AN ANTI-SEMITIC CRUSADE IN THE UNITED H ERMANN AHLWARDT, the leader of the anti-Semitic element in the German Reichstag, came to this country early in December for the purpose of starting an anti-Semitic crusade. He proposes to deliver lectures in various American cities in order to arouse "slumbering anti-Semitic feeling." He states in an interview that he stands on the grounds of racial, not religious, anti-Semitism," and that he is "striving to unite the working-people and the artisans against the Jews," because he considers that, as a race, the Jews achieve nothing through their own honest efforts, but direct all their energies to absorb the results of other men's work by methods of trickery and deceit." Labor, he asserts, is oppressed by them, its fruits monopolized, and the people corrupted. He spoke for the first time in Cooper Union, December 12, to a very small and evidently hostile audience. We quote a number of newspaper opinions about Herr Ahlwardt and his attempt at Jew-baiting in the United States: RECTOR HERMANN AHLWARDT. A Course of Reading Suggested. "It would be well for this foreign agitator to take a course of reading before he begins to advise Americans how to deal with their social and religious problems. He might well begin with 'The American Jew as Patriot, Soldier, and Citizen,' and this might convince him that whatever the condition of Jewish tolerance in Berlin or Vienna, hatred of the race can never be widespread among us. A Philadelphia paper proudly declares that there are the names of nine Jewish merchants of Philadelphia signed to the non-importation resolutions of 1765 still preserved in Carpenters' Hall, and a record of the Revolution shows that Jewish citizens fought nobly for the liberty they are now entitled to enjoy.”—The Journal, Boston. The Constitution is Against Him.-"That the man is foolish as well as ignorant, is proved by the fact that he can accomplish nothing of intolerance toward the Jews in the United States except through amendment of the Constitution of the United States. Before he can even contemplate that, he must bring more than a majority of the people to his way of thinking. The trouble is that with all his wit and learning Ahlwardt has not learned much about the American people, and still less about the methods to employ to effect the peaceful revolution that is compassed whenever the Constitution is amended."-Record-Union, Sacramento, Cal. Racial Prejudices Have No Place Here.-"Ahlwardt is a master of the art of epigrammatic insult. But his tune does not take here. Our national orchestration is out of harmony with his ideas and purposes. Racial prejudices have no more to do with our social, political, and economic systems than the sweep of the tides. To the extent that parties and politicians have acted on the contrary theory, they have been bowled over or run over, and the same is true of the introduction of religious questions into affairs of state. 'But,' says Ahlwardt, 'I do not attack the Hebrews on religious grounds. I oppose them, because of the mastery which they assume in finance, trade, and commerce.' If it be true that the Hebrews are the controlling factors in the financial world, there is no more occasion to find fault with them on that score than there would be to find fault with Chinamen or Hottentots or Zulus. No individual and no race attains preeminence in any walk of life without the possession of qualities which make for the distinction, and if the Hebrews are gradually tightening their grip on the world's commerce and finance they are entitled to credit for their ability to do that which others try to do and do not perhaps succeed so well as they."-The Eagle, Brooklyn. Most of the Jewish papers in this country content themselves with quoting editorials from the secular and Christian press. The Jewish Voice, St. Louis, says: "Public opinion, after all, is, in America more especially, the true register of the condition of any movement. If anti-Semitism can be called a movement, it has been so unanimously condemned in America that any comment on our part adding to this general condemnation would be an adverse criticism on the Jews. We state this fact, not for the world at large, but for our own limited circles." Philadelphia Trolley-Car Strike.