Mr. Trelyon intimated that he would like to have the letter at once, and that he would consider the invitation afterward. Roscorla, with a good-humored shrug, sat down and wrote it, and then handed it to Trelyon, open. As he did so he noticed that the young man was coolly abstracting the cartridge from a small breech-loading pistol he held in his hand. He put the cartridge in his waistcoat pocket and the pistol in his coat pocket.

"Did you think we were savages out here, that you came armed?" said Roscorla, rather pale, but smiling.

"I didn't know," said Trelyon.

* * * * *

One morning there was a marriage in Eglosilyan, up there at the small church on the bleak downs overlooking the wide sea. The spring-time had come round again; there was a May-like mildness in the air; the skies overhead were as blue as the great plain of the sea; and all the beautiful green world was throbbing with the upspringing life of the flowers. It was just like any other wedding, but for one little incident. When the bride came out into the bewildering glare of the sun, she vaguely knew that the path through the churchyard was lined on both sides with children. Now, she was rather well known to the children about, and they had come in a great number; and when she passed down between them it appeared that the little folks had brought vast heaps of primroses and violets in their aprons and in tiny baskets, and they strewed her path with these flowers of the new spring. Well, she burst into tears at this, and hastily leaving her husband's arm for a moment, she caught up one of the least of the children—a small, golden-haired girl of four—and kissed her. Then she turned to her husband again, and was glad that he led her down to the gale, for her eyes were so blinded with tears that she could not see her way.

Nor did anything very remarkable occur at the wedding-breakfast. But there was a garrulous old lady there with bright pink cheeks and silvery hair; and she did not cease to prattle to the clergyman who had officiated in the church, and who was seated next her. "Indeed, Mr. Trewhella," she said confidentially, "I always said this is what would come of it. Never any one of those Trelyons set his heart on a girl but he got her; and what was the use of friends or relatives fighting against it? Nay, I don't think there's any cause of complaint—not I! She's a modest, nice, ladylike girl: she is indeed, although she isn't so handsome as her sister. Dear, dear me! look at that girl now! Won't she be a prize for some man? I declare I haven't seen so handsome a girl for many a day. And, as I tell you, Mr. Trewhella, it's no use trying to prevent it: if one of the Trelyons falls in love with a girl, the girl's done for: she may as well give in."

"If I may say so," observed the old clergyman, with a sly gallantry, "you do not give the gentlemen of your family credit for the most remarkable feature of their marriage connections. They seem to have had always a very good idea of making an excellent choice."

The old lady was vastly pleased. "Ah, well," she said, with a shrewd smile, "there were two or three who thought George Trelyon—that was this young man's grandfather, you know—lucky enough, if one might judge by the noise they made. Dear, dear! what a to-do there was when we ran away! Why, don't you know, Mr. Trewhella, that I ran away from a ball with him, and drove to Gretna Green with my ball-dress on, as I'm a living woman? Such a ride it was!—why, when we got up to Carlisle—"

But that story has been told before.



CAMP-FIRE LYRICS.

II.—NIGHT—LAKE HELEN.

I lie in my red canoe On the water still and deep, And o'er me darkens the blue, And beneath the billows sleep,

Till, between the stars o'erhead And those in the lake's embrace, I seem to float like the dead In the noiselessness of space.

Betwixt two worlds I drift, A bodiless soul again— Between the still thoughts of God And those which belong to men;

And out of the height above, And out of the deep below, A thought that is like a ghost Seems to gather and gain and grow,

That now and for evermore This silence of death shall hold, While the nations fade and die And the countless years are rolled.

But I turn the light canoe, And, darting across the night, Am glad of the paddles' noise And the camp-fire's honest light.

EDWARD KEARSLEY.

* * * * *



MILL'S ESSAYS ON RELIGION.

An interest attaches to Mr. Mill's posthumous Essays on Religion which is quite independent of their intrinsic value or importance. The position of their author at the head of an active school of thinkers gives them to a certain extent a representative character, while, in connection with the curious account of his mental training presented in his autobiography, they merit perhaps still closer attention as a subject of psychological study. It is not, however, in this latter light that we can undertake to examine them here. Our object is merely to point out some of the fallacies and contradictions which might escape the notice of a cursory reader, and which show with how uncertain a step a philosopher who piqued himself on the clearness and severity of his logic moves on ground where a stronger light than that of reason was needed to irradiate his path.

The first essay is devoted to an examination of the ways of Nature as unmodified by the voluntary agency of man. These the author finds worthy of all abhorrence; and Nature in its purely physical aspect he considers to be full of blemishes, which are patent to the eye of modern science, and which "all but monkish quietists think it a religious duty to amend." A competent master-workman with good materials would not have turned out a world so "bunglingly" made, with great patches of poisonous morass and arid desert unfit for human habitation, with coal and other requisites for man's comfort stored away out of sight, with the rivers all unbridged, and mountains and other impediments thrown in the way of free locomotion. So far, then, from its being man's duty to imitate Nature, as some have thought it was, it is incumbent upon him to oppose her with all his powers, because of her gross injustice in the realm of morals, and to remedy her physical defects as far as lies in his power. On this view of Nature our fathers were wiser in their generation than we when they trimmed their trees into grotesque shapes and laid out their landscapes in geometric lines; when in medicine they substituted the lancet and unlimited mercury for the vis medicatrix naturae; when in philosophy they dictated to Nature from their internal consciousness, before Bacon introduced the heresy of induction; when in politics they had a profound faith in statutes and none at all in statistics; when in education they conscientiously rammed down the ologies at the point of the ferule, in blissful ignorance of psychology. If Mr. Mill finds it necessary to rail at Nature because she did not put coal on the top of the ground and build bridges and dig wells for man's convenience, why not call her a jade at once because she does not grow ready-made clothing of the latest mode in sizes to suit, because the trees do not bear hot rolls and coffee, and because Mr. Mill's philosophy is not an intuition of the mind? He is less restrained in speaking of the moral enormities of Nature. Altogether the most striking passage in the book is his indictment of the Author of Nature, which is truly Satanic in its audacity and hardly to be paralleled in literature for its impiety; for it is impious even from Mr. Mill's standpoint, since he admits that the weight of evidence tends to prove that Nature's Author is both wise and good. We transcribe only some of his expressions: "Nearly all things which men are hanged or imprisoned for doing to one another are Nature's every-day performances;" she "has a hundred hideous deaths" reserved for her victims, "such as the ingenious cruelty of a Nabis or a Domitian never surpassed," which "she uses with the most supercilious disregard both of mercy and justice;" "she inflicts torture in apparent wantonness;" "everything which the worst men commit against life and property is perpetrated on a larger scale by natural agents;" "Nature has noyades more fatal than those of Carrier: her plague and cholera far surpass the poison-cups of the Borgias." Such are a few of the impassioned and presumptuous expressions which Mr. Mill allows himself to use in speaking of the great mystery of human suffering, which others touch with reverence, and do not dare to reprobate, since they cannot understand. His words are as false as they are bold. Fierce and terrible as Nature is in some of her aspects, it is not true that her prevailing attitude is, as here indicated, one of bitter hostility to the race she nourishes on her bosom. If she were the monster here described, mankind would long ago have perished under her persistent cruelties, and Mr. Mill's profane cry would never have gone up to Heaven. Men will always regard the world subjectively, and adjudge it happy or the reverse according to their temperament or passing humor; but, if it be conceded—as it is by Mr. Mill through his whole argument—that man is a moral creature, with a true power of self-determination within certain limits, and with sufficient intelligence to discern the laws of Nature, and that therefore all the pain that man brings upon himself by voluntary violation of discovered law is to be deducted from the sum-total of human suffering to arrive at the amount that is attributable to Nature, most men, if they are honest, will on reflection admit that Nature brings to the great body of the human family immeasurably more comfort, if not pleasure, than she does pain. Take the senses, which are the sources of physical pleasure. How seldom, comparatively, the eye is pained, while it rests with habitual gratification upon the sky and landscape, and on the human form divine when unmarred by vice! How rarely the taste is offended or the appetite starved, while every meal, be it ever so simple, yields enjoyment to the palate! The ear is regaled with the perpetual music of wind and ocean and feathered minstrelsy, of childhood's voice and the sweet converse of friends. So, too, Nature is a great laboratory of delicate odors: the salt breath of the sea is like wine to the sense; the summer air is freighted with delights, and every tree and flower exhales fragrance: only where danger lurks does Nature assault the nostrils with kindly warning. If it be objected that vast numbers of the race live in cities where every sense is continually offended, it is to be remembered that "man made the town," and is to be held responsible for the unhappiness there resulting from his violations of natural law. But even in cities Nature is more kind to man than he is to himself, and dulls his faculties against the deformities and discords of his own creating. From the sense of feeling it is probable we receive more pain than pleasure, but by no means so much more as to overbalance the great preponderance of delights coming through the other avenues: a great part of such pain is cautionary, and much can be avoided by voluntary action; and the stimulus thus given by the wise severity of Nature begets that activity of the moral life from which results the highest form of happiness. When we attempt to estimate our mental and moral sufferings, it is impossible even to approximate the proportion of them that are due to our voluntary infringement of law; but, adding together all that spring from natural sources and all that men bring upon themselves, the suffering is still outweighed by the pleasure among the great mass of men.

