LETTERS AND ART.

THE PASSING OF "RIP VAN WINKLE."

HOW greatly the charm of a simple play may depend upon the

genius of an actor was vividly manifested in the appearance of Thomas Jefferson (son) as "Rip Van Winkle" at Wallack's Theater in New York city, October 9. We are told that his assumption of the part was in accordance with his father's express wishes; and his first appearance in the character was made some years ago. The New York Times, the morning after the first New-York presentation, declared that "it was a dubious experiment at best this appearance of Joseph Jefferson's son in a play which the genius of his father had lifted far above anything which its scant merits justified." The Times does not indicate that the young Jefferson is without quality as an actor, but the "underlying sympathy, the poetic imagination, above all, the peculiar subtle artist feeling-all these he lacks."

Those who have felt the poetry and tender graciousness of Joseph Jefferson's pathos and comedy will appreciate the critic's further comment:

"We felt ourselves moved in the scene of Rip's return to his home-a stranger in the midst of his own people. But it was the tear of memory that moistened the eye. That, to-day, is the greatness of Joseph Jefferson's Rip Van Winkle. We hear the old lines, see the old masks, and forget the present, while living in a fond, regretful recollection of the past.

"As for Thomas Jefferson's Rip it is the outward shell. That it would be that, and nothing more, was apparent almost at the beginning. Who that has heard it will ever forget the note of pathos with which Rip laments Gretchen's ill-treatment of his dog Schneider? who could avoid the catch in the throat on the 'I'd rather she'd beat me than my dog'? We never saw Schneider, but we always felt certain that there was a Schneider. And we were nearly as much cut up about his death as was old Rip Van Winkle himself.

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It is a masterpiece that hangs only in the gallery of memory, and Thomas Jefferson, his son, has copied the masterpiece, copied it faithfully and lovingly and intelligently, and set it forth to view. But it is only a copy! That is the result of the inevitable comparison-the réalization that it is only a copy.

"When that realization has come, however, it is pleasant to pass on to the enjoyment of the younger man's by no means slender powers, to feel the charm which he, too, undoubtedly possesses, especially in the later scenes, when pathos rather than humor is called for. His physical resemblance to his father is striking, tho his face is far less noticeably that of the comedian. . . . The witchery which the elder player exerted to such an extent in the early scenes that he won choking pity when he was driven from home, the younger player has not the personality or the art to exert; but the pathos of his waking, the grimmer humor of those later scenes, he could and did indicate with sure and natural art. All comparisons aside, he is no mean Rip."

For the setting of the play as presented in the revival, the New York Sun has only praise. "The true Jeffersonian simplicity was everywhere preserved," says the critic."The effect was most fortunate as regards externals. In several scenes the old illusions were not disagreeably revived." Then follows the frank statement: "But the face of the son quite lacks the well-remembered quaintness and arch distinction. His voice lacks the crispness, his eye the sparkle, that never deserted the elder Rip to his dying day. The mellow sunlight of the old humor, the melting tenderness of the old pathos, are clouded and subdued. There were times when very melancholy memories obtruded. We are not, then, so soon forgot. But why enlarge on the fact that a copy is a copy? As far as the performance had merit, it was that of an externally faithful replica. So, here's to Jefferson's health, and to his family's! May they all live long and prosper!"

The New York Evening Post points out that the new Jeferson was "revealed as a successor, not an inheritor." "The plain truth is," The Post asserts, "that the younger Jefferson, altho in many respects a veritable image of his sire, is nevertheless but a feeble reflection of him."

FATE OF THE UNILLUSTRATED MAGAZINE.