-A strike among 6,000 employees of the Union Traction Company, a recent consolidation of the street-railway lines in Philadelphia, has resulted in a practical tie-up since December 17. The principal demand of the strikers is for recognition of the Amalgamated Association of Street Railway Employees; they also ask for two dollars for a ten-hour day and protection of motorinen against the weather. A number of cars have been wrecked, and proclamations against violence have been issued by the mayor and the strike leaders. It is asserted that the cutting-off of transfer privileges by the Union Company has caused much of the sympathy manifested toward the striking employees by the traveling public. The company has steadfastly refused any settlement requiring recognition of the Amalgamated Association. The local press devotes itself particularly to denouncing mob law. The Public Ledger says, "The re-establishment of law and order is now the only question." The Times declares that the conductors and motormen have been The grievously deceived and misled by demagogic leaders. North American says that the company "must not at the expense of the community play a waiting game, hoping to wear the strikeis out, and win in the long run. The rights of the public are paramount. They have been ignored too long." The Commercial Advertiser, New York, takes this opportunity to say: "The solution of the problem of a satisfactory system of street railways, under which the public shall have such a service as they need and are entitled to, and under which there shall be no strikes and tie-ups, no seasons of violence and danger and inconvenience and interruption of business, lies in the municipal ownership of the street railways. When we have this, we shall have a better service and lower fares. There will be no interest on millions paid to original owners for franchises that were a free' gift from the city. The experience of New York with the rapid transit system will surely lead to universal municipal ownership of street railways." A Chief Justice Takes the Law into His Own Hands.-Chief Justice Snodgrass, of the Tennessee Supreme Court, resenting a criticism upon one of his decisions published in a newspaper by a prominent lawyer, John R. Beasley, visited the office of the latter and, drawing a revolver, fired at him twice, one shot taking effect in Beasley's arm. The condemnation of the act is severe and general. It is denounced as a disgrace to the State and its judiciary. The Nashville American, while declaring that the charges made against Justice Snodgrass by Beasley are unfounded and unjust, says that nothing can excuse the assault. It continues: "A judge owes a duty to the entire State as a conservator of the peace and an upholder of the law, and secure in the knowledge of his own honesty, integrity, and uprightness should pay no attention to the shafts of malice and slander. Chief Justice Snodgrass has placed himself in a most deplorable and unfortunate attitude, that of the Chief Justice of the highest court of the State taking the law into his own hands, and he has thus aided in striking a blow at the majesty of the law which he is looked to to aid in supporting. By his action the entire State suffers." The Springfield Republican, calling attention to the fact that Tennessee is preparing a great exposition to celebrate the centennial of her admission into the Union, remarks: "What mean these horrible lynchings which, like Jefferson's firebell in the night, alarm every thoughtful and law-abiding citizen! What means this astounding foray of the Chief Justice himself, who tramples and spits upon law to avenge a petty personal spite! This is not civilization; it is barbarism. The South, the whole South, not Tennessee alone, must be aroused to its terrible danWithout law society can not exist, and without respect for law things move on to chaos." ger. POLICE CORRUPTION IN PHILADELPHIA. A MUNICIPAL investigation similar to the memorable Lexow investigation in New York has been proceeding for some time in Philadelphia, and the disclosures brought to light, especially in the Police Department, point to a condition which is generally regarded as little better than that which existed in New York prior to the election of Mayor Strong and the appointment of the new Police Board, with Mr. Roosevelt at the head. Bribery, corruption, an alliance with crime, and regular protection of vice and lawlessness are the charges that a number of trustworthy witnesses have made against the Philadelphia police, and the press does not question the truth of the accusations. The New York Times editorially summarizes the reports of three days' testimony given by well-known clergymen, members' of the Law and Order Society, and detectives. We quote from it as follows: "It appears that the unlicensed saloons and houses of ill fame are protected, defended, and openly frequented by the police. The unlicensed saloons are called 'speak-easies.' The city appears to be full of them. Policemen inay be seen standing in front of such places while drunken men are passing in and out. Violators of the license and Sunday laws, when arrested, escape punishment by some 'mysterious influence. Occasionally a raid is ordered, in response to repeated complaints, but the guilty persons are warned beforehand by the police. A story