But, however unfavorable a view we take of the condition of humanity, it is gross exaggeration to say, "There is no evidence whatever in Nature for Divine justice, whatever standard of justice our ethical opinions may lead us to recognize: ... there is no shadow of justice in the general arrangements of Nature." Though many of Nature's dealings with man appear to be unjust, by far the larger proportion of them are graduated according to what seems, even to us, a standard of strict equity. As Matthew Arnold puts it, there is a power in Nature "which makes for righteousness." And every generation verifies the words of the Preacher: "The righteous shall be recompensed in the earth—much more the wicked and the sinner;" "as righteousness tendeth to life, so he that pursueth evil pursueth it to his own death." It was the reverent saying of that noblest of pagans, Marcus Aurelius, that "if a man should have a feeling and a deeper insight with respect to the things which are produced in the universe, there is hardly anything that comes in the course of Nature which will not seem to him to be in a manner disposed so as to give pleasure." When that "deeper insight" comes, and the eyes of man's spiritual understanding are opened, all appearance of injustice in Nature will probably vanish.

If men were indeed as wretched as Mr. Mill describes them to be, and had no fear of judgment and immortality—which Mr. Mill informs us are probably but figments of the brain—why should they continue to endure "the calamity of so long life"?

'Twere best at once to sink to peace, Like birds the charming serpent draws— To drop head-foremost in the jaws Of vacant darkness, and to cease.

So men would begin to reason if this dark gospel of despair were ever to gain currency; but, fortunately, it is only the morbid dream of a closet philosopher, who fancied the world was upside down because he could not unriddle it with his logical Rule of Three.

This representation of Nature is not only at variance with facts, but inconsistent with Mr. Mill's own conclusions, as he reasons from natural phenomena that the Creator is both wise and beneficent, but that He is in some way hindered from fully accomplishing His kind purposes. But if "there is no evidence whatever for Divine justice, and no shadow of justice in the general arrangements of Nature," the reasonable inference is that its author is a being of infinite malignity who is in some mysterious manner, for the present, prevented from wreaking the full measure of his wrath upon mankind. From this horrible thought Mr. Mill recoils, and, giving logic to the winds, he trusts that

God is love indeed, And love Creation's final law, Though Nature, red in tooth and claw With ravin, shrieks against his creed.

In the second essay Mr. Mill undertakes to prove the uselessness and harmfulness of supernatural religion both to society and individuals, and the sufficiency of human authority, of education and public opinion to accomplish all the beneficial results usually accredited to faith in a Divine Being. "Religion," he says, "by its intrinsic force, ... without the sanction superadded by public opinion, ... has never, save in exceptional characters or in peculiar moods of mind, exercised a very potent influence after the time had gone by in which Divine agency was supposed habitually to employ temporal rewards and punishments." Whatever application this statement may have to other religions claiming a divine origin, it is entirely false of Christianity. In its origin, it certainly held out no temporal bribes of any character. Its Founder expressly said to His disciples, "In this world ye shall have tribulation." "Behold," He says, "I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves"; "ye shall be hated of all men for My sake"; "if any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me." His own life was one of unparalleled contumely, and He told them they must not expect to fare better than their Master. Nor did they. The majority of the apostles met cruel deaths after lives of suffering. Paul, describing his experience, speaks of his beatings and his perils among his countrymen and the heathen, of his hunger and thirst and his cold and nakedness. And his was only an extreme example of the common lot of the early generations of Christians. Yet in the face of the hostility of the whole Roman and Jewish world, manifested in the most cruel persecutions, Christianity rapidly grew, gaining its most signal triumphs, laying hold of the consciences and transforming the lives of men. It was only when it came under the patronage of the civil government, and the public opinion of the world was thrown in its favor, and its peculiar doctrines became diluted with worldly policy, that it began to lose its reforming influence—a fact which Mr. Mill himself alludes to in his essay On Liberty. This experience has been frequently repeated since the days of Constantine; so that history fairly proves that Christianity does its peculiar work more effectually when it is dissociated from all human sanctions, and left to act solely by its intrinsic force. This is true not only of the Church at large, but of individuals. Paul, Luther, a Kempis drew their inspiration from the simple words of Christ, and owed next to nothing to the opinions of the world about them. It has always been direct contact with the life and precepts of the Founder of Christianity that has fired the hearts and braced the spiritual energies of the noblest Christians, who have been the reformers of their times, braving the enmity of the world to instill a purer and a loftier morality.

The illustrations, suggested first by Bentham, which Mr. Mill cites to prove the worthlessness of the religious sanction—viz., the almost universal breach of oaths where not enforced by law, and the prevalence of male unchastity and the practice of dueling among Christian communities—have no pertinency whatever to his argument, since they only prove the predominance of religious infidelity and indifference in countries nominally Christian, which no one denies; while the exceptions to this rule, which occur almost wholly among Christians, prove the very view he controverts. It is Christian opinion making itself felt through legislation that is gradually circumscribing the area of these vices.

Again, says Mr. Mill. "Because when men were still savage they would not have received either moral or scientific truths unless they had supposed them supernaturally imparted, does it follow they would now give up moral truths any more than scientific because they believed them to have no other origin than wise and noble human hearts?" Overlooking the adroit introduction here of scientific truths as having originally been on the same footing with moral truths—for which we do not think there is any sufficient historic evidence—it is competent to reply that the great mass of mankind are still in the earlier stages of intellectual and moral development, even in the most advanced countries; so that on grounds of utility it is important to prolong, if possible, the supernatural sanctions of religion. Although, as Mr. Mill believes, a moral truth once in the possession of humanity may never be lost, it may yet have its influence suspended through many generations, as in the Dark Ages, and thus the advance of civilization be indefinitely retarded; and therefore the office of religion in keeping morality operative among men is not to be discarded. It is doubtless impossible to estimate with entire correctness the relative value of the different forces that advance or retard civilization, but we believe the weight of historic evidence goes to prove that religious skepticism was the actual cause, as it has always been the inevitable precursor, of national decay. Coleridge in The Friend quotes the historian Polybius as attributing the strength of the Roman republic to the general reverence of the invisible powers, and the consequent horror in which the breaking of an oath was held. This he thought the causa causarum of Roman grandeur; and he attributed the ruin of the Greek states to the frequency of perjury resulting from the atheism taught by the Sophists. Goethe says somewhere that "all epochs in which faith has prevailed have been the most heart-stirring and fruitful both as regard contemporaries and posterity; whereas all epochs in which unbelief obtains its miserable triumphs, even when they boast of some apparent brilliancy, are not less surely doomed to speedy oblivion." This assertion is notably true of the histories of Judea, Greece, Rome, and Spain. And, a priori, it might be argued that the only possible ground for that cordial unanimity of society upon fundamental questions which is essential to a stable and highly developed civilization is a common faith in some central rightful authority competent to demand and enforce equal obedience from all classes; in other words, faith in God. A band of savages might be held in a lax social union by the common fear of some brawny chief, but in civilized communities it is the real divinity that doth hedge about the king or other civil head that gives cohesion to the social mass. As a political force, therefore, religion cannot be dispensed with.

Religion is not only useless, Mr. Mill proceeds, but "there is a very real evil consequent on ascribing a supernatural origin to the received maxims of morality. That origin consecrates the whole of them, and protects them from being discussed and criticised." Such an objection hardly comes with good grace from Mr. Mill, who spends his strength to prove that a divine sanction has no efficacy when not backed by human authority. Nor has such an objection, if it were true, any application to the case till it is absolutely proved that all religions are of human origin, or else that more harm results from believing human systems divine than from believing one divine system to be of human growth. Neither of these alternatives does he attempt to establish, and he explicitly admits it is impossible to prove the former. But the objection is not true. Human criticism has never been backward to attack all systems of morality, despite the popular faith in their divine origin. Christianity especially has had its historic and intellectual and moral foundations attacked by able critics in every century since its introduction on earth. But in the face of every form of opposition it has made a steady progress, and strengthened its hold upon the human heart and conscience as the world has advanced in culture. It is to-day professed by a larger number of disciples and with a more intelligent faith than at any other period of its history. It is the dominant religion in those countries which are in the van of human progress, whose political institutions are the freest in the world, and whose inhabitants are the happiest and most virtuous. And despite its insoluble mysteries it has always received the assent of the highest intelligence to its divine origin. "My faith," said De Quincey, "is that though a great man may, by a rare possibility, be an infidel, an intellect of the highest order must build on Christianity." And Bacon's testimony is to the same effect. "It is only," he says, "when superficially tested that philosophy leads away from God: deeper draughts of a thorough and real philosophy bring us back to Him." And poor Tyndall, standing afar off in the outer regions of pure intellect, hard by the

ever-breaking shore That tumbles in the godless deep,

has recently been heard to murmur that in his loftiest moments the promise and potency of matter give no response to the deepest cry of the soul. And along the centuries stand the princes of thought, Paul, Augustine, Bacon, Luther, Milton, Pascal, Kepler, Newton, Coleridge, Faraday, Herschel, testifying to the impregnability of the intellectual foundation of the Christian faith.

