cism of literature; and we believe that a close examination of his career affords a key to this weakness. We find that with all his extreme cleverness and his fluent proficiency, he was ill-trained. As a youth he hated restraint and the slow drudgery of acquirement. He went from employment to employment too hurriedly to secure any basis of deep scholarship, and when he sobered down to the precise study of his humanities, the hour for the habit of profundity was past. The Greeks recognized a vice of late-learning, what Aristotle calls oppabía. The man tainted with it was boisterous and inefficient; he argued noisily and clumsily, but ostentatiously; he wanted to have a place in every diversion, in every contest, but he lacked the suppleness and ease of those who had been through the discipline from early youth. This, it seems to us, was the secret of Blackie's failure. He was ardent, clever, even brilliant; but he was anxious to excel, and believed that he did excel; but he was opalns, the hopeless late learner. Well on in middle life he wrote: I hate grammar, logic, rhetoric, law, and all such dry formalisms.' This was a strange confession on the part of a professor of that language which more than any other demands what Bacon calls 'the severe inquisition of truth.

and

"One's interpretation depends almost entirely upon one's mood. You can not read him in a wholly passive state of mind. He demands so much of the reader, attention, reflection, more than all imagination-he suggests in a great degree more of him may be gaged by the extent

than he says-that our praise these qualities, or by the amount in which we are able to supply of mental endurance we can undergo while subject to the whims of a man whose supreme happiness is in toying with the intellect. "With consummate flattery he takes for granted in us an intelligence equal to his own; and we, to deserve this confidence, strain every energy to follow him as he discusses, rambles, and theorizes, as well as to follow his men and women, with their incessant mobility, vague feelings, and nebulous sentiments.

"That there exists a feeling of resentment after reading Mere

dith few will deny. Why is this? Is it that he fails to cast a web of illusions over his characters? that our lofty ideals have toppled over? With insistent wails do we still cry for the angel heroine and care not for the feminine failures that we have about us, some of whom he has placed in his books just as they are with their human faults and foibles? His is not the doctrine of human perfectibility. He often 'strips the bloom from life and shows it to be bare bones.' He even doesn't hesitate to call a spade a spade, but he leads up to it with idealistic flourishes. Things that are in bad taste he somehow describes with his most artistic phrases, so that the subject-matter is lost sight of in its word-setting.

"One thing we are always made to feel, and that is his utter independence. His brilliant flashes of sarcasm we should in a degree be grateful for, but they are hurled at us in such a manner that, like certain people who do kind things for us, the way of doing robs us of all gratitude.

"He seems to take a fiendish delight in his power over the reader; it is like the joy of something lower than mortals. Our consciousness can not overcome the malevolent lurking of a 'Mephisto's smile' that now and then flashes between the lines. We can almost hear his 'inaudible chuckle,' and feel the 'sneering essence' of his writings. It is the personality of the man that at once attracts and antagonizes us. With all his intellectuality there is the accent of coarseness."

Miss Menefee observes that while there is no breathless whirl or rush of events in Meredith's stories, his readers are often rendered breathless with a desire to rush the action of the story; though they may declare that they care not who marries or who dies, yet they feel an insane desire to have some of them do the one or the other. She ends by saying of Meredith :

"Mirthful he may be, musical, poetic, yet the interior of his thoughts has no gladsome ring. It has a penetrating and indefinable pathos, the pathos that Mozart recognized in all his music. The cadences murmur like a muffled knell heralding our inevitable doom. His doctrine of fatality robs his work of all that is healthful, hopeful, or solacing, and therefore the moral stimulus is not excessive or strengthening. When the story is over-when the afterglow itself, which should last a long time, is also over -then are we dimly conscious of this unsatisfied feeling, of a cloying tinge of weariness and melancholy which can not be effaced. We feel that ours has been a painful joy, that we have 'sighed deep, laughed free, starved, feasted, despaired, all but loved-and not been happy.""

WE

using a language of comparison with the physical properties of another art.

