they are drawn, in visible figures. The procession would startle anybody except the professional alienist. The very word "character" has come to mean an abnormal type, or rather specimen, of humanity. There has never been a physical freak so fantastic as some of these moral freaks; but the production in fiction of a moral freak, if it is done with an air of scientific analysis, is regarded as a praiseworthy achievement. Analysis of actual human nature, or of the working of any mind, is quite another thing from the creation of a freak by a jumble of human qualities. This is, however, a deeper matter than the Study intended to go into at this time. It was only thinking, as a matter of art, what sort of pictures these morbid studies in mental anatomy, in moral deformity, would make, and how the reader would like to have them before his eyes for hours and days. The medieval artists used to attempt this sort of thing, and drew monsters which perhaps represent ed their ideas of human nature, if not total depravity. They did not help the world much, either as ideals or as mirrors in which poor humanity can see itself as it is. It is very difficult to elevate one's ideals by a contemplation of vice. But, again, this is going beyond our subject. We must have, of course, real life in literature. The Study simply had the whimsical fancy to imagine what would be the effect on the reader if many of the people the novelists offer us as companions could be visibly drawn for him as the freaks they are. II. Is fiction always misleading, especially if it is very realistic, in the impression it gives the reader of any community, country, or civilization, if the reader's knowledge is not supplemented by other and wider sources of information? Do the conditions of every-day life in Russia seem to the Russian as they do to us who study them only in the Russian novels? Does the Frenchman regard the novels written by Parisians as an adequate account of his civilization? Doubtless he would admit that they represent phases of it, and they may have for him a truth which they do not have for us, because he comprehends exactly the place they occupy in the total national existence, the family life, the thrift, the careful education and religious training, the general amiability and social well-being. It certainly does not occur to us in America to judge the present England by the contemporary English fiction. Some of that fiction is of a very high order as social studies, as a revelation of British character, as a report of intellectual scepticism and of mental awakening to discontent. But we should be justly accused of provincial criticism if we estimated the total outcome of English civilization, or even of English well-being, the great pulsing English life, by the types or the social life in novels, by the studies in city slums, and the pictures of sordidness and vulgarity in country communities. It is not for us to dispute the dreariness or the vacuity or the frivolity, either the social meanness or the social queerness, developed as from a photographic plate in the English novel, but we decline to judge by them the experiment which England has been occupied in making for some centuries to show the rest of the world how to live. There is a town in Vermont called Brattleborough. If it were set down in its spring or summer or autumn array in any part of the world, it would appear to be a most attractive place. Those who know it well find the conditions of life about as agreeable there as anywhere else. It has a New England flavor-and liking for that may be an acquired taste -and we can well imagine that its social usages are unlike those of Grosvenor Square, and that its intellectual life would seem thin to a Cambridge man. Mr. Rudyard Kipling went up there for a week in the winter, and made a paper of his impressions. As a descriptive piece of writing it enhances our estimate of Mr. Kipling's talent, and as a snap-shot at characteristics it is remarkable in its genius for observation. It is true, even in its pathetic note on that eagerness for culture which hopes to satisfy its yearnings by a top-dressing of Browning. The London Spectator praises it almost extravagantly, with that generosity of praise which it likes to give to anything regarding America-when it does not compete with anything that is English. It warms up to the paper because it confirms the Spectator's previous impressions as to the tendency, and indeed the outcome, of life in New England, which it already had from American story-writers. Mr. Kipling's winter picture has no sunlight on it, and it is exactly what the Spectator believed to be the truth about the unpleasantness of life in New England from the stories which have depicted it. And this, then, is the rather sordid, pinched, and melancholy end of what the narrowminded bigots who settled New England set out to do. And what can be said to