the presumption that what they so ardently yearned for was an evil and what they dreaded was a boon.

On one point both parties cordially agree-that, however doubtful the ultimate aims, however disastrous the immediate results of the Papal policy, the motives that inspire it are among the highest and noblest that move the minds of men. But what strikes one more that all his other mental characteristics is the Pope's absolute singleness of purpose. He works and lives for one idea, and that idea is that the conditions of the present age render the temporal power of the Pope absolutely indispensable to the welfare of the Church. Pius IX. was a man with many of man's weaknesses. Leo XIII., on the contrary, has divested himself of all these human wrappings, and everything is inspired or regulated by the ever-present consciousness of his duties as Pope.

The firm conviction that the welfare of the Catholic Church is indissolubly bound up with the temporal sovereignty of her supreme visible hand is, therefore, the key-note of the Pope's policy. All the compromises he has made and all the sacrifices he has imposed upon his spiritual children since his election, were dictated by the recognized necessity of translating that abstract opinion into a concrete political fact. It was this that inspired his repeated advances to Germany, that supplied the motive of his crusade against Austria-Hungary; that warrants what our enemies term the " benevolent neutrality' observed in the struggle between Greek Orthodoxy and Catholicism in Russia, and that explains the inestimable service which the Holy Father has lately rendered to the French Republic, born in the same year as the United Kingdom of Italy.

[The anonymous author of this paper proceeds to cite at length the instances in which Pope Leo XIII. with the view of furthering his policy has interfered with the political rights of his spiritual children in Ireland and Germany and France, has failed to protect them or to vigorously protest against Russian oppression in Poland, and has neglected and snubbed them in what the author calls the " veritable Eldorado of Catholicism, for the match of which we might search the history of the Middle Ages in vain"-Austria-Hungary.]

These, then, are some of our reasons for viewing with intellectual distrust the well-meant efforts of the Pope to recover his lost inheritance. They explain why we wince and groan on beholding appearances which lend color to the accusations of his enemies who represent him as a mere diplomatist who courts the strong, despises the weak, makes tools of the complaisant, and abandons the unlucky. Nor is it of appearances only that we complain. We dare not trust ourselves to judge his policy by its visible and tangible fruits.

Is it not excusable, therefore, if, on counting the cost, we ask ourselves if we are justified in making such enormous sacrifices in pursuit of what may prove in the end a mirage in the desert, if not a will-o'-the-wisp hovering over a Serbonian bog?

IT

RUSSIA, INDIA, AND AFGHANISTAN.
Quarterly Review, London, October.

T is a remarkable coincidence that with the accession to office of a Gladstonian Ministry the Central Asian question should again develop one of its acute crises. The last of these critical attacks was in 1885, when the Ministry was moribund, and the present one occurs contemporaneously with the Gladstonian resurrection. While the foreign policy of England was in Lord Salisbury's hands, the Central Asian question only fitfully attracted public attention. The hatchet unearthed at Panjdeh in March, 1885, was buried-until wanted againat the St. Petersburg Conference, in the spring of 1887; and in February, 1888, the last finishing touches were given to the work of the Joint Boundary Commission. Twice only during the six years of Lord Salisbury's Ministry has Central Asia attracted public attention to some purpose; once when Ayub Khan escaped from Teheran, only, however, to fail in his pro

jected coup d'etat, and yield himself to General MacLean, at Meshed; and again in 1891, when Colonel Yanoff forcibly expelled the representatives of Great Britain and China from the Pamirs.