was told about the blunder of a new policeman who did his duty in a case of this kind before the warning could be received. For his ignorant zeal he was 'broken' by his superiors. Another who had offended in the same way was arraigned on a charge that he had been drunk on a certain afternoon. He was one of the Rev. Mr. Gibbons's parishioners, and at the very time specified in the accusation he was in Mr. Gibbons's house, consulting with him as to the baptism of one of his children. But the clergyman's testimony and influence were of no avail. An appeal was made to the mayor, but he refused to interfere. The man was 'broken' because he had not permitted a gambling-house to be warned before he entered it. is "A detective testified that to his positive knowledge there were 280 disorderly houses in only one police district, the Eighth. He submitted a list of these and of 346 others. In some places there were extremely bold and demoralizing exhibitions of vice. The conditions,' said the Rev. Mr. Gibbons, 'were simply indescribable. The effect upon school-children was pointed out. 'There very little chance,' said Mr. Gibbons, 'for a boy without a Christian home. They are ruined, many of them, before they are sixteen years old.' Speaking of one school, he said: 'The good people in the neighborhood seem to be utterly disheartened. Once, when the School Board was nearly divided, there seemed to be some hope for better things, but one of the ward leaders took a crowd of twenty-five roughs to the meeting and overawed the respectable element. Two years ago we asked the board to appoint a committee of two to go with us and look at the schools. They agreed to do so, but the committee has never been appointed.' This clergyman has complained repeatedly about 'a house of the lowest character immediately behind his church,' but to no pur pose. "There was much testimony concerning the hopeless attitude of respectable people living in districts where disorderly houses are protected by the police. They have learned not only that 'it is useless to complain' to the authorities, but also that complaint makes their condition worse, because they are punished afterward by annoyance in one way or another, and the police enjoy their discomfiture. "Concerning violations of law in the Chinese quarter there was testimony that twenty-three gambling places were running, each paying fifteen dollars per week for police protection. As to disorderly houses elsewhere, witnesses testified that police officers were frequently seen entering them. "It was shown that at primary elections and delegate conventions the police, obeying only 'the boss of the ward,' canvass for votes, assist in the commission of fraud, and exclude persons whose votes are not desired. 'When the conventions assemble,' said the committee's counsel, 'they stand around the doors and throw out men whom they regard as obnoxious, and see that the nomination is made as they are instructed or as they desire. At the general elections they stand by and see crimes committed against the election laws, and repeaters voting under their eyes.' All this was confirmed by the testimony of lawfully chosen delegates to conventions-men whom the police had excluded or 'thrown out.' It was shown that in one ward, the boss, whom all the police obeyed, stood outside of the election place and directed the movements of the officers by a nod of the head. The political contests in question, it should be explained, were between opposing factions of the Republican Party." The Times makes the following comment on the results: "Everybody knows that Philadelphia is a Republican city-a city in which the Republican Party has controlled the Government continuously by great majorities. This is a picture of municipal misgovernment, corruption, protection of vice and crime, protection of fraud at the polls, demoralization of the young, and subjection of respectable citizens to the forces of immorality, in a city ruled now, as it has been for many years, by the Republican Party, and the picture is drawn by a Republican committee and a Republican press. The lesson of these disclosures, according to the Boston Herald, is that no party can be held responsible for corruption, because civic corruption knows no politics and no principles. It says further: "In New York city, under the control of Tammany Hall, the victory at the polls has commonly been a Democratic victory, and hence the greater part of the municipal plunderers in that city are stanch Democrats. In Philadelphia the city elections have uniformly brought to the polls a Republican majority, and thus in Philadelphia the boodlers almost to a man are Republicans. But this classification can be made without a reflection upon either party, since, if the official rascals in Philadelphia were transferred to New York, or those in New York were transferred to Philadelphia, in order to get into a congenial atmosphere they would probably undergo a political conversion as sudden as that of Saul of Tarsus." "THAT," said the curator, "is a suit of ancient armor-450 years old." "Don't see what they wanted of it. They wasn't no trolley-cars ner bicycle fiends in them days."