critical inferences of this sort? Nothing. The critic shouldn't vex his soul about the unpleasant aspects of distant humanity. The pictures drawn by Miss Jewett, Mrs. Slosson, Miss Wilkins, of traits, character, speech, mental habits, are perfectly true. The Spectator cannot realize how good they are. But life, even in America, is a vast and complex affair. And the people in New England are happy in their poor, humble way, and tolerably intelligent, and keep on producing Jewetts and Slossons and Wilkinses, and now and then a Hawthorne and a Lowell. There is a good deal of horizon and clear sky and vital human stir, and, on the whole, life is not all of one type here, nor altogether one of dialect, nor altogether melancholy. There are always several points of view of any life. One is that of the outside and perhaps unsympathetic spectator, and the other is that of the people who live that life. It may seem to the distant observer, who obtains his impression from the study of peculiarities by a novelist, or from a casual note-taker of what is novel to him, that rural and village life in New England is sadly pathetic, not to say gloomy and hopeless. But we doubt if the proportion of intelligent and fairly happy communities is larger in any European country. Thanks to books and newspapers and the telegraph, most of these communities are in vital touch with the great world, and feel that they are part of the moving age. Even the more secluded and ignorant have a certain consciousness of freedom and opportunity that is lacking to secluded and ignorant communities else where. Even where society is illiterate and education thin, the community may get as much enjoyment out of life as many that are otherwise conditioned. Unless there is a widespread delusion over the world, life here has many attractions in the very spirit of its civilization that are not visible to the philosopher. When it comes to the total outcome of a civilization as to the ease of living or the diffu sion of happiness, the philosopher is often misled by the to him novel indications. Mommsen, writing of the Roman provinces at a time when rural life has been supposed to be hard and unhappy, and studying the agricultural towns of Africa, the homes of the vine-dressers on the Moselle, the flourishing townships of the Lycian mountains, says, "If an angel of the Lord were to strike the balance whether the domain ruled by Severus Antoninus was governed with the greater intelligence and the greater humanity at that time or in the present day, whether civilization and national prosperity generally have since that time advanced or retrograded, it is very doubtful whether the decision would prove in favor of the present." III. The flight of Northwick through Canada, in Mr. Howells's The Quality of Mercy, is an episode which would make the reputation of a new writer, and, indeed, the author has never done anything else that exhibited more subtle power. It does not set out to be dramatic or thrilling; the fugitive is in no danger; the journey has the ordinary incidents of travel; and nature is not called on to exhibit unusual portents. It is never the author's habit to use nature much as a background, or to attempt to carry on a story by elaborate descriptions of her aspects and moods. The reader, like the fugitive, takes little account at first of the inhospitable winter, the increasing cold, the drifting snow. The hardships of the journey are even stimulating. Presently, however, these things intensify the loneliness and the torpor of the fleeing man. He is not a person of sentiment, and although he has a New England conscience, it has never given him much trouble. But now he begins to waver. He is conscious of a dual action of the mind; he makes bargains with the Lord, with a cunning notion that he can propitiate fate; and he is conscious of a failure of the power of his will. Is it the cold? Is it coming illness? Is it a creeping sense of guilt? Perhaps the inhospitable region really affects his imagination. He goes on in a dream. He is full of projects when his mind will work, and he has flashes of energy and courage in his restlessness and sleeplessness; but the reader begins to perceive that this is an aimless journey. In all this drive and study. Mrs. Frankland is full of religious haste and eagerness to get on, the man is fervor and holy worldliness. She has going nowhere. In fact, this winter Can- eloquence and a vivid imagination, and a ada is only a phantasmagoria of things noble social ambition to lead the rich, and to be evaded, of objects to be sought. especially the very rich, into the heavenly The flight is an internal one. The man way by the means of that beautiful selfis fleeing from himself, and this double sacrifice which expends itself in sweet and action, the reality of movement, with this holy emotions. It has been said, and even dodging of a psychological spectre, rises