Five of the leading Asiatic Powers-England, Russia, China, Afghanistan, and Persia-have already been drawn into the vortex of the Central Asian imbroglio; and the chain of ambitions and interests known as the Central Asian question reacts upon Europe, where it takes the title of the Eastern question. In the latter form it is of momentous import to all the great Powers of Europe, to the Balkan Principalities, and above all to Turkey, whose dominions and interests are more Asiatic than European. This last Empire is the theatre on which the Eastern or Central Asian question must in a great measure be worked out. The destiny of Constantinople and the Dardanelles is of vital importance. Egypt, the bone of contention between France and England, controls the Suez Canal and the western shore of the Red Sea, and so the principal trade route of the day connecting the East and the West. The Red Sea, which were it not an international maritime thoroughfare would be essentially Turkish water, is as a matter of fact, the object of the keenest competition among the great Powers of Europe, because the command of it means so much both for war and for commerce. The latest aspirant to a footing on its west coast is Russia, manœuvring under the veil of a fervent zeal for the religious welfare of the Abyssinian Christians. Syria commands the entire east coast of the Mediterranean, and the access to all possible railway routes from that coast to Turkish Arabia, Persia, the Persian Gulf, and India. If the Suez Canal and the Red Sea fail, England still has the Cape and the Canadian-Pacific routes to fall back upon. But she is bound to keep the keenest eye on the projects of Russia towards Asia Minor and Turkish Arabia.

If we are alert and watchful, we need not be apprehensive of the result of our struggle with Russia for the mastery in Asia. InFrance, Russia has an ally able to render her valuable assistance. The fortification of Biserta by the French as a naval port is a fresh danger to our supremacy in the Mediterranean, and to our route to India via the Suez Canal. And yet, while France is strengthening in Tunis its power for offense, Radical politicians are anxious that British troops should evacuate Egypt. An ex-Foreign Minister of France, M. Barthélemy de St. Hilaire, recently stated that England's action in Egypt dur. ing the last ten years constituted a vested interest, and that evacuation was impossible, almost at the same moment that MM. Ribot, de Freycinet, and de Giers were supposed to be settling in conference at Aix-les-bains the action to be taken by France and Russia regarding Egypt. With China it is most important that England should be on perfectly good terms. The two nations have a common antagonist in Russia, and their wisest plan is to resist her. As regards the Amir of Afghanistan, we have every confidence that the Government of India will remove or modify all causes of friction, and come to an early understanding with him.

The points that the Government must bear in mind are these: (1) That the security of our Indian frontier must be ensured; (2) That the rights of the Amir of Afghanistan must be safeguarded; (3) That England must secure to herself such a position as will enable her to protect the Amir's possessions on the Upper Oxus from future aggression; (4) That it is our interest to support the Chinese claims; (5) That trade routes between Western China and India must be intact; and (6) That the frontier line must be laid down so fast and firm that there can be no further question of Russian encroachment on Tibet.

It seems difficult to believe that a tract of country such as the Pamirs can lead to a serious rupture between England and Russia. At the same time the action of Colonel Yanoff, the Russian representative (the Czar's reputed disclaimers cannot carry weight), the determined tone of the Russian press, and previous experience of Russian pertinacity, give us every rea son to suppose that Russia will not yield one inch on the Pamirs if she can help it. This would be incompatible with her Indian, Chinese, and Afghan interests. There is, therefore reason to apprehend that the Pamir question may lead to trouble.

SOCIOLOGICAL.

DISASTROUS RESULTS TO GREAT BRITAIN FROM EMIGRATION.

THE

Edinburgh Review, October to January.

HE question of movements of population has two sides. Considered from the point of view of the world it is beyond question, we take it, that the gradual flow of labor and capital to the places in which they find the most remunerative employment is to the advantage of the human race, and helps forward civilization.

The question may be asked, however, how far in this matter the interest of any particular country coincides with the general result, and whether there may not be an antagonism between the two. It may be argued, for instance, that the advantage of a large emigration from Great Britain to the New World is heavily discounted by the loss to this country. The question is by no means easy of solution. It is clear, first of all, that the wealth and prosperity of a country depend largely on the proportion of its population engaged in production. This has been stated by economists in a great variety of ways, and is commonly expressed by saying that the best friends to their country are those who save and not those who spend. A country will advance in wealth in proportion as consumption is limited to those who take part in production. Further, under such conditions wealth will be most equally distributed, and the working classes will be best off. This is seen practically in the great irregularity of employment from which those suffer who supply the articles of luxurious consumption; and it may be safely added, that all such consumption tends to increase the hours of labor and to kee down the standard of living among the poo.

