Vol. IX. No. 7. THURSDAY,JUNE 15, 1911 THREEPENCE.

PAGE PAGE NOTES OF THE WEEK...... 145 L’AFFAIRESERGE-BABIN. From the French of Alfred Capus 156 POLITICALGEOMETRY. By E. S. Hole ...... 146 AN ETHIOPIANSAGA. By Richmond Haigh ...... 157 FOREIGNAFFAIRS. By S. Verdad ...... 147 L’AFFAIREGREAVES. By Walter Sickert ...... 159 TORYDEMOCRACY. By J. M. Kennedy 148 ...... BOOKS AND PERSONS. By Jacob Tonson ...... 160 RINGINGDOWN THE CURTAIN. By Kosmo Wilkinson 149 ...... CZARDAS:A Fragment. From the Polish of Przerwa- PAGESFROM A BOOK OF SWELLS:The Lady Paramount. By Tetmajer ...... 161 1’. H. S. Escott ...... 150 THEREAL WAGNER: An Unrecorded Incident. By Leighton PARISAS A PLEASURERESORT. By Vincent O’Sullivan ... 161 J. Warnock ...... 151 LETTERSTO THE EDITOR PROM Thomas Short, Percy W. THEREBUILDING OF THE THEATRE. By Huntly Carter ... 152 Carlisle, William Poel, Wordsworth Donisthorpe, Beatrice DYONISOSMEDITATES. By A. E. Randall ...... 153 Hastings, W. E. Burghardt Dubois, Algernon Herveg UNEDITEDOPINIONS : East and West ...... 154 Bathurst, Gustav Hübener, Cicily Fairfield, E. H. Visiak, AMERICANNOTES. By Juvenal ...... 155 R. C. Hall, Dr. C. J. Whitby, Criticus ...... 163

Subscriptions to the NEW AGE are at the following ‘It is well known that optimism of this character is rates :- only possible to people who either wilfully, or by some Great Britain. Abroad. defect of intellectual vision, fail to see or realise dis- agreeable facts. They suffer, that is, from partial blind- One Year ...... 15 0 17 4 ness or shortsightedness. Both diseases are to be found Six Months...... 76 8 8 at this moment among the supporters of Mr. Lloyd Three Months ... 39 4 4 George’s Insurance Bill, and in an aggravated form in SPECIALNOTE.--All communications, whether re- Mr. Lloyd George himself. Speaking, far example, in lating to the editorial, business, advertising or Birmingham on Saturday last, Mr. Lloyd George asserted that the principle of his Bill had been publishing departments, should be addressed to THE accepted with unanimity; it was only in the matter NEW AGE, 38, Cursitor Street, London, E.C. of details that criticism had arisen. Now this, as our readers know very well, is untrue. Not only the NEW AGE,but “ Justice ” and the “ Clarion ” have published NOTES OF THE WEEK. articles attacking the Bill in principle. Subsequently the “ Labour Leader ” joined in, and its last two issues “WE are living in great days. It is a privilege to be have contained vigorous criticisms of the bases of the alive. ... Our days are like the dawn of the King- Insurance Bill signed by well known names. It is dom of God. ... It is humanity that is coming to its simply dishonest to pretend after this that the chorus own. ... It is the Sun of Man ascending His of praise of the principle of the Bill has been universal. throne. We are marching into the realisation of The fact is that no single economist in England has ... approved of it. If their judgment has been ignored, it the ‘ world to come.’ ” These passages are taken from an editorial on the Friendly Societies which appeared in has been because Mr. Lloyd George and his claqueurs have preferred not to see what they did not wish to see. the “ Christian Commonwealth ” of last week. The *** “ Christian Commonwealth ” is conducted by an Edi- torial Board consisting of the Rev. R. J. Campbell, We hope our readers who are interested in the theory of the Bill will turn to the impressive letter published in Mr. Philip Snowden, Mr. Sidney Webb, and others equally eminent. We cannot congratulate them on their the “ Nation ” of last week from the pen of one of the most able and conscientious living economists, Mr. conceptions of progress or the Kingdom of God. Ap- Philip Wicksteed. Mr. Wicksteed is under no illusions parently we both read the same book day and night, as to the principle of the Bill, nor has he any more but we read black where they read white. doubt than we have that the, final upshot of the precious *** measure will be the reduction of wages. Expressed in Undoubtedly this vulgar outburst of snuffling optim- the simplest terms, the gist of the Bill lies inthis-that ism is due in part to the signal given by Mr. Lloyd under its provisions an employer will henceforth be George himseIf. There never has been in England compelled to pay the State 3d. a week for permission to before to-day a politician with the impudence to employ employ a man at less than £160 per annum. But what the terminology of the little bethels in the service of a guarantee is there that an employer will not recoup political party. But Mr. Lloyd George, having begun himself by reducing wages to the same extent, if not it and found it extremely profitable, we may expect to directly, at least by resisting the next demand on the be flooded by it before very long. Nay, more, the worst part of the men for a rise in wages? None whatever. effect to be feared from the Payment of Members is the In fact, the experience of German employers, as con- introduction not of the professional politician into fided to Mr. Lloyd George, is that an Insurance Bill is Parliament, but of a crowd of Nonconformist parsons of positively good for employers. English employers have the Silvester Horne and R. J. Campbell type. As been quicker to realise this than English workmen, ignorant of economics as they are of politics, and as with the result, as Mr. Wicksteed points out, that there ignorant of life as they are offensively familiar with their is no general complaint amongst employers against Mr. boojum, they will be ready to announce the Kingdom of Lloyd George’s Bill. The ostensible burden put upon Heaven as lying round the corner of every sentimental them may seem to be heavy and their merit in accepting measure introduced by their friends. To the momentum it meekly, patriotic and Christian; but “ no one should derived by legislation from capitalism will now be expect that they will permanently bear it. ” added the momentum derived from Puritanism ; and *** since both operate in the same direction without more When we, in company with a growing number of than the shadow of a divergence, the pace developed critics, venture to declare that whatever the intention, towards the servile state will be frightfully accelerated. the hopes, or the immediate promises of such a Bill as 146

Mr. Lloyd George’s may be, its ultimate and not very rate at which “we are marching to the realisation of long delayed consequences will most certainly be the the ‘ world to come ’ ” that in two decades we shall very contrary of beneficent, we are met by a double have covered the intervening leagues. The wages reply, though never, of course, directly-anything system will indeed have been abolished. direct being alien to the methods of puritan politicians. *** We are assured that the manifestation of sympathetic interest in the condition of the poor is ample compensa- Our readers will be glad to read the following letter tion for any trifling defects the Bill may have in detail; from Mr. Bernard Shaw which appeared in the and is evidence complete of the rectitude of its inspiring “ Times ” on Saturday :- principle. We are further assured that our vision of THE BIRKBECK SUSPENSION AND THE the coming slavery is a mere disorder of our mind, and INSURANCE BILL. that the very condition that we most fear is really To THE EDITOROF THE “TIMES.” rapidly passing away. We should be glad if we could Sir,--An institution which has for 60 years been of in- believe even one of these smooth and comfortable calculable service to that section of our middle class which assurances; but in the light of facts they appear to be has to content itself with bank balances beneath the notice of rich men’s bankers is, through no apparent fault of its own, no more than mirages of the desert. Good intentions compelled to close its doors because it is short of £400,000, were never yet either compensation for defects in or somewhere between £6,000 and £7,000 per year for its practice or guarantee of rightness in principle; and the term of service. Will anyone who has imagination and path to the servile state may well be paved with them. business faculty enough to understand what banking Apart from its presumed intentions, what in actual means and what it saves, and how it helps men to be really practice must the Insurance Bill prove to be if not an thrifty, deny that it would have paid us as a nation to sub- additional prop to a system of capitalism which makes sidise the Birkbeck to four times this sum annually had such its profits by reducing the cost of production, chiefly in help been necessary? Now that the help is necesSay-now that 112,000 people, who, if they had had their houses the form of wages? Mr. Lloyd George may snivel be- shaken down by an earthquake, would have been rescued fore the Birmingham audience and profess his intention by the public as a matter of course, are thrown into the of treating men as well as horses are treated; but a more most distressing anxiety and threatened with a calamity exact analogy is that of compassionately feeding a dog that will spread far beyond the direct sufferers-why should with its own tail. Every penny, as any fool who is not the Chancellor of the Exchequer hesitate to come to their also a knave can see, that is bestowed on the working assistance, and not only enable the Birkbeck to reopen its classes by this Bill is bound to be taken from them doors and resume its altogether beneficent and nationally profitable activity, but if necessary to give it hopes of such before it is given back. To the humiliation of their an annual grant-in-aid as will save it from retreating, like existing poverty will now be added the humiliation of the the other banks, into the service of the comparatively rich obligation of gratitude. Every poor devil will hence- only ? forth have a stake in the country, his stake being his Just consider the situation. Here we are on the eve of the destitution and the illusory means of its relief. Such Parliamentary Committee stage of a National Insurance will be the effect of good intentions carried out by per- Bill. It is in some respects so monstrous a Bill that its sons whose hearts may be in the right place, but whose passage into law as it stands is unthinkable. It is a Bill to enforce saving on people who already cannot afford to feed heads are certainly wanting. themselves properly (that is, a Bill to make suicide and *** child-murder compulsory), and to enforce it, moreover, by an That great and good man in the worst sense of the official machinery which would make even the millennium word, Mr. Ramsay Macdonald, has so far exhibited only a nuisance. But it contains certain provisions which have won approval from all parties. It proposes to pay a hand- a single symptom that the storm of criticism which some subsidy to those bodies which, like the friendly socie- blows about the Labour Party for its unparalleled ties, have by voluntary effort organised thrift and orderly stupidity, has reached his almost inaccessible citadel of business habits among the working classes, justly recognis- self-complacency. In the “ Leicester Pioneer ” of last ing that they render social services and effect social week, Mr. Macdonald writes as follows : “ If at the end economies for which they can make no charge and which of twenty years from now the Labour Party will (sic) can therefore figure directly in no commercial balance-sheet. have to confess that it has not been the instrument of Now the Birkbeck has done for the less fortunate section of the middle class exactly what the friendly societies and trade increasing wages from the very bottom upwards, but unions (which can be brought within the scope of the Bill that instead it has made a present of clothes and food to by a simple amendment) are doing for the working class. the underpaid workers, it will have failed absolutely and Excepting only the hopeless residuum which represents the lamentably.” It is really not necessary to wait another wreckage of our industrial system, there is no class in which twenty years to pass judgment on the Labour Party. the struggle for existence is so wearing and incessant as in The I. L. P. has now been formed just about a score the class that banked at the Birkbeck. Are they, because of years, and the Labour Party’s well-known legislative they are totally unrepresented in Parliament, to be aban- devices for extracting butter from a dog’s mouth have doned to a calamity which will do several millions’ worth of mischief, when the yield of about a farthing in the income- been in operation for at least half that period. So far tax would avert it ?-Yours truly, from wages having increased either bottom upwards June 9. G. BERNARDSHAW. or top downwards they have in sum been consider- ably reduced all round. Since 1896 the cost of living in relation to the rate of wages has gone POLITICAL GEOMETRY. up by 17.9 per cent. In other words 23s. 6d. is now required to purchase what 20s. would have Through all the complex maze of life purchased fifteen years ago. Naturally, we do A single line runs straight, Runs through the din of wildest strife not blame the Labour Party or its great strategic “Time and the hour”-and date. generalissimo for this effect of the economic laws; but we do say that, with the only means of arresting and So with the mighty man’s career, Who ’mid the benches shone, ultimately of reversing this decadent tendency in He baffled us when he was here, industry in their hands, they have shamefully neglected We met-but he was gone. their employment. Nor, to judge by the party’s atti- And now we view St. Stephen’s squalls tude to the National Insurance Bill, is there the least With philosophic eye, sign that they see the error of their ways. Anyone Then pass within the Abbey walls would have supposed that a Labour Party would work Where dumb debaters lie. upon the rate of wages as their sole barometer. They To place their tale by lineal law were sent, indeed, to Parliament for that purpose. To geometric view, Yet they see wages going down by leaps andbounds Their chapter one like this we draw, and their only cry is for more legislation to facilitate While this is chapter two. and hasten the descent. We can solemnly assure Mr. From chapter two at length they go Macdonald that at this rate of progress there will be To this, ----, sad chapter three, nobody ‘‘twenty years from now ” who will care what Their chapter four like this we show, the Labour Party will have to confess. Such is the Its length--e ternity. E. S. HOLE, 147

Asiatic civilisation is superior to the European, and Foreign Affairs . this is a fact which their long residence in Paris and S. Verdad. other Western European capitals has prevented many By of the Young Turk leaders from recognising. The MANYstudents of international politics have been puzzled result is that the Conservative and Pan-Islamic element during the last few weeks by the apparently apathetic is gradually gaining the upper hand in Constantinople part played by Germany in Moroccan affairs. It was and Salonika, that the Arabs think they stand a good at first a toss-up, indeed, whether she would interfere chance of getting self-government, and that the actively or not. A few weeks ago, however, I had Albanians are wondering whether annexation by Italy the pleasure of giving M. Declasse’s opinion of what would suit them. would happen if she did. It deserves to be regarded *** as remarkable phenomenon that Germany finally a In the “ Evening Standard ’’ of May 31 I observed decided that it would not pay to attack France, or an interesting interview with Mr. G. Spiller, Secretary to interfere by force in the Moroccan affair. This was of the First Universal Races Congress. It appears because M. Delcassé’s view of the matter was emphati- that the Congress will meet here in July, and that its cally backed up by our own Foreign Office, Sir Edward object is “ to promote inter-racial amity, to establish Grey being kept well in hand by the permanent a scientific basis for dealing with racial questions, and officials On this occasion we appeared in a much healing what has been called the ‘great open sore of better light--behind the scenes, of course--than at the the world.’ ” Some fifty countries are to be repre- time of the Bosnian annexation*** crisis. sented, and we are to have bishops, professors, and so on, of course. Fifty or sixty papers are to be read, Having weighed all the possibilities, then, Germany and it seems that the writers of them, though scattered decided that it would pay her better to come to some throughout the world, have reached practically the same arrangement with France. The proposal emanating opinion. Said Mr. Spiller to the “ Evening Standard ” from Berlin was, in essence, as follows : If France interviewer :-- would not show herself too particular in regard to the The consensus of opinion is that racial differences are due Cameroon boundary line, and if, in particular, the to differences in environment, especially social environ- French Government would “ facilitate ” the acquire- ment ; and one writer compares the Zulus of to-day with the ment of capital to carry on the Bagdad Railway, the Teutons of 2,000 years ago, holding that they have all the German Government would not interfere in any way possibilities in them that the Teutons had. With a change in Moroccan affairs--provided, of course, that the few of social conditions almost any change is possible. Initia- German economic interests there were duly safe- tive, capacity, and progress are all produced by social guarded. conditions. . . . The public must come to see that what it *Y% considers as established and rooted race characteristics are neither definite established or rooted. The chief idea is Although I have been able to trace this communi- to set on foot societies in every country that shall carry cation to Paris, I have not been able to trace a com- on the movement initiated by the conference. . . . Sir munication in reply, verbal or otherwise, from Paris Edward Grey said that the elimination of racial differences to Berlin. The fact that Germany has not made any was merely a question of public opinion. move so far, however, although the French are now * * * actually in Fez, leads me to suppose that a bargain I can almost conceive of Sir Edward Grey saying of some sort has been struck. In this case France anything, but, for the sake of the reputation for a will be allowed to turn Morocco into another Tunis; certain amount of intelligence which our Cabinet indeed, if she is to be responsible for order in the Ministers are supposed to possess, I charitably hope country, in accordance with the stipulations of the that he has been misquoted on the present occasion. Algeciras Act, a practically permanent occupation will This remark about public opinion overruling scientific be necessary. The Sultan wields no real power except discoveries-for that is what it amounts to--is, I fear, within the limits of the district containing the capital, typical of the human ostriches disguised in England as so that it is useless to talk of his being responsible to Liberal politicians. France for the maintenance of order. *** *** Hardly a single statement in the quotation I have Assuming such an arrangement as I have mentioned given is accurate; but the whole thing is open to even to have been made between France and Germany--and more serious criticism than that. It was pointed out an understanding of some sort has undoubtedly been by Nietzsche more than fifty years ago that pure races arrived at--the immediate effect on European politics had ceased to exist, though there might be purified is not difficult to foresee. It will mean that France ones. An ethnologist of our own day would go will turn her undivided attention to the development even further and would say that there were now no of Tunis and Morocco, and that Germany may, and races at all, but only families or, perhaps even probably will, devote her attention to the more definite more ambiguously, nationalities. As for obliterating establishment of her position in Asia Minor. Sooner differences, quite a significant feature of the recent or later this will bring her into contact with us over champagne war in France was the outburst of the the Persian Gulf, a matter with which I dealt ex- regional spirit, the spirit which, after a few days, fed haustively several weeks ago. Spain, of course, has the combatants to emphasise their importance as natives been showing signs of annoyance over Morocco; but of certain districts, viz., the Marne and the Aube, negotiations are even now on foot as a result of which rather than their importance as the growers or manu- her grievances are almost certain to be removed. facturers of particular wines. “ Public opinion ” in *** the rest of France was very much against this display. It does not follow, however, that the peace of Europe Need I say that this “ public opinion ” was absolutely will not be broken in another direction. The Young ineffective in stopping it ? Turks have advanced much too fast to suit the majority *** of their fellow-countrymen, and their ill-sumess in Nevertheless I am not surprised that these learned Albania and the Yemen, where the regular armies have professors have begun by confusing race and nation- been defeated time and again, has greatly lowered the ality, and that they have continued by thinking that prestige of the party. The attempt on the part of the alleged “ open sore ” can be cured. We are merely the new régime to rehabilitate itself by threatening coming back to the old sentimental Liberal fallacy that Montenegro, and the firm stand taken up against this the “ barriers between nations can be removed,” etc., policy by Russia, has not added to its lustre. In the etc., a piece of sentimentalism which the even more present state of things in the Balkans it is almost extreme sentimentalists, the English Socialists and the impossible to predict one week what is likely to happen English Labour Party, have naturally tacked on to the next. One thing is certain, and that is that the their creeds. The whole matter is well worth dis- Young Turks are making a great mistake in trying cussing, as it has not a little to do with Imperial to “ Europeanise ” Turkey. I have previously stated Federation, and I propose to enter upon it more fully my opinion that there are many respects in which in the course of a subsequent article. 148