If Mr. Mill's arguments to prove the worthlessness of Christianity are open to many objections, the reasons he offers for accepting his substitute, the Religion of Humanity, are utterly baseless and delusive. For faith in God he would have us adopt an ideal conception of what human life can be made in the future, and sacrifice all our present enjoyment to secure a realization of that conception ages hence. This, says he, is a better religion than any belief respecting the unseen powers. "If individual life is short, the life of the human species is not." How does he know this? The dark demon of Nature he has so vividly described may sweep away the puny race to-morrow by some fell cataclysm; and it would be a blessing if she did in his view. "If such an object," he continues, "appears small to a mind accustomed to dream of infinite and eternal beatitudes, it will expand into far other dimensions when these baseless fancies shall have receded into the past." But if we must feed our moral natures on "baseless fancies," most men will prefer the Christian dogmas of immortality, the infinite capacity of development of the human soul, the brotherhood of the race and its vital union with its Creator, and its perfectibility of human institutions and social conditions in this life under the leavening influence of Christian principle, although Mr. Mill may stigmatize them as grandiose and enervating dreams, to his beggarly improved substitute, which appeals neither to our common sense nor to our moral intuitions. Taking his own criterion, utility, as the test of truth, his religion of humanity fails to establish itself, for it postpones the happiness of each existing generation to the fancied good of future generations which may never be born, and this ad infinitum. On this part of his subject Mr. Mill is simply fatuous, as when he speaks of our being sustained in this faith by the approbation of the dead whom we venerate. But if Socrates and Howard and Washington and Christ and Antoninus and Mrs. Mill are turned to clay, as he says they probably are, it is nonsense to assert that he is strengthened in the path of duty by a feeling that they would sympathize with him if alive. It is the unconfessed hope of their immortality that quickens him, if he is affected at all. Mr. Mill's idolatry of his wife, like Buckle's love for his mother, was an argument for the immortality of the soul which he does not seem to have been able entirely to reject.

Mr. Mill never tires of calling Christianity a selfish religion, and glorifies his substitute as free from this defect. But Mr. Fitzjames Stephen, in his work entitled Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, has clearly pointed out that Mr. Mill has only succeeded in duping himself on this point. A man cannot free himself from self-consideration. Christianity indeed appeals to the innate desire of happiness, but condemns the overweening and blind self-regard which cannot see that the highest happiness of self flows from a just respect to the selfhood of others and from the cultivation of the spiritual nature. Love your neighbor as yourself is the Christian precept; and it has the advantage of being practicable, which Mr. Mill's has not.

Mr. Mill considerately says he will forbear to urge the moral difficulties and perversions of the Christian revelation, "the recognition, for example, of the object of highest worship in a being who could make a hell." "Is it possible," he asks, "to adore such a one without a frightful distortion of the standard of right and wrong?" "Any other of the outrages to the most ordinary justice and humanity involved in the common Christian conception of the moral character of God sinks into insignificance beside this dreadful idealization of wickedness. Most of them, too, are happily not so unequivocally deducible from the very words of Christ." Yet this very Personage, who, Mr. Mill says, implicitly believed and taught this awful doctrine, presents, he confesses, the highest type of pure morality the world has ever seen. Arguing from this phenomenon, the more hideous the creed and the more torpid or sophisticated the intellect, the higher the morality is likely to be.

In the last essay, On Theism, Mr. Mill examines the evidences in Nature for the existence of God and for the immortality of the soul. The argument from design he thinks establishes the probability of the existence of an intelligent Creator of limited power; for "who," he asks, "would have recourse to means if to attain his end his mere word were sufficient?" It may be replied to this that it is as open to an omnipotent being to accomplish his will through a long chain of causes as by a fiat acting immediately. The recourse to intermediate means does not of necessity prove a limitation of power. If the means actually chosen are defective or bad, it may imply limitation of wisdom or moral obliquity just as much as defect of power, and any choice between these alternatives is entirely arbitrary from a logical standpoint.

Monotheism, Mr. Mill asserts, is a natural product, requiring a considerable amount of intellectual culture, but always appearing at a certain stage of natural development. How, then, did it originate among the Hebrews before they had emerged from barbarism, and fail to appear among their highly civilized contemporaries, the Egyptians and Assyrians? Christlieb is more correct than Mr. Mill, we think, when he says that neither in ancient nor in modern times has it been possible to find a nation which by its own unaided powers of thought has arrived at a definite belief in one personal living God. And the latest researches of ethnologists, as they may be found admirably compiled by Mr. Tyler (himself an advocate of the development hypothesis) in his Primitive Culture, substantiate this assertion.

Mr. Mill, in dealing with Kant's dictum, that the intuition of duty implies a God of necessity, is foolish enough to say "that this feeling of obligation rather excludes than compels the belief in a divine legislator;" which is a very discreditable piece of sophistry.

In closing this short review of these interesting essays we may be permitted to quote a few of Mr. Mill's admissions, which, taken together, almost amount to a confession of faith in the Christian system, and which leave upon the mind the impression that this painful groping of an earnest inquirer after the truth, and the closer approximation he continually made to Christian dogma, would have resulted, had he lived longer, in his adoption of that faith as offering the hypothesis that best explains the perplexing phenomena of the moral world.

"Experience," he says, "has abated the ardent hopes once entertained of the regeneration of the human race by merely negative doctrine, by the destruction of superstition." Here is a declaration of the need of a system of positive truth.

Again, of the Christian revelation he says: "The sender of the alleged message is not a sheer invention: there are grounds independent of the message itself for belief in His reality.... It is moreover much to the purpose to take notice that the very imperfection of the evidences which natural theology can produce of the divine attributes removes some of the chief stumbling-blocks to the belief of revelation." Here is the raison d'etre of revelation.

This revelation, it should be borne in mind, in its method and character bears a striking similarity to the natural world, from whose Author it professes to come, as was long ago pointed out by Bishop Butler, and recently with great cogency by Mr. Henry Rogers in his most forcible work on the Superhuman Origin of the Bible.

Again: "A revelation cannot be proved unless by external evidence—that is, by the evidence of supernatural facts." Here is an assertion of the necessity of miracles.

Again: "Science contains nothing repugnant to the supposition that every event which takes place results from a specific volition of the presiding Power, provided this Power adheres in its particular volitions to general laws laid down by itself;" which is the biblical representation of the divine mode of action.

Again: "All the probabilities in case of a future life are that such as we have been made, or have made ourselves before the change, such we shall enter into the life hereafter;" which is the exact declaration of Scripture.

Mr. Mill further helps the Christian cause by pointing out two flaws in Hume's argument against miracles—viz., that the evidence of experience to which its appeal is made is only negative evidence; which is not conclusive, since facts of which there had been no previous experience are often discovered and proved by positive experience to be true; and secondly, the argument assumes that the testimony of experience against miracles is undeviating and indubitable, whereas the very thing asserted on the other side is that there have been miracles, and that the testimony is not wholly on the negative side.

No Christian can read the following tribute to the character of Christ without sadness that the joy of a larger faith was rejected by its author: "Whatever else may be taken away from us by rational criticism, Christ is still left—a unique figure, not more unlike all his precursors than all his followers, even those who had the direct benefit of his teaching. About the life and sayings of Jesus there is a stamp of personal originality, combined with profundity of insight, ... which must place the Prophet of Nazareth, even in the estimation of those who have no belief in his inspiration, in the very first rank of the men of sublime genius of whom our species can boast. When this pre-eminent genius is combined with the qualities of probably the greatest moral reformer and martyr to that mission who ever existed upon earth, religion cannot be said to have made a bad choice in pitching upon this man as the ideal representative and guide of humanity; nor even now would it be easy even for an unbeliever to find a better translation of the rule of virtue from the abstract into the concrete than to endeavor so to live that Christ would approve our life.... When to this we add that to the conception of the rational critic it remains a possibility that Christ actually was what he supposed himself to be, ... we may well conclude that the influences of religion on the character which will remain after rational criticism has done its utmost against the evidences of religion are well worth preserving, and what they lack in direct strength as compared with those of a firmer belief is more than compensated by the greater truth and rectitude of the morality they sanction." The confession of these last few lines refutes the whole of Mr. Mill's elaborate argument on the worthlessness and immorality of that religion which from his grave he lifts his sad and hollow voice to overthrow.