THE

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'HE demise of Longman's Magazine, after a life of twentythree years of unblemished reputation, has brought up rather sharply the question whether a magazine can live to-day on literary excellence alone, or whether it must have recourse to the aid of pictures. Mr. C. J. Longman, the editor, seems to think that the public demands pictures. "The times have changed," he says in his valedictory editorial in the last issue, and "the endeavor to keep up a high literary standard is nowadays not sufficient." The competition for the favor of "the sixpenny public" is becoming very severe, and the "magazines and papers depending largely upon their illustrations" are crowding the others out." "No doubt,' he adds, it would "have been possible for Longman's Magazine to follow the prevailing fashion," but he intimates that its readers would perhaps have disliked the change," while he himself could not "hope for success in editing a magazine of the newer description." Longman's Magazine boasted a list of contributors such as are usually associated with financial success-such as Rudyard Kipling, Thomas Hardy, and Rider Haggard-and the London Academy remarks that "such work might have been expected to make the fortune of any publication."

Since the demise of Longman's, Macmillan announces that the magazine owned by that firm will be reduced to sixpence, and henceforth utilized to advertise the books published by them. A third London magazine of the old school will end existence in its present form and appear hereafter as one complete story every month.

the matter is that to do anything successfully it is necessary to the man in control of the enterprise to rise every morning with his head clear of tradition; that is, he must resolve to do nothing without a better reason than that it was done yesterday and the day before."

A second interesting suggestion from this staid English periodical is that "the chief aim in our ideal periodical would be to print the unexpected," and it goes on to say:

"To obtain this freshness one superstition to be got rid of is that attaching to great names. At the moment editors are too much dominated by them. In a great many cases the writer of repute has only to attach his name to a composition to be quite sure that it will be accepted. Perhaps it would be more true than charitable to insinuate that too often the editor has not the capacity to form an independent judgment, and is obliged to go by the repute in which his would-be contributor stands. But to do this is only to follow along the path which has so often before led to disaster. The ideal editor of the first-class magazine of the future will not only have capacity and independence of his own, but will have faith in the existence of a body of readers who will be able to appreciate the best that he can provide."

The New York Evening Post thinks it would have been easy to have brought Longman's into line by furnishing the usual catch-public features, and it satirically suggests the following practically useful methods.

"A large blotch of scarlet or crude blue, or the face of a simpering girl, on the cover will catch the eye of purchasers as they are rushing for train or ferry-every editor knows that. Should the reader find nothing that he cares for within the covers, it matters little; that streak of color acts with hypnotic effect on his brain. Or, if the contents are to be considered, the proper material is near at hand. Half a dozen full-page pictures of actresses in raw tints, a few photographs of the old homestead' taken with blurred outlines so as to look artistic,' and the principal work is done. As for text, the supposed confession of any one who is poor and honest or rich and treacherous will carry a long way; and there is always the sensational story. But still more important than confession or fiction is the little, seductive editorial note under the title, which confides to the reader how the article was obtained, and tells him some notable fact about the author. All this is so regular that it might seem to be done by machine; the real brain work, of course, goes on in the advertising-room."

"For some time past it has been evident to those who take note of literary changes that the old style of magazine was becoming obsolete, and being supplanted by one more adapted to the wants of the huge crowd which has been recruited to the reading public by a more general system of education. The public is continually changing, and prosperity can only come to those who keep a careful watch on its development, and are ever ready to meet it. There is no standing still. The publication which does not go onward must inevitably fall back. Yet it is clear that a very great gap will be left in the periodical literature of Great Britain by what practically means the obliteration of a style of magazine once extremely popular, and it may be worth while to consider whether it would not be possible to found a new magazine which would at once have a fair chance of commercial success and yet appeal to the élite of the literary world."

One very important fact stated by The Academy is that:

"the traditions of yesterday count for nothing, or next to nothing, with a public that is continually fluctuating, and the truth of

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stepping-stones to the higher. There is a simple taste of ignorance, there is a refined taste of culture; and it is not so difficult to pass directly from one to the other. But it is an absurdity to suppose that the taste can be trained by what is vulgar and vicious."

THE NOTE OF MELANCHOLY IN WATTS'S GENIUS.