That consumption should be regular and normal, and should. be confined (in Professor Marshall's phrase) to the "requisites of a refined and cultured life," is the desire of all economists, and, we may add, of all rational philanthropists. It is the opposite state of things-a large class, producing nothing, and consuming aimless luxuries, on the one side, and a working class ministering to their consumption, on the other side, which is a reign of economic decay. Now, what is the effect of emigration on these two elements of our population? Does it reduce the number of mere consumers-of those who live wholly on the industry of others—the flâneur and tlie tramp -in a word, the unemployed of every degree? If so, it is unquestionably a great benefit to the country. The answer, however, must be given in the negative. It is not to this class that a new country offers any inducement to cross the sea; the prospect of comfort and ease, as the reward of hard work, is put before them in vain. They have no ambition to better themselves. In nine cases out of ten it is useless to help a man to emigrate unless he has saved at least half the passagemoney himself. Nor do the new countries invite such persons as we have just described to settle. Those which take active steps to attract colonists, by assisted passages or vigorous canvassing, look for a very different type of man. They state plainly and specifically that they want settlers who have already proved their capacity as producers in their own country. The United States has gone further, and declines to receive for the future either criminals or paupers, in short, any of those who are euphemistically said to “leave their country for their country's good."

So, then, it is the valuable element of our population which is ready to go, and which the colonies are ready to receive; and we are face to face with the fact that every year sees a heavy drain on our most industrious workers, whilst the lazy, the aimless, and the vicious are left to increase and multiply. Such a prospect cannot but be seriously alarming. The strain of competition, it is clear, is likely soon to become more severe than ever in the industrial world, and how are we to take a

successful part in it if, for a series of years, we have been gradually losing our best energy and strength? The question is one which may well occupy the attention of legislators. Professor Thorold Rogers is probably right when he says that prohibition is not to be seriously thought of; it is rather the motive of emigrants which must be scanned if a remedy is to be found. The motive which acts most strongly on an emigrant is the desire to better himself. Is it not possible that legislation might do more to bring the realization of that desire within his reach at home? The life of a laborer, whether in the country or in a town, is wanting in attraction, and hence a roving spirit among the laboring class. Countrymen move into towns largely because they find'the country dull; artisans emigrate because they think the conditions of life elsewhere more attractive than they are at home. Can nothing be done to equalize the two, and so retain within our border that most useful, nay indispensable, part of the community which now leaves our shoes in such large numbers to seek elsewhere a happiness and prosperity which, rightly or wrongly, it conceives to be denied it here?

THE RUIN OF ENGLISH AGRICULTURE. P. ANDERSON GRAHAM.

SOON

National Review, London, October.

YOON there will be no more need of us," an English farmer said to me the other day; "the country is serving us with a notice to quit." Virtually he contended that the English: people are making up their minds to look after their workshops: to let the country develop into a mere congeries of factories, and buy the food from abroad. Possibly a few dairy-men and market-gardeners and keepers of poultry might be retained in the neighborhood of large towns, but there is no longer any work for growers of corn and breeders of stock.. Before the beginning of the present cereal year the English farmer had received many warnings against continuing to cultivate wheat; and when the price dropped to twenty-nine shillings a quarter, the lowest recorded at that season of the year, and actually twelve shillings less than it was exactly twelve months before, the grower of wheat might very well be excused for deeming his vocation gone.

Bread never was cheaper than now, but the price of the quartern loaf does not fluctuate with the price of grain. Living is cheap, but the food is less wholesome. The brown unsifted product of the English mills, has given place to American white flour with a consequent depreciation of stamina among the consumers. It is scarcely possible to find brown bread in the villages; even in London it is rarely seen except in the wealthier districts. The poor people want their bread snow white in color, and millers are biased against English wheat, because it will not produce bread of this hue; that again tells against the farmer. Many practical, long-headed men, whom I have consulted, think that to leave grain duty-free, and impose a tax on flour, would almost solve the diffculty, It would not increase the price of bread. The middleman's share of the plunder is already too large.