Mrs. Frankland might repeat it, that it is into the most pitiful tragedy. Physical- hard for the rich to enter the kingdom of ly the man is not hunted; there is no heaven: But why may not a sumptuous danger of pursuit; he knows that he is establishment and fine clothes be a means absolutely safe. Nor is he the prey of of grace when they are spiritualized by remorse. What he needs is time to ad- the divine promises, and a deep abiding just his affairs. In certain moments he piety be added to the other luxuries of clearly sees his way to do this. What life? Mrs. Frankland is always in a glow has he done that others are not daily of spiritual emotion; she is carried away doing? Yet something had gone wrong by her own eloquence; and her audience, with him. Fatigue he does not mind, with not a toilet in the room that Worth or would not ordinarily, but it is queer would not approve, follows her in sweet that he is so baffled in his mental opera- sympathy, with the humble consciousness tions. Decision has given place to irres- that New York is indeed the New Jeruolution, enterprise to a mere effort to hide salem. Is the Bible reader a hypocrite? himself and his stolen money, and the one The author does not say so. Perhaps she thing remaining to the man is the dull is not consciously so. Very likely she beinstinct of going on. Was it the hard- lieves that she is floating heavenward on ship of the journey or was it a moral strug- her own oratory. The author has drawn gle that finally landed him in helpless- her with such uncommon skill, has so ness? The author does not explain. He mingled in her luxurious religious fervor, simply narrates events with singular fidel- social ambition, and the love of approbaity to the common aspects of life, and yet tion which an actress feels on the stage, the power of all this is in an apprehension that Mrs. Frankland herself could not tell of the unseen and the spiritual that makes what is her ruling motive. Was there at this flight a high achievement of the ar- bottom a genuine impulse of self-sacrifice tist. The man sets out full of vigor, which was gradually merged in a fever ingenuity, self-confidence, and purpose. for notoriety and success? Was she altoThere arrived at the end of the journey gether self-deluded? or did she have mothe wreck of a human being. It is abso- ments, when the excitement of meeting lute and remediless. Even in Northwick her audiences had cooled, of coming face the mainspring of life, self-respect, had to face with her real fraudulent self? We snapped. The author does not need to cannot say. Self-delusion is as common moralize on the sort of company a thief as hypocrisy. But Mr. Eggleston has is to himself. done a great service in holding up a mirror in which many devotees to a cause for the sake of exhibiting themselves can see their real souls. It is perhaps wrong to call this flight an episode, since it is the illumination of the novel, but it is a complete tragedy by itself. Almost parallel with it in artistic completeness (though different in every respect) is the sketch of the character of Mrs. Frankland, the Bible reader, in Edward Eggleston's Faith Doctor. Mrs. Frankland is a necessary agent in the development of the heroine of the novel, but she is sufficiently interesting and sui generis to stand alone. She is so individualized that, while she is typical of a wellknown class, we cannot escape the impression that she was studied directly from one woman. But it is not a surface VOL. LXXXV.-No. 506.-32 IV. The life of the late Amelia B. Edwards, unhappily for us, ended in this world last March, only a few months after the publication of her last work-the scholarly and yet popular Pharaohs, Fellahs, and Explorers--furnished another illustration of the extreme reluctance on the part of the public to credit an author with success in one department when he has achieved public approval in another. Miss Edwards had been best known as a novel ist. She might, however, have been known as a musician, for she had received the most thorough education and training in the theory and composition of music, and she was a performer of excellence on several instruments. She also drew with skill and knowledge. It was almost by accident that she was diverted from her career as a musician into story-telling, which brought her at once reputation and money. Late in life she made a tour of curiosity up the Nile, and became interested in Egyptology. Her novels are remarkable for accurate knowledge of the scenes and people described. She never wrote a story without profound preliminary research and study. She never wrote about anything she did not know. Into her Egyptian studies she carried the same trained faculties of observation and study. Her first Nile book was a popular record of travel, but as she went on she mastered the subject, making her own the investigations and explorations of the original