The Age of Reason ” much as we
should look upon an opium-crazed Malay run-
ning amuck through the streets,--a being to
be pitied for his condition, but to be relentlessly
made away with in the interests of the com-
mon safety. “ Tom " Paine, in the eyes of the
“ unco guid ” of his time, had not only given
over his own soul to eternal perdition, but was
diligently engaged in ensnaring the souls of
others ; and the rack and the stake being no
longer available, recourse was had to vitupera-
tion.
The history of Thomas Paine is that of an
, English radical of Quaker training, a devout
deist, a staymaker, an exciseman, occasional
preacher, an inventor of iron bridges, a social
schemer who planned societies much as he
planned his bridges without due regard to ma-
terials, a political adventurer caught in the re-
volutionary cyclones of the last century, a
pamphleteer whose ti-enchant pen wrought pow-
erfully in the cause of American Independence,
a member of the French National Convention,
an outlaw in his own country and an alien in
that which had called him to her councils, a
guillotine-shadowed prisoner in the Luxem-
bourg, and finally a pathetic memorial of the
proverbial ingratitude of republics. In Paine’s
case the term “ atheist ” — “ filthy little athe-
ist” is the urbane expression of one trebly-
inaccurate writer, Paine having been neither
“ filthy ” nor “little ” nor “ atheist,” — is ab-
surdly misapplied. The epithet, which has
unfortunately stuck, was merely a term of
abuse, the most effective in the orthodox bil-
lingsgate, and had no foundation in fact.
“ The Age of Reason ” is virtually an effort to
acquit the Creator of what Paine held to be
the crimes and frailties imputed to him in the
Scriptures, — certainly a very different thing
from arguing for the self-existence of the Uni-
verse. Paine himself, alluding to the aim of
his book, wrote to Samuel Adams:
“ The people of France were running headlong into
Atheism, and I had the work translated in their own lan-
guage to stop them in that career and fix them to the
first article of every man's creed, who has any creed at
all, — I believe in God. ”
The Bishop of Llandafi, an orthodox oppo-
nent, once wrote to Paine: “ There is a philo-
sophical sublimity in some of your ideas when
speaking of the Creator of the Universe.”


1892.]
133
THE DIAL
“Paine,” says Mr. Conway, and he amply backs
his assertion, “ was a profoundly religious man
—one of the few in our revolutionary era of
whom it can be said that his delight was in
the law of the Lord, and in that law he did
meditate day and night.” In short, Paine’s
“ atheism ” consisted in the fact that his con-
ception of God did not conform to the prevail- -
ing one of his day; and it is perhaps not too
much to say that—thanks to the process which
Prosessor Fiske formidably terms the “ dean-
thropomorphization ” of religion—the prevail-
ing conception of intelligent religious people
of our day agrees more closely with Paine’s
idea than with that of his t-o1'1uentors. In a
broad sense, Paine was a Christian; for while
rejecting metaphysical subtleties that have
grown into the Christian system, he devoutly
honored the Jesus of whom Dekker wrote:
“ The best of men
That e’er wore earth about him, was a sufferer ;
A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit.
The first true gentleman that ever breathed."
In his “ Age of Reason,” Paine says:
"Nothing that is here said can apply, even with the
most distant disrespect, to the real character of Jesus
Christ. He was a virtuous and amiable man. The
morality that he preached and practised was of the
most benevolent kind; and though similar systems of
morality had been preached by Confucius, and by some
of the Greek philosophers, many years before, and by
the Quakers since, and by good men in all ages, it has
not been exceeded by any. . . . He was the son of
God in like manner that every other person is—for
the Creator is the Father of All. . . . Jesus Christ
founded no new system. He called men to the prac-
tise of moral virtues, and the belief in one God. The
great trait in his character is philanthropy.”
Touching the main trend of Paine’s religious
writings, the vindication of Deity from what he
considered the aspersions of the current theol-
ogy, we may now without offense agree with
Mr. Spencer,— though the words quoted might
have been Paine’s, — that “ the visiting on Ad-
am’s descendants through hundreds of genera-
tious dreadful penalties for a small transgress-
ion which they did not commit ; the damning of
all men who do not avail themselves of an al-
leged mode of obtaining forgiveness which most
men have never heard of; and the effecting
reconciliation by sacrificing a son who was per-
fectly innocent, to satisfy the assumed necessity
for a propitiatory victim,” is hardly consonant
with human ideas of justice.
other free-thinkers of his day. in arguing that
such alleged attributes are inconsistent, not
only with human justice, but also with Divine
character as revealed to us in a beneficently-
But Paine, like i

ordered nature, made the fatal logical mistake
of looking at Nature only on one side—-the
Ormuzd side. He was like the man who, after
supping comfortably on stewed eels, piously
apostrophized Nature’s goodness toward her
creatures. without considering the fate of the
eels that had been skinned alive for his enjoy-
ment. A theological opponent might reason-
ably urge, as Bishop Butler did in effect,
against Paine, that for every natural appliance
for manis enjoyment and preservation, one can
be pointed out for his torment and destruction ;
while an opponent versed in modern science
would doubtless argue that the world being a
sort of shambles filled with victims awaiting
the stroke of the mallet, an amphitheatre of
universal strife where no upturned thumb ever
answered the prayer of those vanquished in
“ the struggle for existence,” is fair evidence
in favor of that implacable Deity of the lVest-
minster Catechism whom Paine denied. The
‘ idea is expressed by Tennyson, when he sings
of “ Man”—
“Who trusted God was love indeed,
And love Creation’s final law, —
Tho’ Nature, red in tooth and claw
lvith ravine, shrieked against his creed."
Mr. Conway’s account of Paine’s career in
America, though marred by a too-constant strain
of panegyric, is interesting and circumstantial,
and furnishes material which future histori-
ans of the period will do well to examine.
Paine came to America November 30, 1774,
bearing a letter from Franklin, in which he_ is
described as “ an ingenious, worthy young
man.” Later, he became editor of the “ Penn-
sylvania Magazine ” —-— " a seedbag," says Mr.
Conway, “ from which this sower scattered the
seeds of great reforms ripening with the pro-
gress of civilization.” Through his writings in
this and in other journals, he was (again quot-
ing Mr. Conway),
“ The first to urge extension of the principles of in-
dependence to the enslaved negro; the first to arraign
monarchy, and to point out the danger of its survival in
the presidency; the first to propose articles of a more
thorough nationality to the new-horn State; the first to
advocate international arbitration; the first to expose
the absurdity and criminality of duelling; the first to
suggest more rational ideas of marriage and divorce;
the first to advpcate national and international copy-
right; the first to plead for the animals; the first to de-
mand justice for women."
On April 19, 1775, came the fight at Lex-
ington, and in the autumn of the same year
Paine was writing his famous “Common Sense”
—a pamphlet of which Joel Barlow (a sen-
sible man, despite his “ Columbiad ”), wrote:


134
[Sept. 1,
“ It gave spirit and resolution to the Americans, who
were then wavering and undetermined, to assert their
rights, and inspired a decisive energy into their coun-
sels; we may therefore venture to say, without fear of
contradiction, that the great American cause owed as
much to the pen of Paine as to the sword of Washing-
ton."
Even the malignant Cheetham is constrained
to say of “ Common Sense ” :
“ Speaking a language which the colonists had felt,
but not thought, its popularity, terrible in its consequences
to the parent country, was unexampled in the history of
the press."
The pamphlet reached VVashington soon after
the tidings of the burning of Norfolk; and he
thereupon wrote to Joseph Reed:
“ A few more such flaming arguments as were exhib-
ited at Falmouth and Norfolk, added to the sound (loc-
trine and nnanswernble reasoning contained in the pum-
phlet ‘ Common Sense,’will not leave numbers at a loss
to decide upon the propriety of separation.”
Of the effectiveness of this production there
can be no question. Tersely eloquent, incisive,
based upon accurate knowledge, sound prin-
ciples, and intense conviction, it gave at once
expression to the thoughts and definiteness to
the aims of the colonists. The divergent rills
and rivulets of public opinion were turned
with the force of the torrent into a common
channel; and it is not, perhaps, overstating
the case to say that chief among the direct in-
tellectual forces that led to the declaration of
American Independence was Paine’s “ Com-
mon Sense.” Cobbett declared that “ Whoever
may have written the Declaration, Paine was
its author.”
Scarcely less effective than “Common Sense”
was the eloquent first “Crisis” (containing
the much quoted “These are the times that
try men’s souls ”), written by the light of
camp-fires at Newark, and read, by Washing-
ton’s order, to the disheartened troops on the
eve of the battle of Trenton. Paine’s pen,
throughout the war, continued to serve the
cause of Independence; and as he had, with
a rather Quixotic generosity, turned over to
the States the valuable copyrights of his writ-
ings, the arrival of peace found him impover-
ished. Mr. Conway makes it painfully evident
that Paine - even allowing him to have been
a quasi-adventurer who fought largely “ for
his own hand ”— was shabbily treated by the
nation he had helped to found. Even VVash-
ington, at first zealous for his intimate friend
and supporter, cooled unaccountably ; and the
most ardent Washington worshipper must con-
fess a show of reason for the bitterly-pathetic
epigram found among Paine's papers