Will this be denied by anyone who has closely followed Tory Democracy. the progress and activities of the Liberal Party? In connection with the agitation over the 1832 By J. M. Kennedy. Reform Bill, it was the avowed object of the Whigs, the political fathers of the modern Liberals, to open (4) Our Blind Guides. the House of Commons to the representatives of WHENyoung and unreasoning children see trees trade.* Up to that time the House had represented shaken by the wind, they forget as a rule that the wind chiefly the landed gentry. Henceforth it was more has anything to do with it and forthwith jump to the and more to represent the commercial element, i.e., the conclusion that the trees are shaking of their own capitalists. The power, wealth, and influence of the accord. The wind is invisible, and, as it cannot be landowners were still in evidence ; but a counter- seen actually working, its effects are thought to be due influence now appeared, the influence of the merchants. to some other and more superficial cause. Generally speaking, the landed interests continue to be The old Hindoo comparison was never more applic- represented in the House of Commons by the Con- able than to the Unionist Party at the present time and servative members, the capitalists by the Liberals. The its attitude towards ideas. Ideas are the powerful strenuous opposition of stalwart Liberals like Cobden influence underlying all political action ; the whole and Bright to the Factory Acts, and the bitterness with foundation upon which political action is built. Their which the Liberal members in general continue to effects are manifest to thinkers whose brains have been fight against legislation for the benefit of the workmen, developed (and incidentally cleared) by modern philo- are classical examples of the tenderness with which sophy. But, as the ideas themselves cannot be seen, this party has always treated the capitalists, while, we are now confronted with the sad spectacle of Con- from the latter part of the nineteenth century up to the servative leaders acting like a pack of children, vainly present time, Liberal sympathisers in the Press, on the endeavouring to explain the cause of their three succes- platform, and in the pulpit, have endeavoured to make sive defeats, and equally vainly endeavouring to formu- it appear that the Conservatives are the incarnation of late a new policy which shall enable them to return to the greed of gain ; the jealous guardians of the power. This inability on the part of the Conservative sweaters. leaders to grasp the importance of ideas is one of the It must not be assumed that recent Liberal legis- most significant and (to enlightened Conservatives) lation, such as the famous 1909 Budget, attacked the depressing factors of the present political situation. capitalists in any way-the party, presumably was too It indicates that these leaders completely misconceive cute for that. Whatever may have been the ultimate their position ; for, until they can thoroughly under- purpose of this Budget, its effect has been to despoil stand where the main strength of the Radical position the workman in favour of the employer ; and when we lies, their own will every day become worse. compare this fact with the Liberal opposition to labour The cursory and superficial interest now taken by the legislation in the past we become suspicious. The English upper classes in literature and philosophy is, South African War naturally had some effect in unsettl- it is to be feared, a typical indication of the inability of ing the labour market for a time, and about the year the average Conservative to estimate the influence of 1900 trade union agitation calmed down as the result authors and their ideas on the public. In connection of the return of a few Labour members to Parliament. with the list I gave a couple of weeks ago, I stated But from 1906 onwards, when the Liberals came into expressly that most of the authors I mentioned did not power, and even more particularly from 1909, wages count for much as compared, say, with Continental have decreased out of all proportion to profits and the authors; but, such as they are, they are undoubtedly increased cost of living. The famous Budget, while influential, each in his own sphere. This stand-offish ostensibly intended to put more money into the pockets attitude is, to put it mildly, inadvisable. I have heard of the working-men, appears to the unprejudiced foreign critics of our institutions refer to it as deplor- observer to have been intended to perform this gratify- ably stupid and cite it as a proof of the slow and un- ing service for the capitalist, which, indeed, statistics scientific English mind. show it has done to a nicety. The capitalist, in short, To the observer with some intelligence, indeed, it is can always manipulate wages in such a manner as to simply appalling to observe the non-intelligence of a recoup himself for any loss that Liberal legislation may great party. I have heard the three successive Con- nominally make him suffer. servative defeats attributed to all sorts of causes-lack This instance of the Budget, however, is not the of organisation, lack of party funds, lack of convincing only one. On one occasion the present Government speakers, lack of agitators, unscrupulous opponents, voted £200,000 to relieve the working classes during a the large supplies of Liberal leaflets, bad trade, period of distress. It turned out that, in those districts Unionist wobbling on the Home Rule question, the car- where the money was distributed, wages showed a toons by Arthur Moreland and Sir F. C. Gould. But decided tendency to fall, and actually did fall, while in all these things are trifles as compared with the real other districts, where the money was not distributed, cause, lack of ideas. Of what use is a stump speaker wages maintained their level-in other words, capita- when he has nothing new to say? Of what use is an lists in particular districts recouped capitalists in agitator when he has nothing to agitate about? Where general, out of the wages of the workmen, for money cartoonists are concerned, again, the Liberals are which had been taken from the nation in general. If infinitely better provided than the Conservatives. The I wished to burden NEW AGE readers with rows of real cartoonist is an artist ; and artists, taking the figures, these instances and others like them could be word in its widest sense, are not encouraged in the fully and completely proved ; and no student of Conservative Party. The Conservative Party, in other economics would pretend that they were fortuitous. words, turns aut of its ranks the only men who can Why, look at the names of a few representative capita- eventually save it. lists and large employers, all of whom openly profess To take a case where ideas are (called for, it is to be Liberal or Radical principles : Lord Cowdray (Sir presumed that an intelligent party would have long Weetman Pearson), Lord Pirrie (of Harland and before now repudiated the Liberal catchwords that the Wolff’s), Lord Furness (Sir Christopher Furness), Mr. Conservatives represent wealth and privilege, and that D. A. Thomas (the mine owner), Sir Alfred Mond (of the main ‘object of the Tory members of the House of Brunner, Mond and Co.-Sir John Brunner, who died Commons is to obstruct any legislation benefiting the not long ago, was also a Liberal), Mr. Lever (Port Sun- workmen, while facilitating as much as possible any light), Mr. Fels ; not to mention the great cocoa firms, measures calculated to maintain and improve the posi- such as the Cadburys and the Frys, the recently de- tion of the capitalist. For this is quite contradictory ceased Lord Airedale (Sir James Kitson), owner of iron- to what has actually happened, and even to what works, and Lord Joicey (Sir James Joicey), another appears to be happening now. Far from endeavouring mine-owner. to tax the capitalist for the benefit of the poor, the * See Prof. Hobhouse’s “ Liberalism ” (Williams and Nor- whole aim of Liberal policy, conscious or unconscious, gate, IS. net) and the “Daily News” review of the book on has been to tax the poor for the benefit of the capitalist. its editorial page, June 6, 1911. 149

But the interests of commerce and capitalism, as actually happened with everything which passed be- represented by the Liberals, and of a section of the tween the Queen, the Archbishop, and Mr. Gladstone. working classes, as represented by the Labour Party, The Primate showed himself a statesman as well as are trifling as compared with the interests of the nation a churchman, while, after everything had arranged as a whole. To represent the whole nation, the nation itself some time before the long vacation, Mr. Glad- considered as an entity, is the task of Conserva- stone, from foes not less than friends, received recog- tives: it remains for us to ascertain how they have nition as the mightiest instrument of inevitable legis- fulfilled it. lation that this country had ever produced. Between the situation of to-day and that looked back upon in the Gladstonian era there exists more than a mere parallel, if not a detailed resemblance. It is not Ringing Down the Curtain. only that now, as then, the two Chambers are at logger- heads, or that the later, as was the case with the earlier By Kosmo Wilkinson. feud, is underlaid by a feeling of the controversy’s having been inevitable, as well as of its demanding, in NOTtill the popular mind had begun accurately to fore- the national no less than the party interest, a settlement. cast the line to be taken by the socio-political move- Then also, as now, a spiritual peer of the highest place ments of the twentieth century, did the public possess thought it his duty as a Christian minister to initiate the means of acquainting itself with the manner in steps that might be the signal for the combatants drop- which there had been surmounted a great constitutional ping their arms. In 1869 the occupant of Lambeth crisis of the Victorian epoch that bears a family like- was Archibald Campbell Tait. In 1911 it is his son- ness in its general aspects to the struggle between rival in-law, Dr. Davidson, whom the ex-Rugby headmaster, forces now at its height, and that may be found to his chief, could not but have, as his chaplain, indoctrin- admit of a solution, recalling in its general features the ated with some of his methods before receiving him into settlement of 1869. In the late summer of that year, his family. At any rate, the Archbishop of Canterbury, as in the present Coronation season, the whole country who will shortly in Westminster Abbey anoint his found itself in a state of high excitement over a con- sovereign with the sacred oil, by his recent speech in flict declared to defy all peaceful negotiation between Parliament has placed on record his readiness to follow the two Houses of Parliament. Social and political the mediatorial example set by his predecessor exactly sentiment had been recently stimulated to a far higher two score and two years ago. Not of course that to- point than that as yet approached in the present con-’ day the Primate has advised the Peers, among whom troversy, by the fourteenth Lord Derby’s speech, intro- he in common with other spiritual lords occupies a ducing, as it did with consummate skill, a parody of a position not unlike that of a governess in the dining noble passage in Scott’s “Guy Mannering,” so happy room, to accept the measure. Archbishop Tait did in its application, so eloquent in its delivery, that his nothing of the sort himself in 1859. On the contrary hottest opponents could not but admire the great he disliked the Gladstonian proposal and insisted on the orator’s fine and finely expressed conception. “ Go need of its reconstruction in Committee. That way, as your way, ye Ministers of England! Ye have this it soon proved, lay the sure progress to accommodation. day, so far as in you lay, quenched the light of spiritual The Peers did save their dignity by what they called truth in fifteen hundred parishes. See if your own reconstructing the Bill in its future stages. The Church stand the faster for that. There are not seven, sovereign could reflect that none of her prerogatives had but 700,000 hearts who have connected themselves with suffered or even been threatened with violence. The you in loyal attachment to the Sovereign, for the sake Prime Minister surrendered no essential point. The of that Protestant religion which you both profess- party could boast of another victory gained under its who, in defence of that union which you induced them earliest democratic leader ; and when the Houses rose to form, would have shed their dearest life blood, but for the long vacation, everyone, to whatever division he now find that from you, to whom they looked for pro- belonged, was agreeably conscious of not having lost tection, they meet with oppression.” About the same much, even if he had gained nothing. Not only the time that this stirring rhetoric was animating English backwoodsmen, but such pinks of patrician decorum and Irish churchmen, Dr. Magee, then Dean of Cork, as Lords Lansdowne and Rosebery may be less amen- denounced Irish disestablishment in a sermon from a able to prelatical influence than their predecessors Dublin pulpit, on the text : “They beckoned unto their proved in the days of Irish disestablishment. The late partners which were in the other ship, that they should Lord Salisbury set the example, and since his time those come and help them.” That discourse, heard by the who have ruled, or tried to rule, in his place, have often Conservative premier, Derby, and his manager, Disraeli, shown a confirmed and wicked fondness for “taking a provoked at the time from the pair the remark,. “We rise” out of a bishop. On the other hand, the must have that man in the House of Lords.” As a sovereign who rules to-day because he is his father’s fact, the Dublin preacher was made, at the first oppor- son can scarcely feel so enthusiastic about his lords, tunity, Bishop of Peterborough. Magee, at any rate, spiritual or lay, as he might have done had they not was himself rescued from the wreck by the partners in missed a chance which, though it might have failed to the other ship, who thus took him on board their own bring them success, would at least have won them a vessel. Popular and political passions remained at cheer for consistency and courage. The national devo- fever height for weeks together. The Queen, on the tion to hereditary monarchy is at least presumptive one hand, it was said, had privately decided she could evidence of the hereditary principle not being the not do violence to her most sacred convictions. Prime despised and ridiculous thing it is sometimes repre- Minister Gladstone, on the other, would not rest till sented. For the Lords to have taken their stand upon he had carried to a successful issue the mandate re- it instead of surrendering it by the Lansdowne Bill, ceived by him from the people. So matters stood would have shown a fidelity to the spirit of the old throughout the latter part of the month of roses. On Barons’ ancestors that the masses would have under- July 26, 1869, the measure for disestablishing the Irish stood, and a king who ruled by hereditary right at least Church received the royal assent. Only a week or two have appreciated. As it is, the royal influence has been, earlier, Exeter Hall had stigmatised Mr. Gladstone as is now being, and will continue to be, exercised through- a traitor to his Queen, his country, and his God ; while out, independently of the prejudice that with every one high ecclesiastic called the Government a Cabinet opportunity of putting its enemies in the wrong, has of brigands, and another exhorted the Protestant preferred to engage in a series of clumsy attempts at pastors of Ireland that, sooner than give up their self-slaughter. Finally, the Coronation will come and churches to any apostate system they should, by help of go, the Parliament Bill will make its way to the crimson a barrel of gunpowder and a box of matches, send their benches ; instead of being pitchforked out, the parlia- enemies flying to the four winds of Heaven. Morley’s mentary ability, which no less a person than King “Life of Gladstone” (vol. ii., pp. 261-270) and Arch- George himself is doing something towards organising, bishop Tait’s biography (vol. ii., pp. 8-43) have familiar- will devise the revision of clauses that will secure some- ised all who care to inform themselves as to what thing like a settlement, at least for a time. 150

to the Bosphorus. With reference to her religion, it Pages from a Book of Swells. had indeed been her calamity to be born a Papist. By T. H. S. Escott. Now that she had come to a country famed for its “ thirty-three religions and three sauces,” and had I I I.-The Lady Paramount. subjected herself to the Protestant discipline, she would, it was anticipated, the more eagerly conform to the SOMEyears ago, about the middle or later ’seventies, rites, ceremonies, and social usages of the Reformed on a fine Sunday afternoon in the height of the river Faith. season, on one of the loveliest lawns sloping gently to the Thames, the young or elderly-young ladies, As the Lady Paramount throughout her lord’s vast married, semi-attached, or altogether disposable, then, possessions, the Princess soon won herself golden with the help of certain fair American cousins, intent opinions from all sorts of people, and drew to herself on organising London smartness, were playing lawn the hearts of multitudes that no man could number. tennis as the Saturday-to-Monday guests of Sir Whether in the country house of the Gulph family, Audenius Giltedge, whose house rose from the midst of looking over the field of Runnymede or in their town a magnificent group of trees immediately opposite, and mansion, occupying nearly a whole side of Grosvenor therefore, as some narrow-minded people liked dis- Square, the Princess, as “ Lady Tum,” gradually won agreeably to say, in appropriate neighbourhood to the the reputation of being “ Sir Tum’s ” good genius. ruins of the building which, on the other side of the There were few or no English modes to which she did stream, once witnessed the revels of John Wilkes’s and not readily adapt herself, and inwhich she did not soon Francis Dashwood’s club of sulphurious name. The become a leader. So things went on for some years. Sabbath junketings now recalled had for their leader Then those who were about her began to notice a rest- a lady endowed with much charm of manner as well less craving for change of scene and for Continental as grace of person. Popular though she had from the gaieties. At first she gratified these tastes by circum- first been, and ever remained, in this the land of her navigating the Mediterranean with her husband in his adoption, as well as amiably disposed towards all yacht. Then, on his finding he must return home for classes of her new compatriots, the Signorina Neroni, shooting, hunting, Quarter Sessions, or Parliament while delighting in every form of insular sport or gaiety, duties, she insisted on being left behind, first at Monte had never acclimatised herself to the British Sunday. Carlo, then at spots in a more northern latitude, where The shrewd and excellent husband who had induced she had discovered relations of her own who had come an Italian princess to become the wife of a British to great state and power. By degrees it became a baronet after a youth that, to say the least of it, had settled thing that “ Sir Tum ” and his lady, in the been incautious, was now taking much pains to sacrifice matter of foreign travel, should go their different ways, to the proprieties. Coupled with a certain rotundity of irrespective of each other’s movements. “ The first outline in the abdominal region, the worthy baronet’s of cosmopolitan baronets” was a description in which Christian name of Thomas had won for him the abbre- “ Sir Tum ” rejoiced. “ The princess who would not viated title of “ Sir Tum.” The shining levels of the be insularised ” was the term of honour reserved for king of English rivers glittered with many coloured his lady. craft of all kinds, just as if it were Gold Plate day at In due course “ Sir Tum ” was gathered to his Henley. The Shrine-for so Sir Audenius Giltedge had fathers; the family honours went to his son. The new called his riparian palace-had a front place among baronet had been at Eton with the son of the lady the sights of the neighbourhood. From pairs, four whose rowing boat, containing herself and her daughter oars, eights, skiffs, canoes, and steam launches as they May, passed the beautiful grounds of The Shrine on passed, thousands of eyes did not rest in their glance the occasion of the Sunday gathering at that spot till, upon the emerald turf on The Shrine’s front, close already described. In the course of one or two seasons to the tennis nets, they clearly made out the Anglicised the acquaintance between ‘‘ Sir Tum’s ” successor in Italian princess, otherwise “ Lady Tum,” as, clad in the Gulph baronetcy and the May Dacre of the Thames the smartest‘ and most arresting of dresses, she took rowing boat improved itself into mutual affection. A her part in the game with a zeal that shamed many marriage was arranged, and Sir George’s wife, as the a younger player, and that showed her neat figure and latest Lady Gulph, acceded to the position of Lady well-cut ankles to perfection. “ My dear,” whispered Paramount throughout the length and; breadth of her