-The Journal, Indianapolis. IT has been noted that while God has been referred to as both male and female in the Woman's Bible, the devil remains male throughout. Why don't they divide him up also?-Iowa State Register. It looks as if Secretary Carlisle and some of the country's other financiers did not study the same arithmetic.-The Star, Washington. THE pen of the President is mightier than his shotgun, the opinion of the ducks of North Carolina to the contrary notwithstanding. The Transcript, Boston. THE REAL BRITISH LION. -Eaening World, New York. LETTERS AND ART. IDEAS AND FANCIES OF THE LATE ALEXANDRE DUMAS. 10 HEN Dumas fils was received at the Académie Française, WHEN was russon ville the late Comte d'Haussonville pointed out what he considered to be the weak character of his work, saying: "You have introduced us to a world which, I think, does not exist. It is an exceptional world, I am persuaded; for I am convinced that whatever exceptions there may be, such as you have described with all the witchery of your pen, in the world we live in, honor in man and purity in woman is the idea we all cling to, and which you yourself unconsciously worship." Some, however, says The Westminster Gazette, seem to think that in speaking thus d'Haussonville did Dumas considerable injustice. From the same paper we quote as follows: "Opinions may and do differ, of course, about Dumas's work, but it is interesting to hear from himself what part he wished to play in French contemporary literature. Upon one occasion he expressed himself in the following terms: 'I am neither God, nor apostle, nor philosopher, nor mountebank. I am a man who, in passing, looks, sees, feels, reflects, hopes, and says or writes what strikes him, in the clearest, most rapid, and most convenient form. If the style is not always irreproachable, the thought is always perfectly sincere, for I should prefer to till the acre of ground my labor has procured me rather than utter a word I did not think. I often wound conventionalities, established ideas, and the prejudices of society; but I write for those who think as I do. It is useless to combat the opinions of others. One may succeed sometimes in vanquishing people in a discussion, but never in convincing them. Opinions are like nails: the more one hits them women. 'Pooh-pooh,' he once said, a woman marries a man because she likes him, or doesn't marry him if she does not; that's the beginning and the end of their analysis. I am surrounded by women, now mothers and grandmothers, whom I knew as girls. I have been able to observe very closely how much is implied by marriage. The day that woman is given the same rights and privileges as man she will despise him. Until that time she is dependent on him. What is more farcical than the institution called marriage? . . . Women regard it as a liberator. It prefixes "Madame" to their names, and takes them away from papa and mamma, of whom they are no doubt very fond, but whom they are delighted to leave.' When Mrs. Mona Caird wrote 'Is Marriage a Failure?' he was asked his opinion, and expressed himself in almost similar terms to those quoted. In this connection reference may be made to a letter by Dumas which was placed at the head of an anonymous pamphlet, 'Le Retour du Christ.' In it M. Dumas made this profession of faith: 'I think that without Mary Christianity would have triumphed more rapidly; it is she who embarrasses it. She shall never be my intermediary between my God and myself.' Dumas was often asked why he did not write his memoirs, and he answered the question some years ago, in the Revue Illustrée, by saying: "I do not write my memoirs because a man can not write his own memoirs without writing those of others or without hiding from his own eye that which the reader ought most to know. Those of whom I should have to write would rather that I were silent, and I have no desire to write about myself. The laurels of Jean Jacques and of Casanova do not prevent me from sleeping soundly at night-on the contrary. It is, however, permitted to draw episodes from one's personal souvenirs which time has formed into a whole, to which nothing more is to be joined, which form one more lesson on the absurdities of human life, and which can no longer hurt or do injustice to anybody." ALEXANDRE DUMAS FILS. on the head the deeper one drives them in. Our power is restricted to repeating what appears to us to be the truth.' "Much