LAWRENCE TURNBULL.



OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

WOMAN'S RIGHTS IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

Not only we, the latest seed of Time— ... not only we that prate Of rights and wrongs, have loved the women well.

Nearly a century and a half ago an English lady, out of patience with the intolerable assumptions of the other sex, raised her voice in behalf of her own. In 1793 there was published in London a pamphlet entitled "Woman not Inferior to Man, or a Short and Modest Vindication of the Natural Right of the Fair Sex to a Perfect Equality of Power, Dignity and Esteem with the Men. By Sophia, a Person of Quality." The title-page has a quotation from Rowe's Fair Penitent:

How hard is the condition of our sex! —Through every state of life the slave of man!

* * * * *

Wherefore are we Born with souls, but to assert ourselves, Shake off this wild obedience they exact, And claim an equal empire o'er the world?

From such a title and such an epigraph one might expect the most incendiary sentiments in the pages which follow, and that Sophia had nothing less in view than to overthrow the usurper; but this she disclaims: she has no intention, she avers, "to stir up any of my own sex to revolt against the men, or to invert the present order of things with regard to government and authority" Her sole object appears to be to bring men to a proper sense of their deficiencies and the emptiness of their pretensions. But she is a person of admirable dignity and discretion: it is not until the conclusion, when she has not left them a leg to stand upon, that she magnanimously waives all the advantages to accrue from their humiliation, and merely bids them in future to know their true place. The composition is in every way worthy of these elevated sentiments. Sophia need not have announced herself a person of quality: there is evidence of it on every leaf of her book. One recognizes the accomplished gentlewoman of a hundred years ago, with her solid reading, her strong common sense, her sober religious convictions, her household science. No doubt she loved fine lace and old china; there are recondite internal proofs that she was pretty; and on closing the book a far-off rustle of her brocade reaches us as she makes her spreading curtsey. But we will let her speak for herself a little. Her first position is certainly a strong one: "If this haughty sex would have us believe they have a natural right of superiority over us, why don't they prove their charter from Nature by making use of reason to subdue themselves?... Were we to see men everywhere and at all times masters of themselves, and their animal appetites in perfect subordination to their rational faculties, we should have some color to think that Nature designed them as masters to us." The doctrine of female inferiority she considers "a vulgar though ancient error," observing that until very recent ages the sun was believed to revolve round the earth, and the notion of the antipodes was "a heresy in philosophy"—that to assert the equality of the sexes now was no greater paradox than to advocate either of those theories but a short time ago. "But," she continues, "who shall the matter be tried by?" and here we suspect she has reached the root of the difficulty. Both men and women, she admits, are too much interested to be impartial judges; therefore she appeals to "rectified reason" as umpire. She considers in order the various claims to predominance which men have put forward, and confutes them one by one. "Man concludes that all other creatures were made for him because he was not created until all were in readiness for him:" even granting that to be unanswerable, she says it only proves that men were made for women, and not vice versa: "they are our natural drudges.... Men are magnified because they succeed in taming a tiger, an elephant or such like animals;" therefore what rank must belong to woman, "who spends years in training that fiercer animal, MAN?" She instances a journeyman tailor she once saw belabor his wife with a neck of mutton, "to make her know, as he said, her sovereign lord and master. And this is perhaps as strong an argument as their sex is able to produce, though conveyed, in a greasy light.... To stoop to regard for the strutting things is not enough; to humor them more than we could children with any tolerable decency is too little; they must be served, forsooth!" It is grievous injustice to Sophia, but one almost fancies one hears Madame George Sand. She allows that to please man ought to be part of the sex's business if it were likely to succeed; "but such is the fanatical composition of their natures that the more pains is taken in endeavoring to please them, the less generally is the labor successful; ... and surely women were created by Heaven for some better end than to labor in vain their whole life long." The supercilious commendations of men are gall and wormwood to her: "Some, more condescending, are gracious enough to confess that many women have wit and conduct; but yet they are of opinion that even such of us as are the most remarkable for either or both still betray something which speaks the imbecility of our sex." She makes an excellent plea forgiving women a thorough education, complaining that it is denied them, and then they are charged with being superficial: "True knowledge and solid learning cannot but make woman as well as man more humble; ... and it must be owned that if a little superficial knowledge has rendered some of our sex vain, it equally renders some of theirs insupportable." With all the sex's frivolity, she adds, women have not been found to spend their lives on mere entia rationis splitting hairs and weighing motes like the Schoolmen. She concludes that men deprive women of education lest they should oust them "from those public offices which they fill so miserably." She handles her logic admirably, and exposes her adversaries for begging the question and reasoning in a circle. Of course she enforces her assertions by citing the women who have distinguished themselves in every position of responsibility, military, political and intellectual, and only refrains from multiplying instances because of their number. Not to quote those alone who have filled chairs of medicine with honor, she ingeniously remarks that the remedies classed as "an old woman's recipe" are those oftenest prescribed, to the glory of her sex, who by patience, humanity and observation have invented without the help of Galen and Hippocrates an infinity of reliefs for the sick which their adherents can neither improve nor disapprove. She makes her final point on the question of moral superiority. It is sometimes stated "that some women have been more flagitious than any men, but that in nowise redounds to the dishonor of our sex in general. The corruption of the best is ever the worst: should we grant this, ... it must be owned their number would at least balance the account. I believe no one will deny but that at least upon the most moderate computation there are a thousand bad men to one bad woman." She winds up by an appeal to her own sex in the very spirit of Miss F.P. Cobbe, the sum of which is to adjure women, for their own sakes, not to be silly.

How many contemporaries of George Selwyn had their eyes opened by this clear statement of their demerits there are no means of ascertaining. But Sophia raised up at least one furious antagonist, who replied by a pamphlet called "MAN Superior to WOMAN, or a Vindication of Man's Natural Right of Sovereign Authority over the Woman, containing a Plain Confutation of the Fallacious Arguments of SOPHIA. By a GENTLEMAN." The first thing to be noted is, that whereas Sophia said her say in about fifty pages, the masculine reply covers seventy-eight in smaller print. He opens by a "Dedication to the Ladies," beginning, "Lovely creatures"—an exordium which any woman of spirit would resent, the perfidy and disrepect of his intentions being obvious in those words alone; and he continues in the tone of flippancy which was to be expected. His arguments are weak in the extreme, and his satire is pointless. The only hit is his scheme for a female university, with Mrs. Manly and Mrs. Afra Behn in the chair of literature. His summary of woman's character and occupations was given earlier, with more brevity and wit, and no less truth, by Pope. To Sophia's historical illustrations he opposes female types named Tremula, Bellnina, Novilia, etc. But in truth the production is so excessively scurrilous that one needs to remember that those were the times of Congreve and Fielding to believe that the author could have the right to style himself "A GENTLEMAN." We shudder with pity for poor Sophia, who had such a mass of filth flung at her. But that decorous personage is not disconcerted: she does not lose her head or her temper, but opens her mouth with a freedom of speech which was the prerogative of an honest woman in those days, and rejoins with a second pamphlet: "Woman's Superior Excellence over Man" Her first thrust is to regret, in behalf of the other sex, that neither Achilles nor Hector appears as their champion, but Thersites. Either her adversary was silenced, or the publishers considered that what he said was not worthy of preservation, for no further words of his appear, so that in any case she had the best of it. Her first pamphlet had a second edition in the following year. Its memory was still alive in this century, for it was quoted with respect by the Retrospective Review for 1824 in a learned article on the "Privileges of Woman," which deserves the attention of those interested in the subject.

S.B.W.



THE TOMB OF LORENZO DE' MEDICI.

I wish to chronicle in the pages of Lippincott's Magazine the record of a scene that took place this spring in the Medicean chapel attached to the church of San Lorenzo in Florence. It was in itself a remarkable and memorable scene enough, but it was yet more important as regards certain interesting points of history on which it throws a very curious light, if it does not, as many persons will be inclined to think, settle them definitively.