_ “Advice to the statuary who is to execute the statue of Wash-
mgton:
"Take from the mine the coldest, hardest stone,
It needs no fashion; it is ‘Washington.
But if you chisel, let the stroke be rude.
And on his heart engrave—Ingratitnde."
Paine's~ career in the French National Con-
vention, to which he was chosen in 1792 as
Deputy for Calais, was always creditable and
once heroic. He tried, much at his own peril,
to save the life of Louis, standing out firmly
against Marat, and adroitly urging: “ It is
little to overthrow the idol; it is the pedestal
which must especially be beaten down. It is
the kingly office, rather than the officer, that is
destructive.” He was the associate of the
Girondists, the friend of Condorcet, Brissot,
Vergniaud, Gensonne ; and these connections,
coupled with his relative political conservatism
and his humane efforts in behalf of Louis,
brought him under the ban of the Mountain.
On December 28, 1793, he was committed to
the Luxembourg Prison, under a law against
foreigners belonging to countries at war with
France ; and on his way to prison he handed
to Joel Barlow the manuscript of his “ Age of
Reason.” Mr. Conway charges Pa,ine’s im-
prisonment directly to the machinations of the
American Minister, Gouverneur Morris, who
was jealous of him, and saw in him an obstacle
to his pet scheme of detaching Washington
from the French alliance. It is at least evi-
dent that, even if Morris did not put Paine in
prison (and we think Mr. Conway is a little
over-ingenious as to this point), he kept him
there for ten months by refusing to claim him
as an American citizen, and by concealing the
facts from the government at \Vashington.
Morris’s successor, Monroe, was certainly sur-
prised. on his arrival in Paris, to find Paine
a prisoner; and on his first positive assertion
of Paine’s American citizenship, the doors of
the Luxembourg flew open. That Paine
escaped the guillotine by a hair's breath is evi-
dent from the following extract from his rem-
iniscences :
Q‘ ()ue himdred mid sixty-eight persons were taken out
of the Luxembourg in one night, and a hundred and
sixty of them gnillotincd ncxt day, of which I knew I
was to be one; and the mnuncr I escaped that fatc is
curious, and has all the appearance of accident. The
room in which I lodged was on the ground floor, and one
of u long rnngc of rooms under a gallery, and the (luur
of it opened outward and tlnt against the wall; so that
when it was opened the inside of the door uppcuri-d out-
ward, and the contrary when it was shut. . . . \/hen
persons by scores and hundreds were to be taken out
of the prison for the guillotine, it was always done in
the night, and those who performed that office had


1892.]
THE DIAL
135
a private mark or signal by which they knew what
rooms to go to and what number to take. \Ve, as I
said, were four, and the door of our room was marked,
unobserved by us, with that number in chalk; but it
happened, if happening is the proper word, that the
mark was put on when the door was open and flat
against the wall, and thereby came on the inside
when we shut it at night; and the destroying angel
passed by it.”
Paine’s experiences after his return to Amer-
ica in 1802 illustrated unpleasantly the old dis-
parity between the ideal and the real. Free
America, the “ land of promise” to which he
had looked so eagerly as a final haven, was
not “all his fancy painted her.” Political
parties had formed, and on Paine’s arrival he
was furiously assailed, as the friend of Jeffer-
son, by the defeated Federalists. Naturally,
his religions views formed the point of attack,
and the country soon rang with scurrilous abuse
of the “ atheist.” Press and pulpit set up a
chorus of vituperation, and Bordentown, his
old home, was promptly placarded with pictures
of “ the devil flying off with Tom Paine.”
Wishing one day to drive over to Trenton, he
was refused a seat in the stage; and on finally
arriving at Trenton, “ insults were heaped on
the, man who by camp-fires had written the
* Crisis ’ which animated the conquerors of the
Hessians at that place.” VVhen Paine and his
friend Kirkbride, after dining at Trenton,
“ applied for a seat in the New York stage for
Paine, the pious owner, Voorhis, cursed Paine
as ‘a deist,’ and said, ‘I’ll be damned if he
shall go in my stage.’ " What were Mr.
Voorhis’ personal views as to the problem of
the Universe, does not appear. Another stage-
man also refused to take Paine, urging, “ My
stage and horses were once struck by light-
ning, and I don’t want them to suffer again.”
‘V hen Paine and Kirkbride had entered their
carriage, a mob surrounded them, drumming
the “ Rogue’s March."
In 1806 a blow still more cruel was inflicted
on our unfortunate Quix0te—certainly in
these his declining years a “Knight of the
Sorrowful Figure.” His vote was refused at
New Rochelle, on the ground that he was not
a citizen; the Supervisor declaring that the
former American Minister, Morris, had re-
fused to reclaim him from a French prison he-
cause he was not an American.
“The Supervisor who disfranchised the author of
‘Common Sense’ had been a Tory in the Revolution;
the man he disfranchised was one to whom the Presi-
dent of the 'United States had written, five years be-

will be your glory to have steadily labored, and with
as much effect as any man living.’ ”
Vvhatever Paine may have sowed in America,
he certainly seems to have reaped the whirl-
wind.
Mr. Conway is at special pains to vindicate
Paine’s personal character. From the mass of
testimony adduced, we select the following from
Walt lvhitman :
‘iIn m childhood a great deal was said of Paine in
our neigliliorhood, in Long Island. . . . It was atiine
when in religion, there was as yet no philosophicalmid-
dle ground; people were very strong on one side or the
other; there was a great deal of lying; and the liars
were often well paid for their work. Paine and his
principles made the great issue. Paine was double-
danmably lied about. Colonel Fellows was a man of
perfect truth and exactness, and he assured me that
the stories disparaging to Paine personally were quite
false. Paine was neither drunken nor filthy; he drank
as other people did, and was a high-minded gentle-
man. . . . Paine was among the best and truest of
men.”
Doubtless the older reader will have read
in his youth certain lurid tales of the death-
bed of “ Tom ” Paine, of his frantic remorse
and tardy recantation ; perhaps, too, of his sorry
funeral c0rté_r]e,— two negroes, a carriage, with
six Irishmen drunk and blaspheming, a riding
chair with two men in it, one asleep, and an
Irish Quaker (a union dimly suggestive of a.
merman or a centaur) on horseback, whose final
tribute to Paine was that he “ was glad he was
gone, for he had tired his friends out by his in-
temperance and frailties.” Such were the piti-
ful “ arguments ” of the orthodoxy of the time.
Of Paine’s death and funeral, the following
is the undoubtedly true account of Madame
Bonneville, a French lady who with her chil-
dren had followed him to America and was
supported during his lifetime from his scanty
fore, ‘I am in hopes you will find us returned gener-
ally to sentiments worthy of former times. In these it
purse I
“ When he was near his end, two American clergy-
meu came to see him and to talk with him on religious
matters. ‘ Let me alone,’ said he ; ‘ good morning.’ He
desired they should be admitted no more. One of his
friends came to New York, a person for whom he had
a great esteem, and whom he had not seen for a long
while. He was overjoyed at seeing him ; but this per-
son began to speak upon religion, and Paine turned his
head on the other side, and remained silent, even to
the adieu of the person. . . . Seeing his end fast ap-
proaching, I asked him, in presence of a friend, if he
felt satisfied with the treatment he had received at our
house ; upou which he could only exclaim, Oh, yes.’
He spent the night in tranquillity, and expired in the
morning at eight o’cloek. . . . Before his coffin was
placed in the carriage, I went to see him; and having
a rose in my bosom, I took it out, and placed it on his
breast. . . . The interment was a scene to affect and
to wound any sensible heart. Contemplating who it
was, what man it was, that we were committing to an