“Sir Tum ” into his lady’s ear, “remember you are husband’s estates. The Princess -- for Sir George as well known here to the passers-by as if you were Gulph’s lady always in speaking gave her mother-in- in Hyde Park. ” law the benefit of her full rank-called her yacht “The While these words of warning were in process of Butterfly.” “ Suppose,” she added, “ we change her utterance there wended its way up-stream a light title to ‘ The Ocean Home ’? ” In the beautiful sculling boat, pulled evidently by some Eton boys, and schooner thus re-christened the pair have already put, containing two ladies, one obviously their mother, the a girdle round the earth. They have found descendants other, it was equally plain to see, their sister. The of landholders on the Berkshire Gulph estates under bells were now ringing for evening service, a signal for every sky and in all the zones. Returning home, they the arrival of a bevy of fresh and ultra-modish guests have explored, not merely as birds of passage, but as at Sir Audenius’s Thames-side villa. As the young lady sojourners, every corner of those regions with which just mentioned looked from her boat to the now densely they have something in the nature of personal concern. thronged lawn, she said : “ A slangy of would-be swelIs They have unearthed and resuscitated industries once is what I call them.” A smile of contemptuous com- profitable but long since buried ; they have introduced passion played over the mother’s nobly chiselled modern modes of manufacture to industrial classes features, while, of the two boyish oarsmen, one said whom they found idling their lives away, or at worst to the other : “ I really think May is right, and that doing nothing but increase the criminal population of all things considered, it is not very good form.” the country. Does a family wardrobe want replenish- Such observations, notwithstanding the irresponsible ing? The cloth stuffs have all been produced within juvenility of their utterers, expressed pretty accurately their own province; the lace and other costume decora- the growing opinion in that part of the Thames Valley tions have come from cottages of their own county, about the Sunday doings in Sir Audenius Giltedge’s who had already begun to despair of ever getting grounds. Sir Thomas Gulph had come last in a long another sovereign from the pillows on which, at their line of baronets of ancient descent and of dominions humble doors in other days, they plied their needles stretching continuously from Windsor in one direction with such golden results. The new Lady Paramount, to Westminster in another. His marriage, at the time who, unlike the old, might almost be called the Lady of its celebration, had been the delight of the whole Bountiful, also exercises in great affairs an authority countryside; for his bride was pleasant and even pictu- such as her predecessors never knew, and for the simple resque to look at, as well as the heroine of many stories reason that she never expresses an opinion without taken for gospel, illustrating her amiability and the being thoroughly seized of all the facts, or a request European admiration felt for her, from the Lucrine Lake that she would really say what she thinks. 151

course of the next three years I shall endeavour, with the Wagner. aid of my receipts, to repay the loan. The Real Let us see, then, whether you are the right sort of a An Unrecorded Incident. man ! If you show yourself to be such where I am concerned- By Leighton J. Warnock. and why should not one in a thousand be found?-you will be brought into much closer contact with me through your IN Wagner’s recently-published autobiography “Mein assistance, and you must let yourself be pleased to put me Leben,” certain reflections are cast upon Robert von up for three months next summer at one of your country Hornstein, at one time an intimate friend of his. In seats,. preferably in Rheingau. I will not say anything more just now. There is one the autobiography von Hornstein is referred to as a other point, however, in regard to the assistance I have asked “ booby,” although this expressbon is hardly applicable for: I may mention that it would be of great advantage to to a man who was a close friend of Schopenhauer, Paul me to have 6,000 frs. at my command immediately; I von Heyse, and other well-known men the time. The expect that, in such a case, I could arrange matters so of that I should not require the remaining 4,000 frs. until references to Robert von Hornstein in “ Mein Leben ” March. But, of course, as you can easily judge from the have induced his son to publish in the “Neue Freie urgent tone in which I write, I really want the full amount at once. Presse ” of May 31 certain letters exchanged between Let us hope, then, that the sun may for once shine on me. his father and Wagner, as well as a few observations What I want now is a success, otherwise-I can do nothing which his father had written down concerning Wagner. more !--Yours, RICHARDWAGNER. These letters, out of deference to the fame of the great “ I must confess,” comments Robert von Hornstein musician, were omitted by Herr von Hornstein, junr., drily, “ that the tone of this letter, and the large sum when he compiled a biography of his father; but the asked for, made a refusal easier for me. It was rendered still easier by the fact that I knew that I was references in Wagner’s autobiography seem to leave no dealing with a kind of bottomless cask, and that, while alternative but their immediate publication. They show 10,000francs was a very large amount for me, it was that the great musician could very often be rude and nothing to him. I already knew that Napoleon, mean, and that, what was even worse, his histrionic Princess Metternich, Morny, and Erlanger had be- temperament could not always be kept in restraint. stowed huge sums upon him, which fell like drops of It was, it seems, the custom for those whom Wagner water on a hot stone. Further demands would be made invited to lunch or dinner to take their own wine with upon me. Finally the rupture would have come, but only after a series of useless sacrifices.” Robert von them, for he himself did not see his way supply to it. Hornstein’s wife, with the true financial instinct of a Robert von Hornstein forgot this on one occasion; but German woman, also opposed the request, and the he was emphatically reminded of it. following repIy was sent :- Wagner‘s birthday was approaching, and an invitation Dear Herr Wagner,--You appear to have a wrong concep- to dinner duly came to hand. I had expected to find myself tion of my wealth. I have some small property, which among a large company, and was greatly surprised to see enables me to live respectably with my wife and child. You only Herr Baumgartner, the director of a Zürich singing- must, therefore, apply to really rich people, of whom there club. He had made a name for himself in Switzerland by are several among your patrons, both male and female, the excellence of his male choirs. Well, I thought, Wagner throughout Europe. wants to enjoy a quiet, comfortable birthday. The little As for your visit to “one of my country seats,” I have company was very merry. We had reached the dessert. already made arrangements for a somewhat long visit With a word of command that came out like a pistol-shot, myself: and when I can comply with your wish I shall Wagner ordered his sister-in-law to bring him the wine-list duly advise you. from a neighbouring tavern. She hesitatingly carried out I have read in the papers with great regret that “Tristan this unexpected order. The list arrived. Wagner read the and Isolde” will not be put upon the stage this winter. I names of the various brands of champagnes, with their hope this is merely a question of time, and that we shall prices, and finally gave the order for a bottle of average yet have the pleasure of hearing the work. quality to be brought. With kindest regards to yourself and your wife,-Yours, The atmosphere became uncomfortable. The bottle of ROBERTVON HORNSTEIN champagne was emptied, and Wagner turned round to his two guests, a sneering smile playing round his lips, and And to this the following reply was received :- said in a loud tone : “Well, shall I make a present of Paris, December 27, 1861. another thaler to each of my guests? ” The ladies, wife and Dear Herr von Hornstein,-I do not think it would be right sister-in-law, rushed horrified to the door, like the ladies for me to let a reply such as yours pass without a word of of the court on the Wartburg in “Tannhäuser.” Baum- censure. It is hardly ever likely to happen that a man of gartner and I were stunned. We looked at one another, and my equal will ever again apply to you, so that the impro- both of us probably felt as if we should like to break our priety of your remarks will redound upon yourself. glasses over the head of our charming host. As this might It was not your place to instruct me in any way, including not have done, however, we thought it a very right and who was rich or not rich; and you should have left itto me proper feeling, after a pause, to burst out into laughter. to decide why I did not choose to apply to any one of the Still laughing, we thanked our amiable host and went away. patrons, both male and female, to whom you refer. The ladies were not to be seen. When we got downstairs, If you were not prepared to put me up at one of your Baumgartner ‘expressed his determination never again to country seats, you could have embraced the unusual oppr- accept an invitation from Wagner, while my fixed intention tunity which I offered you of obliging me by making the was to leave Zürich as soon as possible. necessary arrangements to receive me in the place of my Another incident, this time in connection with von choice. The prospect you hold out to me of letting me Hornstein’s property, is well worth recording. The know when you are ready to receive me is consequently offensive. domineering, not to say insolent, nature of Wagner As for the wish you express about ‘‘Tristan,” you should explains itself in the correspondence now published for have left it out. Your answer can only pass muster on the the first time :- assumption that you are entirely ignorant of my works. 19, Quai Voltaire, Paris, Let the matter be dropped. I rely upon your discretion, December 12, 1861. as you may on mine.-Yours obediently, Dear Hornstein,-I hear you have become wealthy. RICHARD WAGNER. In what a sad state I myself am at present may easily be judged from my failures. I am endeavouring to save In the autobiography, as Robert von Hornstein’s son myself by seclusion and a new work. In order to make this points out, Wagner complains of the reply he received endeavour possible for me-that is to say, to lift me above when, in his opinion, he was conferring an honour upon the painful duties, cares, and needs that rob me of my Robert von Hornstein in offering to go to his house. freedom of mind-I require an immediate loan of 10,000 frs. All reference to the loan, however, is conveniently With this I can set my life in order again, and once more omitted, thus giving an entirely false impression of the begin productive work. It will be rather a heavy burden for you to let me have actual relations between the composer and his friend. this sum; but it will be possible for you to do it if you are For the sake of historical truth it is to be hoped that willing, and do not shrink from sacrifices. But I demand all autobiographies are not constructed on the same it, and ask you for it in return for the promise that in the principle. 152

small part in the life of the drama. It is, in fact, a The Rebuilding of the Theatre. slovenly dress tacked on to a model by a photographer By Huntly Carter. to give his own expression to a study, but not what the model would choose to express herself. M. Rouchi., II. The Seers. who himself aspires to remodel the “scene ” rather ON those who feel and understand the theatre the than to reconstruct the theatre, adopts this view. In impression created by its present separation from the his opinion, “the art of the scene is the most varied drama is that of standing outside the temple of the that exists ; it could not conform to one rule.’’ “The mysteries of the human soul and looking at the aim of the mise-en-scène is to illuminate the body of windows from the light to see nothing but blurred and a play, to clothe it, so to speak.” Further, the enamelled exteriors. We feel that we are surrounded character of each play must be taken into account, “ the Iphigenia of Euripides should be decorated on every side by mysteries of existence which the differently from the Iphigenia of Racine.” Different narrowness, prejudice, ignorance and cowardice of plays require different treatment by different artists. human beings have created. We are conscious that The character of the theatre must also be taken into the essential facts of life are those around which account. “The ‘ scene ’ of the Theatre Francais is custom has thrown a veil of mystery. These are the not that of the Vaudeville.” Scientific precision is not facts that are waiting to face us at every turn, and necessary. Archaeological exactitude may be neglected. from which accident is apt to tear the veil, thus In short, M. Rouché’s introduction consists of a brief but clear-sighted statement of the new ideas con- revealing the truth which we dare not ignore and which cerning the art of the theatre and having a relation forces us to change our whole conduct of life. Just to the notion of creative evolution found in the as Nora’s act of devotion which placed her in the power thought. As each century has its artistic vision, as of Krogstad was the means of revealing the truth of each century begets a new order of seers, so each her married relations. We want to be present at a century demands a new order of artistic interpreters. play rehearsal of these mysteries, to watch human Or in Goethe’s words, “Nature is ever shaping new forms ; what is, has never yet been; what has been beings, i.e., personalities, or individuals who incor- comes not again. Everything is new, and yet naught porate the greatest number of experiences and unify but the old.’’ them into an ideal, pursuing their ideals, each The application of these ideas to plays already in building up his world as he conceives it according to existence is beset with pitfalls, not to say thorns. The the sum of his experiences, and realising either Heaven desire of dramatists during recent years has not been (ecstasy of success) or Hell (agony of failure) in the direction of the creation of plays of imaginative beauty nor of symbolic beauty. To them social life according to the result of the conflict between the has appeared all hideous, all distorted, and so they elements of his experience, i.e., the opposing elements have expressed it. Though that which is ugly may be of his character. Such an initiation by experience into tricked out to appear unusual or sensational, it can the deeper mystery of life which we call truth, with never be made beautiful. To seek to provide sordid its end in destruction, through not being equipped to realism with an artistic background is simply to wander meet the revelation, or in emancipation, through being into the land of the bizarre, and to risk achieving prepared to receive and apply the new knowledge, is nothing but the grotesque. Again, it must be remem- bered that many modern plays are by writers who, alone the material of which great drama is composed. like Messrs. Shaw, Barker and Galsworthy, have no There is no great drama save that which is the result sense of the theatre. But the inability to feel the theatre of a mental visualisation of mystical states. The is not confined to realists and factualists ; it extends mental visualisation of physical states results in a itself to writers of fairy plays and other plays of caricature of detached monstrosities, having no imagination. All the moulding in the world, all the organic relation to each other and dear only to the faking by artists called in for the occasion will not make their products different from what they are, scientist turned dramatist who explains them cate- theatre misfits. gorically. But the vision and dramatic interpretation There are, on the other hand, and belonging to the of soul states is different, Not only does it demand second group, artists of the theatre who, like Messrs. the exercise of the imagination of the artist, the Gordon Craig and Reinhardt, have no sense of the revealer of an eternal truth, but it creates the need drama. To them the theatre is, or ought to be, a of a temple wherein the spirit of truth may be temple of art indeed, but it is a temple not adorned reverently unveiled, and where at the shrine of the with any marvel of the modern creative mind, nor made divine with mysteries of the modern soul, but instead inscrutable god the devout may enjoy the wonder of dedicated to archaeology myth, fantasy and Shake- the unity of mysteries springing from and dedicated to speare-Shakespeare, who, it will be remembered, had the mystery. both a sense of the drama and the theatre, but was The recognition of the separation between the drama denied a theatre, and accordingly wrote for Hyde Park and the theatre and the desire to remove it have called and a megaphone. Besides these, there are Georg forth certain activities in various parts of Europe, Fuchs, Fritz Erler, Professor M. Littmann, in Ger- many ; MM. Meyerkhold and Stanislavsky, in Russia ; which have recently been summed up in a volume Adolphe Appia, Mariano Fortuny and Jeno Kemendy entitled “ L’Art Théâtral Moderne,’ by M. Jacques all earnestly engaged in the reform of the scene and Rouché (Cornély et Cie., Paris). According to this of the theatre, together creating a splendid edifice interesting book of prophecy, with its many adequate which rears heavenward, majestical and serene, but illustrations, the new cathedral builders may be with nothing to put in it. divided into two groups-those who seek to provide If the drama and the theatre are to be united they must develop simultaneously, react harmoniously, and an artistic background for the existing drama and so mould each other till the desired end is attained. those who aim to reconstruct the theatre for a drama I refer, of course, to the drama that must spring out where Nature is as yet but little understood. Though of the need of the moment. The old drama may be the experiments in which both groups are engaged left to fossilise in libraries and museums or in the are commendable, inasmuch as they open up vistas peculiar form of antiquated theatre projected in the on the promised land, they leave much to be desired. pages of Messrs. Archer and Barker’s “ Scheme for a To one group the theatre appears as something that National Theatre.’’ The question of how the unity of drama and theatre has hitherto been incidental, and has played but a may be fostered will serve for another article. 153

Mr. Jackson is pre-occupied with the mysteries of Dionysos Meditates.* life. He sees that “age is a tragedy,” that “the final and unforgivable act of our hopelessly bewildered lives” By Alfred E. Randall. is that we teach children the art of growing up. But THISis an age of great men, and in most cases their he is no pessimist. He does not merely denote the greatness is blameworthy : they achieved it, not with- evil: the meditations of Dionysos result in a new out effort. Mr. Jackson’s greatness was born with religion. “ Peterpantheism ’’ is its name, and the him; he came naturally into his kingdom, bringing with Duke of York’s Theatre is its temple. “We might him “ airs from heaven, or blasts from hell,” and follow Peter Pan,” says Mr. Jackson, “and refuse to similitudes from the Unknown. Apply every known test grow up.” Mr. Jackson is not without a system, for of greatness to him (as greatness is known in these he proceeds to argue that “make-believe is the prelude days) and his cannot be gainsaid. He uses a title that to belief. ” Then he demonstrates the necessity of has only a remote connection with his subject-matter, becoming as little children before we can enter the king- he forgets the use of quotation marks (this is the infal- dom of heaven, and as “the only really vital thing in lible sign of the “ advanced ” thinker), he does not life is the unconscious abandonment of young things- usually acknowledge his indebtedness to his forbears, the spirit of play,” we obtain entrance only by the pur- and it is characteristic of his original wit that he reprints chase of appropriate playthings. Here we enter the his “Introductions ” at the end of the book. “Though realm of miracle : behold, he shows us a mystery. “ If this be madness, yet there’s method in it,” will not you are quite young enough, and like any particular apply to Mr. Jackson. It is not insanity, but divinity, thing well enough, that thing is quite certain to be that makes him indifferent to the usages of literature; either in your stocking or on your bed on Christmas and he has been hailed by an admiring reviewer as morning. There are many authentic instances : one “ Dionysos Meditating. ” quite fresh in my own experience is that in which an I think it was Auerbach who said that “leisure is elephant was miraculously translated from the town to diviner than labour, and the gods leave drudgery to the suburbs in this way without any obvious payment.” mortals.” I shrink from the assertion of prevision, but Some of the mystic charm of these essays has evapo- it is significant that Mr. Jackson’s first sentence is: rated in the process of summary, but it should be clear “ I like to do nothing.” That he should declare in his that the meditating Dionysos has produced something next essay, “My magic is involved in going to like a religion ; not much like, I admit, but the dis- Nowhere,” will not surprise the initiated. The new cerning eye will see the resemblance. avatar has the authentic stigmata, and miracles are not The reviewer previously quoted says that Mr. Jackson wanting to attest his rank. He alone shows the way has been perfecting his style; that he has succeeded a few to Nowhere, “and the miracle will happen in this quotations will prove. In the essay entitled “ Southward wise : Somewhere will come to you.” This is otiose Ho! ” (not to be confounded with a once famous book originality : let none be reminded of Shaw’s early called “Westward Ho! ”) he says that a milk-white apophthegm, “Effort defeats itself, and the thing that albatross floated behind the ship “like an attendant is done well is done easily. ” Let them rather remember beautiful aeroplane. ” That is a similitude beyond the Christ’s laborious method of removing mountains, and reach of Coleridge: he would never have thought of bow the head. it. And who but Mr. Jackson would have said:- One of the English traits noticed by Emerson he “In our dreams objects yield to the touch of fancy, as thus expressed : “ They have difficulty in bringing their easily and as quickly as the keys of the piano respond reason to act, and on all occasions use their memory to the light touch of a lady’s finger-tips.” That is not first.” But the English habit will not serve in this prose : it is almost poetry, and so apt is the comparison case. It is useless to remember that Stevenson wrote that we can hear Mr. Jackson dreaming. His essay “ An Apology for Idlers,’’ which superficially resembles on “Winter ” I must ignore : I remember Lowell’s and half of Mr. Jackson’s book, and might be supposed prefer it. But Mr. Jackson is at his best in the essay to resume his philosophy. Nor will it avail us to on “Spring.” Who but he could have imagined that remember that Mr. G. K. Chesterton has a copyright “the happy trees greeted her by hanging upon their in Christmas: that he has written of playthings, of branches a myriad tiny lanterns of sparkling green ” ? the festival of gifts, even of the hedgerows that moved The image is replete with reminiscence -- of illumin- Mr. Jackson to what his reviewer called “ lyric praise.” ated tea-gardens. The likening of Spring to a young Mr. Jackson writes of these things as though no one hoyden is masterly, for no one will remember Herrick’s had written of them before. He does not merely idle, use of the “tempestuous petticoats.” The book is fulI like Stevenson : he discovers. He notices, for example, of such things : it is what is sometimes called a master- that most of our familiar birds nest in the hedges; that piece. The underworld of civilisation is not hidden “ rats, dormice, weasels, stoats, hedgehogs, are all to from this keen observer. He sees the human derelicts be found there.” But he is not a mere naturalist. asleep in the churchyard of St. Giles’, Bloomsbury, and He has mystic perception, and he sees that “ the hedges the unwritten legend over the gateway : “Rubbish may are growing walls, that is their chief call for wonder.” be shot here.” He sees the crowd waiting for soup Another instance of the amazing use of this faculty near Kingsway, and notes that hunger has tamed it; may be given. People do not ordinarily notice that and his vision is of hungry tigresses, hungry savages, Cheapside and Holborn are noisy-so noisy, indeed, that who do not stand “ in queues awaiting soup.’) Nothing they cannot hear themselves call their souls their own. escapes him, not even the customary reflections on the “ You are possessed,” says Mr. Jackson, “ by the sort of men we breed. legioned devils of noise who clamour indecently in the I have not space to deal with his “ Introductions ” ; public places for your soul. Every time you give way but it is unnecessary. Like Peter Pan, they refuse to to them, every time you live them down, they conquer grow up to date. Most of them are dated 1908, and you. There is no escape save flight.” But pass beneath the one on Wells does not include “Tono-Bungay ” and the archway by Holborn Bars, taste the stillness of the subsequent works. If, as Carlyle declared, “the Staple Inn, and “the sudden releasing of the grip of merit of originality is not novelty,” we cannot deny the noise brings you face to face with the essential fulness merit of these essays. What everybody says of Maeter- of quiet. You are surprised to find that quietness is linck, Chesterton, Wells, Blatchford, and the rest, Mr. full of low sounds, like the murmuring of bees or Jackson says. He will be called a real genius, for his mountain streams-sounds which are a real part of life truths are truisms, or universal truths, from which no and which have been obliterated by the outside clamour. one dreams of dissenting. On the other hand, if Carlyle And you realise that your own soul, which up to now was right in declaring that the merit of originality is YOU had somehow overlooked, is not one with the noise, sincerity, what can we say? Imitation, we know, is but kin to this living silence. You, in short, possess the sincerest form of flattery, and I intend to imitate yourself. ” Mr. Jackson. After journeying with him into Fairy- * “ Romance and-Reality.” By Holbrook Jackson. (Grant land, “ then, then, as they say, I woke up.” The land Richards. 3s. 6d. net.) of Nowhere is not far from the land of Nod. 154