The little square marble chapel itself, which no visitor to Florence will have forgotten, is admired as an architectural gem of Michael Angelo, and is yet more celebrated as the shrine of some of his finest works, especially the sitting statue of Lorenzo and the recumbent statues of Twilight and Dawn on the tomb of Lorenzo. These two grand figures, it will be remembered, repose on the arched canopy over the tomb in such a position that, if not retained in their places by some means adapted for that purpose, they would slide off the rounded arch by their own weight. Now, it had been lately observed that the statue of Twilight was moving, and it was very reasonably judged to be necessary that this should be looked to. The statue was therefore carefully raised, and it was discovered that when the tomb of Lorenzo had been opened to place in it the body of the murdered Alexander, his (putative) son, the metal stanchion or peg by means of which Michael Angelo had secured his statue in its place had been replaced by a wooden one. This, in the course of the centuries which have since elapsed had become decayed, and the statue might have fallen any day. This being the case, it was thought well to raise the other statue, that of the Dawn also. But that was found to be as secure in its place as the great artist had left it. But these superincumbent statues having been thus lifted from off the sepulchre, it was suggested that the opportunity should be taken to examine the contents of the tomb.

There were several reasons which rendered such an examination historically interesting and curious. A certain degree of doubt has been cast—mainly by Grimm—on the question whether the tomb be in fact that of Lorenzo, the father of Catherine de' Medici, the celebrated queen of France—whether it be not rather that of Giuliano, his uncle. For my part, I had always thought that there was little or no foundation for the doubt. The main features of the story of Alexander will probably be in the memory of the reader. The Florentine republic and liberty were destroyed in 1527 by the united forces of the traitor pope, the Medicean Clement VII., and Charles V., with the understanding that this Alexander should marry Margaret, the emperor's illegitimate daughter, and that Florence should become a dukedom to dower the young couple withal. Who and what this Alexander was has always been one of the puzzles of history. He was, tradition says, very swarthy, and was generally believed to be the son of a Moorish slave-mother. He was certainly illegitimate; and the question, Who was his father? was always a doubtful one, though he has generally been called the son of Lorenzo. I have elsewhere given at length reasons for believing rather that whispered bit of scandal of the time which declared the pope, Clement VII., to be his father. When Florence fell he became duke, and reigned over the unhappy city for seven years, in such sort that the murder of him in 1537 by his kinsman Lorenzino, traitorously and cowardly done as the deed was, was deemed the act of a patriot. The story of such a deed, done at midnight in a private chamber, and never made the subject of legal investigation, of course reaches subsequent generations enveloped in more or less of uncertainty. Now, it was likely enough that the careful examination of the remains in the tomb in question might throw light on sundry points of Alexander's story.

In the first place, the identity of the tomb is now fixed beyond the possibility of a doubt. It was known that the body of the murdered Alexander was placed in the tomb of his putative father, Lorenzo. If, therefore, the body of Alexander should be found in this sepulchre, the tomb is proved to have been that of Lorenzo. When the lid of the sarcophagus was raised, there accordingly were the two bodies visible—one dressed in white, the other in black. It has been assumed—and I think the assumption is abundantly justified, as will presently be seen—that the skeleton in black is that of Lorenzo, and the skeleton in white that of Alexander. The relative position of the bodies was very singular. The heads were at opposite ends of the sarcophagus, and the bodies were placed, not side by side, but each between the legs of the other. One of the bodies, that of Lorenzo, seemed when the lid of the sarcophagus was raised to be headless, but on examination the skull was found under the breast of the black tunic that covered the body. There can be little doubt that it became detached when the body was moved for the purpose of placing that of Alexander in the tomb. The white garment that clad the skeleton of Alexander was an embroidered shirt ornamented with lace: the legs were covered with white leggings. The skull of this skeleton had all the teeth perfect when the sarcophagus was opened; but should the curiosity of any future generation tempt the men of that day to peer into this receptacle of the dust of tyrants, the skull of the murdered Alexander will be found to be toothless. And all sorts of suppositions and theories may be based on this singular fact, and credited, until some antiquary of the period discovers in an ancient magazine published at the period of a former examination of the sepulchre this record, in which I am obliged to declare—with a blush for the decency of the Florentines—that the teeth were all stolen by persons who were permitted to be present at the opening of the tomb. A certain special historical interest is attached to those teeth of the murdered man. The story goes that when Lorenzino stabbed him as he slept on a bed in Lorenzino's own house, to which he had been inveigled in the hope of meeting there a certain lady, the wife of a Ginori of the time, Alexander started up, and, seizing the thumb of the murderer between his teeth, held him so firmly that he could not have escaped had not a bravo whom he had hired to aid him come to his assistance. These, then, were the teeth that held so well in the death-grip of their owner! Some Florentine historically-minded virtuoso (!) appreciated the significance of the fact, and stole them from the head some three centuries and a half after that last bite of theirs. There were several gaps in the range of teeth still remaining in the skull of Alexander, which has appeared strange to some who remember that he was only twenty-seven when he died. But I think that any medical man, taking into consideration; the manner of his death, would find nothing strange in the circumstance, but on the contrary a confirmation of the truth of the facts which the chroniclers of the time have preserved for us.

Perhaps, however, the most curious and interesting fact which the opening of this tomb has ascertained is that testified to by the hair still remaining on the skull which was that of Alexander. It is a black curly hair of a coarse quality, such as a man of mixed black blood may be supposed to have had. It is recorded that one of the wounds given by the bravo Scoronconcolo, whom Lorenzino had hired to assist him in the murder, and who ran up to complete the job when his master was disabled by being fast held by the teeth of Alexander, was a stab in the face. And of the truth of this tradition also the skull of the murdered man still affords evidence; for on the left-hand side of the face, a little below the socket of the eye, there is a mark in the bone beneath the cheek which must have been made by the point of the sword or dagger that inflicted the wound, and which shows that the bravo Scoronconcolo's thrust must have been a shrewd one.

It will readily be supposed that the scene at the opening of the sepulchre must have been a very impressive one. There, in that solemn chapel of white and black marble which the genius of Michael Angelo prepared for the repose of his sovereigns and patrons, with his lifelike and immortal presentations of the forms of the dead who have filled all story with their names, looking down on the deed with sad and solemn faces, who would not, while thus forcing the prison-house of the tomb to render up its terrible and long-concealed secrets, have been deeply sensible of a feeling of awe and reverence? Even putting aside all such sentiments as the contemplation of such a memento mori is usually found to inspire in most men, the purely scientific historical inquirer must have felt the importance of the occasion, and the great desirability of making the most in an historical point of view of so rare an opportunity. I am sorry to be obliged to record that the Florentines, so far as could be judged from their conduct and bearing, felt nothing of all this. No one who knows them as well as I do would have expected reverence from them under any possible or imaginable circumstances; but one might have expected such due care and decency of proceeding as would have sufficed to render the examination of the remains as historically instructive as possible, and to preserve the record for a future generation. But this was very far from being the case. A learned professor of anatomy indeed attended at the opening of the tomb, but instead of touching the remains himself, or utilizing his science by handling them as they ought to have been handled, he called a workman, and by him the bodies were torn out from their resting-place in fragments. The clothes were of course torn to pieces in the operation; the lace from the shirt of Alexander was permitted to be stolen; and the same fate, as has been stated, overtook his teeth. No sort of preparation had been made for any possible examination of the remains to any good purpose. They were laid out anyhow, as the phrase is, on a little marble bench in the chapel. Those who remember the place will not need to be told how perfect a sham any pretence of examination must have been under such circumstances. When this pretence had been gone through, the bones were cast back again into the marble sarcophagus by the workman, "like"—as one eye-witness of the scene describes it—"the bones of dogs." And when the same person looked into the sarcophagus after this tossing back had been effected, he saw a mere confused heap of the scattered bones of two skeletons undistinguishably mixed together. "I cannot help," writes the same eye-witness, "expressing my sense of the barbaric acts which I witnessed. Historic skeletons—the father of Catherine de' Medici, the son-in-law of Charles V.; Florentine nobles—one a duke of Florence, the other of Urbino—both bad enough fellows, no doubt, but could any Communists have acted worse? Besides, Communist mobs assert principles, and do these things in hot blood. But this most monstrous outrage was committed coolly by pure stupidity and the carelessness which cannot be moved by any consideration to take any trouble that can by any possibility be avoided. Had they turned up a quantity of the bones of animals to examine them, they could not have done worse." It is fair to add that some of the organs of the Florentine press stigmatized the proceedings upon this occasion as they deserved to be stigmatized.

T.A.T.



T.W. ROBERTSON.

