their fault; they are catholic - minded, and can even find amusement in an almanac, if it is not comic, but that there is a want of literary art in the new writers who offer to entertain them. Most of the writers do not seem to understand their business, and consequently bungle whatever they attempt. These critics say that while there is a great impulse among young Americans to write, there is an equal lack of knowledge how to write, accompanied by want of trained observation, and the faintest power to digest and assimilate the observations made. This is partly due, it is thought, to false noi tions of "Realism." They have been taught to believe that in order to produce a readable, or at least a saleable, novel or story it is only necessary to set down facts that come to their knowledge, with the least regard to the manner of presenting them. Style, which is the essence of prose, as metre is of poetry, is not thought worth considering in this false view of realistic work. If the facts presented are sufficiently disagreeable and vulgar, and the views and dénouements are fairly pessimistic and discouraging, the writers fancy they have done their duty to their generation, and that there is no more art in writing than there is in catching fish in a sluiceway with a net. The consequence is a flood of books with out form and void, which aggravates the summer reader, who is in want of limpid draughts and cooling drinks. In these books the conversation is vapid, the characters are not realized with the slightest definiteness, not having been studied from human life, and the story is not interesting. In no other trade would this sort of work, without apprenticeship or training, be tolerated, not even on the misfit counters. Though shoes might be made by a jeweller and clothes by a school-mistress, they would not sell. Yet it is widely believed, the summer readers say, that any one can write equipped only with a power of the most superficial observation of life, unrectified by comparison and unclarified by reflection. The summer reader says he does not altogether object to being taken to a hospital and made to witness amputations and other painful operations when this is essential to a development of character and the enforcement of a truth, though he hates to devote his whole vacation to a clinic, but bungling surgery disgusts him.

He is willing, for a purpose, to enter the squalid life of the city, or the sordid and brutal existence of vulgar country farmhouses, but when he goes to any of these places he likes to be accompanied by a lady or a gentleman. He declares that the company of an unrefined and commonplace writer is worse than the worst things he can describe.

Another complaint of the summer reader is that he is solicited to read tracts thinly disguised as novels. Some zealous young woman, whose soul is stirred by sociologic problems-by the inequality and pecuniary dependence of women, by the neglect of children, by the degradation of girls-is moved to write a story. Her style is a compound of rhetorical scolding and the report of the district reader; her characters are cut out of pasteboard, and if drawn from "high life" exhibit only the writer's ignorance of that life; her philosophy is crude, and her dialogue is without discrimination of character or tone. The motive she happens on is very likely a good one, and in the hands of a master the story would have power and influence, but used as she uses it the outcome is as weak in effect as it is offensive to good taste. The summer reader says that these writers are making a slopbowl of literature. It would be more polite if he said waste-basket. per critic in his haste sometimes characterizes these stories as "strong," because the writers use coarse language and the technical terms of physiology and legal enactments, but even the painter of horrors knows that he must keep within the limit of his art, and that his effective work is done in fine touches and by delicate coloring. The same epithet "strong" is applied to what may be called studies in morbid anatomy, whose only claim to be considered realistic is one that might attach to a description of a neglected gunshot wound in a mephitic hospital. This is not scientific enough for the columns of a medical journal, and the summer reader says that this failure does not give it the slightest literary quality.

IV.

The newspa

Another thing that vexes the soul of the summer reader is the attempt at the agnostic novel, or the tract on evolution in the form of a story. Now there is no desire to limit the number of motives in fiction. The Study is only discussing the