the capitalist, the shareholder, the financier, the Jew, Unedited Opinions. etc. Right you are! Now we can reckon the amount of suspicion to be carried in our minds in the next East and West. speculative enterprise. Of all the desires so created, I SEE that the latest theory is that Jesus was not a great and of all the profitable devices for satisfying them, is man, since he was a great failure. How does that strike there one that is real or accomplishes its end? you ? Thousands, I should say. Oh, it’s good enough as a challenge to the wor- My compliments to civilisation, but I asked for one. shippers of failure, but in itself it is absurd. Success Bread ! and failure are relative terms. To define them you need But, my devoted economist, bread is not a desire, an intelligible theory of the universe, failing which there it is a necessity based on a natural appetite. No are only opinions. financier has stimulated the desire for bread. On the Then we are doomed to wander among opinions ! contrary, he has contrived to make difficult to you and Very likely. But in that event we may as well be profitable for himself the means of satisfying your careful what intellectual company we keep. All men natural appetite for food. You will agree that a society are mortal, but some are better than others. It is the intent on merely satisfying its natural needs would not same with opinions. This question of success and be civilised in the Birmingham sense of the word. failure, for example, is a longitudinal question; to the You are making now a distinction which you have Eastern side belongs the noble answer, to the Western only just introduced between needs and desires. side the ignoble. So it is now. So will it ever be. Or shall we say with Wagner, between needs and What do you mean by that? Are you making dis- mere wants? Yes, I thought it was familiar. The tinctions of mere geographical space and giving them point is that the East has needs like ourselves, being ethical qualities ? human; but only we in the West deliberately and of I might answer that space being a mental concept, malice aforethought multiply our whims and wants, longitude is as real an intellectual distinction as any together with the means of satisfying them, and call other. But I will not trouble you with esoteric the result progress. But I was asking if you could geography. I will confine my East and West tothe name any created want that could be satisfied. You respective psychoIogies of, let us say, Indianised Asia cannot, for two reasons : First, there is no end to the and the rest of the world Europeanised: India and variety of wants that can be stimulated; and secondly, Europe, if you like. Success and failure, with all their none of the devices supplied by our shopmen is intended progeny of forms, are transposible terms in these to satisfy them. In the name of economics, what on paradoxical longitudes. Failure here is success there, earth would happen to our business people if we and vice-versâ. suddenly ceased from wanting anything but what we But that is due, surely, to a mere difference of con- needed, or were satisfied with a single device? ditions, resulting in a difference of psychology, and O Progress! Even that great monkey of ingenuity on hence in different values. which we pride ourselves most of all would be thrown It is that, certainly; but in my opinion it is also out of work. I mean our brains. Brains, you say, very much more. I take the East and the West are in the service of the Life-force? Fudge ! They symbolically to represent two directions of what Shaw merely create and vainly attempt to satisfy whimsies calls the Life-force, but what the ancient Hindus more and wants. simply described as Desire. When Desire is directed Now you’ve encountered a pretty dilemma in your inwards there is the East; when it is directed outwards attempt to belittle the West. You imply that the ideal there is the West. These two streams being in con- of the East is brainlessness. trary directions never meet, but doubtless between them Well, why not? It is no reproach. The realised is they keep the world moving and yet stable. always the complement of the idealised. To satisfy I’m afraid I must ask you to descend a little if I am desire refuse to indulge it. To increase it satisfy it. to understand you. Aim at brains and you become a fool. Despise brains Well, how will this do? Western civilisation and and intelligence is added unto you. But this aside of progress are the fruits of an outward-flowing desire. yours has nothing to do with our discussion. Are you Eastern civilisation (which, you will note, is mainly agreed that Western civilisation is definable as the invisible) is the fruit of an inward-turned desire. stimulation and attempted satisfaction of wants ? That’s better, but I am still dazed among generalities. I suppose so. For your neglect to exercise your mind you deserve Well, now ask yourself what progress there is in to be. And before condescending I will add to your digging holes in order to attempt to fill them up again ! bewilderment by remarking that the most criminal The answer will satisfy me very well. sentence to my knowledge in the Western Scripture is You shall not escape so easily. Suppose I say that the command of the Jewish Deity: Be fruitful and if even desire is not satisfied in the West by the multi- multiply. The rascal knew that the effect of multipli- plication of our inventions, neither is it satisfied in the cation is fruitlessness. East by the absence of inventions. There is still a Oh, dear! oh, dear! third refuge for me from your contempt. I may main- Now for your beloved economics, where you feel at tain that neither in the presence nor in the absence of home, do you not? Have you ever considered on what desire is there any satisfaction, but only in the expe- theory our Western civilisation proceeds? It is the riencing of desire and in the experiencing of its partial theory that the more desires men have and the greater satisfaction. number of devices €or satisfying them that society pro- See how your mind has been sharpened by this dis- duces, the more civilisation advances. Why, I have cussion ! I congratulate you, but you are wrong. Who actually heard it said, and very nearly sung, that told you that desire is not satisfied in the East? The progress means either the creation of new wants or the proof of satisfaction is that there is no change. Is not satisfaction of old ones. Did ye not hear it, or was it the East called the Unchanging? As for your conten- but the wind or the car rattling o’er the stony street? tion that desiring and obtaining are in themselves satis- Oh, yes, I’ve heard it. But what have you to say fying, I know, as Goethe says, the real shape of that against it ? poodle. It is the doctrine of Becoming,. and most Nothing needs to be said to a wise man against any- unbecoming it is to gentlemen. From this view the thing. All one needs is to describe a thing as it is. world is an eternal workhouse in which we are supposed Well, and what is the nature of this beast of your to be happy under the blessings of a Perpetual Right-to imagination ? Work Bill with no allowances for maintenance during I ask you, did you ever know anything more typically unemployment. How good, says the Western poet of Jewish in the worst sense than the doctrine? To whose Upandatit, how good is our life, the mere living! But interest, my bold economist, is it to stimulate new the East does not want to do anything, even nothing, desires and new means of satisfying them? Answer me for ever. To do is not to be. To be, perhaps, is exactly that, my Jevonian. The middleman, the shopkeeper, not to be. 155

place than the St. Louis fair. It contained a reproduc- An Englishman in America. tion of the Court of Honour of the Buffalo Pan-Ameri- can Exposition, and its illumination made all other By Juvenal. places of the kind seem dull and uninteresting. A huge circus of three rings hung suspended over the water. “ have to have it; yes, sir, without it New York WE Of the forty acres composing this part of Coney Island, itself would burn, the people would go mad, there twenty-four are under cover. Thousands of people wit- would be nothing to work off the general cussedness; nessed terrific flights and falls from towers a hundred New York without an outlet like Coney Island would and fifty feet above the water; the visitor wandered soon be an inferno.” So spoke this Yankee with the about from one scene to another under a maze of worldly wisdom of a Benjamin Franklin, and I believe hanging gardens such he spoke the truth. The great show, or, rather, the vast as no Babylonian queen ever possessed, and to rival these a Japanese tea garden series of shows, at Coney Island acts like a funnel for New York’s underworld. Through this huge funnel was created by Japanese florists and carpenters, while at night all of this was lit by electric bulbs, hidden so as the fumes of the broiling social hot-house rise and dis- to give the illusion of brilliant day. appear in the air, the steam pressure is reduced, and the sweltering army of pleasure seekers return to the great *** city sufficiently refreshed to undergo another spell of Here dance halls such as were never seen in any maddening work, under conditions that beggar descrip- country gave room for thousands of dancers; you could tion, for the heat in New York in July and August make the marvellous trip to the moon or go under the surpasses anything known in Europe. sea so far that you never hoped to return, and from *** two great towers you could be suspended in whirling baskets till you thought you had swung from time Verily, there is method attached to all Yankee mad- into eternity, and never expected or hoped to see the ness. The men who invented the pleasures, thrills and cronies of Coney Island again. But the sensations, the sensations of this seaside resort were psychologists of thrills, the frightful bumps, the terrifying legerdemain no mean order. They were seers whose palms itched of illusions, the swallow dips, the dumb-bell dives, the for more coin; they scratched the itching palm as chil- diabolical devices of submarines and mines, the rush of dren scratch the sands with a stick, and out carne the torpedo boats, the immense faked fire, in which a whole gold in ever increasing abundance; but behind the itch- ing palms there was a philosophical cause. Someone city block begins to burn, in which the police ring the alarm, in which hose carts, fire engines and great com- had seen the immense field Iying there to be worked; panies of police make their appearance, in which someone had divined the way to bring a sort of dream hundreds of people are rescued from windows with the reality into the lives of all at a small cost; someone whole place a mass of flames, while streams of water had invented the great invention of giving six hours of play over all, and at the last a female is lowered from nepenthe for the price of a few bars of naphtha. It was the last window and the walls crumble. All this is be- a sort of magic for the eyes, the ears, the imagination. Let the sea-surf wash the tired bodies, but let the mind yond description. A thousand actors were required for Let it wander free and this part of the Dreamland exhibition alone, and it is a steep in a reality of dreams. mere side show. easy from the “Devil’s Dip ” to the “Loop of Love”; *** let it wander about from suburban ideals to bearded ladies with china-blue eyes; let it pass from dancing New Yorkers need not go so far as India to see a elephants to performing fleas, and from the “ Barrel of Durbar. It is always here in Dreamland. A troupe Love” to hogsheads of thrills, where mind and body of elephants numbering nearly a hundred are engaged in receive a sort of “ suggestion ” treatment at one and this realistic Indian festival, in which the Delhi of the the same time for one price with no extras. old days is represented with singular fidelity. Here, *** too, is a place called “the Bowery with the lid off.” I have already spoken of New York with the lid screwed Coney Island is the New Thought merged in the world down, and here were to be seen the destruction of of amusement. It is the Eddyism manifest in “ Hell Pompeii, a village of three hundred liliputians, a trip Gate ” and on the “ Rocky Road to Dublin ”; a place through Switzerland, battle scenes, a great animal where you cease to think of your ills; where your big show, a baby incubator, realistic pictures of the Arctic troubles are lost in wonder at trained fleas, and your regions the Chilkoot Pass, with crevasses in the little worries swallowed up by fat fairies in pink tights; glaciers, a ball-room as huge as 20,000 square feet of where your doubts are dismissed by a vision of a troupe size could make it, and right over the sea, with a of angels in Eden with Eve and the wily serpent in the restaurant and promenade to match. dim distance ; where your provincial prejudices receive *** rude whacks, and you lay aside town topics for a dazzling utopia of whirligigs, scenic railways, impos- It took me two whole days to see the most interesting sible panoramas, illusions, electric devils, magnetic things on Coney Island, but it would take two whole seasons to study the cosmopolitan visitors. 500,000 maidens, jugglers, infant incubators, things unheard of, visitors in one day was not an unusual sight, but that things never guessed at or invented. sight was worth seeing. The European of New York *** who sees much of these things, who has travelIed up Coney Island has been burned out twice. The and down the Atlantic coast, returns to Europe full of original show place was a pure pandemonium of pick- experience which could not be obtained there at any pockets, sour beer, boozy women with stinking babies, price. The Germans who return on a visit to Berlin the cosmopolitan dregs of all the capitals of Europe find that city slow and tame. But the Americans who and the human wreckage of the seven seas of the whole have seen the “ sights ” of America, beginning with world. It was a place to visit once if you wished to New York and ending with Colorado and the great make death appear as a relief and a blessing; but the sights of the Pacific Coast, have nothing to see when first fire in the summer of 1907 swept the foul odours they get to Europe but the old cathedrals and some old, and scenes away for ever, and a land of illusions arose quaint streets and houses here and there. as by magic. *** *** New York, in the opinion of many people, will soon To describe the place as it was before the recent fire be a rival to Coney Island. Even now its places of is anything but easy. Combine all the shows of Berlin, amusement far outnumber those of any other city in the all the attractions of Paris and Vienna, all that we know world. The foreign cafes and restaurants here are in of Earl‘s Court, the carnivals of Venice, the Mardigras themselves a perennial source of festive pleasures, and fetes everywhere, then add the Durbar of India, and we for the student of human nature they bring together have not yet given an adequate picture of Luna Park all the national types of Europe in one small space, and Dreamland. Luna Park alone was a greater show within a radius of a few miles. 156

Before the fire was out side shows in improvised tents hesitate to use threats in order to force them to were opened. In one of them the few millions that were print it. saved were exhibited to eager crowds at stiff prices of R. : Oh!-- admission. On that same evening after the fire I was D. : Do not deny it; witnesses will confound you. sitting with a few friends. The “Judge ” was there, You made your way into M. Lemerre’s office with and as the talk was all about the burning of Dreamland, a revolver, and you threatened him with death if he said, “ When the last trump sounds and the dead he refused to give you a contract within a quarter arise, some Yankee speculator will erect a tent for the of an hour. M. Lemerre replied that it was not sale of lots on the other side of Jordan.” customary to conduct business with the help of firearms; you were just taking aim when an employee entered. We will pass on. You found at last, a publisher, and “Fibres Supremes” L’Affaire Serge-Babin. appeared. Six months later not a single review [Translated from the French of Alfred Capus by N. C.] or critic had mentioned it. : Naturally. LET us recall briefly the facts which bring the poet R. D. : However, one day on opening a paper you read Babin before a jury to-day. On June I of last year an article on your book, an article full of praise one Durand, exercising the functions of literary critic and encouragement. This article was signed by for one of the principal Paris newspapers, was found one of our most distinguished critics, M. Durand. assassinated in his bed ; it was his caretaker who made The following week the unhappy man was the melancholy discovery when he brought him his assassinated, and by you! [Sensation.] The jury morning cup of chocolate. will sum up the case for themselves. R. : I have only one word to say in my defence. The same day M. Serge Babin gave himself up at Durand’s article opened with this phrase : “ M. the police station of Notre Dame de Lorette, declaring Babin is a poet of considerable talent.” No man himself the criminal. He showed the inspector the of letters can fail to realise that the expression dagger he had used, which was still covered with the “ of considerable talent ” constitutes the most blood of the victim. No more was required for the serious insult that can be addressed to a writer. magistrate to place him under arrest. The latter then If I had been able to defend myself through the Press I would have done so, but I had no connec- proceeded to a cross-examination. tions. My comrades jeered at me, and with But the only reply Babin could be induced to make reason, as the talented poet. I was a lost man; was : “I am avenged ! ” I avenged myself. D. : Why did you not try to induce Durand to EXAMINATIONOF THE ACCUSED. M. retract ? D. : Babin, you are twenty-eight years old ; you R. : I went to him. I swore that I could not tolerate come of good family, but you have always been such an outrage ; I was carried away by passion. a dreamer, of an undisciplined and wilful disposi- I begged, I implored him to write an article in tion. At the age of ten you began to write verses. which he should state quite simply that I am one The prosecution has been able to obtain one or of the greatest poetical geniuses of the century. two. I recognise that they rhyme well and show I did not even require that he should call me the greatest ; merely something which should neither a natural gift for poetry. You read them to your wound my pride nor compromise my reputation. disciples, but you would not tolerate the smallest He refused. criticism. When in the fifth form you beat a D. : On the next day you bought a dagger in the schoolfellow who reproached you jestingly for Rue de la Grande Batelière. having put a foot too many in a line. You gave R. : I must answer for that to the jury. (Exit of wit- him, as we say colloquially, two black eyes. Since nesses for the prosecution.) Several Parisian publishers called into the box gave that time the symptoms of your bitter nature have evidence that Babin had repeatedly threatened them multiplied. All that is of the nature of criticism with death if they would not publish “Fibres fills you with a positive horror, which extends Suprêmes. ” even to writers of the past. How many times Next many members of the Society for Men of have you not been heard to say that Boileau was Letters, questioned by the President concerning the the most degraded of men? Frequently you have merit of the expression “ of considerable talent ” applied uttered imprecations against M. de Pontmartin ; to an author, replied that there indeed existed no more your student followers and your professors could gross insult, and that the term could never be employed hardly guess how far this aversion to literary by a reputable critic. critics would at last carry you. [Prolonged “A writer of whom it is said that he has talent is sensation.] entirely put out of court,” added M. X--, and it is, R. : Some of the details are exaggerated. moreover, impossible to sell a single copy of his books ” D. : Do not interrupt. At the age of seventeen you . passed your baccalauréat; then you entered the DEFENCE. Ministry of Agriculture in the capacity of super- In an eloquent speech counsel for the defence numerary. There it was not long before your demanded an acquittal, pure and simple. He laid stress mad passion was remarked. As you read the news- on the fact that this was the first case of a critic killed papers you were surprised, sometimes ejaculating by an author, whereas the critics had, morally speaking, cries of rage, and one day you threw a copy of sent countless authors to their death. ‘‘Babin,” he the “Revue de Deux Mondes,” which did not even urged, “is to-day a wiser man ;-the long imprisonment belong to you, into the fire in a moment of which he has endured has guided him to more moderate ungovernable passion. [Emotion among the wit- sentiments. From henceforward he will be content nesses.] Finally, you announced to your colleagues merely to despise critics. Besides which, on the one that a bureaucratic career disgusted you (that is hand, we have too many critics; on the other, we your own expression), and you sent in your resig- possess few great poets. ” nation. Then you were to be seen running from Counsel for the defence wound up by appealing to one editorial office to another, carrying from the jury for the restoration of a great poet to society. place to place poems that were invariably refused. VERDICT. Don’t interrupt. I am not drawing conclusions. After an hour’s deliberation the jury returned a I merely state facts. Last year you offered negative verdict on every point. to every publisher in Paris a volume of verse Consequently Babin was acquitted and immediately entitled “ Fibres Suprêmes,” and you didn’t set at liberty. 157