136
[Sept. L
THE DIAL

obscure grave on an open and disregarded bit of land,
I could not help feeling most acutely. Before the
earth was thrown down upon the coflin, I, placing my-
self at the east end of the grave, said to my son Ben-
jamin, ‘ Stand you there at the other end, as a witness
for grateful America.’ Looking round me, and be-
holding the small group of spectators, I exclaimed, as
the earth was tumbled into the grave, ‘ Oh, Mr.
Paine ! my son stands here as a testimony of the grati-
tude of America, and I, for France !’"
Whether this simple rite was more honorable
to Thomas Paine than a statelier funeral bought
by the sacrifice of principle, may be left to the
judgment of the reader.
RECEN'f 1\RCHI’l‘F.(7TURE IN Al\IERI('A-*

Among the Anglo Saxon race, during the
greater part of the nineteenth century archi-
tecture was almost a lost art. At about the be-
ginning of the last decade, the popular taste in
this direction had sunk to perhaps the lowest
point ever reached. There had been ages of dul-
ness before, but no other had produced so many
large and costly buildings that were absolutely
vicious in design. This is more especially true
of the United States, where every state, every
county and every town has a state house, a
court house, or a “ city hall,” pretentious and
costly in proportion to its means. These pub-
lic buildings must be taken as an expression of
the average taste ; and, with a few exceptions,
they are the worst examples of architecture
that the world has ever seen. They almost
make one despair of representative govern-
ment, and the only consolation about them is
that they are not fire-proof.
The first signs of the dawn of a brighter
day were an efiort to revive the Gothic and to
give it a practical modern character. But the
attempt to create a Victorian Gothieonly em-
phasized the depth of ignorance and bad taste
that had been reached; and this Nineteenth
Century revival died in giving birth to the so-
called “ Queen Anne” style. This was the
weakest child of all the ages, and, fortunately,
it died young. Since the style of Queen Anne
became as dead as the Queen herself, a move-
ment has begun which seems to give promise
of a popular awakening to good architecture.
There are some hopeful signs about it, but
it is too early to predict any great or perma-
nent results. There are still too many indica-
tions that in our country architecture is a crea-
ture of fashion, whose style may be changed

* Ansnrc/m Ancnrrscrvms. Studies by Montgomery
Schuyler. With Illustrations. New York: Harper & Brothers.

as cnpriciously as the cut of our clothes or the
shape of our hats.
The people are not altogether to blame for
this. The architects are largely responsible
for it, as they have flitted from one style to
another like butterflies among flowers. Many
of the successful architects have been, and
some of them are still, willing to design a
building in any desired style,— Grecian, Ro-
manesque, Gothic, Renaissance, Byzantine,
Neo-grec, or Moorish. No good architecture
has ever come, or ever will come, from such a
process of selection. No man can speak a half-
dozen languages equally well, and no architect
can master all the styles. The best work of our
age has been done by a man of genius, Mr.
Richardson, who had also the good sense to
recognize the limitations of human life, and
devoted all his time and energies to making
one style his own. It matters not so much
what the style, as that it be followed persist-
ently until it is fully mastered.
It is evident, however, that we cannot hope
for universally good architecture until the peo-
ple are taught to distinguish the good from
the bad. There are now many young archi-
tects who are earnestly striving to do good
work, and there are intelligent and scholarly
critics who are enthusiastically conducting a
crusade in behalf of a nobler and truer art;
for in this work of education the critic is as
necessary as the architect. Among these work-
ers for good is Mr. Montgomery Schuyler,
whose studies in American architecture, orig-
inally published in a magazine, have recently
appeared in book form. The work as a whole
has some defects which are inseparable from a
compilation of disconnected articles; but the
articles are all admirable in tone and spirit,
and the book should be welcomed as a valuable
contribution to popular education on a very
important subject. Mr. Schuyler writcs about
our more recent architecture in a scholarly and
judicial manner, giving generous praise where
it is due, and, where occasion requires it, in-
dulging in such scathing criticism that one’s
heart warms to him.
The first chapter, called “The Point of
View,” is a report of an address by the author
before the National Association of Builders,
and serves as an introduction. It contains a
quotation from an architect, whose name is not
given, which is witty, and too true, even yet:
“ American architecture is the art of covering
_one thing with another thing to imitate a third
thing, which, if genuine, would not be desir-


1892.]
137
THE DIAL
able.” In this address the author pays a well-
deserved tribute to the memory of John Wel-
born Root, which is at the same time a good
text for a discourse on architecture :
“ Mr. Root’s buildings exhibit true sincerity_the
knowledge of the material with which he had to do,
the fulfilment of the purpose which he had to perform.
. . . I don’t know any greater loss that could have
happened to the architecture of this country and to the
architecture of the future than that man dying before
his prime.”
The second chapter, “ Concerning Queen
Anne,” was written while that style was strug-
gling for existence, and shows a vigor of de-
nunciation which justifies the belief that the
author may have contributed to its early de-
mise. After describing some particularly bad
dwellings in New York, he says:
“ These are not subjects for architectural criticism,
they call for the intervention of an architectural police.
They are cases of disorderly conduct done in brick and
brownstone. . . . It is enough to indicate these things,
and to point out that they are all produced by the
strain in minds of incompetent designers after original-
ity and aborigiuality,—a purpose essentially vulgar,
which would vitiate the work even of a competent de-
signer, wherever it could be detected. For although
the pursuit of excellence is sure to result in novelty, the
pursuit of novelty is sure not to result in excellence.”
He inentions a tendency of the younger gen-
eration of architects “ to take themselves too
seriously and their art not seriously enough.”
It is only fair to say that this was written
nine years ago.
To the readers of THE DIAL perhaps the
most interesting and suggestive chapters are
those entitled “Glimpses of Western Archi-
tecture,” which form nearly one half of the
book. The first one relates to Chicago. Mr.
Schuyler is naturally amused by that comedy
of errors, the City Hall and County Building,
which violate the first principle of architecture
-—that a building shall be designed with re-
ference to the uses for which it is intended.
He says, however:
" Its formulas may seem quite empty, but they
gather dignity when contrasted with the work of an
arid ‘swallower of formulas’ like the architect of the
Board of Tradc. There are not many other structures
in the United States of equal cost and pretension,
which equally with this combine the dignity of a coili-
mercial traveller with the bland repose of St. Vitus.
It is difficult to contemplate its bustling and uneasy
facade without feeling a certain sympathy with the
mob of anarchists that ‘demonstrated ’ under its win-
dows on the night of its opening. If they were really
anarchists, it was very ungrateful of them, for one
would go far to find a more perfect expression of an-
archy in architecture.
“ In striking contrast with these buildings is the Art
Institute, of only three stories and a roof; but no

neighbor could make it other than a vigorous and
effective work, as dignified as the Board of Trade is
uneasy, and as quiet as that is noisy. . . . It may
be significant, with reference to the tendency of West-
ern architecture, that this admirable building, admira-
ble in its sobriety and moderation that are facilitated
by its moderate size, is precisely what one would not ex-
pect to find in Chicago, so little is there evident in it of
an intention to collar the eye or to challenge the atten-
tion it so very well repays.”
In commenting on domestic architecture in
Chicago, Mr. Schuyler says:
“ There are exceptions, and some of them are con-
spicuous and painful exceptions; but the rule is that
the architect attempts to make the house even of a rich
man look like a house rather than a palace, and that
there is very little of the mere ostentation of riches.
The commercial palace against which we have been in-
veighiug is by no means as offensive as the domestic
sham palace, and from this latter ofiense Chicago is
much freer than most older American cities.”
The nineteenth century has been chiefly re-
markable for the development of things mater-
ial, and perhaps more especially for the im-
provement of means of transportation. The
latest achievement in this direction is the ele-
vator, which is now really a vertical elevated
railway, swift, smooth in motion, and perfectly
safe. It has created a revolution in architec-
ture. The inventor of the first perfected hy-
draulic elevator once remarked to the writer,
that he had “ made it possible to build two
cities where one had stood before.” The ele-
vator has made it possible and profitable to
build mercantile structures of a height never
before attempted. It is therefore perfectly
natural that in this material and practical land
these “elevator buildings ” should represent
what is best in the recent growth and develop-
ment of architecture. They are built under
many new conditions of construction and of
proportion, thus giving the architect a certain
freedom from tradition in his design; and they
are usually erected for profit, and to enter into
competition with other structures of similar
nature, and the architect is compelled to re-
gard the uses of the building as of paramount
importance, and to obtain architectural effects
without sacrificing material advantages. These
are conditions favorable to the development ,of
good, sincere, vigorous architecture.
There is one other condition, to which Mr.
Schuyler makes no reference, possibly because
it has come to perfection since the greater part
of his book was written,-—for it is really “ some-
thing new under the sun ”; this is steel con-
struction. The use of steel'f0r the structural
parts of a building was unknown to the world
when the architectural styles were formed '