method of treatment. In the present outburst of fiction in America there is much to be commended in the escape from the trammels of tradition and the ligatures of squeamish conventionality. The problems of life which tear our hearts are not to be shunned. Our human surroundings, our philosophizing on the past, and our speculations on the future beyond the life we know, the relations of the sexes in the real struggle and passion of existence, the experiences common to every travailing soul which formerly were shunned by the novelist, are legitimate subjects of fiction. The question now is in the ability of the writer to use his material. Life, we say, has grown more complex than it was. All the more need of a master, and not an apprentice, to handle it. A story appeared this season -which is anonymous here, because it is published anonymously, and criticism should be shy of disturbing chosen privacy-which illustrated some of the momentary tendency of American fiction. It also has been called "strong," for it treats God and the most tender religious associations without respect. As a polemic against Christianity, and an elucidation of the evolutionary theory of morals and the conduct of life, it may seem strong to those who have no faith; as a novel it is long and tedious. The bulk of it is a bare statement of the most elementary science and hypotheses, put forward with assurance by a conceited young man, but is sufficient to knock out of her bearings a lovely girl, who makes the feeblest opposition before her faith is wholly wrecked. As is usual in these encounters, the agnostic has it all his own way in the argument. The education of the girl in doubt, scepticism, and finally in faith in a vague Force which aims to substitute perpetuity of energy for immortality, is completed by the uncle of the young man, a very sane and sweet-tempered man of the world, whose equipoise and knowledge are phenomenal. On the object of the book-the destruction of Faith -it is not necessary to comment; the slight story which appears here and there in the tract is real, and in more competent hands would have been a fine motive. We may say even that the relation of the sexes here treated is made impressive and touches human life deeply and freshly. The failure is, in the first place, in the crude use of material; and in

the second, in the inability to make those represented as ladies and gentlemen appear and talk like ladies and gentlemen in the rank in life in which they are set. There is here no illusion. Their conversation betrays them, and either the writer's knowledge of the life he attempts to depict is superficial, or he has not assimilated it by reflection. The ideas are here, but there is a want of firm grasp of character, and a lack of literary art. This want of accurate conception and finish is characteristic of a large portion of the American fiction that the summer reader worries over. New situations, vigor of impulse, are visible, but where is the art, where is the literary good - breeding? Contrast this story with David Grieve, which also traverses religious tradition, and which also is long and to a degree episodical. In the latter what a compact, well-knit, sinuous style! what a background in the writer of culture, of traditional refinement and breeding! what clear delineation of character! what fidelity in dialogue to individual peculiarity and station! what unforced pathos in the reality of every-day life! The criticism of David Grieve must be on quite another plane from that of the anonymous story referred to. The Spanish story by Don Armando Palacio Valdés called Faith travels much of the same ground of evolution and scepticism as this American story. It is animated by contempt of the Spanish priesthood as it is at the moment, but even in this the author is not wholly iconoclastic, for the hero, a priest who is led into doubt, is purity and innocence itself, and his martyred life is illuminated at the close by a flash of divine light which beatifies his spirit. But aside from the polemics of the story, and from every possible radical motive, how fine are the study and drawing of character and traits! how real the talk is! how vividly we are shown the dull, pompous little village which is the theatre of action! We do not need to go to Spain for life, or for motives, or for interesting people. We do need to learn how to set those forth which we have.

V.

But there may be style without substance. The perfection of manner and the minimum of material are illustrated in Madame Chrysanthème, Pierre Loti's recent contribution to the entertainment

of the world. The graceful literary quality of this sailor has procured him admission to the French Academy. In point of color, light, and tropical passion his Roman d'un Spahi touches perhaps his high-water mark, and recalls in its vivid painting the work of Lafcadio Hearn; his Pêcheurs d'Islande won the world by its simple pathos and charm of style; but it was his Mariage de Loti that made his reputation. If it were possible to suppose that a Frenchman was acquainted with any modern literature outside of Paris, it would have been said that he had taken his scenery, his plot, and his method of treatment from Typee, a romance of the Marquesas, which Herman Melville published over forty years ago. The life of Loti on this tropical island-that is, the mode of seeing and enjoying it is suggestive in all its details of Typee, and Loti's heroine is simply another Fayaway. The advantage of freshness and vigor lies with Melville, though he has not Loti's literary refinement. In Madame Chrysanthème the author relies almost entirely upon his style. He gives us no new light on Japan. His view is limited to the harbor of Nagasaki, where the French fleet lay for several weeks, and he fails to interest us in that. The insight into Japanese life is most superficial. The impression we gain is of almost constant rain, of sloppy trips from the vessel to a cottage on the hill-side, and of an insipid woman. It seems to be the habit of the French officers while in port to marry. There is a marriage for a month at a fixed price, and a life without romance. It requires much presumption to suppose that the public would be interested in such a vulgar intrigue, which has, indeed, no spice of intrigue. The book can be characterized in a word-it is simply effeminate.

