The

it is that an engine can be kept in service for thirty years. men at the head of American railways contend that so old an engine must be an expensive one because it can not do the cheaper work a modern engine is capable of. The American policy is vindicated by its results. Freight rates on American roads have gone down because of the fearless use of mechanical improvements by their managers. Freight rates in England are high, and do not come down. One reason is that the managers of English roads have false ideas of economy."

REFLECTIONS ON THE PENSION PAYMENTS.

THE

HE preliminary report of Pension Commissioner Evans for the year ending June 30 last brings out the usual number of protests from the daily papers against the alleged frauds that are perpetrated against the Government by dishonest pensioners. Many papers note that more names are on the pension roll than were on the army roll at the end of the Civil War, and that our total annual military and naval expenditure ($386,000,000), of which the pension expenditure ($140,000,000) forms a large part, is double the largest military expenditure of any European country. The New York Mail and Express also thinks that "it is a somewhat startling fact that, tho the Civil War is now thirtysix years away, the pension roll has grown in cost during the last four years faster than it has grown in any preceding four years." The Philadelphia Record notes and comments upon some of the features of the report as follows:

"The report of the commissioner of pensions shows that 997.735 persons are on the rolls. There was a net gain of 4,206 for the past governmental year, after deducting losses resulting from death and otherwise. On June 30 there were 403.569 claims for an increase of pension. The fact that Commissioner Evans issued during the year 109,668 certificates, 4,000 more than were issued before in any one year, is at once a dismaying fact to the taxpayers of the country and to the carpers of the Grand Army of the Republic.

"The Civil War ended thirty-six years ago, but we are now paying five dollars where we paid one at the end of President Grant's second administration. The total payments for pensions since July, 1865, have been $2,666,904, 589. Two prices could have been paid out of this vast sum of money for every slave in the Southern States at the outset of the war, and enough left over to have given each slave family forty acres of land and a mule.". While most of the papers are commenting on the size of the expenditure, the Boston Herald remarks that the greatest evil of the situation is not the cost of it in money, but "it is the cost

in public morality, the spreading conception of government as an eleemosynary institution from which it is right to filch whatever one can, by any false pretences that are unlikely to be exposed." Most of the praise for Commissioner Evans's administration of the pension office seems to come from the belief that he keeps a vigilant guard against such impostors, and The Army and Navy Journal expresses the conviction that "the true old-soldier sentiment of this country favors an administration of our pension laws so honest and exact that it will make it as difficult as possible to secure pensions for bummers and dead-beats, the bountyjumpers and the coffee-coolers of the Civil War. They believe that our pension laws have been, if anything, too liberal, and they have some measure of sympathy for the taxpayers who are patiently bearing their burden of a pension list approaching $150,000,000 a year."

The National Tribune, of Washington, the most prominent G. A. R. organ in the country, says of the report:

"The first thing that strikes one in reading this is that the veterans of the rebellion are not given the benefits of this increase of 4,206 on the pension roll. Nearly the whole went to the survivors-and they nearly all survive-of the Spanish war. They got 3,849 of the total of 4,206, or over 90 per cent. of the gain.

"This, too, while the veterans are old, and at the critical periods of their lives, while the Spanish war survivors and their widows are all young, with the greater part of their lives yet before them.

"The next thought is that with all these hundreds of thousands of unadjudicated cases on file, with the claimants all past the meridian of life, and constantly growing older and needier, with what iron rigidity has been kept the tab on the graveyard, and no one admitted to the roll until some one died and made a place for him. Even including this extraordinary increase of 4, 206 during the past year, Mr. Evans has allowed a net increase to the rolls during his four years of but 4,021. As the Spanish war was fought in the mean time, and has so far resulted in 5,604 additions, there are really fewer Union veterans and their widows on the rolls than there were when he took charge.

"This, too, at a time when the rapidly increasing infirmities of the Union veterans demanded a large expansion of the roll. "This fact is again brought out strongly in the great discrimination of the amount paid pensioners under the old law for disabilities of service origin. In the very nature of things these invalids must grow needier every year, with an increase in their ratings required by their increasing disabilities. Yet the payments to this class diminished $1,720,253 last year. "The fees paid pension attorneys last year aggregated $591,

245, and was certainly the hardest-earned money paid any attorneys in the country.