of Dumas's work was written very quickly. He used to say that he always had his dramas completed in his mind before he took up his pen. The third act of 'Héloise Paraquet' he wrote in three hours between breakfast and dinner. His modus operandi was to devote twenty quarto sheets of paper to each act, save the last one, which he finished. in seventeen sheets, in virtue of his father's sound advice, 'Surtout, le dernier acte court.' When he got to the end of his allotted number of sheets he knew the act was long enough, and he brought it to a conclusion." The difference between Dumas père and Dumas fils was once summed up sententiously by the latter to an English critic thus: "I inherited my instinct for the theater from my father; but our manner is not the same. My father was born in a poetic and picturesque epoch; he was an idealist. I came into the world in a period of materialism; I am a realist. My father took his subjects from dreamland; I take mine from life. My father worked with his eyes shut; I work with them open. He withdrew himself from the world; I identify myself with it. He sketched; I photographed. You would search in vain for his models; mine are to be met everywhere." To quote again : "As may be supposed, Dumas had not a very high opinion of The Gazette says, in conclusion: "Those who knew him best were always ready to affirm that Dumas was particularly kind to young beginners, whether actors, authors, or artists, who rarely appealed to him in vain either for advice or assistance. He scorned politics, and was always, as his position enabled him to be, very independent. Under the Second Empire the Duc de Persigny once asked him to write a cantata for the opera in honor of the Emperor's fête-day. He replied that it was not for him to open his mouth while such great poets as Hugo and Lamartine declined to sing. For long-indeed he may have done so to the last-M. Dumas signed himself fils out of veneration for his father. Latterly he complained that he was growing old and disinclined to work. Moreover, he said 'I have arrived now at an age when the best thing a man can do is to hold his tongue.' And now the tongue is silent forever." "S. D.," writing from Paris for The Evening Post (New York), under date of December 4, gives the alleged cause of Dumas's aversion to the priesthood: "In France the clergy, who are so constantly rebuffed, are only too willing to bury religiously any baptized person who has not It expressly refused their offices. Against this Alexandre Dumas had taken his precautions, to the scandal of his many Conservative friends and the sudden comfort of the Radicals whom he detested. 'No priests, no soldiers, no speeches!' is the exact formula of the directions he left behind for his funeral. This has in consequence been reduced to the bare ceremony of a crowd of notabilities assembling to see him put under ground in the cemetery of Montmartre. The reason of this unexpected wish of the great writer, who had been a close and appreciative friend of Catholics like Louis Veuillot and Bishop Dupanloup, has leaked out. was due to the officious bungling of a celebrated pulpit orator whom over-confident friends had schemed to introduce to the keen-minded dramatist. The occasion was the union of one of Dumas's daughters with a family given to religion. The zealous ecclesiastic improved the occasion to speak out his mind knowingly about the many reserves which Catholics would have to make as to the moral speculations with which the younger Dumas filled his works. The latter perhaps prided himself on being the moral teacher of young France, in which he was certainly unlike his father, who cared only for a good story and was a priest-hater and active carbonaro. Besides, the unseasonable discourse might have broken off a marriage to which he held, by arousing undue susceptibilities on the part of the other family. As it was, when the indiscreet speaker wound up by assuring him, 'I have read all your works,' Dumas answered bruskly, 'No one would say so!' and abruptly withdrew. From that time, so it is said, he cherished the fixed idea to keep clear in life and in death of all clerical neighborhood." The same writer says that a distrust more evident in his pieces, of whatever period of his life, is that of woman in general. We quote again: "Meilhac has just been making public some very Frenchy stories of conversations on this subject between Dumas and Maupassant, to whom the elder writer had taken a great fancy. In giving his young friend the freedom of his table, he added: 'You will always find at my house passable champagne and people no stupider than elsewhere-and no women!' The foundation of this unnatural sentiment is said to have been laid in his youth by a heartless deception, after which he swore that he would not be caught