138
[Sept. 1,
THE DIAL
and it is only within a few years that buildings
have been erected in which all the supports,
from foundation to roof, are columns and
beams of steel. This is the lightest, strong-
est, most compact and homogeneous of all build-
ing materials, and out of this new construction
we may reasonably anticipate, for the first
time in three hundred years, the development
of a new style of architecture, or a modifica-
tion of the older styles as radical as the Re-
naissance. In all countries, the first stone
buildings have followed the forms of the earlier
wooden structures; and the first buildings of
steel construction have been designed after the
manner of stone or brick. hlassive walls are
suspended from slender steel columns, to give
the jhcade the appearance of solidity which in
the older structures was essential ; or the same
effect has been sought by using sham walls of
terra cotta, which is lighter and equally de-
ceptive. In time all this will be changed.
The public will learn the strength of the light
steel shafts, and architects will venture more
and more to express in their designs the light-
ness of the construction. Gradually a new style
will be evolved, and buildings will be designed
as radically different from any now in exist-
ence as a suspension bridge differs from one
built of stone piers and arches. What is now
most needed is a fire-proof material for the ex-
terior covering of the steel, to protect it from
the atmosphere and from fire, which shall take
the place of bricks and terra cotta, and present
an unbroken surface, without visible joints.
There is no limit to the beauty of effects
which the art of man can produce in decorat-
ing this surface. VVhen such a material shall
have been found, we can imagine buildings con-
structed of steel as light as a cobweb, as_ strong
as the pyramids, and as beautiful as the Taj
Mani’ BRYAN Lnnnor.
Josuua R. GlDDINGS.*
The history of the United States seems full
of miracles. Virginia and Massachusetts are
planted as if one should toss handfuls of
wheat not unmixed with chaff into thickets of
thistles ; and lo! the wheat uproots the this-
tles, but the chaff persists with the wheat.
The colonists blundered and stumbled, but suc-
ceeded. When, in 1745, Massachusetts un-


* Tm; Lira or dosnua R. Gmmnos. By the Hon. George
W. Julian, author of “Political Recollections.” With two
portraits and an index. Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co.

dertook to capture Louisburg with such trum-
pery plans, such insufficient means, she ought
to have failed ; but she took the fortress.
Bunker Hill was at once a blunder, a defeat
in fact, a victory in effect.
In the Revolutionary War, how often failure
seems inevitable, and safety comes as an acci-
dent ' As we read Fiske’s “ Critical Period,”
which has the representative vigor of a drama,
the Ship of State, without a pilot, goes amid
shoals and rocks in a crooked channel, with
checks of adverse winds and currents, till we
are amazed to see her enter the deep blue
water and spread her sails for the voyage.
But our greatest miracle was the overthrow
of Slavery. It was the Babylon the Great of
the Apocalypse, sitting upon many waters,
grand and powerful, bending the statesmen
and ordering the politicians to do its will,_win-
ping in all skirmishes and battles from the
day it became a leading political power. To
lose the Northwest Territory seemed a trifle
when it gained the Southwest. It was little
to grant the Missouri restriction when it
pushed its frontier to the edge of Iowa and
gained Florida. Texas was clear gain. Con-
trolling presidents, cabinets, congresses, legis-
lation, diplomacy. commerce, how should Slav-
ery fear ? And yet -~“ Fallen, fallen, is Baby-
lon the Great I ”
The history of the rise of the powers that
overthrew it is not yet all written. When a
century has passed, men may survey them in
full perspective. Then shall be seen the
cumulative power of many strokes. Colonel
Buford, at West Point,—as Emerson tells
us, -— caused the trunnions of a cannon to be
pounded with a hammer until they broke off ;
and he fired a cannon some hundreds of times
until it burst. “ Now, which stroke broke the
trunnion ? Every stroke. Which blast burst
the piece? Every blast.” So not Adams, nor
Garrison, nor Birney, nor Leavitt, nor Smith,
nor Phillips, nor John Brown, nor Giddings,
nor Hale, nor Seward, nor Lincoln, destroyed
Slavery; but all the men and all the events
that fought against it. Yea, let us not forget
among the destroyers of Slavery, Calhoun,
Mason, Slidell, Davis, Toombs, and Yancey;
Brooks and Pryor, as well as Sumner and
Greeley ; for their madness availed much, and
forced the crisis that might have been long
postponed, fifty or a hundred years. Only of
the leaders in this warfare can we write lives,
and so give the contest dramatic form and
interest.


1892.]
139
THE DIAL
Prominent among these will always be
counted Joshua Reed Giddings, whose life has
just been portrayed for us by the Hon. George
W. Julian, Mr. Giddings’s son-in-law. Mr.
Julian himself took part in the great contest,
and has already given us a volume of “ Polit-
ical Recollections.” One who shared in the heat
and stress of the battle can write with an in-
terest and insight greater than those can have
who look on affairs only as a history ; and our
author, though writing with the calmness of a
historian and the coolness of his seventy years,
never lacks earnestness or vigor. Some phrase
not needed for the story will betray the parti-
san, as when he generally calls the representa-
tives from the South “ slaveholders ” ; or when
he says, “ The last hopes of Mr. Clay had per-
ished forever in the nomination of the hero of
the Mexican war and the owner of two hun-
dred slaves ”: the owning of slaves had noth-
ing to do with the matter, but is a little dig at
General Taylor,—an abolitionist slash. The
reader must make allowance for the personal
equation, as in all histories. Mr. Julian tries
to be just; yet it is hard for an abolitionist
to obey the tolerant maxim, “Put yourself in
his place.”
‘Naturally, and appropriately too, this biog-
raphy of Mr. Giddings is almost entirely occu-
pied with his political career. Two chapters
tell us of his birth in 1795, on the \Vestern
Reserve, that New England of the VVest, and
of his career until he entered Congress. Had
he been born ten or fifteen years later, he
might have had an education at Yale ; but he
had such education only as he could work out
for himself in an intelligent community, with
few books well studied. A raid of the In-
dians in the VVar of 1812 made him a soldier
for a short time at the age of seventeen. His
neighbors called on him to teach school when
he was nineteen, wisely thinking that his qual-
ities of mind would make up for lack of book
lore. To the surprise of his friends, he told
them, when he was twenty-three, that he was
going to be a lawyer ; and a lawyer he became.
When he went to begin his studies, he had to
walk forty miles, his baggage “ consisting of
three shirts, two pairs of stockings, four white
neck-cloths, and ‘two pocket handkerchiefs. He
had also seventeen dollars in cash.” It is the
old story of Energy and Character starting at
the bottom of the hill and forcing a way to the
top. While still a student, he married the
wife who helped him all his days and survived
him but a few months. As a lawyer, he was

eminent especially for defending persons
charged with crime, often saving innocent men
who were unable to employ counsel. Some-
times he risked reputation and popularity in
so doing. Serving one term in the State Leg-
islature, he refused to go again.
In the great financial crash of 1836-7, he
lost his property, and, at the same time, his
health. He had not long resumed his practice
when, in 1838, he was elected to Congress,
and thus entered upon what proved to be the
great work of his life, his battle with Slavery
in the House of Representatives.
The first administration of General Jackson
had developed from the political indifference
of Monroe’s time two distinct parties, one of
which took the name of National Republican
or Vi/'hig; the other retained the older name,
Democratic. Mr. Giddings, an ardent admirer
of Henry Clay and a believer in his distinc-
tive doctrines of finance and tarifi, entered
Congress as a Whig, and remained such un-
til, in 1848, he threw himself with all his
force into the Free-Soil party, which was the
intermediate between the Liberty party. of
1840—-18 and the Republican party of 1854.
There was no Anti-slavery party until 1840 ;
but in both parties there were a few men who
were opposed to slavery too strongly to keep
silence in Congress. There was, when Giddings
entered the House, but one representative who
was an avowed abolitionist,—\Villiam Slade of
Vermont, who made the first speech in favor
of the abolition of slavery that was delivered
in Congress. But the principal figure in the
fight which was already going on was the
able, versatile, and vigorous ex-president, John
Quincy Adams, venerable in age, station, ex-
perience, knowledge, and character.
It is a remarkable fact that the first and the
last lines of contest with “the slave power”
were mere side issues which stirred up those
who cared little for the main question of slav-
ery. To raise either of these issues was a po-
litical blunder. The first side issue was the
right of petition; the second was our national-
ity. Mr. Adams was leader in maintaining the
first right, and he was the first to say that the
war-powers of the nation might be called upon
to extinguish slavery; and Lincoln seized the
flaming sword of Emancipation to which Adams
had pointed, and with it cut down the foe of
our nationality.. When Mr. Giddings entered
Congress, petitions on the subject of slavery
were coming into the hands of Mr. Adams, be-
cause he alone had the boldness and skill to