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USKIN'S remark, that Watts was a great artist ruined by studying the Greeks, does not seem to be indorsed by Mrs. Russell Barrington, his friend and pupil, who makes an intimate and illuminating study of his genius in a new book of reminiscences of the great painter. In her opinion, his instinctive, unconscious genius was Celtic, shown in the note of melancholy and mystery that appears in his best work. We derive from her that what he owed the Greeks was the spirit of his rendering, "the serenity of form," while the content of his work was interfused with a feeling Celtic in its nature. His perceptions, she says, "went into the unrecognized crevices of the psychic realm: that realm in which the Celtic and Slav natures revel." To quote :

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There is much in common between the genius of the Slav and the Celt. Nietzsche went so far as to trace a similarity in the origin of their languages. I feel much of the finest Slav music, which arouses such enthusiasm in our modern music-loving natures, to be in the same strain as that of Watts's genius. Tchaikovsky's tragic symphony and Watts's' Sic Transit' touch the same chord of profound impersonal melancholy, the intense and deep interest of both works lying beyond the circumstances of the human lot alone, touching these vaguer mysteries which float between the spiritual and the earthly conditions of the soul, recognized by the word psychic.

But the other day I realized how identical is one strain in the art of the Slav and of the Celt. I was listening in the gallery in Leighton's studio to a fine rehearsal of Tchaikovsky's splendid trio for pianoforte and strings. Close to me was a cast of Watts's' Clytie.' How intimately connected seemed the feeling of the two great works! As the sounds rose and I looked intently at the Clytie,' so full of yearning, passionate, lingering unrest, each creation seemed to add something of meaning to the other. Two sister-spirits speaking in music and sculpture: the same strain of mysticism and melancholy, alike.

ant the differences were compounded of the materials of which genius is made. Says the writer:

The idea of death was a very constant idea with Watts. It was not merely a fact to his mind, it was a stirring interest, and had in it the power of moving his most creative impulses. Over and above his Celtic temperament there was in his nature so much besides. Tho doubtless a very sensitive instrument on which other individualities played, which aroused by their stimulating influence the development of his own creative power, his temperament was allied to a searching intellect, subtle powers of reasoning, and the traditions..of an early strict religious training; above all, to that rare mold in human nature we call genius, which sees, apprehends, and comprehends instinctively a further, completer point of vision in things than does the ordinary man or woman. Genius is peremptory, the Celtic temperament is diffident, secretive, and intensely tho shyly emotional. With his finely pointed, subtly dis

Courtesy of The Macmillan Company.

tinguishing brain Watts discerned every weakness in himself. He fought strenuously against outside influences diverting his own constancy of purpose and determined aims, and yet he felt the necessity of feeding his genius by outside influences. Watts might, and indeed did, feed much on the vitality of others, but such vitality was but added fuel to a fire which burnt in his own creative imagination, his own fervent, individual temperament, the temperament of the Celt. It was the something indefinite which explains itself but in part, tho reaching to the very heart of the mystery in all things that stirred most deeply his imagination, those questioning notes reflecting the pathetic contrasts in life rather than definite themes weighted with solemn fate, such as the Greeks commemorate in their tragedies. The melancholy note in the art of the Slav and of the Celt is left loose ended, a note of unexplained sadness, such a one as forms the inner thread of the wild, reckless bursts in Slav music. The upper surface may be gay and fearlessly abandoned, but the ground-work is a mystery and a wailing. It is the contrast of sad and gay, the story of all the world's real life.

"So in Watts's painting. Behind the sensuous glory of color, the richness of texture and quality, the serenity of Pheidian form, we find a weird, melancholy note. In his greatest pictures that note belongs to the theme as well as to the feeling. In the Sic Transit' we have the triumph of his art. Here there is no rift rent in the sky-nothing to lift off the brooding melancholy of the theme, no hint to lead the thought upward from the transitory to the eternal. After the first 'Love and Death' was painted I often pleaded for the further theme, Love Triumphant.'

in composer and sculptor, uniting in creating one and the same. deep impression."