workers. In fact, Egyptology owes much to her clear brain, her trained judgment, her splendid power of sympathetic understanding. Her genius illuminated the subject. And yet the public was unwilling to regard her from any point of view except that of the novelist with a dilettante interest in the science of old Egypt. She did not begin with the world in the character of a dry and unimaginative digger." And the world is still unwilling to connect accurate scholarship with imaginative or literary art. It remains, then, for those who knew her well to bear testimony that this royal woman, whose capacity of self-sacrificing friendship equalled her intellectual strength, had a brain capable of mastering any science and making contribution to the progress of the world of learning. Her death is a great loss to the science to which her later years were devoted, for, aside from her power of illuminating a difficult subject, she was as a co-worker the most helpful of human beings. It was owing to her appreciation and sympathy that one of the most creditable pieces of scholarship of American origin was enabled to come into print. It was Miss Edwards who recognized the extraordinary value of the studies of Mr. Wm. H. Goodyear (Yale, 1867), and procured through her friends in England the means for the publication in London of The Grammar of the Lotus, a history of classic ornament as a development of sun-worship. The cost of producing this magnificent quarto, with its hundreds of illustrations, on a subject so purely artistic, would not have been undertaken by a publisher at his own risk, and few scholars could bear the burden of it. Mr. Goodyear began his studies in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in Cesnola's Cypriote collectionthe value of which is as yet only appreciated by scholars -- and he extended them through the entire field of ancient art and of ornamentation, until he was able to present a demonstration of his theory of the influence of the lotus form in art- especially its relation to the Ionic capitol. While strictly scientific, it is one of the most interesting studies ever made of the development of art, that is to say, of the ingenuity of the human mind in the adaptation of nature. It would be impossible in these pages to make any sketch of the compact contents of the book, which depends so much upon the illustrations for effect. It is a volume for scholars and artists, and it is a monument of diligent and imaginative scholarship. V. The shifting of the literary and publishing centre of a country is a curious study. Is it due to the preponderance of brains in one locality at a particular time that the ceutre is there, as in the cases of Edinburgh and of Boston; or do commercial activities or facilities of distribution determine it? A history of The Philadelphia Magazines and their contributors from 1741 to 1850, by Professor Albert H. Smyth, of that city, is not only an interesting but a valuable contribution to our literary history. For a century the Quaker City was the literary centre so far as publication was concerned. It not only reproduced the foreign books of note, but it projected the periodicals that were the American pioneers in our supremacy in such publications, and it drew to their support nearly all the talent and genius of the country from Boston to Richmond. Only two or three names prominent in our aute-war period were not contributors to the literary glory of Philadelphia. late as 1843, Hawthorne, Whittier, and Lowell were still attracted to that centre. How did Philadelphia happen to lose her supremacy? As POLITICAL. UR Record is closed on the 12th of May.Record bills of minor importance were passed by the two Houses of Congress. In the Senate, on the 25th of April, the House bill for the absolute exclusion of the Chinese was rejected, and another was substituted providing for the extension of the present laws for ten years. This substitute, slightly amended, was agreed to and passed by the House, and practically prohibits the importation or immigration of Chinese into this country until June, 1902. Among other bills passed were the River and Harbor Bill, by the House, May 9th, and a bill for enlarging the Yellowstone National Park, by the Senate, May 11th. A bill was also passed by both Houses authorizing the Secretary of the Treasury, under certain conditions, to register as United States vessels highclass steamships built in foreign ship-yards, but controlled by American owners. The immediate effect of this bill was to confer an American registry upon the two largest steamships in the world, the City of New York and the City of Paris. The difficulty between the Italian government and the United States caused by the lynching of Italian subjects at New Orleans in March, 1891, having been satisfactorily adjusted, diplomatic rela tions between the two countries were resumed on the 14th of April. The