140
[Sept. 1,
THE DIAL
present them. InWFebruary,W1836, a commit-
tee offered a new rule, that all petitions relat-'
ing to slavery should be laid upon the table
without being printed or referred. This rule
was continued in various forms, one of which
was known as the “Atherton gag.” Against
this Mr. Giddings voted, eight days after he
entered Congress, but without speaking upon
it. But Mr. Adams constantly presented pe-
titions and moved references of them. He man-
aged to make this proceeding a thorn in the
side of the pro-slavery men. Upon one occa-
sion, not narrated by Mr. Julian, he asked the
Speaker whether it would be in order under
the rule to present a petition from some slaves.
When the tempest of fury over this “impu-
dence ” was at its height, and propositions to
censure or expel him _were made, Mr. Adams
let it leak out that this petition from slaves
asked that he be expelled. Mr. Julian gives
an account of the Haverhill petition for a dis-
solution of the Union, for presenting which Mr.
Adams was put on trial, though it was an ex-
act copy of one presented from South Carolina
some years before. After Mr. Adams had de-
fended himself most vigorously, carrying the
war into Africa, and showing what the South
had done to provoke such a petition, the pro-
ceedings were dropped on the fourteenth day,
the old warrior having intimated that it would
require about ninety days for him to get
through with his defense. When Mr. Giddings
tried to get a meeting of Northern members
who would stand by Mr. Adams, only eight
came in, though seventy-five had voted against
the introduction of resolutions of censure.
While Mr. Adams led the battle on this
line, Mr. Giddings devised another assault
upon the. “ peculiar institution,” one which
would be always in order, so that no'parlia-
mentary trick or rule could ward it off, and
which was indeed suggested by the very plea
of the slaveholders themselves that slavery was
a peculiar or local institution. If local, then
it is not national; hence the Free States and
the Nation as a whole have the right and duty to
be free from all support of it, from all aid to
it. Mr. Giddings was the first to see the spe-
cial advantage of this line of attack, and to use
it consistently, constantly, and untiringly. He
thus furnished the platforms of the Free-Soil
and Republican parties. It was not necessary
to present the enormities which were incidental
to slavery: he could start from the first public
Declaration of Independence, which, in its doc-
trine of natural freedom and equality of men,

put upon slavery the condemnation of the con-
siderate judgment of mankind. He might
make any reasonable allowance for the difli-
cult position of the slaveholder, and still press
his points that slavery was sectional, freedom
national: he might claim that he was only de-
fending the national interests and welfare
against the encroachments of an oligarchy
whose very existence was a menace to the ad-
vancement of civilization and a defiance to the
moral judgment of mankind. He did but hold
the South to the logic of its position, of its
confessed isolation.
Is it said that this was no new doctrine?
True; but it was political genius that saw how
to use the old principle in a new way: high
principle and unflinching courage were needed
to turn it to practical advantage; and uuvary-
ing persistence was necessary to make the
North adopt it in political action. This was
the work which Giddings began and continued
with wonderful steadfastness, working in an
eminent field to which the eyes of all were
turned. Outside of Congress others were urg-
ing the evils and wickedness of the slave sys-
tem; and the Liberty party was enforcing
the political duties of the nation. And then
were true Emerson’s words: “ The fury with
which the slave-trader defends every inch of his
bloody deck and his howling auction-platform
is a trumpet to alarm the ear of mankind, to
warn all neutrals to take sides, and to sum-
mon all to listen to the verdict which justice
shall pronounce.”
Mr. Julian’s Life of Giddings is a history
of the work of this leader of the army of the
Lord of Hosts, and is full of dramatic inter-
est. It would be pleasant to quote many in-
stances of his play of sword and shield in
these gladiatorial contests, two or three men
against the whole field ; but we must forhear.
On two subjects Mr. Giddings made himself
specially well-informed : individual claims upon
the treasury, and the relations of slavery to
the general government. These were enough
to give him abundant opportunity for his spe-
cial warfare. His first Anti-slavery speech was
on a bill to appropriate $30,000 to build a
bridge across the east branch of the Potomac ;
and at the time of its introduction a memorial
came from citizens of the District asking that
no notice be taken of anti-slavery petitions.
Mr. Giddings opposed the expenditure of pub-
lic money for further improvements, because
of slavery and the slave-trade in the District;
and he boldly alleged that the North would ere


12392.]
THE DIAL
141
long remove the capital from lVashington, so
as to be rid of connection with that disgrace.
VVhen an appropriation of $100,000 was
asked for to remove the Seminoles, Mr. Gid-
dings exposed the causes of the Seminole ‘Var,
which were rooted in slavery and in the aid
given to it by the general government. Mr.
Adams’s Diary speaks of this speech, with its
documentary proofs, as an “ exquisite torture
of the Southern duelists and slave-mongers,”
who, at its close, insulted Giddings as much as
possible by abusive language, Black of Georgia
and \Vaddy Thompson of South Carolina tak-
ing the lead. Giddings retorted with spirit.
The speech was circulated extensively at the
North, with great efiect.
The next attempt to crush the outspoken
Northerner was connected with the Creole Case.
A coasting ship, the Creole, with 130 slaves,
was going (Nov. 1841) from Virginia to New
Orleans, when the slaves rose upon the whites,
killed one man, and took the vessel to Nassau
where they were free by British laws. Mr.
Webster, Secretary of State, demanded that
the negroes be delivered to the United States.
Senators and others declared that if England
should fail to restore them, the United States
would have reason to declare war. Vvebster
carried his servilit-y so far as to say to En-
gland, what he knew to be false, that the slaves
were property under the Constitution of the
United States. Mr. Giddings was indignant
at this attempt to nationalize slavery. He pre-
pared resolutions which aflirmed the local rights
of the Slave States, but declared that slave-
laws could not by state law be extended to the
high seas, and hence did not cover the Creole
on her voyage. But the glove was thrown in
the face of the Southern representatives by the
seventh and eighth resolutions.
(7) “ That the persons on board said ship, in resum-
ing their natural rights to liberty, violated no law of the
United States, incurred no legal penalties, and are
jnstly liable to no punishment.”
(8) “ That all attempts to regain possession of or to
re-enslave said persons are unauthorized by the constitu-
tion or laws of the United States, and are incompatible
with our national honor.”
The resolutions were presented March 21,
1842, and twice read, the second time amidst
the closest attention. Their audacity was as-
tounding. Everett of Vermont moved to lay
them on the table, and expressed his “ utter
abhorrence of the fire-brand course of the gen-
tleman from Ohio.” F essenden of Maine, Mil-
lard Fillmore, and others, wished to avoid an
immediate debate and vote upon them, and in-

duced Giddings to withdraw them. But he
must be punished for his daring. John Minor
Botts of Virginia at once drew up a series of
resolutions of censure, which Weller, of Gid-
dings’s own state, offered, moving the previous
question, the adoption of which would cut off
any defense on the part of Mr. Giddings. No
opportunity was given him, and under the pre-
vious question the vote of censure was passed
by 125 to 69. Hr. Giddings promptly re-
signed, appealed to the people of his district,
and was reelected. But the ordinary course
of business was altered for one year to keep
him from offering his resolutions again.
One thing more could be done. One North-
ern member, Cilley of Maine, had been inur-
dered in a duel by Graves of Kentucky and
lVise of Virginia, having been shot after both
seconds had urged that the duel should cease.
As Mr. Giddings would not accept a challenge,
a collision must be had in which he could be
murdered. Only a few were in this scheme,
for only a few of the Southerners were bullies.
After Giddings had spoken on the coastwise
slave-trade, Dawson of Louisiana passing him
gave him a violent push, which he recognized
with the exclamation, “ Dawson I ”
“That member turned around and seized the handle
of a bowie-knife which partially protruded from his
bosom, and immediately advanced toward Giddings un-
til within striking distance, when Giddings said, look-
ing him i|| the eye, ‘Did you push me in that rude
manner?’ He answered, ‘Yes.’ ‘For the purpose of
insulting me? ’ ‘ Yes,’ said Dawson, as he partially re-
moved the knife from the scabbard. Giddings rejoined,
‘ No gentleman will wantonly insult another. I have
no more to say to you, but turn you over to public con-
tempt, as incapable ofinsulting an honorable man.’ By
this time Mr. Moore of Louisiana and other members
seized Dawson and took him from the hall. . . . It
was generally believed that Dawson intended to pro-
voke a blow from Giddings which would have served as
an excuse for assassination.”
This was on February 14, 1843. Two years
later, Dawson reappears in the same charac-
ter. Giddings had spoken on an appropria-
tion hill and exposed some Georgians who
had obtained enormous sums for indefinable
constructive losses. Black of Georgia replied
with vile personalities, saying, among other
things, that Giddings would be in the peniten-
tiary, as he deserved, if the House could send
him there; and he added two false charges,
which involved the honor of Mr. Giddings.
Giddings replied, and referred to the fact that
Black had been discarded by his constituents,
as unworthy, after one election. Black ad-
vanced on Giddings with a cane raised to