"There we were over 100,000 claimants rejected on medical grounds, which sufficiently explains the ghastly farce of pronouncing every week 2,000 men past sixty, and who have undergone the most terrible campaigns, as 'not incapacitated for the performance of manual labor.' Was there ever anything more absurd! . . . . . .

"Any one who reflects that men grow old and become more helpless and needy as age advances, must understand and expect that up to a certain period there must and should be a rapid increase in pension expenditures, which will again suffer a rapid decline as the pensioners begin dying in great numbers. The latter period has not yet arrived, and the country should be deeply grateful that it has not."

THE

THE FRANKO-TURKISH TIFF.

HE friction between France and Turkey last week over a Constantinople quay concession to a French company was not regarded by the daily press at any stage of the affair as anything very serious. As the New York Evening Post says: "It must be admitted that it is almost impossible to get anything done, and especially anything paid, in Turkey without some breach of diplomatic amenities. While we may properly rejoice that our little bill was collected without the withdrawing of a minister, we should hardly criticize the French for taking the more vigorous course." It appears from the despatches that the Sultan, after permitting a French company to build docks, ferries, etc., in the harbor of Constantinople, decided to buy the property, which he did-all except paying for it. The French minister, M. Constans, has long been urging the Sultan either to pay the bill or restore the property, and last week he went so far as to threaten to break off diplomatic relations unless a satisfactory settlement was made. On Saturday it was announced that an imperial irade had been issued permitting the company to resume its dock and ferry privileges. Some of the European papers that are not particularly friendly to France are reported by cable as expressing the belief that the dock concession was an unprofitable investment, that M. Constans wanted the Sultan to pay for it instead of returning it to the company, and that the stockholders are greatly disappointed at the French "victory" over the Sultan.

The New York Times explains the claim of the French company in more detail as follows:

"The differences between France and the Porte are the result of three questions. Two of these questions relate to claims upon Turkey by Frenchmen for advances made in the construction of railroads. One of the claims, with the interest, now amounts to about $9,000, 000.

"The third and most important question is that in regard to the Constantinople Dock and Quay Company, which was incorporated about ten years ago for the purpose of constructing and operating quays on both shores of the Golden Horn. Everything about the company, except its name, is French. Frenchmen formed it, Frenchmen supplied the capital, and its employees are almost entirely French.

"The edict which granted the right to construct quays to the company also conferred other valuable privileges upon it, such as establishing docks and a system of steam ferries and street railroads. With these magnificent prospects the company set to work. When it was almost ready to enjoy the results of its investment it received notice that it would not be allowed to do so -that the Sultan intended to buy back the concession.

"The company was powerless to demand the privileges it supposed belonged to it. All it could do was to insist that it be properly reimbursed. It had expended about $7,000,000 in constructing quays, and asked $10,000,000 from Turkey as reimbursement. Two years ago the Sultan nominated a commission to negotiate the terms of purchase, and that is all the satisfaction the company has up to now obtained.

"The Sultan, in explanation of his attitude, is said to have de

clared that the possession by foreigners of facilities for landing and embarking passengers at Constantinople would be very dangerous to the Porte.

"It was announced in a despatch from Constantinople last Sunday that the Sultan had agreed to raise a loan of 40,000,000f. [$8,000,000] with which to purchase the quays. This was apparently the arrangement he made with Ambassador Constans."

It appears that the Sultan found that he could not raise this loan as readily as he expected, and the French company is to resume the operation of the quays.

THE

PROGRESS OF THE MERIT SYSTEM.

HE most interesting feature of the civil-service commission's annual report, to judge from the newspaper comment, is the fact that three-fourths of the money now paid out of the United States Treasury in salaries goes to employees who are under the merit system. To quote from the report:

"The aggregate salaries of positions in the classified service, numbering about 90,000 and to be reached only through competitive examinations, approximate $75,000,000 per annum, while the salaries of all unclassified positions in the executive branch of the Government, probably numbering slightly more than 100,ooo, are estimated not to exceed $30,000,000, of which 60 per cent. is for the compensation of the 4.429 Presidential postmasters and the 72, 165 postmasters of fourth-class offices."

Many Administration papers consider this an answer to the charge made in some quarters that the President does not favor the merit system. Says the Boston Journal (Rep.) :

"In spite of the sneers of the spoilsgrabbers and the jeremiads of some despondent reformers, the merit system has forged right ahead in America. President McKinley has been accused of 'betraying' the reform. Before him, President Cleveland was accused of betraying it; before him, President Harrison. But the exact truth is that the reform has grown so strong in the hearts of the people and the practise of the Government that no President could betray it if he cared or dared to try. Every President for a long time has disappointed the earnest reformers, but every President has done a great deal more to promote the reform than he has to harm it."