"The assertion that music formulates the expression of man's innermost feelings and sensibilities in the sanie way that painting formulates impressions received through the eyes, equally involves a confusion of ideas. The expression in painting is imitative, while that in music, supposing that we admit that the object of music is the expression of our feelings, is at best purely symbolical. A mountainous landscape in a picture, however it may be conventionally treated in regard to color and effect, in order to realize a certain ideal of the painter's mind, is still a mountainous landscape, perfectly recognizable as such, and capable of direct comparison with the original in nature. Still more emphatically is this the case with the representation of the human figure, which, however it may be used for the expression of special feeling or emotion, or as a portion of a composition invented by the painter, must in the first instance be a correct drawing of the figure, and is directly referable to the life-model as a test. Where is there anything analogous to this in the art of music? What possible resemblance is there between a mood of feeling in the mind and a combination or succession of musical tones? The two ideas are incomparable; it is only in a metaphorical sense that the latter can even be said to be symbolical of the former. It is true that crude and barbarous forms of music have been evolved among savage tribes by, apparently, an attempt to arrange cries or sounds in a certain form of repetition and contrast, and so far these efforts may be taken as instances of an attempted formation of music on the bow-wow' theory; 'but it is noteworthy that no music (if we are so to call it) commenced in this way has ever got very far. . . . The art of music, in the only form in which it has ever been worth serious attention, is an essentially artificial treatment of sound, founded on the Greek scale; and the Greek scale arose out of no ‘bow-wowism,' but out of the intellectual recognition by the Greeks of the mathematical relations of sounds. Here was laid the foundation of the possibility of the infinite variety of tone-structures which musicians of the modern epoch have built up, and, in building them up, have exercised that power of artistic creation which is one of the greatest joys and privileges of which the human intellect is capable. . . . It is from no desire to express any meaning that musicians have created such works: it is for the pure pleasure of creating a new and beautiful organism, and to say that music-pure instrumental music-is the expression of certain feelings in human nature is putting a secondary object before the primary. Music may express, or be supposed to express, certain definite ideas or feelings of the mind, either by being linked with words, or by an indication prefixed to it (such as the word 'Eroica' attached to Beethoven's Third Symphony) as to some feeling that was uppermost in the composer's mind when writing it. But even in the case of such indications it is the music itself that is the interest to us, not the feeling we are told that it is to express. The statement that the slow movement of Beethoven's Op. 26 Sonata is a 'Funeral March on the Death of a Hero' gives us a reason for its gloomy grandeur of style and its regular and persistent rhythm; but it is the grandeur of the composition that impresses us, not the fact that it expresses funeral lamentation; and neither the beautiful Theme and Variations which open the Sonata, nor the brilliant and striking 'Allegro' which concludes it, are any the less interesting because there is not the slightest indication of a meaning attached to them. In short, the reply to any one who asks, after hearing a fine piece of instrumental music, 'What does it express?' is that it expresses itself, and is to be judged by its own character and effect as an artistic creation. Any other answer is beside the mark, and music which can not interest the hearer by its own inherent power and beauty, without a secondary meaning tacked on to it, is essentially deficient as music."

hind the music, and capable, had the composer so chosen, of expression in words instead of in music."

Authors Their Own Publishers.-An experiment of this kind is being made by French authors. Alexandre Dumas, Henry Becque, Jules Barbier, Stéphane Mallarmé, Henry Bauer, and Paul Alexis are among those forming an authors' publishing association (La Société Libre d'Edition des Gens de Lettres), which is thus described by Robert H. Sherard in the Westminster Gazette:

"The Association is composed of honorary members, subscribing members, and titulary members. The honorary members are selected among distinguished persons in French society, preference being given to leading lights in the literary world. These form the Committee of Patronage. Subscribing members are those persons who, not being authors themselves, are sufficiently interested in the Association and its objects to subscribe a minimum of ten francs per annum to the funds of the society. . The titulary members, who must justify their claims to be considered men or women of letters, pay an entrance fee of two francs and a monthly subscription of two francs, that is to say, about nineteen shillings per annum. Every member is entitled to have one book, plaquette, or pamphlet, published by the Association and at its cost each year, but not more than one book, plaquette, or pamphlet. The manuscripts of members are submitted to the Committee of Management, and are read by a Bureau de Lecture, formed of members of this committee. It may be noted that no member of the Committee of Management can publish his works at the expense of the Association. The readers have consequently no personal interest to ensue in rejecting the manuscripts of members. The Bureau de Lecture reports once a month on the manuscripts submitted, and such as have appeared to the readers to have a commercial value are published by the Association, as funds allow and in order of reception. Members whose manuscripts have been rejected by the Bureau, or who do not care to submit them to the Bureau, can have them published at cost price. The profits on each work, less 25 per cent., which goes to the funds of the Association, are paid over to the author quarterly."