again. Yet he was flattered and followed by the sex all the days of his life, as if wishing to prove the truth of his words, 'Woman is an unreasonable being, a subaltern, and evil-doer!'" CHARACTER AND INFLUENCE OF CARLYLE. FOR `OR years to come, the character of Carlyle and the influence of his work will be food and inspiration for essayists who, like himself, regard the great questions of life from the standpoint of moralists. "In a time like our own," says Mr. William Roscoe Thayer in the December Forum, “when literature on either side of the Atlantic lacks original energy; when the best minds are busy with criticism rather than with creation; when ephemeral story-tellers and spineless disciples of culture pass for masters, and sincere but uninspired scholars have our respect but move us not, we shall do well to contemplate anew the man who by his personality and his books has nobly swayed two generations of the English-speaking race, and who, as the years recede, looms more and more certainly as the foremost modern British man of letters." Mr. Thayer asserts that among the masters of British prose Carlyle holds a position similar to that of Michel Angelo among the masters of painting. "Power-elemental, titanic, rushing forth from an inexhaustible moral nature, yet guided by art-is the quality in both which startles our wonder.” And he says that sufficient time has now elapsed for us to perceive that "Carlyle belongs to that thrice-winnowed class of literary primates whom posterity crowns." Mr. Thayer takes an ample inventory of Carlyle's substance, through all of which we need not follow him, contenting ourselves with a few comprehensive thoughts, such as the following: "He had, as the discerning Goethe said of him, unborrowed principles of conviction, by which he tested the world. He felt the compulsion of a great message entrusted to him. There rings "Here, then, we have the corner-stone of Carlyle's influence. Referring to the fearlessness with which Carlyle attacked the optimism based on "material prosperity," which brags of the enormous commercial expansion made possible by the invention of machinery, and boasts of the rapid increase in population from decade to decade, Mr. Thayer proceeds: "These facts, he insisted, are not of themselves evidences of progress. Your inventions procure greater comfort, a more exuberant luxury: but do comfort and luxury necessarily build up character?—do they not rather unbuild it? Are your newly bred millions of bodies more than bodies? Take a census of souls, has their number increased? Tho your steam-horse carries you fifty miles an hour, have you thereby become more virtuous? Tho the lightning bears your messages, have you gained bravery? Of old, your aristocracy were soldiers: is the brewer who rises from his vats to the House of Lords-is any other man man owing his promotion to the tradesman's skill in heaping wealth-more worshipful than they? Let us not say that this amazing industrial expansion may not conduce to the uplifting of character; but let us strenuously affirm that it is of itself no indication of moral progress, and that, if it fail to be accompanied by a corresponding spiritual growth, it will surely lead society by the Byzantine high road to effeminacy, exhaustion, and death. 'A different gospel, this, from that which Carlyle's great rival, Macaulay, was preaching-Macaulay, who lauded the inventor of a useful machine above all philosophers! Different from the optimism-which gages by bulk-of the newspapers and the political haranguers! Different, because true! Yet, tho it sounded harsh, it stirred consciences-which smug flatterings and gratulations can never do; and it gave a tremendous impetus to that movement which has come to overshadow all others, the movement to reconstruct society on a basis not of privilege, not of bare legality, but of mutual obligations." Observing that History, like every other branch of intellectual activity, has responded to the doctrines of Evolution, and after commenting at length on that line, Mr. Thayer comes to the consideration of the kind of history that Carlyle constructed, and says: "Indubitably, history of the highest kind may be written from the evolutionist's standpoint, but as yet works of the lower variety predominate. Naturally, therefore, in a time when the development of institutions chiefly commands attention, Carlyle, who magnifies individuals, will be neglected. But in reality, histories of both kinds are needed, to supplement each other. institutions originate and exist in the activities of individuals. The hero, the great man, makes concrete and human what would otherwise be abstract. Environment does not wholly explain him. It is easy to show wherein he resembles his fellows; that difference from them which constitutes his