142
[Sept. 1,
THE DIAL
strike, and cried, “ If you repeat those words
I will knock you down!” Giddings imme-
diately repeated the words. But Black’s
friends caught him in their arms and carried
him ofl‘.
“Giddings continued his remarks, when Mr. Dawson
of Louisiana, who had assaulted him on a previous oc-
casion, came across the hall within a few yards of him,
and placing his hands in his pocket, said “I’ll shoot
him, by G-d! I'll shoot him!’ at the same time taking
care to cock his pistol so as to have the click heard by
those around him. Mr. Causiu, a Whig from Maryland,
instantly took his position in front of Giddings and be-
tween him and Dawson, folding his arms across his
breast with his right hand apparently resting upon the
handle of his weapon; while Mr. Sliddell of Louisiana
and Mr. Stiles of Georgia, with two other Democratic
members, at the same moment took their position near
Dawson. . . . At the same time, Kenneth Raynor, a
North Carolina \‘\'hig, fully armed, took his place on the
left of Giddings, while Mr. Hudson of Massachusetts
placed himself on his right, and Mr. Foot of Vermont
at the entrance of the aisle through which Black had
made his exit. \Vith armed foes in front and friends
on either hand, Giddings continued his remarks; but the
slave-holders in front began to realize the awkwardness
of their position, and quietly returned to their seats, ex-
cept Dawson, who remained until Giddings closed his
speech, Cnnsin facing him. . . . Giddings . . . says
that this was the last effort made to silence a member
of the House by violence during his service in Congress.”
We have cited these incidents to show what
need there was of the highest moral and phys-
ical courage on the part of Anti-slavery repre-
sentatives. They needed to be men who
“looked rather to the day of judgment than
to the day of election.” Only two of them,
Adams and Giddings, were returned term
after term by appreciative constituencies. As
we read their lives, we cannot wonder that
they tired of their burdens, fell into ‘hopeless-
ness, and wished to retire from political life.
This mood of mind came upon Giddings in
1842, after the censure had been passed upon
him and before his first encounter with Daw-
son. Accordingly he wrote to the editor of
the “ Ashtabula Sentinel,” requesting him to
announce his withdrawal. Instead of doing
that, Mr. Fassett summoned friends of Hr.
Giddings and of the cause, who persuaded him
to continue in the service of the people. In
this they were aided by the congratulatory let-
ters and addresses which came to him from
various sources, and which showed that his
work was not only appreciated, but effective
in advancing the cause of freedom. However
much like a warrior he has seemed in scenes
we have sketched, he loved peace; only love of
justice drove him into conflict. In a letter of
this time to his wife, he speaks with longing

of “ the time when I may lay aside the cares
and responsibilities of public life, and making
my bow to the people, I may -be allowed to re-
tire from the arena of strife and danger to the
bosom of my family.”
Mr. Adams was in a similar tired and hope-
less condition. As chairman of a special com-
mittee on rules of the House, he had prepared
a code without the famous twenty-first or
“ gag” rule, when this incident occurred:
“Giddings relates that during the progress of this
debate, on entering the hall one morning he found Mr.
Adams greatly burdened in mind. His appearance
indicated the loss of sleep. He declared that our
government had become the most perfect despotism
of the Christian world; that he was physically disquali-
fied to contend longer for the floor; and that he must
leave the vindication of his report to Giddings, as duty
to himself forbade further attempt on his part. He
said he had indulged the hope of living to see the gag-
rule abrogated; but he now considered this doubtful.”
Giddings soon fulfilled the old man’s wish;
and in the following December (1844) Mr.
Adams’s customary motion to strike out that
rule prevailed by a vote of 108 to 80.
The relation of these two mighty men to
each other was at first that of friendship and
cooperation; but it grew to be a love like that
of Jonathan and David — or, perhaps it is bet-
ter to say, like that of father and son. It
found frequent expression in words and deeds.
Comrades in what seemed like a desperate, al-
most hopeless battle, they had soon in public
life the same friends, the same foes, the same
hopes and fears for their country, and the
same plans for its future welfare and security.
No sadder mourner than Giddings followed
the body of the old man eloquent to its grave
in Quincy.
But when Adams departed, the prospect
was already brighter. The group of defend-
ers of liberty in Senate and House was grow-
ing, and soon included Chase, Hale, Sumner,
VVilmot, Preston King, Allen, Durkee, Julian,
Howe, Root, and Tuck, all able and brave
men. And though there came the dark time
of the compromises of 1850, the F ugitive-Slave
Law and the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, it was
plain that the tide of love of Freedom was
rising to an irresistible flood. Giddings’s hope-
fulness and his faith in humanity found in-
creasing reasons for their existence. He did
not live to see the end of the war, though it
was plainly approaching when he died, May
27, 1864, while he was consul at Montreal;
his heart failed suddenly, and in eight minutes
he was dead.


1892.]
143
THE DIAL
In this review of Mr. J ulian’s excellent bio-
graphy of this hero of the great struggle, it
has been impossible to give even a sketch of
the large amount of work done by Mr. Gid-
dings with tongue and pen, or to show how
his reputation grew and honors were heaped
upon him : for these things we refer to the book.
It has seemed better to show something of the
dangers and difficulties that beset the political
opponents of slavery from 1838 to 1848, and
to present the hero since we could not show
the full man. The younger and the middle-
aged men of to-day know of the Civil War and
its great men ; but only by reading lives of Gid-
dings and his co-workers can they see where
the greater battles of freedom were fought. The
greatest task was to stir the nation to see the
dangers that threatened our liberties of thought,
speech, and political action. No American
should be ignorant of our critical periods, among
which we must include those shameful days.
A few words on the book itself. It is ad-
mirable as to paper and type, so that it is easy
to read and pleasant to the eye. We have
found no misprint. The publishers are to be
congratulated on their share of the work, and
Mr. Julian on his successful authorship.
SAMUEL VVn.I..�1).
Tun Pms(:1PL1-:s or‘ MODERX Mr:nm-:-
\'ALIS.\[.*

In a leading Roman Catholic journal, Dr.
St. George Mivart explained, some years ago,
that he had not assumed “the position of Cath-
olic apologist in the arena of biological sci-
ence ” on his own responsibility, but “ in a
spirit of obedience.” He is thus a man with a
message; and in whatever estimation this may
be held, it is impossible not to admire the pa-
tient persistency with which, led by conviction,
he continues to explore the same ground and
arrive at the same conclusions, — hoping, evi-
dently, by many metaphysical droppings to
wear away even the stony hearts of the agnos-
tic school. His two somewhat ponderous vol-
umes of “Essays and Criticisms” deal, in a
more or less popular way, with a wide range
of subjects, which may be classified, for the
purpose of review, as scientific, philosophical,
ethical and religious, and political. Of so ex-
tensive a survey, of course only the briefest and
most fragmentary criticism can be attempted.
"EssAYs AND CRXTICIBMS. By St. George Mivart, F.R.S.
In two volumes. Boston: Little, Brown & Co.