A Queer Horn-Orchestra.-"The twenty-two Russian musicians who have lately been giving concerts in Western Europe," says the Musical Courier, “used instruments quite unknown outside of their native land. These instruments look like large pipes of a conical form, curved toward the embouchure, and vary. ing in size from 80 centimeters to 2 meters. One of them utters notes lower than those of the bass viol, and gives out only one note. The performer has two of these pipes, into which he blows in turn. The effect produced approaches that of the organ, but the hearer can distinguish sounds analogous to those of the Pan pipe, the clarinet, and the keyed trumpet. The lower notes resemble those of the large pipes of an organ, and at times one could fancy that he hears the friction of the bow on the lower strings of a contrabass. The inventor of this orchestra was named Maresch. He was born in Bohemia about 1719 and commenced to organize it in 1730 with the aid of Prince Narishkin. It was heard with great success at a celebrated fête given at Moscow in 1760; an immense sleigh, about 80 meters long drawn by twenty-two oxen of the Ukraine, c rried the musicians, and the music could be heard at a distance of a league and a half. Each instrument gives out only one note, which each performer must sound at the precise moment indicated in the score, and the difficulty is to attain this absolute precision. Maresch died in Russia in 1794, leaving a daughter, who made a great reputation as a pianist."

"I know I am at a climacteric for all men who live by their wits, so I do not despair. But the truth is, I am pretty nearly useless at literature. Were it not for my health, which made it impossible, I could not find it in my heart to forgive myself that I did not stick to an honest, commonplace trade when I was young, which might have now supported me during these ill years. But do not suppose me to be down in anything else; only, for the nonce, my skill deserts me, such as it is, or was. It was a very little dose of inspiration, and a pretty little trick of style, long lost, improved by the most heroic industry. So far, I have managed to please the journalists. But I am a fictitious article, and have long known it. I am read by journalists, by my fellow novelists, and by boys; with these incipit et explicit my vogue."

and up, fall and rise, far and near, that and this; in all of which we have, in the first series the broad vowels a or o, pronounced, expressively, with rather widely open mouth, while in the second series we have the thin vowels e, i, or u, or the terminal consonants m, n, or p, which are pronounced either within the mouth or with closed lips; and in each special case the action will be found to be expressive of the meaning. • Thus, in to the lips are protruded almost as much as in go (always supposing we are speaking impressively and with energy), while from requires only a slight motion of the lips ending with their complete closure; in out we have an energetic expiration, and outward motion of the lips, while in is pronounced wholly inside the mouth, and does not require the lip to be moved at all after the mouth is opened; in down we have a quick downward movement of the lower jaw, which is very characteristic, since the word can not be spoken without it; while in up the quick movement is upward, after having opened the mouth as slowly as we please; infall we require a downward motion of the jaw as in down, but slower, and the word is completed with the mouth open, indicating, perhaps, that fall is a more decided and permanent thing than down, which implies position rather than motion, while in rise we have a slight parting of the lips with a decided inspiration, and the meaning would probably be made clearer by the gesture of raising the head, which is natural during inspiration.

Mr. Wallace goes on to show that emotions, qualities of animate and inanimate things, and even moral characteristics are indicated by characteristic combinations of vocal sounds and terms which are "naturally expressive" of the things represented. Every class of expressive words, he claims, has a natural basis, and only detailed modifications are conventional.

A WARNING TO FAT PEOPLE.

A BERLIN professor has just discovered that for fat persons

to employ any means whatever to reduce their flesh is likely to injure their health and shorten their lives. We quote the abstract of the professor's article, with comments thereupon, as it appears in The Medical Times, New York:

"Fat men, do not try to make yourselves thin. It is thus that Professor Eulenbourg, of Berlin, adjures you in one of the last numbers of the German Medical Weekly. It is not that he would advise you to persist in your obesity, but he has discovered that all the means that you may employ to be rid of it would have the effect of ruining your health, and even shortening your life. Against all these he would place you on guard. For example, he is indignant that permission should be given to German druggists to sell, without an order, to the first comer, tablets and potions which might perhaps cure obesity, but which injure the organism and produce grave troubles of the nerves and the blood, for all of them contain some poison, and it would be much better to be fat and healthy than a lean valetudinarian. Among other examples of the disastrous effects of the cures of obesity, Dr. Eulenbourg cites the case of a well-known dramatic artist, who, not content with the opulence of form which Nature had given him, became so thin that he died in consequence. the treatment alone that is dangerous. Scarcely has the man the opportunity to enjoy his diminishing obesity, before disquieting symptoms begin their appearance, his humor alters, he becomes nervous, impressionable, and from day to day he has no more the feeling of being in his natural state.