It is not the failure of wheat alone that has ripened the inevitable crisis in agriculture. For many years the shrewder farmers have been steadily converting their wheat fields into pasture. The conversion has gone on at the rate of 100,000 acres annually, until our wheat area has shrunk to 2,300,000 acres. But here, too, such a fall has occurred in prices that the live stock of Great Britain is worth to-day somewhere between ten and twenty million pounds less than it was twelve months ago.

This state of things is not due to high rent. It is due to our buying annually £160,000,000 worth of foreign produce. Whatever be the state of our own crops the quantity goes on increasing. Unfortunately, too, in bad years there is no compensation in enhanced prices. The professional writers on agriculture have been trying hard to put the best face they

could on affairs, but one of the most successful and far-sighted agriculturists in England has over and over again declared to me during the last twelve months, that we have entered upon a period of agricultural distress, compared with which all past depressions are trivial.

Unless we are going to leave England to the shop and factory and let agriculture go to ruin, in expectation that we shall always be able to buy food from abroad, it will be necessary to find and apply our remedy immediately. And if the only solution of the question is some sort of Protection it is difficult to see why Mr. Gladstone's government should be restrained by any mim-mouthed prudery from taking the subject in hand. It is a long time since the Radicals repudiated the principles of Messrs. Bright and Cobden. The Newcastle programme, which is composed of Protectionist items, would be sensibly rounded off by a proposal to impose a duty on foreign flour. That is a rapidly increasing import, yet to check it would never affect the price of bread perceptibly while wheat was admitted duty free. One thing is certain that, unless some firm and effective steps be taken, English land is bound to pass out of cultivation.

THE

FACTORS IN PRODUCING CRIME.

THE REVEREND W. D. MORRISON.
Mind, London, October to January.

HE social causes of crime are numerous and complex. It is probable that the most important of these social causes at the present time is the increasing concentration of population, arising mainly out of the centralization of industry. In all nations where the towns are increasing at the expense of the country, crime has a distinct tendency to grow rapidly. In large centres of population the physical and industrial conditions of life are in a highly defective state, and a large degenerate class springs up, most of which is unsuited for industrial occupations. Many members of this class resort to a career of crime.

It was at one time very usual to assume that poverty is the principal source of crime; but in recent years considerable differences of opinion have arisen upon this point. Garofalo maintains that the well-to-do, in proportion to their numbers, are just as criminally disposed as the poor and needy; and it must be admitted that both he and Ferri are able to produce many striking facts and arguments in support of this contention. According to Dr. Földes, the Austro-Hungarian criminal statistics show that the well-to-do perpetrate fewer thefts than the poorer classes; but, on the other hand, they are responsible for quite as many murders, and, in proportion to their numbers, they commit a higher percentage of offenses of a serious character. Mr. Roland Falkner has shown that in the United States the native-born citizen, notwithstanding all his comforts and advantages, is more addicted to crime than the poor emigrant from Europe. M. Joly assures us that in France there is no intimate relation between poverty and crime. I have pointed out elsewhere that in England the prison population is highest when work is most plentiful, and lowest when work is hardest to find. The twelfth report of the Scotch Prison Commissioners also reveals the fact that the prison population was greatest when pauperism was lowest. In the face of these facts it is impossible to contend that crime is merely an economic question, and that the criminal is simply a product of wretched material conditions.