sum of $25,000 was voluntarily given by the United States government for distribution among the families of the victims. An agreement was entered into, April 20th, between the United States and Great Britain, extending the Bering Sea modus vivendi till October 31, 1893, after which it may be terminated by either power upon giving two months' notice. On the 28th of April the President nominated Thomas Jefferson Coolidge to be Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States to France in place of Whitelaw Reid, resigned. On the 15th of April the reservation of the Sisseton Indians in South Dakota, embracing about 1,000,000 acres, was thrown open to settlement; and on the 19th the Cheyenne and Arapahoe reservations in Oklahoma, 4,000,000 acres, were also opened. The report of the Chief of the Bureau of Statistics showed that the exports of the United States for the twelve months ending March 31st amounted to $1,006,284,506, being an increase of $134,276,220 over the preceding twelve months. The value of imports for the same period was $837,058,585, being an increase of $1,398,221. The total increase in the foreign commerce of the United States during the year was $135,674,441. Murphy J. Foster, anti-lottery Democrat, was elected Governor of Louisiana April 18th. The following nominations for Governor were made: In Indiana, April 19th, by the Democrats, Claude Matthews; in Illinois, April 28th, by the Democrats, John P. Atgeld; in Missouri, April 28th, by the Republicans, William Warner; in Tennessee, May 4th, by the Republicans, George W. Winstead." The corner-stone of the monument to General U. S. Grant at Riverside Park, New York city, was laid with appropriate ceremonies on the 27th of April, President Harrison officiating. The official enumeration completed in New York in April showed the population of that State to be 6,510,162. Near Buffalo, in the State of Wyoming, serious difficulties were threatened between an organized body of cowboys and the settlers and small cattlemen occupying the lands in the vicinity. Several acts of violence, accompanied by bloodshed, occurred, and on the 13th of April, by request of the Governor of the State, three troops of United States cavalry were ordered to the scene of the disturbance. The leading violators of law and order having been placed under arrest, quiet was restored. Severe shocks of earthquake occurred in California on the 19th, 20th, and 21st of April, destroying a number of buildings and injuring several persons. Political matters in Brazil seemed to be assuming a more hopeful aspect. On the 13th of April the state of siege in Rio Janeiro, which had been proclaimed on the 2d, was raised. A number of naval and military officers who had taken part in a great public manifestation in favor of ex-President Fonseca had been placed under arrest. Troops and war ships had been despatched to Matto-Grosso for the purpose of suppressing a movement for independence which had been inaugurated in that state. In France, Belgium, and Spain the anarchists continued to give trouble. Explosions of dynamite, caused by these conspirators, occurred in Paris, Liege, Valencia, Cadiz, and several other cities, doing considerable damage and causing much alarm. Numerous arrests were made, and Ravachol and Simon, the leaders of the movement in Paris, were tried and sentenced to penal servitude for life. A conspiracy against the Bulgarian government was discovered on the 24th of April, and fifteen persons alleged to be among its leaders were arrested. The Italian cabinet resigned on the 6th of May. In Dahomey a war between the natives and the French colonists was in progress, and despatches received on the 21st of April reported that the former had captured the town of Porto Nuovo. DISASTERS. Six thousand houses were destroyed, and more than April 12th.-A great fire occurred at Tokio, Japan. fifty lives were lost.-Destructive floods prevailed in northern Mississippi, damaging property to the amount of more than $1,000,000, and causing the death of at least one hundred persons. April 20th.-A sloop belonging to the Messageries Fluviales foundered in the river Claire in Anam, and thirty soldiers were drowned. May 10th.-An explosion occurred in the coal mines at Roslyn, Washington, killing thirty-four miners. May 11th.-Near Brody, in Austrian Galicia, sixty persons were drowned by the capsizing of a raft. OBITUARY. April 11th.-At Waterford, New York, Hon. John K. Porter, ex-Judge of the Court of Appeals, aged seventy-three years. April 16th.-In London, England, Amelia Blandford Edwards, author and Egyptologist, aged sixty one years. April 17th.-At Toronto, Canada, the Hon. Alexander Mackenzie, ex-Premier of the Dominion of Canada, aged seventy years. April 19th.-In New York city, Roswell Smith, publisher, aged sixty-three years. April 25th.-In Paris, France, William Astor, of New York, aged sixty-two years. |