The New York Mail and Express (Rep.), which is often spoken of as Senator Platt's organ, thinks that the "country is no longer in need of the civil-service reform for which there was once so great a cry," and it goes on to say:

"The ideal public service for this country is a more or less elastic system, which shall escape the evils of the hard-and-fast, offensive bureaucracies of Russia and Germany and other countries, on the one hand, and a spoils basis in appointments, with a shifting and incompetent service, on the other hand. In our federal republic the civil service should be representative of the whole country, appointments being apportioned among the States. A wholly classified, wholly competitive service means a more or less centralized and bureaucratized force, which is contrary to the genius of our institutions. At the same time the classified service may well be extended in certain directions, and the sense of security of the deserving employee increased. The civil-service commission should have added power to punish violations of the law."

Eleven Thousand Boers Left.—Most of the American newspapers agree with Lord Kitchener that the Boer chance of winning the fight in South Africa is small, but they do not seem to indorse his opinion that the Boer resistance is unpatriotic. According to the London correspondent of the New York Sun, Lord Kitchener says "he sees the inevitable end of the insensate resistance, which some may consider patriotic, but which, in his opinion, has long since forfeited such a designation and has resulted in an unjustifiable prolongation of the war sufferings of the women and children." This stubborn resistance is now being kept up by less than 11,000 men. As the London corre

spondent of the New York Tribune says: 'It is possible to estimate with a fair degree of accuracy the strength of the Boer forces now remaining in the field. On July 8 Lord Kitchener estimated the number of fighting Boers at 13,500. Their losses since that date have brought the total down to something under 11,000, and, of course, wastage in ammunition as well as in men is going on rapidly." The same correspondent also says that it is estimated that the British Government is now feeding in military prisons or camps of concentration about one-third of the entirety of the population of the two republics."

The Philadelphia Ledger makes this comment:

"With more than 200,000 British soldiers at the seat of war, it is now proposed to use the Kafirs and Basutos to crush the little Boer army of 11,000. Despite these extraordinary preparations, the British respect for, if not fear of, the prowess of the 11,000 Boer fighters is such as to inspire General Kitchener to say in an official despatch on Tuesday that great patience is still required. While it would be hoping against hope to expect the Boers to win or regain independence at this late day of the contest, Lord Kitchener's reference to the 'obstinate resistance' of the Boers, in which he can discover no 'patriotism,' reminds us that the American patriots of 1776 were similarly regarded in the mother country as obstinate rebels mistaking themselves for patriots. The Boers have a fighting force of about 11,000, according to latest advices. This is about the size of the American army encamped at Valley Forge in the darkest period of the Revolutionary War, and half of that meager force was ineffective. The American cause seemed almost hopeless at that time. It is darkest, it is said, just before dawn. It was so with the American Revolutionists; but the problem is probably too stupendous for the brave Boers."

THE BOERS AS SEEN BY WEBSTER DAVIS.

MR

R. WEBSTER DAVIS says that he issues his new book on South Africa in the hope that it may "aid in some manner in saving two little republics from destruction," and altho the reports from the seat of war make it seem likely that his wish will meet with disappointment, that very fact lends a good deal of interest and value to Mr. Davis's description of the culture and manners of a people whose government may soon perish from the earth. Mr. Davis, who was formerly mayor of Kansas City, resigned his position as Assistant Secretary of the Interior in Washington, about a year and a half ago, to go to South Africa to investigate the Boer cause for himself, and his book will give the future historian a view of the Boer people decidedly different from the idea of them commonly expressed in the British periodicals. He describes the public buildings of the Boer capital as "magnificent," and compares the new court building, which was just nearing completion when Mr. Davis was there, with the new Congressional Library building in Washington. The churches and schools, he says, were "first-class in every particular." The schools were public and private, and the churches were of all denominations." The hospitals and asylums were excellent, and "in fact, the whole appearance of the city was equal to that of any city in the United States." The modern improvements and appliances, the electric lights, gas, water-works, street-cars, workshops, parks and market-places "made one feel as if he were in one of the prosperous cities of America."

More important, perhaps, are the characteristics of the people. Mr. Davis says:

"I found the Boers possessing the very characteristics which we most admire in our own people, namely, the good nature, the generous spirit, the kindheartedness, the affection for their families, and the frank and manly independence. . .