It was formerly a prevalent idea that ignorance is a very important factor in the production of cripfe; but almost all investigators in the department of criminal statistics are hostile to this belief. In France, Guerry, Yoernes, Haussonville; in Italy, Lombroso, Garofalo, Ferri; in Belgium and Germany, Quetelet, Von Oettingen, Valentini, Starcke, are all more or less emphatically of opinion that instruction in reading and writing has little or no effect in elevating the character,

and diminishing the annual volume of crime. The most that is admitted by the majority of competent inquirers is that education sometimes determines the form which crime will assume; the educated criminal, they maintain, seeks to attain his ends by fraud rather than violence. Dr. Bosco is of opinion that the spread of education has had the effect of diminishing the percentage of homicides. Yet even these small concessions to the work of education are the subject of much dispute. The only kind of education which possesses undoubted value from a moral point of view is the education of the character; and, as Tarde has shown, this form of education is much more the product of imitation than of precept. On the whole subject of the relations between education and conduct, Goethe goes to the root of the matter when he says that "everything is pernicious which liberalizes the mind, but gives us no mastery over ourselves."

It is also coming to be recognized that the effect of drink on crime has been greatly exaggerated. It is a remarkable fact that the most drunken nations in Europe are also the very nations that are least addicted to crimes of blood, and if sobriety is to be accounted as the chief preservative against criminality, we ought to find a very low percentage of offenses amongst the temperate communities in the south of Europe. As a matter of fact, it is these communities which present the blackest criminal records, and although international statistics are not capable of being used for purposes of exact comparison, they at least possess the merit of making it perfectly plain that sober communities are just as criminally disposed as communities which contain a large percentage of drunkards.

The relations between nationality and crime have been exhaustively dealt with by Colajanni, who arrives at the conclusion that the varying degrees of criminality among different peoples are not to be ascribed to racial differences. Quetelet, on the other hand, considers nationality one of the most essential factors in the production of crime. The question is one which is rather difficult to decide, inasmuch as the criminal characteristics of a community may be attributed with equal plausibility either to nationality or to social and economic conditions. It is, however, certain that different nations have different temperaments, and that the highest percentage of offenses against the person is committed by hot-blooded people. The existence of this fact would seem to show that nationality is not without some influence on the propensity to crime, but the precise extent of this influence it is of course impossible to determine.

THE BERLIN "PENNEN" AND "SCHLAFBURSCHEN.” PAUL LINDENBERG.

Folkebladet, Christiania, September. [OUSE-RENT is so high in Berlin that very many people

Ho

try to reduce it by letting rooms by the day or night, or for a longer period. Those that hire rooms for the night only are in the lower classes, called "Schlafburschen" and "Schlafmädchen," and are as a rule, the greatest enemies to public morals. Usually they are poor laborers, but as their numbers are thousands, the criminals can easily hide among them. The owners of the cheap lodgings do not care the least who comes so long as he pays the price of the bunk; they do not make regular reports to the police, and often neglect it entirely. For months, or weeks at least, the criminals may thus hide themselves. These night-guests, who pretend to be out of work, are often employed in the houses, receiving a small compensation. The "Schlafburschen "or Schlafmädchen " take their landlady into their confidence, and tell her that they have been fined for a minor offense, and are unable to pay the fine; they ask her protection, and pay for it in work of some kind. They easily escape detection, of course, for who thinks of counting and watching the inmates of a house, when there are hundreds of them. They go and come without causing

any suspicion. In short, they are lost to the police, and may carry on their criminal pursuits.

The "Pennen," low drinking-resorts, are other favorite and comparatively safe hiding-places for criminals. They are very numerous in Berlin. They offer lodgings of the worst kind for the poorest of the poor. The lodger is hidden away in some cellar, a shed, an old stable, and pays 35 Pfennings per night for the sleeping-place. One can readily imagine what it must be. It is a place of filth and vice.

Of other hiding-places are to be mentioned the "Homes for the Poor," though the lodgers here have to show their papers, but as they can steal or borrow such papers, they easily escape detection for a while. Berlin has four "Homes for the Poor," erected and managed by "Evangelischer Verein für kirchliche Zwecke," and criminal processes have shown that the most dangerous fiends to human society have hidden in them.

EDUCATION, LITERATURE, ART.

THE

IT

ESSENTIAL CHARACTERISTIC OF FRENCH
LITERATURE.

FERDINAND BRUNETIERE.
Revue Bleue, Paris, October.