The Celtic nature is melancholy and secretive and its real sensitiveness is kept under, points out the writer. Its melancholy is almost unexplained to itself, and it turns naturally to thoughts of death. These traits are found in their purest expression in that specimen of the race produced in the Breton peasant. All of these traits were present in Watts, tho between him and the Breton peas

"It came at last, but compared to the 'Love and Death,' 'Love Triumphant' was a failure. The love who was defeated, overpowered by the stride of death, was a glorious, passionate, pathetic love; and death, the inevitable, was solemn and grand.

"The unanswered question, the mystery of existence, had more 1 power to stimulate the imagination of the Celt than had the glory and the joy of a fixed faith."

IF

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW ACCUSED OF

DULNESS.

F the accusation that George Bernard Shaw lacks the moral sense roused him to such a furious retort as the one noticed in these columns October 7, it is hard to predict what he will say when he reads the verdict of the New York dramatic critics on his latest and very "topnotch" drama, "John Bull's Other Island." They find it tedious. There are "interminable wastes of talk" in it, says The Tribune; and The Times, before proceeding to a rather complimentary notice, explains that Mr. Shaw is not to be judged by ordinary standards. The Sun says that the "better" half of the audience "was frankly mystified, except at rather infrequent intervals; while the larger half, after a courageous effort to laugh, relapsed into long and sullen silences." The same critic adds: "The emotions he portrays are bloodless, and his characters are mere puppets-badly dangled at that. Character degenerates into the flattest and most obvious exploitations of caricatured types; and the love affair, instead of giving body to the play as a play, is inexpressibly painful, even revolting."

All this is a new accusation against the brilliant essayist and playwright who declared, "I have wit in my head, skill in my hand, and a higher life for my aim." The present play was so popular in London that it demanded five matinees a week, and came heralded as the author's banner production. The critics experience difficulty in sketching the plot, and, indeed, it seems to be mainly an interpretation of British and Irish character, with remarks on political questions in the United Kingdom. Alan Dale describes the "movement" of the play thus in The Ameri

can:

"For more than three solid hours we sat, in our theater-faces, and listened to an Englishman and an Irishman holding forth on Tariff-reform League, Nationalists, Separatists, Protective Tariff, Free Trade, the Disestablished Church, the principles of the Liberal party, Home Rule, Mr. Gladstone, the Tories, the Unionists, the House of Commons, and-presumably-Mr. Bernard Shaw's own conception of the Trinity.

"It was not gay. The Irishman had one theory; the Englishman knocked it down. The Englishman had another theory; the Irishman pulverized it. This went on with dizzy persistence, but those who waited for the end found nothing settled. It was all admirably impartial, but it was a tie.' Mr. Shaw gave the Englishman and the Irishman a black eye apiece, and seemed to revel ghoulishly. But it was not amusing, and it was not play.' It was ineffably tedious, insufferably drawn out."

GREEK FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDENT.

FREDERICK B. LOOMIS, PH.D., professor of biology in

Amherst College, makes some interesting points in advocacy of Greek for the scientific student. Writing in the New York Independent, he states that his experience in teaching biology has convinced him that the classical students do a better grade of work in the subject than do the scientific. All his classes, we read, are composed of a mixture of both sorts," and during the first three years the scientific students were given a half-year of zoology before the classicals came in with them, the latter even with the handicap doing as good or better work." The chief difference, he states, is in the character of the work presented, "the tendency being for the classicals to turn out more accurate and thorough results." He attributes this superiority to the mental discipline enforced by the study of Greek. We quote further:

FREDERICK B. LOOMIS, PH.D.,"

Professor of biology in Amherst College, who empasizes the importance of Greek for the scientific student.