her there was Man’s work to do which concerned not An Ethiopian Saga. woman to know. At these words Jamba gave great heed to hear more, By Richmond Haigh. but the girls, drawing their water, returned to the kraal, CHAPTER I. talking of other things. AT Kohani’s Head Kraal there was some little commo- Now Jamba, although scarce yet a man, was wise; tion, for Jamba, the son of Bama the Warrior, had so he gathered up his blanket, and, taking the shortest come from Kundu’s with disquieting news. paths, he hastened and tarried not until he came to Now, Kundu was the hereditary head chief of all the Moali, to his kraal, when he related to his father, Pabedi; but, because of the great number of his people, Bama the Warrior, what he had heard. And he said : the White Strangers, who now ruled the land, had, with “My father, I fear Kundu is of mind to come against cunning, induced Koloani, his half-brother, to take arms us.’’ Then Bama took his son Jamba to the Place of against him, and, for the Peace of the Land, the White Council; and when he had repeated these things which Men had come between them and said that the tribe he had heard, the Wise Men spoke together upon them. must be divided : Koloani and all his men and their And Manok, long of tooth and wise, said, “Go now, families should live in one district with the Moali for Jamba! Thou hast done well to bring us this word so their river; Kundu with his people should remain at speedily. ” Nilisetsi--which was, and had always been, the Ring’s And when the young man had gone out Manok said, Kraal-and possess that district; the rugged hills should “Hear, Koloani, of the Blood of Kings, and ye, my be between them for a border on each side. brothers, hear my words. The message which Jamba And so the tribe was divided. has brought is as the cry of the bird, the Quaraquara, But Kundu and his head men and councillors were which is a warning to the deer that the Hunter ap- angered at this doing. Nevertheless they found it wise proaches ; and though the bird may have became dis- to dissemble, for the face of the White Man was with turbed from slight cause it is yet well for the game to Koloani to protect him. And the men and maidens of take the alarm. How stand we now? Our runners the tribe went back and forth from the one part to the bring word that those White Men upon whom we have other. counted for assistance can with difficulty keep them- Now a time had come when the White Strangers in selves together and are being driven like cattle before the land, having grown rich, became dull in council those who fight against them. They can be of no use because of their fatness, and, from much talking and to us now, and Kundu will know this as well as we. slandering, were now moving in camps against each The sore upon his head has not healed with time; rather other, and had fought many battles. And on a day this does the running of it continually irritate him more. side would win, and on another day that side. And now, surely, that we have lost our Right Arm, he But now it appeared that those White Men who came will seek to be avenged upon us. What think you, from over the Water, and who were in numbers as the my brother, Bama, Chief of Warriors? What may we locusts which darken the Sun, would be the victors. expect ? ’’ When this was understood the councillors of Kundu met And Bama, victor of many fights, said, “My words, together, and the Chief was with them. And Mokani, O Koloani and brothers, are few ; hear them ! Boka- the first councillor, stood forth and said, “ Hearken, lobi is a wise man and of much learning in war. He O Chief! son of Manduku and Father of Thousands! will know our strength even as we know theirs. Put- and ye, Men of Council, hear my words. ting weight on the word we have heard it would seem that now, even this night, Kundu has sent summons to “The White Men fight together, and they who are his villages ; to Malopani, to N’quobi, aye, even to beaten and sore pressed are the friends of Koloani, but Sandabo, the son of Daasha, who can bring a thousand our enemies. Now, therefore, the time for which we spears. Three days must pass ere they can be gathered have waited has come. We have trod on our hearts together against us. Two days will it take thee, for many months. The Snake has been in our midst, Kioloani, Chief of thy Line, to bring thy spears together but because of the Rocks which protected him we could at this place. But Kundu will think to surprise us do nothing. Now the Storm has shattered the Rocks, and gain a day, perhaps two. If my words seem right, and before fresh cover can be found the Snake must then, at the rising of the Sun, let thy messengers go be destroyed. Koloani and his House must be cut off; forth and call in thy people from Sankili, the dry spring, but the people with him, are they not thy people, even to Vamoling, bordering the land of Kamalubi, O Kundu? And if the goats stray because of a bad Chief of Rasalamoon ; that we may not be as foolish leader it is not necessary to kill the whole flock. Now, game, which, having heard the Quaraquara, is yet therefore, my words are these : Give command, Kundu taken by surprise. Should it be that we have not read of the Lion breed, to thy general Bokalobi, that he take the word aright, and the mind of Kundu is not against an hundred men of his best to-night, and that, at the us at this time, even then, Koloani, of a Long Arm! falling of darkness, they set forth swiftly and in silence the clashing of spears is a good sound and pleasant in against Koloani. Before the turn of the night they will the warrior’s ear. A Great Day of dancing will be of be upon him, and he and his whole house, man, woman, comfort and cheer to thy people. These are my words.” and child, should be destroyed. Then, before the day Then, after these sayings had been considered by the breaks, let it be proclaimed from every point of Taban- Council, arose Koloani, the chief. Now, Koloani was dini that the people are to be at Peace and not to fear, not a man who delighted in war! Rather was he a since your will is not evil towards them but Good.” dreamer, and loved those who sang songs. Never- When Mokani had finished speaking in this wise, the theless, in war was the Chief of great bravery. And Chief, Kundu, turned to the other councillors, and they Koloani said, “I have heard, my Fathers ! and every spake amongst themselves and with Mokani. And their word has been of weight. But, even as I have listened, hearts were with him in this matter, and Kundu sent my eyes have seen a dark and swift rising of the for his general, Bokalobi. Waters, as of the furious wave which comes from the sharp and crashing Thunderstorm. True, the wave CHAPTER II. passes in a moment ; but it has swept the stream, and And it had happened that Jamba was returning from he who follows in his boat need have no fear. What, a visit to the house of Mafefu, whose kraal was at a my Fathers, if Kundu wait not for Malopani, nor for great distance, and, being, tired, had stopped to rest M’quobi, nor for others who are at a distance, but that near Nilisetsi, Kundu’s kraal. And while he lay in the he bring Nilisetsi against Moali, his Chief Village grass close to the river two young women came with against mine ; for there are none who dwell between their pots for water, speaking loudly, as is their way, us? Consider this thing also ; even this night might and Jamba heard from one how the Father of her house they set forth against us and, unprepared, we could had been at the Mochabato, the Place of Council, since not stand before them.” noon, and how Kundu, the Chief, had sent her brother Now these were wise words of Koloani, the Chief, to call Bokalobi, the General, and how now she was to but fighting in this way had not taken place in those prepare an early, meal for that brother who had told parts before. So the Weight of the Council was against 158 alarming the people that night. It being late evening had seven sons, and the men who dwelt with him to the council dispersed having decided to act as Bama, serve him were four. And it was known that the four the Warrior, had said ; to be astir at break of day to unmarried sons slept in one hut and the three married attend to these things. sons each in his own huit, and the four men who were servants in one hut. Bama slept alone. So I divided CHAPTER III. my men accordingly against the five huts, and I myself At this time, the falling of darkness, Bokalobi the went swiftly towards the sleeping place of Bama. General gave order, and he and his hundred men, The door of his hut was open, and, examining closely, chosen of the mightiest and best, gave greeting to the I found no one there, and so I hurried to the hut of Chief, Kundo, and turning their faces towards Moali, the eldest son, Touga, giving the call of the guinea- held their spears aloft and shook them. Then Bokalobi fowl, that my men should know me. Porodak, who sprang forward with a great leap, and his men followed follows in my House, had chosen Touga for his spear, and were at once out of sight; but not a sound was and he had pushed aside the door of Touga’s hut and heard. And Kundu returned to his house with a smile called him, saying he must speak with him. And upon his face, for he expected great things. And his Touga, true son of his father, had seized his sticks heart yearned to be avenged on Koloani. Across the and spear and sprung forth and had fallen to the spear river and over the sand, through the thorn bush and into of Porodak as I came up with them. But Bamba was the corn lands went Bokalobi and his men. And here, not there. And now three other of my men came only, did they walk because of the thick dry leaves towards us; and their step was light, for their spears which covered the ground after the plucking of the corn. were red. And even while I asked them of Bama, lo! Then on again, springing forward, landing ever lightly a shout, and from the darkness of the wall two Men on the toes ; and so from dusk to midnight. sprang upon us. Two Lions, verily, were they; two Then Bokalobi raised his spear and stood, and each against five; and he, the taller of the two, was Bama man, as he saw, raised his spear and stood that those the Warrior, but the other I could not see because of behind might also see and stand. Then they gathered the rush and that my eyes were for Bama only. And about BokaIobi to hear his word. And Bokalobi called Barna had in his right hand his War Club, and in his the Ten Men together whom he had appointed as left hand his spear. The club fell upon the head of Leaders and heard them repeat the Orders which he Porodak, he who followed in my House, and crushed had given them. To each Leader with ten warriors it like a melon. The spear pierced the throat of him was it given to deal with a certain Sabolo, that is, the to whom I had been speaking, and Bama grunted huts of one family in a korral : to slay every man and deeply with the joy of it. Then Bama drew back his boy and to deal with the women and girls according as spear and raised his war club, of great weight, against they behaved, also, to cut down every Man of the me, and we both struck and parried together; he with Enemy who came in their way. When they had his spear drove mine down so that it only pierced his finished with their Sabolo they should make their way thigh; while his club-such was the strength of his again to Bokalobi, who would await them at Koloani’s arm-bore down my guard and struck my left shoulder own House with which he himself would deal. so that my arm refuses even yet to raise itself. The And now, again, they moved forward silently on the fight was to Bama, for, though sorely hurt in the chief entrance to the Village Moali, and each leader of thigh, he could yet stand and strike and guard against ten drew away with his men in the direction of his my one arm. But now seeing his Friend, whose spear Sabolo. had broken off in the ribs of Sekobo, the son of Presently there was barking of dogs in the village, Mokani, being overcome by Talipi, of the bow legs, and then a shout, and another, and screaming of Bama. hurled his spear which took Talipi under his Women. And the people, terrified, came rushing out right arm and drove deeply in; but Talipi’s club had of their huts, and many knew not what had happened. in the same action crashed upon the face of his But here and there, and at the Sabolo of the Chief, and Enemy. Now Bama, Lion of heart! had lain himself where Bama the Warrior lived there rose the sound of open to me, and my spear entered his chest, and the Fighting and the angry shouts of men ; and this died point came out between his shoulders. The Mighty away and there was silence again. The people trembled One turned his face to me and stood like a stricken and looked at each other and asked what this thing elephant, then sank to the earth. The other men, meant. Then, as they stood yet amazed before their each kissing his bloody spear, had now come up, huts, the people saw the warriors pass, with springing O Bokalobi, and we hurried to meet you, bringing with step and shaking spears, before them and out of the us our dead. And now, Bokalobi, the Man whose face village. But they knew not who they were in the dark- I saw not was of the height and build of Koloani, ness, for Bokalobi had ordered silence amongst his men. and he was a man of Valour. More I cannot say, for Then Bokalobi led his warriors into the Tabandini, the I know not; but my heart, O General! says ‘ Be rugged hills, to await the coming of Kundu and all comforted for our enemy is dead.’ ” those with him. For he had sent off Koromati swift of foot with tidings to the Chief. And Bokalobi, the General, was fain to believe that Now the General called together the Leaders of Ten it was even as the heart of Pondabi the Smith had told him. and asked, “What of Koloani? ” And the Leaders were astonished and asked, “Was he not at his house?” CHAPTER IV. Then Bokalobi was sore of heart and said, “I found And now, the sound of great Wailing and Lamentation him not at his Sabolo, and the Women of his House was in the air, and, as the day broke, Bokalobi and whom I questioned knew only that he had been there, those who were with him saw from Tabandini, the and pointed to his bed which had been lain upon. And rugged hills, that there was a great commotion at Moali, they spoke truth, for the first who said she knew not the place of Koloani. Men ran to and fro beating was struck down before the others, but they could say the breast, and ever a great sound of wailing arose only this. And I thought, he will have visited Mono- as the people came together. And soon Messengers kang or Bama or some other and will surely fall before were seen to leave the Village and run swiftly in many one of my men. And they could not tarry for already directions. the alarm had been given and it was useless then to search for any man, in the darkness, in his own place.” But Bokalobi moved not from the hills. And now, And BokaIobi bowed his head and was much troubled. just after the rising of the Sun, came Kundu, with all Then he who had been leader against Bama the the men who could be with him; for he had not waited Warrior and his house, Pondabi the Smith, an honour- for the messenger sent by Bokalobi, but had met him on able man, stood forth and said : “O Bokalobi, Lion and the way. And Mokani, the First Councillor, whose son, Wolf! be yet of cheer and hear my words, for it may Sekobo, had been slain in the fight, was with the Chief be that it is with ‘ He-who-troubled ’ even as you Kundu, and they all entered quickIy into the hill and thought, and that the purpose of our coming is accom- came to Bokalobi, the General. Bokalobi told at once plished. Behold, in the Sabolo of Bama, Man of to the Chief and to Mokani what had been done. And Might, we counted to meet twelve men; for Bama also the word about Koloani, at which Kundu was not 159

well pleased, but hoped that it was even as Pondabi the Smith had said. L’Affaire Greaves. And now Mokani stood forth, and Bokalobi with him, and moved towards Moali. And Bokalobi blew upon By Walter Sickert. his Horn loudly three times. And of a sudden the IT appears that Mr. Pennell, who has appointed himself wailing ceased, and the eyes of the people in the Village official scold to the memory of Whistler, is dissatis- were turned towards the hills, and they saw Mokani fied with some of Mr. Walter Greaves’s paintings. advancing towards them with his hands held high in Mr. Pennell is an able black-and-white man, an effective sign of Peace, and Bokalobi coming on with him, be- etcher and transfer-lithographer, but not, so far as I hind. And these two came to a Rock which stood out know, a painter. AS a critic he cannot be said to be not far from the Village, and Mokani called out with a noted €or balance or temperance. I do not therefore loud voice that the men of the Village should come find myself disturbed by Mr. Pennell’s Constantino- nearer and hear his words, which were words of Peace politan perturbations, or even by Mr. Rowland Strong’s and Good Cheer. In a little while many men came entertaining and racy journalism on the same subject forth out of the Village, and when they were below him, in the “ Saturday Review.” not far from the rock, Mokani, the First Councillor, My acquaintance, oddly enough, with Walter spoke and said : “Hear now, O men of Moali, the Greaves’s work dates from the third day of this glorious word of Kundu, the son of Dukani, the son of Parolong, June. I had heard of the boom, did not believe in the son of Bonoa, the only true and rightful chief of it, was bored by it, and told everyone I knew that I this land and of all the Peoples here. Well does was sure it was a coup monté, and that there was Kundu, your Lord, know that your Hearts were never nothing in it. “ Well, that only shows,” as we say against him, but that you were led away by Koloani and in England. My friend Mr. Tonks tells me we begin his young and evil councillors. Kundu bears towards to ossify at eleven, so that at eleven and forty it is you no ill will ; his Face is Kind towards you. Koloani no disgrace. I have this in my favour that, while and those with him have received the Death they de- some of my contemporaries are ossified and do not served ; and those White Strangers who placed their know it, I at least know that I am, and try to allow feet upon our necks will soon be slaves to another for it. nation. Now, therefore, the word of Kindu is this: When I come to examine the reasons for my hitherto His people must sharpen their spears for Strangers, not indifference, I find it was due neither to jealousy of against each other; Tabandini is to be no longer a a rival “pupil of Whistler ” with the same Christian Border between them. He promises pardon to all men; name, nor to a distaste for the appearance of new and he now, here in the rugged hills, awaits and ex- and sensational men of genius. “La divine jalousie ” pects that you will without delay send in your due sub- has mercifully been left out of my composition, and as mission to him. And, Brothers, hear me, Kundu, your to discovery of genius, that has always been one of Lord and Chief, has not come alone ; his Army is with my pet hobbies. We must look elsewhere; and I am him. If his brow was black towards you he could in a sorry to say that the fault must lie at the door of my moment pile your village in a heap and burn it so that really rather naughty (lachons le mot) master and of not a stick remained. Weigh now the word I have my careless credulity in believing him. In effect given you well and quickly, and I will return with your Whistler gave me to understand that the “ Greaves answer to Kundu, the Chief of all this land and people.” boys ” were negligible, that what they accomplished Then the men of Moali returned to the Village to they had from him, and that when his influence was consider the word which Mokani had given them; but withdrawn they relapsed into the nullity from which they were as Sheep which had no Leader, for there was he had lifted them for a while. To complete, while I no man of great standing left amongst them. As for am about it, my evidence on this subject, I must add Koloani, their Chief, his body had not been found that Whistler gave me his account of his reasons for amongst the dead; and the women had spoken of the breaking with them. His story was this : Whistler doing of Bokalobi and that he had not found the Chief had had an exhibition somewhere (don’t ask me for in his hut to kill him. But Koloani was not in the dates or places), and after it was over he asked the Village. And now Mokani, the Councillor of Kundu, Greaveses if they had seen it, and they said “No ” had told them he was slain with the others, so that Act of lése-papillon, and no mistake, here! They there were many who thought it must be so, and that made it worse by saying “they didn’t mean anything his body had been carried away by Bokalobi with his by not going.” Worse and worse ! “ If you had meant own dead. For they had found in the Sabolo of Bama anything . . .” Words failed! You see the scene the Warrior the signs of a great fight. from here. Whistler added that, some time after, a Yet, many were for fighting and defending them- common friend had been to see them, and that they selves until assistance came, for Messengers had been had said that “they were painting pictures on the sent to all the other villages to call the People together. method of Whistler up to Academy pitch.” But others were for accepting Kundu again as their My idea on the Greaveses remained ever after at that. chief-for the hearts of the people had never been black I left them at that, with the dangerous fatuousness that against him. And so when Bokalobi again blew his is ours when we allow a tag to fill the place that pro- horn, and Mokani had declared to them that he could perly belongs to a reality. not wait longer for their answer, the people in the However, so far as I am concerned, all’s well that VilIage, seeing that they would not stand together to ends well. I came, I saw, and was bowled over, and resist Kundu, went out again to Mokani the Councillor herewith make publicly act of penitence. Walter and Bokalobi the General, and threw down their arms Greaves is a great master. Henry doesn’t count. before them. And ten of the principal men who were Walter announces himself with an immense painting of left amongst them went up with Mokani and with Boka- Hammersmith bridge on Boatrace day, a work of ex- lobi to cast themselves down before the Chief Kundu treme youth. Simon Bussy once told me an enchanting and declare the submission of the chief village of Moali. story : A painter, entering the studio of a colleague, is When Kundu saw this thing his heart was glad, and so struck with a work on the easel that he seizes it and he spoke to the ten men and told them to rise ; then he rushes to the door with it. “Malheureux,ou allez vous gave orders that all the men who were with him should avec mon tableau? ” ‘‘Au Louvre ! ” TO the National follow him down to the Village and camp outside, Gallery with Hammersmith Bridge! But I forgot, Mr. around the place where the spears had been cast down. Greaves is only a great painter, and the graduate of no But Bokalobi and his chosen men were to go with the University. The boatman’s son “ aura difficile à entrer,” Chief to the Great Ring in the centre of the village as the Norman fisherman say. (Turner, by the way, where council would be held. And Kundu told the ten was a barber’s son.) men to go before him and hold their hands high so that The Hammersmith picture is a masterpiece. The only those in the Village should know that it was Peace. thing it reminds me of in painting is Carpaccio. It is a staggerer. Its perfect naïveté results in purest art. (To be continued.) Curiously enough I should say it must have been done 160