"During my travels throughout the two republics, meeting the people in the public places, in their offices, in the hotels, in their homes, in villages and cities, and on the farms, and mingling with the soldiers on the march, in the camp and on the battlefield, I met but few persons who could not speak the English language. Almost all of those who did speak it spoke it quite as

well as the citizens of our own country. I found them clean and neat in their appearance-their homes in as perfect order, as clean and as comfortable and as convenient as the homes of Americans. Sitting at their tables, attending their little dinners in our honor, even private dinners as well as public dinners given by officials of the government, we found the men and women in evening-dress, and when all the guests besides myself were Boers, yet I would not hear a single word but English spoken during the whole evening. I found many of them cultured and refined. Some of them were authors, some had written books, some had written poems, some had produced excellent paintings, many were artists, many were fine musicians, and it was indeed a very common thing to find in camp and on the battle-field many a stalwart Boer with long hair and long beard, apparently rough and uncouth, who surprised me by telling me that he was a graduate from one of the great English universities. Noticing their beards I asked them why so many of them wore whiskers, and one of them answered: 'We do not have time to get our hair cut or to be shaved, for we are busy all the time fighting for our lives and our homes against the savage native or the still more savage Britons, fighting to save our country and to save our independence.' And thus frequently among these brave and chivalrous men of the mountain and veldt would I be surprised so agreeably. And yet these are the kind of men whom the British press and the American sympathizing press would have us believe are untutored savages.

"The two leading newspapers of the Transvaal, the Volksstem, at Pretoria, and The Standard and Digger's News, at Johannesburg, are published in the greater part in English, and they are bright and newsy papers, and to my mind much better papers than the papers of England. . . . The fact of the matter is that I could get, even during those times, when the British cables were keeping news out of that country that was of much importance, more news in those papers about my own country than I found in the English dailies. I must commend the Boer papers of the Transvaal for their energy and enterprise, and I do believe that the editorials that appeared in those papers will rank far above those of the London dailies and will compare very favorably with the editorials in the columns of the best American newspapers."

TOPICS IN BRIEF.

"HAVE you looped the loop?" will be one of the leading questions in the Schley inquiry.-The Chicago Post.

WITH his appetite for war, it sometimes seems a pity that the Kaiser was not born a Venezuelan.-The Washington Star.

THE changed tone of Colombian despatches indicate that the other side must have captured a telegraph-office.—7he Detroit News.

THERE must be a species of mosquito in South America that communicates the revolutionary bacillus.-The New York Mail and Express. THESE must be happy days for that obstreperous brother-in-law of Kipling's, if he reads the literary criticisms.-The Chicago Record-Herald. IF Rudyard Kipling really wants to do something for his country let him move up to the firing-line and read his poems to the Boers.-The Chicago News. THE Alabama man who has been so thoughtless as to misplace his grandfather will not cut much of a figure at the ballot-box.-The Washington Post.

IT is reported that the leader of the Colombian revolution has been killed. Why not place the other man under arrest and call the thing off?-The Chicago News.

TWENTY-FIVE births were reported to the City Health Office on Tuesday. Thursday the milkmen met and raised prices 50 per cent.-The Nashville American.

CAPTAIN RICHMOND PEARSON HOBSON has gone into the cotton business. May he have better luck in this line than he had with calico a few years ago!-The Chicago Post.

THE proposition to consign Statesman Bryan to the tomb with Jefferson, Jackson, and Tilden will be vigorously resisted, it is more than likely, by all four.-The Chicago Tribune.

IF the Standard Oil Company succeeds in destroying mosquitoes, there will be a widespread feeling that trusts are not as black as they have been painted. The Washington Star.

PRESIDENT SCHWAB and President Shaffer both announce that the steel strike is to be a fight to the finish. While not upholding the fight, the public will be glad to see the finish. The St. Louis Globe-Democrat.

IT has been suggested that Sir Thomas Lipton ought to be give the freedom of the city of New York. The only way to accomplish this thoroughly would be to put him on the police force.-The Washington Star.

J. PIERPONT MORGAN'S proposition seems to be to allow employees of the steel trust to own stock provided they buy it. Possibly he would let the men own automobiles on the same terms.-The Chicago News.

MR

LETTERS AND ART.

IS KIPLING'S POWER DECLINING?