peculiar, original gift is the real mystery, which the study of resemblances can not solve. Men will cease to be men when personality shall lose its power over them. Accepting, therefore, the inherent antagonism in the two points of view-antagonism which implies parity and not the necessary extinction of one by the other-we can judge Carlyle fairly. Among historians he excels in vividness. Perhaps more than any other who has attempted to chronicle the past, he has visualized the past. The men he describes are not lay figures, 1 S with wooden frames and sawdust vitals, to be called Frenchmen or Germans or Englishmen according as a different costume is draped upon them; but human beings, each swayed by his individual passions, striving and sinning, and incessantly alive. They are actors in a real drama: such as they are, Carlyle has seen them: such as he has seen, he depicts them. To go back to Carlyle from one of the 'scientific historians' is like passing from a museum of mummies out into the throng of living men." Mr. Thayer closes his essay as follows: "We will indulge in no vain prophecies as to Carlyle's probable rank with posterity. That a man's influence shall be permanent depends first on his having grasped elemental facts in human nature, and next on his having given them an enduring form. Systems struggle into existence, mature, and pass away, but the needs of the individual remain. Tho we were to wake up tomorrow in Utopia, the next day Utopia would have vanished, unless we ourselves had been miraculously transformed. To teach the individual soul the way of purification; to make it a worthy citizen of Eternity which laps it around; to kindle its conscience; to fortify it with courage; to humanize it with sympathy; to make it true-this has been Carlyle's mission, performed with all the vigor of a spirit 'in earnest with the universe,' and with intellectual gifts most various, most powerful, most rare. It will be strange if, in time to come, souls with these needs, which are perpetual, lose contact with him. But, whatever befall in the future, Carlyle's past is secure. He has influenced the élite of two generations: men as different as Tyndall and Ruskin, as Mill and Tennyson, as Browning and Arnold and Meredith, have felt the infusion of his moral force." ANOTHER PLEA FOR MORALITY IN FICTION. IN N compliance with Mr. Grant Allen's recent announcement that hereafter his novels, in addition to the title proper, would bear the generic or family name of "A Hill-Top Novel," which he said was to signify "a protest in favor of purity," his latest story, "The British Barbarians," so duly appeared. The promised generic name is there, but The Spectator charges that the implied good morality is deplorably wanting. This writer, having read this new novel "with sorrow and amazement," feels constrained by a sense of truth and of duty to the public to say quite plainly that there is in it no protest in favor of purity, but a skit advocating free-love, suicide, adultery, and all sorts of offenses 'against law, morality, religion, and common sense. In a scathing criticism following this charge, The Spectator proposes to extend Mr. Allen's "Hill-Top" mark to "the whole class of kindred compositions," such as "The Heavenly Twins," "Daughters of Danäus," "Jude the Obscure," and "all other strange books which are written with a purpose, tho not a purpose that can be called moral, unless 'moral' and 'immoral' are henceforth to be accounted synonymous terms." Mr. Hardy is then arraigned, who "always seems to be saying" that man is largely animal and woman is animal altogether, unless she is nothing at allthat is to say, what the newest faction in fiction calls sexless. Women do not elevate men, they lower them; and love and marriage cripple men's careers and complete their ruin." And after some ungloved handling of Mr. Hardy, the writer proceeds: 'But after all, the really interesting question is not whether the novel with a purpose generally is, or ever can be, a great work of art, but whether it is possible for a novel to be a work of art and not have a sound moral at the heart of it. And this consideration brings us to a part of our subject about which it is not altogether easy, tho it is particularly necessary, to be explicit. All who believe in a divine Creator of the universe, must of necessity believe that the moral and spiritual laws of the universe are expressed in whole or in part in every episode of man's life. But yet there is no more characteristic sign of our times than the reluctance of those who believe in God to take their stand boldly upon their faith, and all that it involves, in questions of art. The cultivated believer in God feels himself bound (by what unwritten law of courtesy we know not) to defer to the agnostic dogmatist the moment