on a white tempera ground, though Mr. Greaves says our own lifetime, who can wonder at the difficulty that not. Ithink he must have forgotten. Let any one posthumous experts find in details of attribution ? look at number (27), “The Thames, bright morning,” As to Whistlers and Whistleriana, I am perhaps the “ Unloading the barge ” (35), “ Mountebanks, Chelsea ” person living who is most qualified to speak, and that (39), “The Old Haymarket ” (40), “Lawrence Street, is why I have been at the pains to write this article. Chelsea ” (48), “ Cremorne Gardens at night, showing the entrance to the theatre and the stooping Venus fountain,” “ The Boating-pond, Battersea Park,” Books and Persons. “Battersea Church ” (70) and “Old Chelsea and the Adam and Eve,” and say that here is not a little master By Jacob Tonson. in the first rank. In the portrait of Miss Alice Greaves, IT is a curious thing that one of Walter Savage Walter Greaves has accomplished what Whistler spent Landor’s major works, “High and Low Life in Italy,” his life trying to do. It is odd, tragic, humorous, has never been published in book form. Thus even the cocasse, anything you like, that it should be so, but best collected editions of Landor are incomplete. This there it is. The ways of providence are inscrutable. singular omission is about to be remedied, thanks to a The boatman’s son is the great gentleman. The humble French student, M. Valery Larbaud. M. Larbaud has and meek have scored in this dramatic manner, as they already translated the work into French, and he has have scored before, and as they will probably score now arranged to publish the original text in England. again to the end of time. “Au Louvre ” with Tinny It seems rather strange that in spite of our enterprising Greaves ! national spirit, which sends racing-crews to Ghent and Now the reader will ask what about the Whistler erects a box-office at Westminster Abbey, we have not influence ? What especially, about the Greaves Noc- found time to publish a complete edition of one of our turnes? Of the bulk it may be said that here was a fine greatest writers. artistic personality deflected from time to time from its *** orbit. Greaves did many Whistlerian nocturnes, not Being English, I, of course, knew little about one of which could be mistaken by a connoisseur for a Landor’s work on Italian life, but I learn from a note by Whistler nocturne. Whistler, trained in Paris, taught M. Larbaud in the new number of “La Nouvelle Revue and influenced Greaves, Greaves the professional Francaise :’ that it originally appeared in Leigh Hunt’s armorial painter and boatman inspired Whistler and “ Monthly Repository,” between August, 1837, and suggested subjects to him. To be dragged out of April, 1838 (when the “ Monthly Repository” died). Leigh your orbit round the town, like a tin kettle at the Hunt censored the book in the interests of prudery, and tail of a dog, by a stronger personality may appear he allowed the mutilated text to be further disfigured by to the unphilosophical experience merely painful. The numerous misprints. This was very naughty of him. truly philosophical kettle returns, dented, it is true, It is impossible not to like Leigh Hunt, but he did sin but enriched by, and grateful for, ecstatic experience. gravely at times. M. Larbaud says that the work was If in Old Battersea Bridge (69) Greaves had caught written partly in Florence before 1835, and partly in badly the slippery strip touch which was Whistler’s England after 1835. He gives no answer to the ques- worst fault, in the Balcony (41) we have an august noc- tion : “Why did not Landor, who had a passion for turne with a quality of intricate and monumental design getting himself printed, arrange for the publication of that Whistler never reached. Any nagging about this book, written over thirty years before he died? ” mutual indebtedness is sordid and trivial in such a case. But he refers to Landor’s correspondence to prove that It is as if two lovers should quibble under the bough the reason was not that the author did not think highly of a lime-tree about which of them it was that made the of the work. In “ La Nouvelle Revue Francaise” M. other happy. Larbaud prints a translation of one complete part of the As to the difficulties and surprises of identification, book. It occupies 35 pages of the “Revue ” and forms I have only to run over a short list of facts in my own only ten per cent. of the whole. experience to see how easily they may arise. I painted *** a small panel of Duret while Whistler painted his By the way “ La Nouvelle Revue Francaise ” is about large portrait. The panel was exhibited at Suffolk to start a book-publishing department. Among the first Street. I think I gave it to Menpes. I painted a books issued will be a play by Paul Claudel and André sketch of the blue girl, actually taking the mixtures Gide’s new novel, “ Isabelle. ” Some twenty years ago off Whistler‘s palette. A friend of mine has a little another review, then young, “Le Mercure de France,” panel of a model which I painted, not very well, and started a book publishing department, which to-day is which Whistler finished, with some exquisite passages one of the principal houses in Paris, and which has pub- in a lace dress and velvet curtain. I etched a plate lished about ninety per cent. of all the good poetry from Stephen Manuel while he was sitting to Whistler. written in French since 1890, besides many admirable My etching was good for me, being done in once, novels (including André Gide’s) and critical works, and Whistler’s portrait was bad for him. He was not quick a unique collection of translations from foreign authors, enough for the child, who was wearied with the number the latter chiefly under the editorship of Henry Davray. of sittings. I remember I told Whistler a theory I I understand that “La Nouvelle Revue Francaise ” will had that when two people painted from the same thing, specialise somewhat in translations. the bogey of success sat on one or the other, but not *** on both palettes. Whistler took up and nearly finished Speaking of the publication of poetry, there can a portrait of Mrs. Walter Cave which I had planned surely be fewer more splendid editions than those of and begun. This one also was lost. I painted another the Bibliothéque de L’Occident (17, Rue Eblé Paris) ? of the same arrangement, and exhibited it at the New The latest volume is a brief trilogy entitled “Sapho,” English. While Whistler was painting Miss Barr’s by Francis Vielé-Griffin. The book is worthy of the portrait in my studio in Robert Street I did a very work. It looks like a folio, but is in reality a large complete pencil drawing, which Robert Barr still has. quarto, printed in magnificent Italic characters, at Whistler’s painting was lost or stolen. My drawing Chartres. The expensive edition of sixty copies, on may some day serve to identify it, if ever it turns up. papier vergé d’Arches, signed by the author, costs a When Professor Brown was appointed to the Slade, louis, and the other edition, limited to 250 copies, costs either I drew a head of him for an apologia that ten francs. It is cheap. I direct the attention of McColl wrote in a magazine and it was published as by Mr. John Lane to these editions. “Sister-Songs,” by Steer, or Steer drew it and it was published as by Francis Thompson, for example, would excellently suit me. I forget which. I did a drawing of Beardsley the format. in an armchair in Cambridge Street. A German *** collector cherishes it as a Beardsley, and when Arthur The most popular author of the moment, after Symons pointed out that “Sickert ” was written in the corner, the German authorities said : “Ah ! yes, we Mr. Charles Garvice and Miss Clo Graves (who wrote know ; but Beardsley wrote that to indicate that he “The Dop Doctor,” but didn’t sign it) is Robert Louis was ill, was at his sickest.” If these things occur in Stevenson. Not long since I tried to read Stevenson 161 again, and either he or I did not come out of the enterprise with credit. Nevertheless Stevenson is in Paris as a Pleasure Resort.* the midst of a great boom. Yet another limited edition, By Vincent O’Sullivan. the “ Swanton ” (not too limited--2,060 copies !), is annouced by Messrs. Chatto and Windus, who, by How France (and particularly Paris) has for long been the way, must be very pleased with themselves for credited with a reputation for gaiety and that variety having acquired certain Stevenson copyrights in the mighty past. The new edition is to be in twenty-five of energy which we, who use English, always suggest volumes, at 6s. net. A mere £7 10s. per set ! I don’t when we talk of wickedness, is pretty easy to under- know how many collected editions of the alleged com- stand; for in France there have always been discoursing plete works of Stevenson have been published; but, wits in the foreground flinging their brilliancies about anyhow, this edition guarantees itself to be the first studies from the partially dressed, and France and collected edition of the really complete works. It will England between them have produced the humorists contain all the letters recently issued by Messrs. of the world. As for the humorists, let us put them Methuen. (The format chosen by Messrs. Methuen, I regret to say, is displeasing to me and to many other aside. Everyone knows that the French have humour. bookmen). It will also contain some additional “ South And as for the writers who have taken the physical Seas ” matter furnished by Sir Sidney Col\-in, and never side of life for their province, many of them artists before published. Lastly, it will contain a long preface of the most attractive talent, we may remind ourselves by Mr. Andrew Lang. I deferentially wonder why. that they wrote at one period to divert certain readers Perhaps Stevenson is for Mr. Andrew Lang the last hebetated by theological disputes, at another to amuse great English novelist. I have noticed lately that the tendencies of modern fiction have been making Mr. a court bored and fatigued-at all periods for a limited number. But the first time that literature as Lang somewhat acidulous in the “ Morning Post.” His is a type of critical mind which cannot perform the feat an influence went directly to all classes of the people- of admiring the old without incidentally giving one in I mean the Romantic movement of 1830-it carried a the eye to the new. The format of the “ Swanston ” serious front. Victor Hugo was relentlessly serious. edition seems pretty fair, but the spacing of the words Whether the French were ever a people given over is not good. The secret of a good page is close to boisterous gaiety, whether at any time it could have spacing. On at least four lines of the specimen page been said with truth that France was the country above of the “ Swanston ” the spacing is in the worst American style. all where one amused oneself, what rests certain is that such is not the case to-day. It should need more than a few novels and plays to prove the French, in the face CZARDAS. of existing facts, the intrepid revellers, the indefatigable A FRAGMENT. caperers under the electric light, the mirthful laughter- (Translated from the Polish of Kazimierz Przerwa-Tetmajer loving people they are given out to be. Far from that ! by P. Selver.) The French regard gaiety with suspicion and even with HAIL,O gypsy fiddler, hail! positive dislike. To say a man or woman is not serious A czardas is my pleasure! is to ruin them in the sight of their neighbours. At ’Cello, groan, and fiddle, wail Paris we have to thank the foreigners, not the natives, In wild exultant measure. for the relieving element of frivolity. If you hear loud All the grief my soul doth sway, laughter in a Paris restaurant or theatre it is probably All the woes and ills, English laughter ; if you see people vigorously amusing All into thy fiddling lay- themselves, they are probably Americans. The gentle- Ho! a czardas to me play, men sitting there with the beautiful night-moths are Gypsy from the hills. Russians, if not natives of Latin America. Meanwhile All the grief my soul doth sway the French look on with a smile of tolerance and pity, Proudly laid to rest, mingled perhaps with envy, as an old gentleman whose All into thy fiddling lay- young age has been stormy rests his thin hands on a Ho! a czardas to me play, cane and watches from a corner the enthusiastic per- With wild exultant zest. formances of youth. The strange exotic haunts, the Mountain blood flows in our veins, shady shops and the rest, are kept open for the Both our souls are dire, foreigners and supported by them: if their owners Quell my anger with thy strains, depended on the French for a living they would be All my scorn and ire. dead of starvation in six months. Their life is very Hearken to the forest cry; nearly the same as that of shops and hotels in watering- From afar it rings, places: that is to say, they have their season, what Play e’en as the forest plays time the foreigners overrun the city, and the rest of When the tempest thro’ it strays, the year they are stagnant, living on the profits of From the bow let fibres fly, the months of plenty. What more serious than the Tears flow from the strings. quarters of Paris not affected by the foreigner and Ho! ne’er let me meet my doom his parasites, as, for instance, the Faubourg St. Down within the lea, Germain? What more serious, more dull if you like, Nor may I find on earth a tomb than a French provincial town, where the foreigner Death’s laughing-stock to be. little penetrates and leaves no trace of his passage? On the granite I would find Contrast the staidness of Bordeaux with the exhilara- Rest, where rocks are still ; tion of Bristol. Compare the turbulence, the rowdyism, Cradled by the weeping wind the shouting, the loud inane laughter of any English I would sleep my fill. town whatever on a Saturday night with the decency May the gloomy pine-trees sigh, and quietness of a French town of equal size. Ameri- Verdant branches swaying, cans come to Paris and grow wan with disappointment Clouds in clusters hover nigh at not finding the liveliness without mercy of Chicago. A rainbow crown displaying. They, and the Russians, and the Germans, and the There the mighty eagles soar English have imbibed the legend of Paris--the rather Loudly onwards sweeping, crude legend of an unceasing luxury, of a perpetual From the granite gates there pour * “A Guide to the Pleasures of Paris.” By X. (Fifteenth Mighty waters, weeping. edition.) 163 carnival under the afternoon sun-in short, of a great irresistible grace, offering a bed of roses-on condition, capital existing and flourishing without work of any be it understood, that the booty-laden pockets grew kind being done by its inhabitants. The distressed light among the roses. Roses, damask and red! And foreigners can discover not even a twilight glimmer the warriors found the couch so delicate, sweet and of this legend, the chronicles of the dissipation of cordial, that they drowsed there a strange time, while Paris being in truth as mythical as the Mimis and all suffered change. Meanwhile, in farms and manor- Schaunards of Murger’s Quartier Latin. houses from Westmoreland to Devon, along the golden Now, having proceeded in our train of thought as Rhineland, in the far northern kingdoms, sat the wife, far as this, I will ask leave to interpose one or two watching the corn grow, ripen, and be gathered into remarks upon the Quartier Latin, because of the the barns, watching the ragged mists of winter, the Quartier Latin, in particular, there has been such a soft rain that drops in the spring, hearkening in vain mass of flowering stuff set afloat over the world that for him whose foot sounded no more upon the the reader may welcome by way of a change a plain threshold, turning aching, disconsolate eyes ever and homely account. I have already suggested that the anon towards the hated, mysterious city which held foreigners before coming to Paris regard it from afar him strangled in its snares. And when at last he did with the reverence and curiosity which we bring to the return he was no better than a weary broken man, with consideration of any person uncontrollably wicked. curious reticences, with a flame and yearning in bis eyes Especially that section of foreigners governed by which betrayed that they had rested on some unforget- artistic instincts, or the imagination of them, with table vision. Then were the little Teutons and Saxons which they mingle, as an integrant, a courageous filled by their mothers with horror and awe of that per- impatience of restraint-such foreigners, chiefly fidious, dangerous city whose jewelled hand had English and American, come to Paris to refresh them- wrought such havoc in the quiet homes. selves from the organisation of the family. They seek There you have M. Paul Adam’s theory. It seems Bohemia, and they have been led by rumour to seek it to me sound as far as it goes, but I think what should in the Latin Quarter. But in the Latin Quarter be‘ added to it is the great wave of vaudeville which Bohemia, alas! is not to be discovered. They see a Labiche and his numberless imitators sent rolling across number of youths who, after working hard at their Europe in the nineteenth century. The febrile and studies all day, at night relax themselves by an hour’s uneasy life portrayed in these comedies, the men talk in a café and then go tranquilly to bed-need I indefatigably hunting after petticoats, the women add, a solitary bed. Some never put their foot in a continually dodging their husbands and living, so to cafe at all : to do so might bring upon them a reputa- speak, between two slamming doors, both men and tion for not being serious. In face of this state of women feeling their way gingerly through a fog of affairs the foreigners are filled with bitterness. Was lies-all that life without repose, without truce, highly it for this respectability, this life without colour, that artificial inexorably gay, came to be accepted by the they left Norwood or Harlem, the culture of Birming- world as the real life of Paris. But the truth is that ham, the restlessness of Chicago? So, not finding the vaudeville of Labiche was no more a natural Bohemia where it ought to be, they organise in despite product of France than the Restoration comedy was of England. When I say it was not a natural product a Bohemia of their own, which has nothing French about it except that it exists in the heart of Paris in of France, I mean that it did not rise from the heart common with the English chemists and tailors. of France; it did not even rise from the heart of the boulevards. The genuine manners of the French nation Thus it appears that the lukewarm dissipation and went for nothing in the conception of these vaudevilles. excitement which may now and then be perceived in It was in the forcing atmosphere of the theatre that the Latin Quarter are provided by the strangers, who the characters were stirred into life ; their breath was are engaged on the sterile task of “seeing life ” where the air of the wings and the dressing-rooms, their no life exists. From time to time one of them writes habitation the stage. Tinsel, painted, bewigged, put a book or an article to describe this Bohemia, this together with all the fards and glue that go to the Latin Quarter. We read these books and articles in making of ingenious dolls, no more than dolls had they the same spirit as we read books about Hell-I mean, any connection with reality. And in Paris they about a highly unpleasant place of which we have no appeared much less real than anywhere else. Life in personal experience. And with a few exceptions this a Labiche comedy was much more amusing and kind of Latin Quarter is unknown to the Frenchman. intersting than the general life of Paris. The The average young Frenchman who comes from the unreality, in fact, counted for a good deal in the country to Paris has been far too well drilled in success. The Frenchman and his wife went to the domestic maxims of economy and prudence not to make theatre to contemplate with amusement and envy serious studies. He hardly ever comes in contact certain stirring scenes of an extraordinary life as with the foreigners, those superficial rakehells, those remote from the manners and habits of the ordinary naive and vague girls often charming-as all who seek citizens as the customs of the cave-dwellers. With an ideal, no matter what, are charming-those would- admirable daring these scenes were offered as a slice he painters, singers, players on, the piano, makers of of Paris life ; but that they were not. They were rather statues, who populate the exotic Bohemia I have a fantasia on Paris life, your everyday commonplace indicated. people being first presented peaceably doing the most Now, since it is obviously a melancholy deception commonplace things, and then, at a sudden swing of to look upon the French as experts in gaiety and what the wand, compelled to the most unlikely gyrations. used to be called “lewd courses,’’ it becomes a subject The French spectator would examine these vaudevilles proper for inquiry by what means this fable has arisen. in the same spirit as the yokel at the fair regards the And, first, it must be noted that the fable is a com- two-headed calf : such births are monstrous and little paratively modern invention. In the seventeenth and probable; still there is one chance in a million that eighteenth centuries, when the intercourse between our own dun cow in yonder paddock may play us just France and England was very active, there was no such another trick. Labiche in his way was a master- talk of Paris as the common dance-hall of the world. of the lower forms, it is true, but a master all the Therefore, I think that a theory put forward by M. same. His followers, such as Gondinet, were more Paul Adam a few years ago is, if not all the truth, at than clever. Who, then, can be surprised that what least in most part true. M. Adam said (I am repeating Labiche was skilful enough to persuade his own his argument from memory in my own way) that this countrymen, in spite of their reason and senses, to diminution of credit in the eyes of censorious foreigners accept for a few hours as a not too unlikely picture of first came upon Paris in the years 1814-1815,when their daily lives, should come to be regarded by the city was thronged by the armies of the allies. To foreigners, albeit blurred and injured by adaptors and these foreign soldiers worn by campaigns, their pockets translators, as the real, troubled, sensational existence laden with the spoils of war, Paris, practically in the of France? Caesar had already said that Gaul was position of a conquered city, came forward with an divided into three parts; Labiche saw some fun in exquisite air of deprecation and anxiety, with adding that all Gallic marriages were divided into 163