́T is assuredly, it will be said, both a rash and imprudent undertaking, as well as one which at first sight seems quite useless, to propose to express or sum up in a single word the essential characteristic of a literature so extensive, so rich, above all, so diverse, as that of France. What connection, in truth, can be found between a romance of the Round Table, like the Chevalier au lion of Chrétien of Troyes, for example, and the Maitre de Forges, or Doit-on le dire, or some other vaudeville of Eugene Labiche or Edmond Goncourt? In these everything is different, even to the language, and still more, the authors themselves, without speaking of times and places.

This objection can be easily answered. If it be not absolutely, mathematically true that a great literature is the adequate expression of the genius of a race, and the history of that literature the faithful summary of its whole civilization, the opposite of that proposition is, without any manner of doubt, still less true. Whatever difference an interval of six or seven centuries has brought about between a troubadour of the twelfth century and a contemporary writer of vaudevilles, there must, nevertheless, be, of necessity, some relations between them. May I be allowed to add that in Europe, where, during the last thousand years only, so many races have been mingled and founded, it is perhaps more through their literature than anything else that the great historic nationalities have become conscious of themselves? There would be no Italy if there were not something in common between Dante and Alfieri; there would be no Germany if there were not still to-day at the base of everything German something of Luther. Suppose, for instance, the essential character of Italian literature to be that it is what may be called artistic. This characteristic alone distinguishes and separates it immediately from all the great modern literatures,—from the French as well as the German, from the English as well as the Spanish,—in all of which, doubtless, works of art abound, but among them you find very few designed in a regular and artistic form, in which the author, like Ariosto or Tasso, proposes only to follow a poetic caprice or realize a dream of beauty.

Let us take another example, and say that the essential cnaracteristic of Spanish literature is that of being chivalresque. Is it not true that its whole hietory is illuminated by this adjective as by a ray of light? The epics of the Roman cero; the romances in the style of Amadis; the dramas of Calderon and Vega, even modern Spanish productions, have a family likeness, the hereditary feature which bears witness to their common origin, that Castilian punto d'onore, of which the

exaggeration, sometimes sublime and sometimes grotesque, is met with everywhere under manifold forms.

The essential character of French literature it is more difficult to determine. Not that our national literature is more original than any other, or, above all, richer in great works and great men. Nothing would be more impertinent than such a claim. If the Spaniards have no Molière and the English no Voltaire, we, on the other hand, have neither a Cervantes nor a Shakespeare. Yet French literature is beyond question the most abundant or the most voluminous, not to say the most fertile, of modern literatures. Moreover, it is the oldest of these, and we can say, without any vanity, that neither Dante in Italy, nor Chaucer iu England have hesitated to confess what they owe, the one to our troubadours, the other to the anonymous authors of our fabliaux. It is, however, the very qualities of French literature which make it difficult to characterize it by a single word.

Nevertheless, if in defining French literature you take into consideration its qualities of method, and clearness of logic and precision, of elegance and politeness, the enumeration of which has become almost commonplace, and say that our literature is essentially sociable or social, although you might not perhaps express the whole truth, you would not, unless I am much mistaken, be far out of the way. Prose writers and even poets-from Chrétien of Troyes, whom I have just named, to Mr. François Coppée, from Froissart or Commines to the author of the Esprit des lois-hardly anyone in France, has written except with an eye on society, without ever separating the expression of his thought from consideration of the public to whom he addressed himself, without, consequently, even separating the art of writing from the art of pleasing, of persuading, of convincing.

The first and principal object of our great writers, at all times, has been to be read. It was not the universality of the French language which alone procured or prepared the universality of its literarure, but, on the contrary, it was the universality of its literature which has been the cause of the universality of the French language. Civilized Europe has not read Rabelais and Montaigne, Voltaire and Rousseau, because they were French; it has rather studied French, in order to be able to read the Essais of Montaigne and the Contrat social of Rousseau. The consequence is plain enough. If the French language has become clearer and more logical, more precise and more polished than any other, it was not so originally, and had not in itself any peculiar reason for becoming so. All the honor for that belongs to our great writers. It was they who have made it such, and, if they have made it such, it was in order to render it more suitable for the social function which at all times they have assigned to literature.