The qualifications needed by the novelist and by the dramatist are at once alike and unlike. Differing in manner rather than in matter, they are rarely found united in one man. Scott, from whose novels many stirring plays have been taken, was incapable of writing one himself; Thackeray, even after he was the well-known author of Vanity Fair, could not find a manager willing to produce his comedy; and Thackeray's great master, Fielding, comparatively failed as a dramatist, though Joseph Surface is Blifil and Charles Surface is Tom Jones, and from the same work Colman derived his comedy of the Jealous Wife, which holds the stage to this day. By dint of hard work a man might make himself a novelist, but the dramatist, like the poet, must be born. He who possesses the power of writing successfully for the stage will surely show it in his first work. This theory accounts for the signal success of the Cantab, a slight farce played in 1861 at the London Strand Theatre. The material was weak and worn-out, but the fun was not forced: it flowed naturally from the situations. There was a freshness and a firmness about the little piece which showed the hand of a young author capable of better things. Three years later, Mr. Sothern, desiring a part diametrically the opposite of Lord Dundreary, produced David Garrick, and in 1865 Society made its first appearance on the stage of the Prince of Wales's Theatre. Then T. W. Robertson stepped to the front rank of living English dramatists.

The author had found his audience and his actors. The Prince of Wales's Theatre was directed by a burlesque actress, and devoted to light comedy and extravaganza: after that it gave up burlesque, merely heightening the effect of the comedy and prolonging the programme by a quiet farce. The company was small and strong, the theatre was well managed, and plays were handsomely mounted. After the success of Society until Robertson's death its main reliance was upon his pen. In 1866 Ours was first produced, followed in 1867 by Caste. The pieces of other authors, although carefully played and well mounted, were uniform failures. Mr. Edmund Yates's Tame Cats, and Mr. Dion Boucicault's How She Loves Him! were each withdrawn after a run of a very few nights, whereas School Play, an M.P. succeeded each other with undisputed success. At the Haymarket Theatre David Garrick was followed by Home and Birth.

The day was won, and the successful author could afford to rest on his laurels. But he was ambitious and a hard worker; so he continued to write and adapt. To counterbalance the good-fortune of David Garrick and Home at the Haymarket, and the series of six at the Prince of Wales's Theatre, there was a list of failures—Birth, Progress, Dreams and War. But his comedies were far more successful than his heavier plays: his belief in his power to construct good acting dramas must have been sadly shaken by the total failure of For Love, the Shadow-Tree Shaft and the Nightingale. There can be no better proof of their want of success than the fact that at a time when American managers were eager for his comedies, not one of his dramas was ever produced in the United States. But in spite of the comparative failure of his later works, his death was felt to be the loss of a dramatic author of some performance and of greater promise,

We have a way of nicknaming a new writer after one of his most celebrated predecessors whom we imagine him to resemble, and then we find fault with him for not having all the qualities of an author whom he probably has no desire to imitate. False friends of T.W. Robertson called him the "modern Sheridan." Few writers are more dissimilar. Robertson in his dialogue and construction imitated the modern French dramatists; Sheridan, the old English, Congreve, Farquhar and Wycherley. Robertson especially delighted in love-scenes—there are generally two at least in each of his comedies: I cannot remember one in any of Sheridan's. The dialogue of the author of the School for Scandal is artificial and glittering—that of the author of School is generally more natural, and always less brilliant. They have, however, one point in common: they both practiced Moliere's maxim, Je prends mon bien ou je le trouve. They both unhesitatingly plagiarized. Robertson in particular easily assimilated foreign matter. He turned Le Degel and Les Ganaches of M. Sardou into A Rapid Thaw and Progress. David Garrick was taken from Dr. Robin, a French play, itself imitated from the German. Home closely follows L'Aventuriere of M. Emile Augier. Madame de Girardin's La Joie fait peur, previously translated by Mr. G.H. Lewes as Sunshine through the Clouds, gave Robertson the situation of the last act of War: Mr. Dion Boucicault has since deftly adapted the same delightful little piece under the name of Kerry, or Night and Morning. The Cinderella-like plot of School is taken from the Aschenbroedel of Roderick Benedix: the school examination was suggested by a French vaudeville, En classe, mesdemoiselles! The part of Beau Farintosh is a weak revival of Garrick's Lord Chalkstone and Colman and Garrick's Lord Ogleby; and the strong situation in the fourth act is imitated from Les Beaux Messieurs de Bois-Dore of George Sand.

But Robertson is decidedly strongest when he walks without crutches. His own original plays, Society, Caste, Ours, are by far his best. A foreign support made him limp. Of all his adaptations, home alone is really good: most of the others failed. Although that cosmopolitan mosaic School has been the most successful of his pieces in London—it has passed its five hundredth night—it is by no means the best. Success is not necessarily a test of real merit. Evidently, School has the elements of popularity, although it is a very weak piece, although it is full of foreign matter, and although it violates that most necessary rule of dramatic art, declaring no play should contain an effect, a line, a scene or an act which does not bear on the end in view by developing either the characters or the action. The entire second act, containing the farcical examination-scene, is useless. Robertson again sinned in this way in the Nightingale: although it had no effect on the plot, although it was entirely unnecessary, he introduced a pretty tableau representing the heroine, a lovely prima-donna, singing under the silver moonbeams in a boat rocked to and fro by the waves.

I have before spoken of Robertson's fondness for love-scenes. There are almost as many of them in one of his comedies as in one of Mr. Anthony Trollope's novels. And they are generally very good. What can be more delicious than the "spooning" in Home, if it is not the billing and cooing in Ours? But what can be more commonplace or more objectionable than the frequent remarks about love and Cupid scattered through his plays? Tom Stylus says in Society, "Love is an awful swindler—always drawing upon Hope, who never honors his drafts—a sort of whining beggar, continually moved on by the maternal police. But 'tis a weakness to which the wisest of us are subject—a kind of manly measles which this flesh is heir to, particularly when the flesh is heir to nothing else. Even I have felt the divine damnation—I mean emanation. But the lady united herself to another, which was a very good thing for me, and anything but a misfortune for her." This is altogether false: no man could ever say such things seriously—at least no man of sense would, and Tom Stylus is a man of sense. See, too, this bit of dialogue in Play:

"AMANDA. You are a good girl, and will be rewarded some day with a good man's love for this.

"ROSIE. I don't want it. I don't want anything to do with love. Love's a nasty, naughty, wicked boy, and the sooner he's put in convict-clothes and refused a ticket-of-leave, the better."

That is false too: the affected smartness of the wit does not suit the situation; or, rather, as a writer in the Athenaeum has said of a similar speech, "it suits any occasion."

In this same Play, Mrs. Kin peck soliloquizes thus: "I fell into a most unquiet sleep. I thought I saw Cliqueteaux, the old croupier, who died of love for me—of that and a complication of other disorders. A man that was a genius, with a wart on his nose. It was hereditary—the genius, not the wart," etc. Now this may be "funny," but it is not dramatic. It reminds one of the most forced passages of Artemas Ward's generally fresh and unforced humor. But perhaps the worst instance in all Robertson's play of this pitiful sacrifice of situation and character to a petty "joke" is found in Caste. Sam Gerridge, a gas-fitter and plumber, desiring to marry Polly, the daughter of Eccles, a drunken old brute, tells him so, casually mentioning that to prove his affection he will do anything he can in "the way of spirituous liquor or tobacco." This captivates the heart of old Eccles, who joins the hands of the young couple, saying with a drunken leer, "Samuel Gerridge, she is thine. Samuel Gerridge, you shall be 'er 'usband! I don't know a gasfitter man!" (The italics are in the original).

These are but minor errors, however. The great fault in Robertson's comedies is the lack of strong dramatic interest. There is no human passion. There is no exhibition of human strength and human weakness. There is little of that clash of character against character from which results true comedy. But even if his characters are mere empty-headed automata, even if his plays have not the literary value of Mr. W.S. Gilbert's, even if his pieces have not the situations of Sardou or the wit of Sheridan, he has a simple sweetness all his own. And perhaps, after all, the greatest objection to him is the weakness of his imitators. Success is always a schoolmaster. But it is not just to hold Robertson responsible for the faults of Alberry or the failings of the tea-cup-and-saucer school of comedy-writers.

J.B.M.



THE LETTERS OF A PRINCESS.

It is the fashion to decry French memoirs of court-life, and, considering the quaint freedom of style which characterizes much of this voluminous literature, it is not strange. Many of these memoirs, original letters, etc. are exceedingly interesting, because of their merciless unmasking of some of the sublime figure-heads of history; notably the letters of Madame Charlotte Elizabeth of Bavaria, widow of Monsieur, the only brother of Louis XIV. She always hated the French manners, and longed for her native sauer-kraut and sausages, which to her taste were finer than all the luxuries and dainties of the French cuisine. She was counted a severe moralist, and her tongue was more dreaded than a bayonet-charge. To be sure, her enemies more than hinted that her extraordinary virtue was trebly guarded by her ugliness. On the latter subject she says herself, "I must be cruelly ugly: I never had a passable feature. My eyes are little, my nose short and big, my lips long and flat, my cheeks hanging, my face long, my waist and my legs large, my stature short: sum-total, a little old fright." But she was intelligent and witty, and that, in France at least, goes a long way with a woman. She was also loyal and truthful. No one doubted her word when once she had spoken. This makes her testimony valuable, though many incidents circumspectly narrated by her seem incredible. Of the young duchesse de Bourgogne, second daughter of Louis XIV., she says: One of her amusements was to make her lackeys drag her over the floor by her feet. It is to be presumed that the duchess was a very young person at this time.