would gather that most of the women in Paris were three persons, essentially an unholy trinity. His actresses ostensibly or surreptitiously, that every man business was to amuse his countrymen; if the people was an actor, or a piano player, or a jockey, or a of other countries were dull enough to be scandalised, journalist, or an aeroplanist, or a mixture of the lot. to take gnats for camels, they were to be pitied or laughed at as the mood might take you, but when Further, one might gather that all the painters and dramatists spent their nights in the bars of Labiche was composing his plays he had not them Montmartre, their days drinking absinthe, and made in view. their pictures and dramas in such stray hours as were So we are arrived at an explanation which, if not left. Possibly some of them do, and, if so they are at all points adequate, at least renders intelligible the amazing creatures. However this may be, there is estimation of Paris commonly entertained by the world no question that the correspondent makes a most for the last hundred years. But why has this estima- entertaining chronicle of the acts and sayings of such tion prevailed even to this day, when Paris can be as are blown into the public eye, those pantaloons reached so easily from most of the European capitals, and marionettes who strut and caper an hour in a when Paris is, in fact, yearly overrun by foreigners? fine glitter for the astoundment of a cosmopolitan Why does the London stockbroker still Iook upon crowd, but as to whose existence, it must be con- Paris as the one place for a week-end frisk? Why fessed, the serious part-that is to say, by far the do the German and American take on a doggish and largest part of Parisian men and women-is pro- confused air when they mention that they intend to foundly indifferent. linger in Paris on their travels? For what really After Sterne had been a while in France he declared happens is that they go to Paris with their minds made he was heartily tired of it. “I believe,’’ said he, “the up about what they are going to find there, and proceed groundwork of my ennui is the eternal platitude of the to find it. Ah, poor foreigners! You know we bring French character.” I think he meant the eternal most of the entertainment with us: if we depended seriousness of the French character, which wearied and on the French for that kind of thing what a sodden annoyed one who was continually seeking the variegated time we should have of it ! lights of mirth, for again he writes : “As for pleasure, Our illusions are deepened-or at least till quite we have nothing here which deserves the name: if I recently have been highly coloured-by the methods do not mind I shall grow in France most stupid and of the gentlemen who write about Paris in the European sententious.” Certainly the men who have had the and American newspapers. These gentlemen, who are, greatest influence in France, who have made the of course, men of great intelligence-these foreign strongest appeal to the French people, at least in correspondents may be roughly divided into two classes : modern times, have always been serious. Louis XIV. Those for whom any event short of a catastrophe was intensely serious, and his mistress, Mme. de Main- which has no relation to politics is negligible, and tenon, was the most serious woman in Europe. those who echo more or less accurately the various Napoleon was deadly earnest. Need I recall Turgot, rumours of Parisian life. For both classes the pasture Robespierre, St. Just? And if you would come nearer and gleaning field are the French, or, rather, the the present day, there is Guizot, there is Jules Ferry. Paris newspapers. So it comes that when they say I think Lord Palmerston, with his amiable levity, the French people are talking with vivacity of any could never have been Prime Minister in France under matter, they mean the Paris journalists are talking any scheme of government with which the people had of it, which is a different thing. Journalists are people anything to do. The times in France when statesmen who pass their lives looking out of the window. There and politicians have permitted themselves easy manners must be a perpetual bustle in the street below to keep of bantering and pleasant mockery have been the times them employed. If all remains tranquil they forthwith when the people have had least to do with the imagine a row and a noise, and, like witches, nigro- government. Anxiety is a concomitant of democracy, mancers and delirious men, grow appalled at the and anxious people wax angry and suspicious at even phantoms they have called up. But the actual people the appearance of frivolousness in their advisers. in the street have little part in this commotion ; There may be found among those who read these many are not affected at all. It is remarkable the pages certain French people who will protest, like number of people there are in France who never read Rosmer in the play, that they have a great capacity a newspaper. On the other hand, of course, there are for enjoyment. That is to be expected, for it is rare people who read ten or twelve a day, and so maintain to find anybody who can form an accurate judgment the circulation of the newspapers. But do you think of his own character. However, no one can be that the young men who play football in the suburbs offended if I point out that just as those who make on Sunday, the innumerable small tradesmen in tranquil a practice of calling others stupid and imbeciles may quarters of the city, the immense body of manual themselves be fairly suspected of stupidity, so it is an labourers, are passionately interested in foreign uncontrolled truth that the man who argues he has a relations, or care a farthing about the speeches in the sense of humour, or the man who sternly resolves to. Chamber? A principal characteristic of the Frenchman be gay, is the least likely of mortals to give a successful is to attend to his own business and not to meddle exhibition of these qualities. with the affairs of his neighbour unless they are fetched up to his door. And considering the French horror of disturbance, the mildest reader who opens certain German and English and American newspapers LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. may well complain that it is on the part of the foreign correspondent an error in presentation, to say the DOCTORS AND THE INSURANCE BILL. least, to describe such a people as stirred into fever Sir,-However real the grievances which the doctors may by every demagogue who gives tongue, and howling have against the National Insurance Bill, their cause will not be advanced by the tactics of the British Medical Asso- and bellowing around the sphere of practical politics. ciation in the person of its President, who is at the same The social correspondent addresses a larger body of time President of the Royal College of Surgeons. Last readers than his political colleague. Comparatively Thursday morning, June I, this gentleman attended a large few foreigners are interested in French politics and and representative meeting of members of the British Medi- the directors thereof, whereas many are interested in cal Association specially convened to discuss with the Paris considered as a powder-puff. For this kind of Chancellor of the Exchequer the difficulties which have been agitating the profession with regard to the Bill. Mr. Lloyd correspondent the provinces do not exist. France for George made a perfectly frank statement on all points, him begins at the Place de la Madeleine, and extends and amongst other things expressed in unequivocal terms as far as the Rue de Richelieu, stretches away to the his wholehearted support of the doctors’ proposal to take Palais Royal so as to take in the Théatre Francais, the administration of medical benefits completely out of the continues along the Rue de Rivoli, and ends at the hands of the friendly Societies and place them with the local Place de la Concorde. Sometimes he makes an excur- health committees. He said [I quote from the “British sion towards the frontier as far as Etoile or the two Medical Journal” and from the ‘‘ Times” of June 2] :- racecourses. From reading his amusing notes, I ‘CIam entirely with you in this-entirely and whole- 164

heartedly with you in this, and if you can persuade the carafe, it may be wholesome and pure-fit for man’s con- House of Commons to consent to the transfer of the sumption. whole of the medical attendance, including maternity, to But regarding the 1906 Election. Had not the Tory the local health committees, you will find me a whole- Party then THE MAN and THE IDEA? And was it not hearted supporter of that proposal.” this combination which brought them ‘‘ with headlong ruin Surely no language could be plainer, and he concluded by and combustion down to bottomless perdition ” ? urging his hearers to assist him in bringing about the desired PERCYW. CARLISLE. conclusion, by representation to their own Members of Par- * * * liament. Sir,--Mr. Kennedy refers to Mr. Dark’s penultimate para- Despite this highly satisfactory statement, Mr. Butlin, the graph, but shall the final one pass unchallenged? Before President of the British Medical Association, addressing a Mr. Dark complains of Radical “tyranny” he should ex- mass meeting of doctors at Connaught Rooms on the even- plain what he means by Tory “freedom.” Am I a tyrant ing of the same day, spoke as follows on the same question : because I forbid my child to swallow a red-hot poker? I “In his opinion [I quote from the “Times” of June 2, where object to a man having a whisky and soda if he has just full reports of both meetings are to be found strangely drunk six of them. But at what number of tumblers may his enough on the same page, 7] Mr. Lloyd George was still freedom cease and my tyranny begin? The Churches have bent on placing the administration of medical relief, or a had their temperance societies in existence these sixty years, great part of it, in the hands of friendly societies.” and has all their talk injured the Trade one penny? Lloyd The policy of the Association is thus evidently to fan the George puts an increased tax on the consumption of spirits flames of agitation in order to rush up its membership and the revenue drops six millions! Again, I object to But such deliberate and foolish misrepresentation is dis- a man living with a woman who is not his wife, if he has creditable to the profession, and can but alienate any popular another woman living to whom he is married. He is doing sympathy the doctors might otherwise command. no good for the one woman and much harm to the other THOMASSHORT. one. I object to pay tithe to a parson if I don’t go to his *** church, because it is not fair. I object, too, to pay the rates to support a man who refuses to try and support TORY DEMOCRACY. himself. To the man in the street, British Toryism means Sir,-It is almost indecent of your contributor, J. M. the right of the strong to prey on the weak, and he is not Kennedy, to exhume in your issue of May 18 the 1906 far wrong. Since 1906 he has seen many unhappy faces Election after its interment, with the two subsequent elec- less unhappy, and many starving children less hungry. If tions doing duty as gravestones at its head and feet. He this is tyranny, well, then, the more of it the better! must belong to his favourite class of “thinkers”: the people WILLIAMPOEL. who devote so much time to the study of abstractions that *** they lose all touch with public opinion, as voiced by the man in the street. Much as people may deplore the suffrage Sir,--Mr. Kennedy is quite wrong. The Tory Party has value of this “unthinker”--if I may be permitted the word plenty of ideas. Witness the smart way in which it dis- -yet he is an individual who knows, or thinks be knows covers that Lloyd George caused the Birkbeck Bank smash! what he wants and votes accordingly. To him the sub- By the way, judging from recent events, could not Mr. tlety of Messrs. Belloc and Chesterton has no message. Lloyd George claim and get about £1,000,000 damages against the “Pall Mall Gazette” for this insinuation? Nay, rather is he led by the ha’penny Press, with their X. battle-cries of “Your Food Will Cost You More,” or “Tax *** the Foreigner.” To him the pictorial poster showing an attenuated “ Free Trade Home ” (which experience has PROPERTY IN LAND. shown us could be used with equal effect to represent a home under Tariff Reform) is argument irrefutable. Sir,-In last week’s NEW AGE, Mr. H. D. Paul asks for the individualist solution of the land question. He seems dis- I am not denying the ability of the galaxy of talent which satisfied with what he regards as Mr. Meulen’s evasive reply, Mr. Kennedy has mentioned, but their pronouncements to the effect that private ownership is not the cause of con- sway but an infinitesimal portion of the electorate. And gestion. Might I ask either or both of the disputants to things move too quickly to permit of Belloc-Chestertonian furnish us, before proceeding further with the discussion, ideas “filtering downwards” in time for every-day use. Be- with a good working definition of “property”? This will fore the act of filtration of any one idea is accomplished, be- clear the ground. hold ! the political kaleidoscope has received another twist, Mr. Paul wants more liberty: and there I am with him. and the idea, its cause and effect, are as dead as Queen But when he says, “I want liberty to walk across any Anne. beautiful part of the country that takes my fancy, without No, the average voter has chosen a party and a party being ordered back into the road by a man with a gun,” I organ, to the fiats of which he renders unswerving allegi- can only say that he will have to go on wanting till barley ance, and values the pronouncements of the Opposition not and potatoes and wine can be manufactured in a factor one Continental damn; in fact, he won’t even be bothered out of sawdust and water, or other suitable raw material to listen to them. It needs a very big issue at stake to Neither under individualism nor Socialism, nor under the ensure anything like a big turn-over. present jumble of the two, will he be allowed to walk The “thinkers,” on the other hand, are everlastingly through a field of yellow wheat, or to play football in a watching for the latest thing in thought, and hence are vineyard. Even we fox-hunting scoundrels make no such constantly “ratting.” But the percentage of thought in a claim as this. Parliamentary division is so vastly inferior to bigoted par- But he does not mean exactly what he says: he has tisanship that it becomes a negligible quantity. merely expressed himself rather loosely. What he really Your contributor further falls foul of the Tories in that wants is to walk (or ride?) over any land, beautiful or they showed apathy and Philistinism to the “thinkers.” otherwise! provided he can do so without causing damage. Now, “ thinkers ”-brilliant thinkers-have an unfortunate And this is almost (not quite) the present condition of affairs. habit of overlooking prosaic, if practical, details ; they are No one denies that private property in land, and in every- impatient for the infant idea to at once blossom forth in thing else, must be held subject to the prior right of the virile manhood. “Here is OUR idea, which will put the public. Those ridiculous boards warning trespassers that world to rights. No, there is no need to discuss it. WE they will be prosecuted, “ by order, etc.,” are, as he probably are satisfied that it is right. Just you carry it out at once.” knows, little venial lies, like the boggart which virtually says But the Tory or Conservative mind is by nature opposed to the birds, “Wait till I catch you, that’s all ! “ Trespassers to change; he certainly approves of the slow filtration cannot be prosecuted: and even wreckers can only be sued system-so slow that the water evaporates on the way. for such damage as they may do. But Mr. Paul has another Hence the offence of deliberating is committed, wherefore grievance. The crofters of the islands and Highlands of the “Thinker” takes himself off in high dudgeon to the Scotland, “are cleared off the land to prepare it for sale Opposition. to some Jew or Yankee trader who wants a shooting-ground.” If I may say so as an unprejudiced observer, the Social- In other words, if a land-holder can make more money by istic “Thinker” is on the surface such a bloodthirsty, letting his land for shooting than he can make by letting it aggressive, .piratical character that the gentle Tory passes out to small agriculturists, ought he to be allowed to do so, him by with a shudder as an unspeakable person-and or ought he not ? Some twenty years ago Bradlaugh brought small wonder! So, if we are to have an Aristocracy of a Bill into Parliament to bring pressure to bear upon owners Intellect (ugh ! !), the “Thinkers” must practise patience, of uncultivated land: enabling the State to buy out such eliminate the dictatorial and cultivate the persuasive landlords on a basis of a seven-years’ average rental. The manner, never forgetting the fact that every question has as State has always reserved the right to buy up any land (or many facets as the Cullinan diamond. In fact, they must other property) for purposes of public utility, such as roads, be content if the filter is very slow of action, thoroughly canals, railways, harbours, etc. If food supplies from cleansing the pond-water which they pour into it of its mani- abroad ran short, it might be deemed necessary to stimulate fold impurities, so that, when it eventually reaches the food-production in this country even at a loss: and, if so, 165 no individualist would object to the expropriation of a the W.S.P.U. gaol-birds, as they love to be called, made landowner who neglected to turn his land to the best themselves so dreaded by the Government, we have seen account. The only question is, Would it be expedient? the Indeterminate Sentence pass into law, and the establish- When land is left in the natural state, because in the opinion ment of courts especially to prosecute little boys and girls, of its owner it would be unprofitable to cultivate it, we and the turnover of infant prisoners has very nearly doubled, may be sure that even if the State got it for nothing, it and twenty-one men were hanged last year, leaving twenty- would incur a dangerous risk in cultivating it. The land- one innocent families, from grandfather to baby, blasted owner is, as a rule, a better judge of his land than the so long as memory endures. But still, it can all wait until public, and also more anxious to make the most of it. we get the vote! Pah! One gets to hate the very word “vote.” “ Dominium eminens” has been defined as “ the right which belongs to society to dispose in case of necessity and for BEATRICEHASTINGS. the public welfare of all the wealth contained in the State”- *** not of land only, but of all wealth whatever. If grouse and red deer are a more paying “crop” than THE AMERICAN PROBLEM. rye and potatoes, it is hard to see why the community should wish to breed a proletariate for the purpose of raising an Sir,--It seems to me, as a black American and a believer inferior crop, which could be bought out of the proceeds of in the doctrines of Socialism, nothing short of disgraceful to the superior crop-with a balance left over! have such a comment of foreign affairs as was published by S. Verdad in your issue of December 15. It is easily If Mr. Paul cares to take a twenty-mile walk over the conceivable that an Englishman and a Socialist would be lovely moors of Yorkshire or of Scotland, and he chances ignorant upon well-known facts which concern the American to come up with a “man with a gun,” I will wager he receives negro, but that he should parade his ignorance in inexcus- no worse greeting than “ Glorious weather, sir,” or “Steady able, offensive language, is beneath the dignity of a decent a while, the guns are over there.” But if the moors should periodical. have been cut up into cabbage patches and small allotments We black men may be shallow, superficial, unbalanced full of hedges and farm roads, he would meet with a very and lazy, but we certainly have enough of the instincts of different reception. His liberty would be seriously curtailed. courtesy and ordinary consideration for the feelings of I assume that he walks the moors without a gun. He would human beings never to make such an unwarranted attack not claim a right to shoot over the land, unless he had paid as this writer has. In the first place Mr. Verdad has stated his share of the preserving and the shooting rights. A deliberate falsehoods, and in the second place he has been word to Mr. Meulen. Absentee landlords are the best of deliberately insulting. Is this necessary? Are there no landlords. Men who invest their wealth in land are not gentlemen among the Fabian Socialists who can write? Is always or usually experienced farmers: and the best they it necessary to be a blackguard in, order to be brilliant, and can do is to put experienced men in their place, and apply does THE NEW AGE prefer this sort of thing to the truth? their talents to less mischievous work than amateur farming. Does it propose to allow Mr. Verdad to continue this assault Meantime, I await a good definition of “property.” as he promises to do? I ask with real anxiety to know, WORDSWORTHDONISTHORPE. because those of us who have looked upon your paper for *** light and leading, have been somewhat more than astounded at this outbreak. “A HOLIDAY IN GAOL.” W. E. BURGHARDTDUBOIS. Sir,-Permit me to correct Lady Constance Lytton’s im- *** pression that she “knows nothing’’ of the row I mentioned. She has read my statement. Are we to understand that she CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. asked no questions of the W.S.P.U. officials? Yet that, Sir,--I have read some references to Christian Science in after all, is possible and probable. Everyone knows that your issue of June 1, and I will ask you to allow me to say even to enquire within the Pankhurst policy is sufficient to a word as to some of them. become suspect; that is why so many women of spirit have The writer of the remarks points out that numbers have left. Name after name seems to be struck off the rolls: evidently much to do with belief andenthusiasm. Now, Unsound! Wants to know too much-so now we never neither belief nor enthusiasm alone is of any avail in Chris- mention. her ! tian Science. Christian Science is no mere theory, it is I’ve never looked at “Votes for Women” since the cham- known by its works, and those only can be called Christian pions of political equality swooned in the arms of the Con- Scientists who have not only studied, but practised, the ciliation Bill, so that I know not what humanistic battles teachings set forth by Mrs. Eddy in the Christian Science the W.S.P.U. may have won over their more barbarian text-book, “Science and Health, with Key to the Scrip- selves; but I do remember an article that Mrs. Pethick tures.” It is for this very reason that the word “Science” Lawrence wrote while in prison or as if from the prison cell. was so aptly chosen by Mrs. Eddy to describe this great Faithfully imitating the juvenile rhetoric which I once subject. Mere enthusiasm alone will not avail much, but narrowly escaped making popular, she, however, took a the actual experience of sickness healed, of sin, misery, view of herself in prison from an aspect which I hope I could want and discord overcome, is what enable Christian Scien- never choose. Surrounded by misery, in daily contact with tists to stand and say, in the words of Job, “I know that my heart-rending sights and sounds, this lady wrote of the Redeemer liveth.” wondrous peace and rest she was experiencing, and of the Again, surely, the term “eccentric religion” falls some- necessity for piling up the coffers of the W.S.P.U. Prison what wide of the mark when used in connection with Chris- as a rest cure ! Perhaps it was so to her; and decidedly to tian Science. It is true that the same religion, preached and be passionately sung to o’ nights and, eke, sure of wild practised two thousand years ago by Christ Jesus and His hosannas and a week in Switzerland after “doing time,” must disciples, was similarly criticised. Nevertheless, the sick be no end of an amusing martyrdom. The picture of Mrs. were healed and the sinner reformed, as a proof of the Pethick Lawrence bathing in holy calm and cracking up the mission which the Master declared he had come to accom- joys of solitude was not exactly calculated to rouse England plish, namely, to fulfil, and not to destroy, God’s law. against the prison system. Jesus the Christ taught and demonstrated that sin, sickness To quote Miss Liddle: “It is the moral suffering which and fear were no part of God’s creation, and were not makes prison life so hideously cruel, and that the author of brought about by the law of God. Would it not, therefore, ‘A Holiday in Gaol ’ was not susceptible to this is sufficient be more logical to term eccentric those religions which teach condemnation to me of his outlook on life.” So, to me, that these very things which the Master came to prove Mrs. Pethick Lawrence’s article was a revelation of-I will unreal, that is, not created by God, are to be patiently borne cut comment short : after reading I said to myself, “What a and accepted as God-given? Truth cannot be changed, skin ! ” and the truth taught by Jesus and again reiterated in Lady Constance Lytton, in a sideway sentence, hints that Christian Science is as true and practical to-day as the day no reformer (me) is under compulsion to join the W.S.P.U. it was first uttered. I never did join, though I was invited, so I was spared Those who have turned to Christian Science for the help the necessity of leaving. But I know some of the bravest they have failed to find elsewhere, need no urging to under- and brightest who did join and have left, unable to endure stand what has freed them, and, as was the case with the the atmosphere of tyranny and jobbery. What remains now blind man, they say with gratitude, in reply to criticism, is a type of female that becomes in every generation the “One thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see,” willing prey of excitement. In the last age, these women sat and as they continue to search deeper into the teachings under the revivalists, and were jerky and humdrum; now of this great subject they learn that, far from being eccen- they are jaunty and smart, and drop copies of “Votes for tric, freedom from sickness and sin is the logical and Women” in the tubes. “Great Sport,” as Mrs. Drummond natural result of the endeavour to live and practise the said to a friend of mine. teachings of the Master given to the world two thousand But the prisoners go in and in and in again as though the years ago, and reiterated by Mrs. Eddy. Great Reformers had never been to gaol at all. And since ALGERNONHERVEG BATHURST. 166