he sets his foot within the capri cious circle drawn by the art student and the art critic. And yet what more preposterous theory could be advanced than that which assumes that while it is a sin against art to paint incorrectly phenomena which are the outcome of the physical laws made by the Creator of the universe, it is no sin against art to treat arbitrarily the things of conduct and happiness which depend upon the spiritual and moral laws of the same Creator? To see life in its truth and its entirety is to see all these laws in their operation; and to paint life as it is shaped by them for good or ill is the obvious duty of the artist, especially if he aims at realism. But because the moral tale done to order has often succeeded in being dismally inartistic, the idea has got abroad— even among religious people-that there is some deep-seated and ineradicable hostility between the beauty and truth of art, and the beauty and truth of morality: and that to hold and confess the opposite opinion is to announce one's self a fubsy Philistine. Whereas the truth of the matter really is that these inartistic moral tales are inartistic only because the writers of them lack some or all of the gifts that made an artist," It is possible, continues the critic, to be very zealous for morality, and yet have no imagination, no insight, and no style. Why,. then, he asks, should we be ashamed to say also that it is quite impossible to write a great poem or a great novel without a clear and true perception of the moral and spiritual laws of God as manifested in the life of the world He has created? We quote again: "Behind and above all the conflicting opinions formed upon any human transaction, there is a truth known absolutely to God, if to none else; and that it is this truth that the artist has to seenot necessarily to understand all the history of it—but to see, and having seen, to celebrate it in painting, poetry, or song, so that thousands who only dimly suspected the truth before shall feel sure of it henceforth, and sure also that there is beauty in the truth. Being, as we are, certain that there is a moral in everything that happens, and that the moral is of God's meaning, we can not pretend to think it immaterial whether the artist believes or does not believe in God. And yet, remembering that three of the most convincing presentiments of the inspiring force and beauty of Christian character to which the literature of the last thirty years has given shape-Dinah in 'Adam Bede,' Turgenief's 'Lisa,' and the Roman soldier in Mr. Pater's 'Marius'-have proceeded from writers who avowed themselves agnostic; remembering these things, we are glad to recognize that even intellectual unbelief, so long as it does not paralyze the instincts of modesty, reverence, and tender human affection, need not close the avenues of the spirit to that kind of revelation which makes the testimony of the artist a thing independent of, tho not antagonistic to, the testimony of the moralist.' Drawbacks to American Art and Culture.-In a recent conversation with the editor of The Bookman, Mr. Hamilton Mabie expressed these sentiments: "The significance and place of art have never been at all adequately understood in this country. Very few people, even among cultivated Americans, have grasped the real idea of art, so far have we grown away from it; and I think it is going to take a long time to make us understand that we shall not be finally successful on this continent until we have given expression to our life in some form of art. So long as we feel that the supreme fruit of true living is incessant activity, we shall not reach true living itself. As the deepest and most vital religious life shrinks most from professional forms, follows most closely natural channels, and separates itself instinctively from the use of the religious patois, so the richest and fullest national life is evidenced by depth of feeling, by breadth of personal resource, and by ripeness of spirit rather than by incessant activity. I think that one of the greatest hindrances to the spread of real culture in this country is the spirit in which the great mass of newspapers are now edited. So many newspapers deal so exclusively with the mere news side of things, and with the purely gossipy aspect of the news side, that they never come in contact with general principles, and never even suggest to their readers the sense of the relative values of events. In many of our newspapers there is no sense of proportion; the ephemeral, the vulgar, and the inane almost exclude a discussion or presentation of news that really contributes to the thought and growth of the reader. The habit of newspaper reading in this country stands in the way of the real culture of the great majority of men and women who have formed it." |