Madame Charlotte's portrait of Marie Therese, queen of Le Grand Monarque, is not very flattering: "Her teeth were black and broken, and she ate immoderately of garlic and chocolate. She was very fond of basset, but she never won, for she could never learn to play any game. She ate long and very slowly, taking mouthfuls for a canary." The diagnosis of the disease of which the queen died displays the popular pathological lore of those times. Madame says: "She died of an abscess on the arm, for which Fagon bled her. The humor entered and fell on the heart: he then gave her an emetic to remove the humor, and this suffocated her." La Valiere, according to Madame Charlotte, was the only woman who ever really loved the king. She limped a little, had lovely eyes, irregular teeth, and was very neat in her person, while Madame de Montespan was just the reverse.

Of Cardinal Richelieu we have a glimpse in madame's letters which his biographers, generally at least, omit. She tells us that he used to have violent fits of insanity, during which he would imagine that he was a horse, jump over a billiard-table, kick his servants, neigh, and make a fearful noise for an hour. His domestics would then get him into bed, and after much sweating he would wake without the least memory of what had passed. As "jumping over a billiard-table" might appear an incredible feat, at least for an aged cardinal, it is proper to remark that the billiard-tables of those times bore about the same relation in size to our modern billiard-tables that the ancient spinnet did to a grand pianoforte.



JAPANESE ART.

Some of our young ladies have a pretty art of constructing miniature landscapes out of pebbles and mosses, strips of glistening paper for brooks, little fuzzy pine sticks painted green for trees, and animals and Swiss cottages from the toy-shop. Could these amateur artists once see how the Japanese do this thing, they would abandon their mosses and pebbles in despair. A late traveler in Japan says of one of these: "It was a fairy-like landscape seen through a spy-glass reversed." Some of the details were real trees dwarfed to pigmies by the art of the Oriental florist. There were limpid lakes peopled with gold-fish; grottos and summer-houses of exquisite finish draped with growing verdure and large enough to shelter a small company of rabbits: lovely walks winding through groves, lawns and by miniature parterres of flowers, and finally, liliputian canals, spanned by elegant bridges wide enough for the passage of a large rat.

* * * * *

Among the "Notes" in the New York Nation of May 6th is the following:

"In the new edition of Prescott's complete works (Lippincott) we have remarked that the introduction to Charles V., so admirable for the time when it was written, is left untouched by the editor, not even the notes giving any intimation of the great progress made in the knowledge of the Middle Ages within the last hundred years. The editor may have chosen to regard the work as a literary monument to be preserved as it stands, and certainly it would require very extensive if not entire recasting."

There would seem to be some misapprehension at the bottom of these statements. No one, we believe, has ever undertaken to edit Robertson's History of Charles the Fifth. Prescott appended to it a long "Account of the Emperor's Life after his Abdication," and for that reason it has been included in all subsequent editions of his works. But no intimation has ever been given that the editor of Prescott's histories had assumed the same office for Robertson. If any one be engaged in editing Charles the Fifth, we can only wish him joy of the task. We trust, however, he will not proceed on the plan suggested by the Nation, of "recasting" the work in whole or in part. Such a process could hardly be considered as proper treatment of any literary production, which, whatever its demerits, should at least be subjected to no worse perversions than those of dishonest or incompetent criticism.



LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

Macready's Reminiscences, and Selections from his Diaries and Letters. Edited by Sir Frederick Pollock, Bart., one of his Executors. New York: Macmillan & Co.

It is probable that this book will excite a degree of disappointment in many readers, who, knowing Macready's position outside his profession, may naturally have expected to find in the record of his life ample and interesting details of his intercourse, often amounting to intimacy, with a great number of notable persons. This expectation would without doubt have been gratified had the autobiography, which occupies a third of the volume and covers about the same proportion of the writer's theatrical career, been carried to its close. Macready was not one of those men who spring to eminence at a bound: his powers were gradually and slowly developed, and owing partly to this fact, but partly also to unfavorable circumstances, the recognition of them was tardy and grudging. For many years after his debut on the London boards he, who at a later period was almost disparaged as a pre-eminently intellectual actor, owed his chief successes to his performance of melodramatic parts like Rob Roy and William Tell, for which his mental as well as physical endowments were considered especially to qualify him. When at length he had reached his full maturity, he stood without a living rival as the representative of leading Shakespearian characters; and maintaining this supremacy down to his retirement from the stage, closed the line of great tragedians and left a place which after the lapse of a quarter of a century still remains unfilled. His high personal worth and his efforts to exalt and purify the drama won him golden opinions from all sorts of men; and, with the exception of Garrick, no actor probably ever mingled as largely or came into as close relations with persons distinguished in other and alien walks of life. Mere fashionable society he seems never to have frequented, and his labors were too pressing and onerous to allow of that continuous companionship with a chosen circle in which men of letters or of science, however industrious, are generally able to find relaxation. But he came in contact, at one time or another, with most of the celebrated people of his day on both sides of the Atlantic, his friendship was sought and prized by many of them, and the occasional glimpses we get of them in his Diaries are of a kind to deepen our regret that the Reminiscences, in which the power of skillfully elaborating his material is sufficiently evidenced, should close abruptly just when the sources of its interest were becoming wider and fuller.

But any loss from this cause of amusing anecdotes or graphic descriptions of persons or scenes is more than made good by the far higher value and stronger attraction of the book as the portraiture of a striking character and a remarkable career. In this view the Diaries are not inferior in interest to the expanded narrative that precedes them. Indeed, terse and concise as they generally are, they have the advantage of presenting freshly and vividly the impressions and reflections of the moment, and thus exhibiting the writer's mind both in its habitual and exceptional states without reservation or deliberate purpose. They do not, however, reveal any different image from that which is presented in the autobiography: on the contrary, they confirm the truthfulness and frank fidelity of the more conscious self-delineation which is there attempted. There breathes, indeed, through the whole book a tone of unaffected sincerity, the charm of which cannot be overrated. Not only does every statement bear the stamp of veracity, but there is an utter absence of artifice, of any design, so to speak, upon the reader, which is as rare as it is beautiful. Admiration and sympathy were needs of Macready's nature, but he will have no jot of them beyond what he can fairly and honorably claim. Least of all, will he exalt himself at the expense of others. He pays no idle compliments, pours out no fulsome or insidious eulogies, but he speaks of his rivals and his predecessors with the warm appreciation of one who had felt the full influence of their power, and who could never look on merit with an oblique eye. His worship of Mrs. Siddons, as unparalleled in her genius, was life-long, and his descriptions of her acting convey a more vivid idea of its peculiar qualities and matchless effect than any others we can remember to have read. Talma comes next in his regard as "the most finished artist of his time, not below Kean in his most energetic displays, and far above him in the refinement of his taste and the extent of his research—equaling Kemble in dignity, unfettered by his stiffness and formality." He says acutely of Kean that "when under the impulse of his genius he seemed to clutch the whole idea of the man, ... but if he missed the character in his first attempt at conception he never could recover it by study." Of Kean, if of any actor, we might have feared that his notices would be tinged with jealousy; but not only does he render justice to his originality and "burning energy," but his account of the only evening he ever spent in private with "this extraordinary man" brings into full relief the charm of his manners and personal qualities at a time when he was still unspoilt by flattery and unenfeebled by dissipation. Sketches and criticisms more or less complete are given of many other great performers, whom, it is to be remembered, Macready had less opportunity of seeing in a variety of parts than if he had not himself been a busy member of the profession. He can censure as well as praise—less warmly, but not less candidly. His verdict on Ristori, whom he saw after his retirement, may not improbably appear harsh to her admirers, but we should recommend them to ponder well before endeavoring to controvert it.