R. KIPLING'S latest poem, "The Lesson," has stimulated anew the question as to the literary quality of his recent work, especially his verse. We quoted last week several stanzas from "The Lesson," which, it will be seen, strikes much the same note as that heard in "The Absent-Minded Beggar." A remark made by the Philadelphia Press concerning the "sickly sentiment" of the latter poem, and another by the Chicago Record-Herald to the effect that the former poem is "not above the standard of the costermonger," brings forth from the Hartford Courant a defense of both poems, of the author and of the costermonger as well. Says The Courant:

"There is a great deal in the lines we have quoted [from The Absent-Minded Beggar'] besides masterly simplicity. There is patriotism-generous, humane, wide-seeing patriotism. Underneath their musical cadence and their picturesque delineation there throbs the living heart of a man who loves two things-his country and his kind; and both are worthy to be loved. A lot of us think that there are other things worthier of love-some of us even hitting upon oneself as the only object worthy of supreme and lasting devotion; but those of us who do that are not making poetry, not even of the costermonger standard, and certainly not of the Kipling standard. Then there is, in the lines quoted, that rare, definite, exquisite consciousness, and expression of the inseparable bond between a great, widespreading, historic em

pressed by those who have the opportunity of drawing attention to the performance and of uttering a word of warning as to the danger with which it is fraught."

This "danger" is that inasmuch as Kipling has done good work and has so large an audience, his voice at this time will be taken as that of the English people:

"Stamped with the great hall-mark of The Times, Mr. Kipling's verses go forth as the voice of the nation. That nation is represented as 'a business people '-we have only a vague notion as to what a business people' means-owning that it has had a great shaking up, that its army at the beginning of the war was utterly inefficient. Now that without doubt is the feeling of England, and the subject handled by a poet, by a poet of the second rank with some sense of dignity, of responsibility, might well have produced verse that would elevate, certainly not de grade. How does Mr. Kipling treat the subject? Let us give three variants of his catchy refrain. We have had a jolly good lesson, and it serves us jolly well right!': 'We have had no end of a lesson; it will do us no end of good': 'We have had an imperial lesson; it will make us an empire yet!' 'We are not cotton-spinners all,' exclaimed Tennyson fifty years since when the Manchester School seemed to have too much influence in high politics. We do not want Manchester again, but would put up with that better than with the politics of the pot-house."

DRAMATIC

"

"The Absent-Minded Beggar," The Courant thinks, will not die as long as the Anglo-Saxon race continues to be a fighting race, whereas "The Lesson is for a special exigency of state and will pass with that exigency; but neither parodies nor ridicule can impair the "wise, loving humanity" of the one nor "the serious, lofty purpose" of the other.

In Harper's Weekly (August 17) Mr. James K. Stephens expresses himself briefly and adversely concerning Mr. Kipling's latest novel, "Kim." He writes:

"Mr. Kipling's decline may be said to have begun with 'Captains Courageous,' which was crude and revolting in its strength, lacking in grace and inspiration. For the serial rights of that story he received $12,000; for the serial rights of Kim' he was paid $25,000. It will be seen, therefore, that the highest price is not always paid for the expression of a man's highest power, but is a matter of literary reputation. For it must be confessed that, sanguine as were the expectations of his most loyal admirers, Kim' as a novel is distinctly a disappointment. It is the work of a finished journalist, and a fine piece of work at that, but as a criticism of life and as an artistic work instinct with living issues, it fails in the final test to convince, to persuade, to appeal to the imagination."

The London Saturday Review, which is one of the most "imperialistic of English papers, has, nevertheless, no words of praise for "The Lesson." An editorial in its pages (August 3) on "Mr. Kipling's Descent," begins as follows:

"The first impulse of many who read Mr. Kipling's verses called 'The Lesson' in The Times of July 29 was, very probably, to thrust aside the sheet containing them with impatience and disgust, to dismiss the matter from their minds forthwith. Verse so bad and treatment of a subject of high moment so coarse, in combination, are enough to make the gorge rise even of those who possess by no means a very delicate literary stomach. If to any one this way of putting it seems itself to verge on what is coarse, let him refresh his memory with the verses and own that our metaphor is, by comparison, of the very essence of refinement. But this impulse, tho naturally enough, should be re

CRITICISM AND "THE UNCRITI-
CAL PUBLIC."