Since Dr. l\Iivart‘s philosophy is avowedly
based on science, the first step in an examina-
tion of his thought is naturally to consider his
scientific views. His attitude toward modern
theories is well known, and the teaching of this
book is the same as that of his “ Genesis of
Species.” He defines “ evolution ” as “ the un-
folding from potential into real existence of con-
stantly new forms of animals and plants ” : a.
formula which recalls Aristotle’s theory that
matter exists only potentially, attaining actual
being solely through form. In harmony with
such conceptions, Dr. Mivart holds that spe-
cies originate by the operation of “ innate law,
modified by the subordinate action of Natural
Selection.” His disbelief in the adequacy of
natural selection to explain the differentiation
of species is connected with his conception of
human reason as an isolated fact, not to be re-
ferred to any antecedents in sensation, however
remote. His denial of reason and the moral
sense in animals practically begs the question,
since the point is not, of course, whether these
faculties are actually developed in animals, but
whether they do not possess such rudiments of
them as may be safely considered an adequate
basis for their higher development in man.
The distinction between “degree ” and “ kind ”
of intelligence seems merely assumed.
Yet even on his own groimd, Dr. Mivart’s
logic is open to criticism. Thus, he makes self-
consciousness the basis of true rationality, de-
claring that no animal has this. But elsewhere
he says that “no true memory can exist in a crea-
ture devoid of true self-consciousness,” defin-
ing two kinds of “true memory,” “one in which
the will intervenes, and which may be spoken
of as recollection, and the other in which it
does not, and which may be termed rmn2'm's-
ccnrre.” All unconscious psychical accompani-
ments of automatically repeated actions, or of
organic habits, are expressly excluded from the
definition. But nothing is more certain about
animals psychologically than that they do con-
sciously remember, in the second, at least, of
these two ways; so that, according to Dr.
'Mivart’s statement, they must possess true self-
consciousness. Again, in denying reasoning
powers in animals, he observes, Zlpropos of
ideas of number:
“ The real gulf lies between the animal able to
count two [the savage] and the animal not able to
count at all. The difference between being able to
count two and having the integral calculus at one's
fingers’ ends is but a difference of degree.”
That this is a dangerous admission is proved


144
[Sept 1,
THE DIAL

@...;i;;.?;....;....;’<;‘;1.... byWSiiriJohn
Lubbock :
“ Once while I watched a Dammara floundering
hopelessly in a calculation on one side of me, I ob-
served Dinah, my spaniel, equally embarrassed on the
other. She was overlooking half a dozen of her new-
bom puppies [to see if any were missing]. . . . She
kept puzzling and running her eyes over them, back-
wards or forwards, but could not satisfy herself. She
evidently had a vague notion of counting, but the figure
was too large for her. Taking the two as they stood,
dog and Dammara, the coniparision reflected no great
honor on the man.”
The arguments with regard to the lack of
language among animals are equally unsatis-
factory, especially since Mr. Garner has suc-
ceeded in identifying definite words of the
monkey tongue. Another criticism that may
be made of Dr. Mivai-t’s treatment of the sub-
ject of brute intelligence is that he considered
only the two departments of sensation and rea-
son, leaving that of emotion quite unnoticed.
But certainly the emotions of affection and
gratitude, so common among the higher ani-
mals, are a true link between them and hu-
manity. As for the moral sense, the appendix
on “Judyism ” to Spencer’s “Justice ” ought
to convince any unprejudiced mind that some
animals possess at least a rudimentary moral-
ity. How many persons have known some
creature like Matthew Arnold’s dog Geist, into
whose short years were crowded “ all that life
and all that love,” a “ loving heart ” and “ pa-
tient soul”; a being so distinct in personality
that not all the infinite resource of nature
“ Can ever quite repeat the past,
Or just thy little self restore.”
Dr. Mivart’s system of evolution is certain-
ly well adapted to spare certain theological
prejudices. The value of the theory may be
questioned, however, after the controlling idea
of constant unbroken development has been
changed for that of a mere physical continuity
existing throughout a series of predetermined
stages, isolated by unfathomable gaps between
inorganic beings, the “ vegetative,” the “ ani-
mal,” and the “ rational” souls. As Mr.
Leslie Stephen has observed, “ ‘Creation ’ is
really nothing but a name for leaving off think-
ing, and giving to cessation of thought a pos-
itive name.” Dr. Mivart's well-known conten-
tion that the theory of evolution not only is in
perfect harmony with the teachings of the
Catholic Church, but was actually anticipated,
in a way, by some of her early theologians, is
certainly well calculated to exasperate his ra-
tionalistic opponents. Dispassionate observers
will be likely to consider his process of thought
‘ own philosophical creed.

analogous to the misleading habit of much
modern liberalism in another field, so acutely
described by Sir Frederick Pollock in his
“ Jurisprudence and Ethics ” :
“Just as the law which is enounced in deciding a
new case is by an inevitable fiction conceived as having
always been the law, so the moral rules proceeding
from the invisible and informal judgment-seat of
righteous men, which yet is more powerful than any
prince or legislator, are referred to doctrines originally
based on a far narrower foundation.”
The papers on Spencer and Lotze are chief-
ly vehicles for the conveyance of Dr. Mivart’s
An important point
of this is his denial of the “ relativity of knowl-
edge” doctrine. He argues that if all our
knowledge is relative and phenomenal, the
proposition which asserts the fact must share
the same limitations. “ It has no absolute
value, does not correspond with objective real-
ity, and is therefore false.” The italicised
words are rather astonishing. They show a
confusion of two very distinct ideas: the de-
nial that we can know objective reality, and
the denial that objective reality is what it ap-
pears to be. The former proposition alone
could accurately be called agnosticism. But
Dr. Mivart speaks, later, of Spencer’s sys-
tem as one “ which asserts that neither exten-
sion, nor figure, nor number, is in reality
what it appears, or that the objective connec-
tions {amongst these properties are what they
seem to us to be.” Yet he goes on in the same
sentence to quote Spencer’s words: “lvhat we
are conscious of as properties of matter . . .
are but subjective affections produced by ob-
jective agencies which are unknown and un-
knowahle.” “ What we are conscious of ” is
by no means to be identified with objective
“ extension, figure, and number.”
Dr. Mivart objects also to the doctrine of
the conservation of energy, on the ground that
it savors of realism (in the ancient sense, as
opposed to nominalism), energy being appar-
ently conceived as a real entity apart from
its special manifestations. He observes in an-
other place that even these are “ in themselves
nothing but abstractions of the mind. There
is no such thing as ‘heat’ or as ‘motion’;
though of course there are numberless warm
bodies,” etc. Yet in the essay called “ Why
Tastes Differ,” he seeks to establish the idea of
absolute "goodness," “truth,” and “beauty,”
as actual entities, regardless of the fact that
in consistency he should find these qualities
only in particulars. But the way of the be-
liever in innate ideas is hard. Dr. Mivart’s


1892.]
145
THE DIAL
favorite theory of “ prototypal ideas ” is most
suspiciously realistic. Like St. Thomas Aqui-
nas, he would maintain that “ the ideas or
thoughts of things in the divine mind, antece-
dent to creation, were unirersalia ante rem.”
“ The teaching of what we believe to be true
philosophy,” he says, “ is that the types
shadowed forth to our intellects by material
existences are copies of divine originals, which
respond to prototypal ideas in Gor .”
Dr. Mivart, of course, asserts the freedom
of the will ; and this point leads to the consider-
ation of his ethical and religious views. “ Fully
maintaining that atheists generally are not only
in error but culpable.” he is horrified at Pro-
fessor Huxley’s saying that “ the necessity of a
belief in a personal God, in order to a religion
worthy of the name, is a matter of personal
opinion.” He himself once defines God as “the
concrete infinity,” — a quite overwhelming
term. He seeks to show an anthropomorphic
deity legislating in behalf of an anthropocen-
tric universe. God has willed that the lower
animals should minister to man, to whose care
he has entrusted them. The “ highest motive
for the cultivation of art and science ” is
“ their cultivation for God’s sake.” The utility
of a reestablished Benedictine abbey is set
forth thus:
" N o thoughtful man, while admiring the beauties of
creation, or enjoying the multifold benefits which
spring from the harmonious coiirdination of its parts
and powers, can but feel impressed with the insuffi-
ciency of his own acts of grateful recognition and rev-
erent homage. To one so impressed, the knowledge
cannot be unwelcome that there is a new community
of men in the land, whose whole lives are set apart to
atone for and supply the neglects of others."
Happy England! since, while the numbers of
her criminals and slums are still undiminished,
a company of men can be found willing to de-
vote their lives to the sufficient object of
making up the arrears of national thanksgiv-
ing! Worse than these crudities is the ques-
tion, in a paper on “ National Education,”
“ What harm can be done by reinforcing mor-
ality by religious sanctions?" Dr. Mivart,
however, does not really believe that morality
is reinforced by sanctions, and proves in an-
other essay (“Why Tastes Differ”) that the
remark quoted is but a passing inconsistency.
“Some religious persons will probably say that the
‘goodness’ of anything depends on the will of God.
. . . But in our perception of duty and moral obliga-
tion we recognize that it addresses conscience with an
essentially absolute and unconditional imperativeness.
. . . But if ‘goodness’ cannot be dependent even on
the will of God, if the commands of conscience are ab-