But it is not

"It seems to be clearly proved that we can not make ourselves thin with impunity. Nature creates the fat and the lean, and it is the part of wisdom for one and the other to resign themselves to their condition. But just here humanity seems to fail, and it is to be feared that the most serious discoveries, as well as the most dangerous advertisements, will fail to prevent people who are too fat from making themselves thin, no matter how. Why did not Professor Eulenbourg, instead of discovering, the dangerous chemical properties of the remedies for obesity, try to discover that obesity was graceful, and more beautiful than the opposite state? Upon this condition alone would his advice be heeded. And after all, who can prove the esthetic superiority of the thin over the fat? That's but a matter of fashion, the result of a new taste, that may change from one year to another. not time to honor the ancient ideal of fat beauty? Would it not prevent the disastrous effects of all the remedies for obesity?"

Is it

CHEAP POWER FROM THE COAL-FIELDS.

WE

E are to-day digging bottled-up power, as it were, from our coal-mines, and shipping it by the carload to the points, often hundreds or thousands of miles away, where it is to be utilized. This process is somewhat analogous to the methods of supplying water in parts of Spain and Spanish America, where the fluid is put into casks and carried on mule-back to its destination. We have replaced this primitive method by a distribution of water in pipes from central reservoirs. So, too, think those who are sanguine we shall soon distribute our power from great central stations placed where that power can be most cheaply generated. The mode of transmission would probably be by electricity. Power obtained from water has already been thus transmitted, and there seems reason to believe that the power from coal will in time be generated at the mines and distributed in the same way. We quote from Cassier's Magazine (November) some remarks on this important subject by Dr. Louis Bell. He says:

"Up to the present time substantially all the transmissions of any magnitude have been from water-powers, and it is singular to note how their success has stimulated their production. Waterpowers have been discovered in unheard-of nooks, and even where they were hardly suspected. But there is an end to such discoveries, and sooner or later, beginning in the very near future. something must be done with the next largest amount of unused energy remaining. This is to be found in the huge store of fuel that is our legacy from the carboniferous age. How great it is we can only guess, for we have perhaps hardly begun to take account of it. Yet this is no reason why we should play the spendthrift with that which we now have. Huge piles of waste coal are landmarks in every mining region, and below ground are enormous masses, untouched as yet because of poor quality.

"The present state of the case is that on a large scale the [electrical] transmission of power from the culm pile, or the now unworked coal-mine, over even considerable distances stand a good chance of commercial success. The larger the plant and the steadier the service, the greater the distance over which power can be sent to compete with that generated on the spot."

TH

THE "MISSING LINK" AGAIN.

'HE discovery by Dr. E. Dubois, a surgeon in the Dutch army, of remains that he asserted to be those of a monkeylike ancestor of man, was noticed in these columns at the time it was made, and we have since on several occasions quoted comments on that discovery. Up to this time the consensus of opinion has inclined toward belief that Dr. Dubois's find was that of an actual human skeleton, somewhat modified by deformity or disease, and not a missing link in any sense of the word. The whole subject is so interesting that we may imagine the excitement with which the members of the third international geological congress, which met in Leyden, Holland, in September last, assembled on the last day of the session, Saturday, September 21, to hear the discoverer himself describe his discovery and defend his views concerning it. We quote below from the report contained in Science (New York, November 1) :

"The paper which excited perhaps the greatest interest of all those presented to this Congress was that by Dr. E. Dubois on 'Pithecanthropus erectus, a transitional, man-like form.' Dr. Dubois described the locality in Java where the remains were found, and mentioned as occurring near them a tooth of Hyæna, bones of Cervus, etc. No complete skeleton was found. The speaker then described the cranium and femur, of which he had maintained that they belonged to a man-like creature. He had compared the thigh-bone with 150 different femora of Malays, negroes, Europeans, and other races, but could establish no similarity. Virchow's view of the greater resemblance of this femur to that of the apes (especially Hylobates) is correct. It is remarkable that the zoologists maintain the skull to be human, while the human anatomists refer it to the apes. The speaker discussed the cranial capacity of man and the anthropoid apes,