N a series of papers entitled "Reminiscences of a Dramatic Critic." Mr. Henry Austin Clapp, the well-known dramatic lecturer and late critic of the Boston Advertiser, gives some of his impressions of plays, playwrights, and playgoers in America during the past twenty years. The most striking portions of his first article (The Atlantic Monthly, August) deal with the American dramatic critic and with the characteristics of the American theatergoer. Of the former he writes:

"The value of liberty to a public critic is incalculably great; the lack of it to an honest and earnest man in that vocation is like the lack of wholesome air to human lungs. It was years before I fully appreciated my privilege in this kind, or realized how much happier was my lot than that of some of my professional brethren. The ideally perfect dramatic critic must always be, even in Paris, London, and New York, a rara avis. The man whose equipment includes a good working familiarity with the classic and modern languages; an intimate acquaintance with all English literature, and with all that is most important in other literatures; a long experience with the theater; a high and varied skill in writing; honesty of purpose and complete emancipation from mean personal prejudice; and, finally, the faculty inborn, and, tho highly susceptible of cultivation, never to be acquired, of detecting false touches in acting as the perfect ear detects false tones in music,-even the late brilliant, accomplished, and unimpeachable Sarcey did not fill the area of that definition. Yet if such an Admirable Crichton existed, he would not be effective on the staff of a newspaper which in any way or at any point, for commercial or any reasons, cabined, cribbed, or confined him; hinting here, coaxing there, anon undertaking to give instructions as to his meting out of praise or blame. I have known many critics, and of the entire number have known but one whom I believed to be capable of corruption in his high office. They were, and are, as square a set of men as ever lived. But some of them were hampered and handicapped by their employers, and came short of rendering the best service to the public because of counting-room pressure in favor of liberally advertising theaters, or against theaters whose patronage was less valuable. Sometimes it has happened, also,-tho seldom anywhere, I suppose, and oftener in New York than Boston, -that among the actors there were friends or foes of editors-in-chief or of owners, with the shameful consequence that the critic was bidden to be a respecter of persons,' and at the same time instructed to be crafty not to betray the secret of his partiality."

Such newspapers, however, are always found out, says Mr. Clapp, and soon lose much of their influence with their readers.

But the public cares very little, at best, for dramatic criticism, he adds, or is qualified by education or habits to weigh it:

"A large majority of all the persons who read the daily journals have not the faintest notion of comparing or distinguishing the values of various censures. The great body of patrons of the theater are, indeed, alike indifferent and, directly, impervious to criticism of any sort; they swarm into the playhouses with an indiscriminating eagerness of desire, which seems as masterful as the blind instinct that compels the migration of schools of fish; they are laws unto themselves, and find out and applaud what they like by the application of those laws, some of which have roots which run far down into our common psychic protoplasm. The judicious remainder-absolutely large in numbers, tho comparatively few-constitute the body to which the critic appeals, and through which, by processes of slow filtration, he may hope to make some indirect impression for good upon the vast mass of humanity that fills the theaters night after night, week after week. If this statement seems cynical, the reader of The Atlantic is requested to consider the situation in a kindred matter, and to note that three-quarters of the general perusal of contemporary books is utterly uninfluenced by any kind of literary criticism. The huge public which revels in the novels, for example, of Albert Ross' and Mrs. Mary J. Holmes knows no more about book notices than it knows about the Eddas. As far as that public is concerned, the critical journals, magazines, and reviews might as well be printed in Russian as in English, as well be published in St. Petersburg and Moscow as in New York and Boston."

PROFESSOR TRIGGS AND LITERARY VALUES.

R

ECENT classroom utterances by Oscar L. Triggs, instructor in English in Chicago University, have come in for what one newspaper calls "a well-merited castigation" at the hands of the press of the country. His reported declaration that the hymns of evangelical churches are mere doggerel, inferior in literary excellence to the average dime novel, caused a storm of editorial protest. When, a few days later, he characterized Longfellow's verse as trivial and unworthy of consideration, decribing it in effect as milk for babes, not meat for strong men, editorial disapproval, secular and religious, grew stronger.

In a letter of explanation published in the Chicago Tribune, Professor Triggs said:

"The public should understand that a teacher in the privacy of his classroom may state a thing playfully, paradoxically, with that exaggeration that belongs to a good pedagogy, and so leave the class to discriminate the true and the false. A teacher is not required at all times to tell the truth. A class is under obligation at all times to investigate and discover for themselves the truth."