It would, however, be difficult if not impossible to name a volume of memoirs in which there is so little dispraise of individuals, such an absence of what can be characterized as depreciation either in the way of direct remark or of insinuation. There will be no call for contradiction of any slurs upon character through perversion of facts or the repetition of hearsay calumny in its pages. Nor does this seem to proceed from either a mere distaste for the chatter of gossips or an unwillingness to wound the feelings of survivors, though both these traits are discernible enough. The strong and more pervading cause lay in an instinctive nobility of nature which sought only what was excellent and had no keen scent for blemishes or meannesses. There are in his Diaries many bitter reproaches and vehement denunciations, but they are all directed against his own conduct. Like Orlando, he will chide no breather in the world but himself, against whom he knows most faults. He had the defects incidental to a sensitive organization, an irritable temperament and an aspiring mind. He was apt to suspect hostility where none existed, and to resent indignities that were never intended. He confesses on one occasion at least to an unworthy elation at the inferiority of a rival. Above all, he was unable to curb the outbreaks of impatience and anger excited by negligence or stupidity—outbreaks which were often sufficiently amusing to the bystanders from the contrast between the old-fashioned violence of the language and the refined tones and lofty bearing of the speaker. In fact, so foreign were such displays to the dominant qualities of his character, while yet so closely connected with the fine sense and exacting spirit of the artist, that one is tempted to wish that he could himself have viewed them with more indifference, accepting this thorn in the flesh as a slight but irremediable misfortune, instead of making it the constant subject of penitence and self-abasement. But such a course would have been still more foreign to his nature, ever aiming at perfection, moral and artistic, ever summoning his faculties and actions to the stern inquest of conscience, and refusing to accept the verdict of any lower tribunal. And the struggle had its reward in a real if not complete victory. The weeds, if never wholly eradicated, could not choke the nobler growth; the stream, if it retained its turbid coloring, increased always in volume and majesty. The fine qualities which might so easily have deteriorated remained unscathed. His keen sense of justice and honor, his inborn candor and generosity, his fervent love of virtue and goodness in their simplest and least obtrusive exhibitions, his cordial admiration of true greatness,—these and kindred traits never lost their freshness or force. Above all, he retained throughout life that deep and exquisite tenderness of feeling which formed the supreme charm of his character, as it did of his acting, and to which it would not, we think, be easy to find a parallel in a person of his own sex. It was not alone in his ardent family affections—his fond recollections of the mother he lost in boyhood, his devotion to his sister, wife and brother, his passionate love of his children, or his anguish and abiding sorrow at every severance of such ties—that this quality displayed itself. His sympathy with all suffering, especially if conjoined with innocence and patient endurance, was not only quick but strong. His eyes fill with tears at the sight of a fellow-passenger in a mail-coach, a poor deformed boy, who is carrying a basket of toys from one town to another, and he shakes his hand at parting with a "God bless thee!" that comes direct from the heart. It was strikingly characteristic of him that, with all his intense ambition, his resolute desire—to use a phrase which we have heard him apply to himself—"to rise above the crowd, and stand when others fall," he chose for his wife a young provincial actress, whom he had once chided for her inattention or inability, but whose artlessness of manner, purity and sweetness of nature and aptness for improvement so enlisted his sympathies that he constituted himself her friend and guide until the death of her father and brother awakened a still warmer solicitude, bringing with it the discovery that "love had been the inspiration of all the counsel and assistance he had rendered her." Nor is the noble frankness less noticeable with which he tells of his sister's unconcealed disappointment on her first introduction to the fiancee, whose person as well as mind he had so extolled in his descriptions and whom happily she learned ere long to look at with his eyes, so that the happiness and serenity of his home were destined to be pure and undisturbed.

Within a few years after his marriage he fixed his abode at a short distance from London, where the sight of open fields, of trees and flowers, never failed to exercise its soothing and restorative influence upon him. The love of Nature was a passion with him, and in the record of his journeys—whether the few which he was able to make for the sole purpose of pleasure or his many professional tours—his notices of the scenery show how large was the enjoyment he derived from this healthful source. When, too, he withdrew from public life, it was to the neighborhood of a small town, remote from the former scenes of his struggles and triumphs, but commanding a wide view over a pleasing landscape. Here, as the friend who has edited this volume tells us, "he devoted himself almost exclusively to labors of kindness and usefulness; his charity was so extensive that, although his left hand knew not what his right hand did, it was impossible that it should escape observation even beyond the sphere of the recipients of his bounty; and while thus engaged in relieving distress in the neighborhood of his new home, he continued to remit money to old pensioners elsewhere up to the day of his death.... But his great interest was in the cause of education, especially among the poorer classes, which he developed at the cost of incessant personal exertion, and mainly at his own expense. He established a night-school, which he conducted himself, and in which he was assisted by voluntary teachers from among the gentlemen and tradesmen of the town, who attended in turns, but he was himself never absent from his post, except under very urgent necessity. After a time some of his friends raised a subscription in order to relieve Macready of a part of the burden which his own zeal in the cause had brought upon himself. Yet, although his own contribution to it had not been ever less than one hundred pounds a year [about a twelfth of his whole income], he was so fond of the night-school that he accepted this aid as a proof of the estimation in which his work was held, and as an additional fund, but not in ease of his own payments." Such a close to such a life will seem either a lame and impotent conclusion or a most fitting and harmonious cadence, according to the point of view.

We have spoken chiefly of Macready's character as a man, which was so attractive in itself, and is so faithfully and lucidly mirrored in this record of his life, that the work may be commended to readers of every class and ranked with the choicest specimens of biography. As the record of an artistic career its interest is of course more limited. Yet in this respect also its excellence is very great, and if the art which Macready practiced with such assiduity and devotion, though with no undue estimate of its value or importance, held a higher place in the world's regard, the light which is here thrown on its processes and requirements would be received as an inestimable boon. But at least his example, the spirit in which he worked, is worthy of the study and emulation of those who cultivate any art. In none has excellence ever been achieved by deeper thought or more unremitting labor. It would be absurd to question Macready's real eminence, based on the judgment of critical audiences with whom great acting was not a mere matter of tradition. But we may readily concede that in natural endowments he fell short of the most illustrious of his predecessors, that he lacked the intuitive grasp which he ascribes to Mrs. Siddons and to Kean, and that he never reached the intensity and complete abandon which gave an overwhelming effect to their highest performances. We may apply to his acting what Carlyle has so justly said of the poetry of Schiller, that it "shows rather like a partial than a universal gift—the labored product of certain faculties rather than the spontaneous product of his whole nature." There was always the perception of the natural limit of his qualifications, instead of any suggestiveness of a boundless capacity. His voice, though rich and musical and of extraordinary compass, had not the sonorous roundness and the penetrating sweetness of the rarest organs, and was subject to a tremulousness which, though often pleasing, could not but be considered as a defect. His features, though capable of great expression, had neither the beauty nor the extraordinary mobility so desirable in an actor. His attitudes and walk were graceful, picturesque, often superb, but not absolutely free from conventionalism. Instead of bursting away, as Kean had done, from the meshes of tradition, he had only expanded and attenuated them to the utmost, and if they did not really cramp, they still appeared to circumscribe Nature and truth. It is evident that without the most persistent efforts he could never have triumphed over obstacles and gained the highest rank in his profession. How ardent and conscientious was the struggle a thousand details in this volume bear testimony. Perhaps the most curious is the description given in a letter written after his retirement of the methods he had practiced for repressing exaggeration in gesture, utterance or facial expression. "I would lie down on the floor, or stand straight against a wall, or get my arms within a bandage, and, so pinned or confined, repeat the most violent passages of Othello, Lear, Hamlet, Macbeth, or whatever would require most energy and emotion; I would speak the most passionate bursts of rage under the supposed constraint of whispering them in the ear of him of her to whom they were addressed, thus keeping both voice and gesture in subjection to the real impulse of the feeling.... I was obliged also to have frequent recourse to the looking-glass, and had two or three large ones in my room to reflect each view of the posture I might have fallen into, besides being under the necessity of acting the passion close to a glass to restrain the tendency to exaggerate its expression—which was the most difficult of all—to repress the ready frown, and keep the features, perhaps I should say the muscles, of the face undisturbed, whilst intense passion would speak from the eye alone." If the propriety of some of these exercises be questionable, there can be no doubt that the general effect of such discipline was to correct the acquired tendencies of his youth and to chasten his style until it lacked nothing less than refinement.

All this concerned the technique of his art. Its soul—the thoughts, the feelings, the characters to be embodied by it—formed the subject of deeper, more constant and more delightful meditation. Here at least Macready was at no disadvantage in a comparison with the most illustrious of his predecessors. Some there may have been who gave more vividly the salient points of a character, or who, as in the case of Kean's Othello, infused into their personations of some of the grandest but least complex of Shakespeare's creations an intensity of passion that defied all rivalry. But none ever brought to the study of the poet the intellectual discernment, the sympathetic spirit, the true and heartfelt devotion with which Macready ministered at his shrine. Not his own part alone, but the whole play, including the words and scenes omitted in representation, were imprinted in his memory and continually revolved. The groundwork was thus laid in a thorough knowledge of the medium, to use the expression of Taine, applying it, however, not to mere external facts and circumstances, but to that individuality of form, ideas and style which the great dramatist has given to each of his works. Then the meaning and bearing of every phrase received their share of light from the same general source, and the performance was pervaded throughout by a consistency and a subtle discrimination which rendered it a living commentary, acting on the intellect through the emotions.

THE END