solute and supreme, if it is impossible even to con-
ceive an evasion of its universal and unconditional
authority, then the ethical principle must be rooted, as
it were, within the inmost heart, in the very founda-
tion, so to speak, of the great whole of existence which
it pervades. The principles of the moral law must be
at least as extensive and enduring as are those starry
heavens which shared with it the profound reverence of
Kant.”
The supremacy of ethics could not be asserted
in a nobler spirit; and the same lofty concep-
tion pervades the paper on “ The Meaning of
Life.”
There is a saying related of a certain Amer-
ican political scholar: “ The State is an organ-
ism —— but keep it dark! ” Dr. Mivai-t’s reti-
cence is not so great, as he devotes several
pages to the exposition of the familiar physio-
logical parallel. One is more grateful for his
protest against the metaphysical conception of
the State as an actual Ding an siclz, and not
merely as a name for “the nation in its col-
lective and corporate character,” to use one of
Matthew Ar1iold’a aptly-chosen phrases. His
own theory of the State, however, is not clearly
defined, and there seems to be some inconsist-
ency in the different views of social organization
which he puts forth. For instance, adopting the
idea of the subdivision of labor, he observes that
“ class distinctions must, if we are not to re-
trograde, hereafter increase in number, and our
social condition become, in a certain sense, an
increasingly divided one.” It is not quite
easy to see how an increase of class distinc-
tions is to be harmonized with even the quali-
fied “liberty, equality, and fraternity” which
he elsewhere advocates. He even glows over
the social contract theory, very justly rea-
soning:
“ But, because the theory is false historically, is it
necessarily devoid of all value ? Have on this account
its many eloquent and philanthropic advocates written
or declaimed altogether in vain‘? . . . By no means.
False as an historical fact, it is a pregnant truth as an
idealfur thefuture. \Vhat else, indeed, is all constitu-
tional government but an approximation towards such
an ideal ‘.7 "
An ideal, it may be added, after which our own
government was, to a considerable extent, eon-
sciously framed. Dr. Mivart, however, does
not admire our methods. He opposes govern-
ment by the masses, and demands the repre-
sentation of interests, not of numbers. Per-
haps an increased familiarity with the work-
ings of Tammany and its compeers would
lead him to regard us as rapidly approaching
this political summum bonvum. For the pres-
ent we must be grateful for the mildness of


146
[Sept. 1,
THE DIAL

this criticism on our “ popular ” government:
" The example of the United States, by the occa-
sional ostracism of estimable citizens and the corrup-
tion of many of its professional politicians, abundantly
shows what bad results may ensue even when the mass
of a community merits our esteem.”
Another result of democratic rule in America
is truly surprising:
“ In the United States wealth [as an interest] tends
to be absolutely crushed by the incidence of taxation."
As regards the functions of the State, Dr.
Mivart makes no definite contribution to this
important question. Modernly speaking, he
partakes of the character of both the indi- .
vidualist and the collectivist; but more accur-
ately considered, he seems to belong historic-
ally to the pahny days of the Holy Roman Em-
pire. He offers the general ethical conception
of the State as making the goods of life possi-
ble to all individuals; but how far this is to be
done by the direct action of government, is left
largely to the imagination of the reader. Free
compulsory education he regards'as opposed to
a sound political economy ; but asserts, what to
many would seem a far more unsound principle,
that “ The individual as a member of the State
is not bound to tolerate, rather is he absolutely
lJ011Il(l to repress, expressions and actions on
the part of individuals, which actions or ex-
pressions he has good grounds for certainly
knowing are the manifestations of bad voli-
tion and not of conscientious convictions," etc.
He also declares that the State, for its own pres-
ervation, as a means to moral, not merely ma-
terial good, may even, “ with extreme reluct-
ance and as the last resort, justly exercise pres-
sure on consciences.” It is impossible to do
more than mention several other very ques-
tionable doctrines —namely, that the waste of
noble intellects in uneongenial and exhaust-
ing labor is not a moral loss to society; that
limitation of births is not to be approved be-
cause of the beneficial effects on character to
members of large families (one thinks of the
conditions of existence among the classes which
most habitually have unlimited families), and
that armed rebellion against the State is never
justifiable. But there is one saying of Dr.
Mivart’s in this connection which is a true
word of wisdom, containing the largest promise
of good for the future: “ Each day advances
the movement which transforms the process of
civilization from an unconscious evolution to
a fully self-conscious and deliberate develop-
ment.”
Little space is left in which to notice two

especially interesting historical papers, on “J a-
cobinism” and Sorel’s “Europe and the French
Revolution.” The latter is an excellent con-
densation of a remarkable book, on which it
would be pleasant to dwell. The essay on Ja-
cobinism is a review of several books, but
chiefly of Taine’s brilliant but misleading
“ French Revolution.” Dr. Mivart’s prejudices
lead him to be uncritical of its accuracy, so
that he repeats Taine’s error, pointed out by
Dr. Charles K. Adams, of attributing all the
misery of the Reign of Terror “ chiefly to the
Revolutionary leaders: whereas, it was rooted
in those relations of the difi"'erent classes which
the nobility and clergy had persistently refused
to change.”
It is not quite fair, perhaps, to look for
much literary merit in a work devoted to ab-
stract thought: though the writings of Scho-
penhauer and Professor Fiske occur at once as
proof that philosophy and excellence of form
are by no means incompatible. But it might
certainly be justly required of Dr. Mivart that
he should pay a little more attention to the
architectonics of the sentence.
MARIAN M1-mo.
BRIEFS ox New BOOKS.

THE two volumes of “Essays on
Philosophy and Literature" (Mac-
millan), by Professor Edward Caird,
of Glasgow, invite the attention of thoughtful
readers. Volume I. contains papers, mostly maga-
zine reprints, on Dante, Rousseau, Wordsworth,
Goethe, Carlyle, and “ The Problem of Philosophy
at the Present Time”; Volume II. contains re-
prints of the author’s excellent articles in the En-
cyclopzedia Britannica on “Csrtesianism” and
‘*Metaphysic." The trend of these essays is what
one would expect, or rather what one would ask,
from a distinguished Professor of Moral Philosophy,
—something quite different, in a word, from the
desultory though delightful chat of the Lamb and
Hazlitt order. The threshed-out straw of personal
gossip is left untouched, and there is little discus-
sion of matters of pure literary form. On the
other hand, philosophical bearings and affiliations
are clearly brought out; and in the thoughtful
papers on Goethe and VVordsworth the author en-
deavors to indicate the sources of, and, so far as
possible, to give direct expression to. those deeper
intimations in their verse, that “breath and finer
spirit of all knowledge," wherein great poetry
often forestalls and always transcends science, and
by virtue of which, as Matthew Arnold said, its
future is immense. \Ve do not, of course, mean
Cav'rd': Essay:
on Philosophy
and I/itcrature.


1892.]
147
THE DIAL
to imply that Professor Caird approaches Goethe
in the spirit of Mr. Donnelly, or that he mistakes ‘
“ The Excursion” for a rebus or a quadratic equa-
tion. To the lover of poetry as poetry, whose ears
may perhaps still tingle with Professor Hnxley’s
vigorous epithet “sensual caterwauling,” it is a
cheering thing to find a “severe thinker” like
Professor Caird holding that “ in poetry the form
is the first thing. Its function is pure expression
for its own sake, and the consideration of what is
expressed must be secondary.
undoubtedly prefer a good bacchanalian song to
Zachary Boyd’s metrical version of the Bible.”
Still (the author observes, touching the " old quarrel
of poets and philosophers " of which Plato speaks),
while “ it is far from desirable that poetry should
ever become ‘a criticism of life,’ except in the
sense in which beauty is always a criticism upon
ugliness." “ there is undoubtedly a point—and
that, indeed, the highest point in both-—in which
they [poets and philosophers] come into close rela-
tions with each other. Hence, at least in the case
of the greatest poets, we are driven by a kind of
necessity to ask what was their philosophy." Pro-
fessor Caird rates Wordsworth high: “There is
no poet who is more di