In The Tribune the professor qualified somewhat his statement regarding hymns and his estimate of Longfellow. He made a favorable exception of Cardinal Newman's hymn, "Lead, Kindly Light," and, speaking of Longfellow, he said:

"I have looked upon literature, always, as the expression of its age, manners, and life. So regarding it, I look around to find this expression in the literature of the United States. But in our conventional literature it is not there. Searching for the modern and the democratic, as opposed to the traditional and the feudalistic, there is too little in evidence.

"We have been writing of things too far removed from the sunlight, the sweep of the prairie winds, the whirl and jar of this industrial age. We have had the literature of the library-of the dilettante-when we have needed a literature that should mark our roughness, bareness, and uncouthness.

"This has come of allowing a literary New England to stand for the literature of America.

"The criticism in force to-day is largely derivative from New England. Not content with writing the greater volume of our verse, the Eastern men have imposed their critical judgment upon the people at large. Recently there have been signs of a shifting of emphasis. Longfellow is losing importance, and wri

ters like Riley are gaining. In Longfellow's sense of poetry Riley has not written poetry so much as a new and more democratic sense he has depicted life. In some way life has got into a book, with its own rhythms and accents; and the book does not read like a book, but is known like a person. The humanization of poetry may count for more in the twentieth century than does Longfellow's poetization of humanity."

Professor Triggs's explanations and qualifying statements have not served to turn the current of adverse criticism. Says the New York Times's Saturday Review:

"Anything is good that brings Longfellow up again, even silly remarks from the professor of English literature in the Chicago University. There is something about his verse so clean, so wholesome, and so thoroughly artistic withal, that it would not be very risky to say that he is the most poetical as well as far and away the most popular poet we have thus far produced.. "To be sure, his intellectual limitations prevent his poetry from being entirely satisfactory to serious minds. The perfection of his technic is best appreciated when it is not complicated with the question of his ideas, as, for example, in translation, of which he is one of the first masters in the English language, and quite the first in this country. But the man is to be pitied who can read, say, 'My Lost Youth' or 'The Jewish Cemetery at Newport,' or the introductory sonnet to the translation of Dante, and find nothing in it.

"The fact is that we are coming to require, not 'meat,' meaning substance, but high flavor, in our poetry. Ginger and tabasco will alone titillate the jaded palate of a Triggs, it appears. That is Longfellow's misfortune, but it is not he that is in fault. The same thing has happened in literature which Wagner brought to pass in mysic, that the zealots of the newer poetry can not taste the simpler flavors of the older. A good musician said, not long ago: 'Mendelssohn is down, but he will come up again.' And the charm of Mendelssohn is curiously like the charm of Longfellow, the setting forth of common themes with flawless artistic workmanship and a never-failing mastery of form, and to a result of quiet beauty."

The New York Sun asks:

"It was Taine, wasn't it, who decided that Tennyson couldn't be a great poet because Tennyson was respectable? Professor Triggs is positive that on account of the 'environment of Puritanism Longfellow could not be a great poet.' So Longfellow is pitched out of the Poet's Corner and sent after that wretched Puritan, Milton. . . . When all the American or un-American poets have been executed, will not Professor Triggs make short work of Dante? He was 'a cultured cuss,' a natural enemy, therefore, of Professor Triggs."

The Hartford (Conn.) Times says:

"The statement that the hymns of the Protestant churches are doggerel could never have been made by a man of literary culture, even if he disapproved of the contents or ideas embodied, because one of the first things a literary man learns is to appreciate form independent of meaning. He may disapprove of the dogma, but he appreciates the embodiment, and he sympathizes with the old earnest belief. The strongest Unitarian can appreciate the great Trinity hymn, and the man who does not see that 'Rock of Ages' is a great piece of literature lacks the rudiments of literary sensibility."

The Interior (Presb.) thinks that

"he must have curious canons of literary excellence who does not find in the limpid English and faultless rhythm and perfect rimes of many of Watt's hymns the 'hallmark' of pure gold. It can hardly be gainsaid that William Ewart Gladstone, master of the languages and literature of the modern world, was a fair judge of literary excellence; and he found in Toplady's 'Rock of Ages, cleft for me,' a something worthy of translation into classic Latin. And when one who has seen as much of life as did the aged queen of Great Britain, recently deceased, falls on sleep repeating, 'My fait looks up to thee,' there must be something in English hymns which touches the universal heart and satisfies the common soul of the race, irrespective of learning, place, or years; and nothing lacking in literary excellence ever did that."