"It is the writer's belief that this is due to the better training obtained by the study of a language like Greek than is possible from a modern language. There are two main reasons why the Greek is the better: the first inherent in the language, due to its greater complexity and yet exact usage; the second in the manner in which the two are taught, the French or German being taught with the literary and artistic use emphasized. The second reason may be left with the mere statement, usually agreed to, that the French and German are not as thoroughly taught in the secondary schools as are the Greek and Latin. Turning to the first reason, in Greek there are for nouns, adjectives, and participles 3 declensions, and in each 3 numbers, 3 genders, and 5 cases, each with its ending; for verbs there are 3 voices, 5 moods, 7 tenses, and 3 numbers. This complexity is considerably greater than that of the modern languages, and when a student works out Greek sentences, extracting from each word its exact meaning by focusing on it this considerable number of tests, he can not but concentrate his thought. This taking of a word, and from each modification of its ending drawing a correct conclusion, is the sort of training which develops accuracy, which is the requisite of a natural science. There is so much in such a science as zoology which attracts the attention and is of popular interest that the tendency is to learn merely statements about the animals. This, however, does not train the mind or develop a scientific thinker. Both are done by taking a fact and focusing on it the wealth of other facts and principles until a logical conclusion is reached in regard to the relation and bearing of the particular feature."

"The weakness of the mass of the so-called scientific students," he asserts, "is their inability to concentrate, also the tendency to be easily satisfied." The mental exercise in acquiring Greek, he claims, is as much superior to the mental exercise in acquiring French or German " as swimming is superior to walking as a physical exercise."

JEROME K. JEROME, who has come to America to lecture, was asked by a representative of a New York paper if he did not fear to lay his brand of humor before an American audience. "Young man," he replied, "I have faced a Scotch audience on a damp night, and now I fear no foe."

SCIENCE AND INVENTION.

THE ABSENT-MINDED MAN.

ABSENT-MINDEDNESS, as a special phase of what the

author calls "lapses of consciousness," is treated in an article on such lapses contributed to The Popular Science Monthly (New York, October) by Prof. Joseph Jastrow, of the University of Wisconsin. The object of the article, as he states it, is " to set forth the range of certain common and normal types of thought and conduct that reach expression without the usual and attentive guidance of consciousness." Such subconscious direction of what we think and say and do, the writer tells us, plays a constant part in the ordinary, and occasionally in the extraordinary, operations of the mind. Such lapses appear, for instance, when a man carries out unconsciously a more or less suitable act, from habit (a motor lapse"), or when a discarded habit is unintentionally resumed, which Professor Jastrow calls a "lapse of persistence." Revery and dreaming are analogous states. That absent-mindedness belongs to the same category appears from Professor Jastrow's treatment of it. He notes that one of its most important factors is abstraction or a deviation in alertness of the faculties from their normal functioning." He says:

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“A certain intensity of concentration brings about a loss of orientation, a forgetfulness of self and surroundings; the regaining of which after such a moment of rapture,'' brown study,' sleep, or anesthesia is variously interesting. Naturally the more bizarre and inconsequential lapses demand such decided fluctuations of self-adjustment as occur commonly only in those by temperament predisposed thereto. It is quite prominent how frequently those who contribute such instances admit that they are frequently detected in absent-minded loss of self. The slight or incipient form of the defective adjustment to which the state leads, every one can appreciate from the common experience of consulting one's watch merely for one's own information, and yet being wholly unable a moment later to tell what is the time. Students look up foreign words in the dictionary in some similar mental preoccupation, and as they close the book, become aware that they do not know the equivalent which they had actually found and read. Just how extensive the loss of orientation becomes can not be determined by the nature of the error which it induces, but must be inferred more intimately from the temperament and introspective account of the subject thereof. The man who, suddenly fearful that he had forgotten his watch, hastily explores the outside of his pockets, fails to feel the object of his search, and a moment later consults his timepiece to see whether he has time to go back and get the forgotten watch, may be regarded as suffering from a decided lapse of orientation sufficient to becloud his rational habits. Yet the degree of objective confusion involved in the following narrative is no greater than in many others, tho the context suggests a decided mental wandering. A young lady, after the wear and tear of an amateur play, was returning a helmet which she had borrowed as property,' and, passing by a laundry, entered, wrote her name on the package, asked when it would be delivered, and was only brought to' by the astonishment on the clerk's face when a partial unwrapping revealed the nature of the article. The same comment may be made upon this instance as well: A young lady calling upon her friend to borrow a bicycle, found only her brother at home. The latter was pleased to be of service, brought out his sister's bicycle, inflated the tires, then took the trouser-guards from his own bicycle, offered them, along with the machine-and realized that explanation was hopeless. One also hardly needs the confession of the subject of the following lapses that she is constantly losing herself, particularly under mental excitement, or apprehension, such as examinations bring in their train. Knocking at her own door and waiting for an answer, rubbing one foot against the other and saying, Excuse me'; sitting in her room absorbed in work, and realizing the passing of muffled steps outside the door (such as made by rubber heels which she herself wears), she mentally comments, · There goes -,' meaning herself-such