In striking contrast to this effeminate performance is the virile and pure latest novel of Émile Zola, La Débâcle, the pitiful story of the downfall of the Second Empire. The main action centres about Sedan. The intention of the story is to make war as loathsome by the pen as Verestchagin has made it with the brush. But it is the most complete exposition ever made of the rottenness of the empire of Napoleon III., the braggadocio of the French, and the imbecility of the whole imperial entourage. For war they were

utterly unprepared, the heads had neither system nor brains. The armies (whose courage and élan were superb) were demoralized, worn out, disheartened by senseless marchings, half the time at the point of starvation, because the provision trains were usually sent in one direction and the troops in another. The generals were fools, and half of them popularly suspected of being traitors; even the author thinks that Bazaine betrayed his country, and that the Empress Regent, left in Paris, wished the destruction of Napoleon in order that her son might reign. There are glimpses given of the sick, broken - down, rouged Emperor, a pitiful spectacle of imbecility; but the writer has little to do with generals and with the splendors of war. His point of view is that of the common soldier, the simple-hearted peasant, and the disreputable vagabonds who are gutter thieves and plunderers. True to his "realism," he spares us no revolting detail of misery and wounds and death on the march, on the battle-fields, in the sickening hospitals. Indeed, there is so much of this detail repeated page after page that the effect is weakened. In this respect the author's want of selection and of reserve is an artistic fault. The personal story is subordinated to the necessity of describing the manoeuvres and the crash at Sedan, and it is plainly evident that the characters are moved about merely in order to show the reader all the horrors of the scene. Yet, detailed and revolting as the picture is, Zola often rises to idealized and poetic descriptions, and in the old soldier's reminiscences of the Grand Army the author recalls the splendid characterizations of Thackeray. The men and women of the book are living, absolutely natural persons, drawn with that insight into human nature which is Zola's chief merit. It is a work of genius and of immense power, and it would have been a great novel if the details had been subordinated to the purpose of fiction. As it is, it is an explanation of the French defeat not creditable to France, and a powerful sermon against war. The interest is skilfully sustained for two-thirds of the work, but the climax is reached with the fall of Sedan, and after that the story drags. It is not the privilege of genius ever to be dull, and in fiction picking up the fragments after the explosion is apt to be tiresome.

"There is no security in the world like the reputation of being worthless," he used to say. "With it a man can talk love to any girl he pleases, and the girl likes him, too."

The next thing I heard of him he was practising law at the county-seat of his native county, and it was said that he had one side or the other of every case, and was madly in love with the pretty daughter of the rector of the parish. The next thing I heard was a rumor that he had "held up some man" on the street one night and had been forced to run away from the State. I did not believe

the robbery story; but there was a mystery about it.

It was several years after this that I happened to be in a new town in the Sonthwest. I registered at the Plaza, the new plank hotel, and had eaten my supper and was about to retire, when there was a heavy tread outside of my room. The door opened without the formality of a knock, and a tall, fine-looking man, with a black slouched hat, full camp rig, and a cigar in his mouth, walked in. It was Buck. I knew him in a second by his smile. He had not changed a whit. He was the chief engineer of the new railroad. I asked him how he came to leave Levisa.

His eyes twinkled. "Got religion, and could not stand the law."

"I heard you could not stand the law," I said; "but I did not hear it was religion. I heard it was holding a man up-robbery." "It was," he said-" of his girl. You know I used to be a deuce of a fool about women; am now about one, at least; would not give a cent for a man who is not. Well, I used to be awfully in love with a little girl-the preacher's daughter. Pretty as a puppy! She liked me, too; but I used to kind of knock liquor those days, and her old folks were down on me. That was all right; and at last she began to try to save me. I had her then. Nothing to help a man with a woman like having her try to save him. Well, I was getting along all right; but she had a fellow coming to see her, an old fellow from town with a big pile. I had seen him once or twice before, and I took it into my head that she was liking him. I got to cutting up about it, and the first thing I knew she had sent me flying. I got on a spree, and staid there till I heard one evening that he had come to see her. I sobered up, and went around to the hotel to find out about him. I found that he had taken the private parlor, and had sent a note around by Link to my girl. Link was my nigger. I owned him