BERGSONISMIN PARIS. candid history. The old history, written for the school- Sir,--In answer to the interesting critical observations of room in the sickroom, is a lie whose remoteness from Art Mr. Murry, you may allow me to accentuate at first that I proves it to be a blasphemy against Life. only wanted to draw the attention of your readers to the CICILYF AIRFIELD. failing of Bergson’s influence among the French students *** in Paris, and especially among their élite, which forms the Ecole Normale Supérieure. I suggested that an explanation STEVENSON. may be found in the half-English origin of Bergson, which Sir,-A greater than Mr. Randall attempted to defame brings him nearer in blood to, among others, William Stevenson. Henley will never be forgiven for it, because he James. There is no doubt this whole spiritual attitude is was great enough not to be forgotten. To attack some men akin to that of the great American, and he owes to him some is to offend against the Holy Spirit of man, in which the souls of those great ones live memorised. Of them was fundamental ideas of his psychology -- for instance, his theory of perception and the idea of the unity of conscious- Robert Louis Stevenson. “Robert Louis Stevenson lived ness. I insisted on his general affinity to the actual trend of only at his fingers’ ends in the thing he was doing.” What- Germanic thinking, because it seems to me characteristic soever Stevenson did, he did it with his might. “He never for his situation in Paris; his original difference from quitted his task,” wrote Mr. L. Cope Cornford, “until the Pragmatism is known enough. In the first place I made piece of work in hand was as near perfect as he could make the French rationalist temperament responsible for the it Sick or well, travelling or sitting at home, though the neglect of Bergsonism. And I am sure I touched here a inspiration tarried, though he must write and re-mite, and point which is not so easily rejected by a very rationalist re-model from top to bottom, though he were deprived of and optimistic appeal to logic. I wish Mr. Murry, who speech and the power to hold his pen, and must dictate seems to consider himself a Bergsonian, would have applied upon his fingers, the indomitable worker still toiled to attain in this psychological question the Bergsonian method. perfection, until there was left no stroke untried, and the Whether a philosophy acts in the mind of a generation is voice of inspiration had found complete utterance.’’ Only not a matter of logical arguments, but of vital forces and those can appreciate that who have themselves toiled at tendencies. A true Bergsonian can only admit that one is writing out the best that is in them, in the weariness, ex- brought by logical arguments to the logical acknowledgment haustion, and nausea of extreme ill-health. No superficial of the existence of intuition, which has to be applied in nature, as Mr. Randall would have Stevenson’s to have been, introspection, in a pure insight in life. But not further. is capable of it for a moment. Logic is not able in helping you to enter the sphere of intui- “Mystic he was not”: Is there, then, nothing mystical in tion itself, which means free interior life; as you know by Atwater’s impressively expressed idea of the Cherubim watch- yourself that you are awake and do not take the arguments ing man in the vividness of supernal light, listening to man for it out of your dreams. The French youth could be in the tense silence of eternity? brought to a new intuitional philosophy only by a deep in- (‘He revealed nothing, not even himself”: He saw the tuitional experience, never by logical reasons. And I romantic soul of common men and common things, and doubt whether the real old national French spirit is capable revealed it. of this experience. I think the protest of Anatole France, “He never feared to wound”: Of the many letters that who represents for me the spirit of Montaigne and Rabelais, Stevenson received from young writers, he would only last winter, against Bergsonism was typical for the attitude answer where he could praise, lest he might wound. (This, of the French intellectuals. And then there may be men- by the way, qualifies an allusion in “Unedited Opinions,” tioned that Bergson’s philosophy has formed no school in that, while Stevenson lived, any young writer who com- France, while the German Husserl builds out his ideas in the municated with him was sure of an answer.) “Of human feeling he showed no trace” : Of human per- “ Phänomenolegie.” ception Mr. Randall shows no trace. Stevenson’s “ humor- I admitted in my first Letter the colony of foreign students ous presentment,” which Mr. Randall finds such a stumbling and artists in Paris, and can assure Mr. Murry there is no block, was of a piece with his philosophy of conduct, the danger of my ignoring it. I see in the general predominant corner-stone of which was a gay invincible courage : faith ; importance of foreigners in Paris, in the increasing influx the optimism of God. Acidity was to him a most deadly of foreigners to the leading positions in France, one of the sin. He would have commiserated Mr. Randall as a lost and features of “La Nouvelle France.” The vacant places in guilty soul. a nation will be filled by a gradual immigration, trans- There is a poignant passage somewhere in Stevenson’s forming the character of the original race. works of the suffering that he endured by the bedside of Gottingen. GUSTAVHÜBENER. a child in pain. “The gods work out their purposes for I +** men,” I think it concludes; “but by what cruel, bludgeon- ing and blackguard devices ! ” HISTORICAL PLAYS. Mr. Randall takes Stevenson seriously when he says that he wrote for money. Now we have it ! This was the motive Sir,--Mr. Alfred Wareing, in his article on historical which drove Stevenson to “toil under the very dart of plays, treats of an art that is very young. Up till a few death,” to dictate in the dumbness and paralysis of his last years ago it seemed that historical plays and hymns were days. He might, poor money-grubber, have taken a hint one in their popularity with middle classes and their divorce from Richard Burton’s experience ; he might have profited from Art. Sheridan Knowles commanded the respect of the by the experience of so many low, inferior writers: he would early Victorians by the conscientious production, obviously not then have ruled out from his work every hint and vestige without the aid of any inspiration, of thousands of lines of of those salacious baits which make sales leap up by the bad blank verse. Then came the melodramas at the hundred thousand! Thus I have done my best to see the Lyceum, quite as bad. And then, quite recently, we had the thing through Mr. Randall’s eyes. I find it all very foolish. works of Mr. Stephen Phillips, a really excellent writer if “He could charm children, women, and savages into his he had not laboured under the delusion that the people of ‘service ”: No more convincing testimony of the innate the middle ages aped the style of Mr. James Douglas of goodness of Stevenson’s nature could be evinced ! the ‘‘ Star.” “The diplomats of Samoa became mere strutting cox- Then John Masefield wrote “Nan.” It was more than a combs, . . . politics became a dirty game when his great play. For the first time we saw a noble crisis through elemental sympathy clashed with the purposes of civilised an atmosphere cot of our time. It was the callous, sensual, people ’’ : The “ purposes of civilised people” were the harry- vital atmosphere of the days when men were hung for sheep- ing and buying and selling of the Samoans by German stealing. And there was not one allusion to the great and officials. In a like manner, Stevenson’s “elemental sym- irrelevant events of that day. It was the play of a man pathies” would have clashed with the purposes of the who had written his own Hodgiad--who had escaped from Belgian officials in the Congo. Mr. Randall, I suppose, the monotonous hucksterings of the barren spirits who would have taken sides with the German officials. Steven- dominate the State through all ages, and had sat down at son intervened on behalf of the “savages ”-all honour to the hearth-stone of the people. him for it !-nor grudged any time that he gave in their Well, naturally, one cries out for more of it. One wants interests, or the interruptions to his work of their frequent to see Hodge throughout all the ages. Perhaps some daring visits in quest of his counsel. They made a forest road to and inspired dramatists would use the “stationary” tech- his house, A labour of great devotion. No understanding nique that Anton Tchekhov employed in “The Cherry without insight; no insight without love. Not one of those Orchard” to reveal the vexed soul of Russia. But how is “savages” but understood Stevenson better than Mr. Randall the average playwright-so much less gifted than Mr. Mase- does ! field-to get in sight of Hodge or any other normal man “Life meant nothing to him”: “It is still good fun ! “ he of woman of the past? Does not that dull, snobbish dog, said of his life, in his last toiling, stricken days. Let Mr. the mandarin historian, stand in the way? What we must Randall ponder those words. They give the key to the have is a class for docile playwrights, where Professor “humorous presentment” that is so enigmatic to him. Patrick Geddes would lecture on History That Matters. ‘(. . . . By every art known to him he spared himself the To have a new historical drama we must have a new and pain of experience. Like Thoreau, whom he admired, he 167

despised civilisation and lived by it ” : Stevenson went from exegetical or other propositions antagonistic to the “ Right civilisation of necessity, to stave off death. But what of the Divine.” pain of experience of the emigrant train. Has Mr. Randall What, also, is well-known to every historical inquirer- read “Across the Plains ”? He did not admire the inhuman though it is a fact too much kept in the background, or, rather, detachment of Thoreau. “I cannot find my copy of “Men is ignored by our theological authorities-is that the modern and Books ”; but, unless my memory plays me false, Solomon (or Suleiman) was a fanatical believer in diabolism Stevenson there censures that quality in Thoreau very and witchcraft; that he was, in fact, the author of the severely. repertory of the horrible creed, the Demonology, and the “Death had no terrors for him ” : It is true. Stevenson author of the most terrific tortures inflicted upon the alleged died, as he had lived, a brave man. agents of the “devil ”-for the most part, aged, and de- “In all his writings there is not one example of mystic crepit women. This is a historical fact which, as I have perception, nor of spiritual consolation to the soul-weary said, is a good deal too much ignored-inasmuch as it is and doubting ” : His writings, as his life, preach the gospel of high significance for readers of the two versions. For of courage. And in courage, such as he preached, and lived, this fact it is which is the interesting explanation of the the whole of true mysticism is contained. Such courage is conspicuous place which the diabolistic creed holds in the its own consolation. two ‘‘ Testaments”-in particular in the first one-and which E. H. VISIAK. -perhaps more than anything else-discredits (and dis- *** graces) the ecclesiastical and theological translators, and- BACON AS A POET. in the judgment of every candid and independent thinker- makes their work quite improper for popular use. It is true Sir,--Your correspondent, Mr. E. H. Visiak, says that the writers of the old Jewish sacred books, with the “ Bacon’s acknowledged verses are poor stuff.” Greater rest of their countrymen, believed in a sort of sorceric or authorities, however, set a much higher estimate upon divining arts. But it is also equally certain that Bacon’s poetical works. Shelley, in his defence of poetry, this simple, primitive creed was totally different from the says: “Lord Bacon was a poet. His language has a sweet tremendously-developed diabolism of the Middle Ages and and majestic rhythm that satisfies the senses.” John Aubrey, of later Christendom. Thus the perversion of the A.V. Milton’s friend, says: “Bacon was a great poet, one of the -followed servilely and confessedly by the R.V. -is doubly greatest.” In Ben Jonson’s “Discourses ” he mentions a list condemnable: firstly, because it lends a sanction to the of thirteen great authors and poets whom he had personally popular credulity and to a frightful superstition, and known. Bacon is the first name on the list. Shakespeare secondly, because it misrepresents and aggravates the does not appear. particular superstition of the “ chosen people,” who have Ben Jonson also, in his great eulogy on the death of Lord enough to answer for on the score of barbarous customs, Bacon in 1662, speaks of him as “a great poet,” preferring without the addition of this peculiarly Christian one. his poems “to insolent Greece or haughty Rome.’’ Also It may be pleaded on behalf of the Revisers of 1870 that Pope, De Quincey, Addison, Professor Fowler, all unite in they have given the modern and true meaning of the terms their testimony to Bacon’s poetic gifts. in question, in the margins of their version. But the plea ROBT. C. HALL. avails them little in so important and significant a case. If *** they held, as they must have held, the A.V. translations to SEX AND SUPERMEN. be wrong, why did they not put the right interpretations Sir,-In common courtesy I cannot leave Mr. Randall in the text and (if they were so anxious to respect the in the dark as to “what I am writing about.’’ reputation of their Jacobian predecessors) the old, dis- He asserts that those to whom sex is of paramount import- credited ones in the margins? ance are (I) fornicators and (2) not supermen. That is, he How many of the unlearned or unintelligent of their sets up a moral test for exclusion from superhumanity. I readers, I wonder, accept the marginal readings as the true: say such individuals are (I) not necessarily fornicators, and and preferable interpretations ? It may safely be affirmed (2) may be supermen. not one in a hundred. If the lives of great men are any criterion of super- The special terms and translations to which I refer, it humanity-and they are the only one we can have-the facts scarcely is necessary to specify here. The two most mis- are all on my side, since they prove that all great men have chievous and most conspicuous obviously are those imply- had vices, that most have had sexual vices, and that to ing the actuality of “devil” and of “ hell.” As to the former many sex has been of paramount importance. expression, it is superfluous to state that both the Jewish Show me a blameless man and I will show you a non- and the Hellenic terms denote something quite different entity. Even that gentlest of men St. Francis d’Assisi could from the later Christian development of that compound of not inaugurate his career until he had flouted the authority the wholly barbarous and fetish conception, and of the of his excellent father. Zoroastrian idea of a spirit of evil. As to ‘‘hell,” of course I am perfectly willing to renounce moral tests of great- it was well known to the Revisionists that neither the Hebrew ness, but as long as Mr. Randall insists on the essentiality ‘‘ Gehenna” nor the Hellenic Hades has the faintest resem- of virtue I shall maintain the converse proposition. blance to the conception of mediaeval and (horrisco referens) If Mr. Randall can see no difference between the instinc- modern Christianity. tive promiscuity of boors and the vices of great men he is If there were no other or further reason, I venture to a worse psychologist than I think him. The difference assert, for a new revision-independent of all preceding exists all the same: in fact, there is only the most super- versions-this particular perpetuation and authoritative ficial resemblance. sanction of a vile superstition-a superstition which has I never dreamed of suggesting that super-humanity means caused the frightful deaths and tortures of millions of human extra sexuality, but I certainly deny emphatically that either beings-demands, and loudly, an “ Authorised Version” term excludes the other. And that is what Mr. Randall which shall be free from so fearfully demoralising a asserts. scandal, and which undoubtedly tends to maintain among I decline to be tied down to one department of morality the ‘‘ uneducated” the still lingering belief in Tartarian simply because offences in that department happen to be tortures. commonest. Morality is sanctified custom, and all great I have not left myself space to descant upon the second men have necessarily defied it in one way or another. It set of reflections raised by the tercentenary. To emphasise is a fair inference that supermen will do the same. the patent fact that the sacred books of Christendom are, C. J. WHITBY,M.D. as respects atleast a very large proportion of their contents, as legendary and puerile--and, it must added, demoralising *** -as well can be conceived, and inevitably suggest the old REVISION AND REFORM OF THE BIBLIA SACRA. Hellenic “Bible,” the Homeric Epic-to insist upon so Sir,-The tercentenary of the A.V., and the recent public obvious a fact is superfluous. In Shakespearean phrase: ostentatious presentation of a copy of the volume, with ‘‘ Oh ! reform it altogether.” much ceremony, to the King, suggests to the philosophic CRITICUS. mind some reflections not altogether of a pleasing kind. *** First-as to the history of the A.V. and of the R.V. Everyone knows the circumstances and the conditions under MILTON ON THE CORONATION. which these accepted English versions of the sacred books Sir,-Now that we have had the opportunity of reading of (Protestant) Christendom were produced. Everyone- several “Coronation Odes,” perhaps it would be well to or every fairly instructed person-knows that the former remind your readers of Milton’s description of Adam :- was undertaken and achieved under the not too promising “In himself was all his state, “ auspices” of James 1.-the somewhat ambiguous “ Defender More solemn than the tedious pomp that waits of the Faith”--after no little opposition on the part of his On princes, when their rich retinue long bishops, and at the instigation of a leading Puritan theolo- Of horses led and grooms besmeared with gold gian, who, by the way, had to submit to much badgering Dazzles the crowd and sets them all agape.” and brow-beating from the heads, ecclesiastical as well as --“Paradise Lost,” Bk. V. civil, of the Establishment, for the having made some CEPHAI. CORONATION EXHIBITION, WHAT AND WHEREIS GREAT WHITE CITY, SHEPHERD’S BUSH, LONDON, W. TRUTHIN RELIGION? 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Rain or Shine. 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