are the tales laid at her door, which in substance are acknowledged."

In such a state as this the condition is similar to the transitional

• In such a condition a night operator at a small railway station, who was rarely called between midnight and four o'clock and frequently slept during parts of these hours, tho always awakening to the combination of clicks that formed his personal summons, dozed off at midnight, and was awakened an hour later by the appearance of a conductor of a special train that had arrived without awakening him. The latter at once asked him for his train orders. The signal was displayed preventing any train from passing the station without stopping for orders; on the desk at the operating key was an order in his own handwriting, which was verified and found to be correct. With only the feeblest recollection thereof,

the drowsy or sleeping operator had interpreted and recorded accurately his telegraphic duties. It is doubtless more likely that in such a half-awake condition the wrong response would be made, such as that of an operator under similar conditions who, suddenly aroused, went to an automatic vending-machine and tried to call up the despatcher by manipulating it. The half-awake, half-orientated consciousness is typically not critical, is satisfied with partial resemblances, and is suggestible; it occupies the middle ground between the lapses arising from a temporarily sleeping orientation and the more serious disturbances sequent to more fundamental lesions of consciousness."

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RADIOACTIVE MATTER IN THE AIR. ESEARCHES to ascertain whether there is any relation between the state of the weather and the electric condition of the atmosphere have been singularly unproductive, and efforts to use the electrometer as an aid in weather-prediction have therefore been failures. Recent investigations carried on at McGill University, Montreal, indicate a plausible reason for this failure, according to The Electrical World and Engineer (New York, September 2). These researches appear to show that the earth is continually exuding a radioactive emanation, electrifying the atmosphere from below and interfering with the measurement of charges due to aerial movement, which is what the student of weather is trying to get at. The experiments at McGill showed that the air in an empty water-tank of about 650 cubic-feet capacity was as radioactive as if it had contained a small ascertained proportion of radium bromide. We read:

"The deductions from the measurements are of much interest. If the atmosphere covering the land surface of the earth is as active from an ionic standpoint as the air in Montreal, for an elevation of a kilometer, 600 tons of radium bromide evenly distributed over that surface would continue to produce emanation sufficient to equal in its effects those observed in this case. Moreover, if radium salts occur distributed uniformly in the crust of the earth to an extent sufficient to account for the observed temperature gradient in the earth, the layer of surface soil containing this small proportion of radium, sufficient to ionize the air to the observed extent, would be only a few meters thick. . . . It seems very desirable that the experiments described should be repeated in numerous localities over the globe, both on land and sea, in order to ascertain whether the ionizing properties of the atmosphere are uniformly distributed, or whether they vary from one region to another."

Besides accounting for the failures to get satisfactory atmospheric electric measurements, this radioactivity of the air may also, it appears, explain the apparent leakage from some well-insulated telegraph wires. To quote again :

"The ordinary telegraph wire is too poorly insulated at its supports or contacts to render such observations of much value, but lengths of aerial wire insulated with care, on oil-insulators, might afford important material for scientific investigation. These atmcspheric ions have so recently become recognized that there has not been time to determine their influence upon natural laws. It is quite possible that they may exert an appreciable effect in the production of rain or take some share in the activities of the organic