SHAKESPEARE'S WISE WORDS.
JOHN DENNIS.

Leisure Hour, London, October.

OR creative imagination, for fertility of resources, for tragic

guage, Shakespeare, by general consent, is the supreme poet of the world. This expressive dramatist has scarcely left a word or circumstance connected with the ordinary affairs of life, unfitted with a phrase, and these phrases are familiar in our mouths as household words." Men pass them to and fro in common talk, unmindful perhaps of the source whence they come, but what a loss these would be to the art of conversation if we were suddenly deprived of them! Shakespeare's prodigality of language is almost as wonderful as his flights of imagination, and homely people, undazzled by his poetry, can appreciate his rare sagacity and proverbial wisdom.

Shakespeare, it is true, lived in a coarse age, and sometimes, like Queen Elizabeth herself, used coarse language. There are scenes in his dramas which every faithful lover of the poet must regret, but, compared with the dramatists of the period,

his elevatiou of tone is as remarkable as the superiority of his genius. He kept as Coleridge said, the high road of life and "never rendered that amiable, which religion and reason taught us to detest; he never clothed vice in the garb of virtue; never used what was faulty for a faulty purpose." It has been said that we do not know whether he was a Roman Catholic or a Protestant-and this is true; but this, at least, we do know, that the things which are lovely and of good report, were always treated by Shakespeare with reverence. He shows no liking for the falsehood of extremes," and no inclination, mighty though he was in intellect, to forsake the old paths for new ones. No poet has ever portrayed women of a more radiant and fearless purity; and in looking at the sweet pictures of Perdita and Imogen, of Miranda and Cordelia, of Juliet and Desdemona, of Rosalind and Viola, and of many another fair lady in his wonderful gallery, it is difficult to believe, they are nothing more than the exquisite creations of a consummate artist. And then, how thoroughly manly are Shakespeare's men! and, whether good or bad, how real!

.

To write of Shakespeare's characters is a well-nigh exhaustless theme. I propose here to dwell only on a single phase of Shakespeare's genius, namely on the weight and wisdom of his sayings.

His homely wisdom is as conspicuous as his poetical genius, and the two blend harmoniously. How true, for instance, is the saying that "every one can master a grief but he that has it," and how true, also, is the kindred thought, poetically expressed:

'Tis all men's office to speak patience

To those that wring under the load of sorrow;

But no man's virtue or sufficiency

To be so moral when he shall endure

The like himself.

The distinction between knowing what is right and doing it, is frequently made by Shakespeare, and nowhere is it more sharply defined than in the familiar saying, "It is easier to tell twenty what were good to be done, than to be one of the twenty to follow your own teaching." Polonius's counsel to his son,

Neither a borrower nor a lender be;

For loan oft loses both itself and friend,

And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry,.

could not be expressed more pithily. Indeed, Ophelia's father, despite the garrulity of senile decay, has a heart full of wise

saws.

The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, Grapple them to thy soul with hooks of steel, might well have come from the lips of Lord Bacon.

It has been said of the poet Shelley that he seemed to be destitute of conscience, and there are living writers who assert that conscience and the sense of responsibility are the dreams of superstition. Shakespeare writes in quite another strain, and no poet has depicted more fully the burden and the terrors of guilt. The web of our life is a mingled yarn, good and ill together," but the worst ills that befall a man are those caused by his own sins and follies.

The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices
Make instruments to scourge us,

is the reflection of Edgar in “ King Lear." "O, coward conscience, how dust thou afflict me," cries Richard III., and then :he adds:

My conscience hath a thousand several tongues,
And every tongue brings in a several tale,
And every tale condemns me for a villain.

Take what subject we will, and Shakespeare has something wise and truthful to utter about it. When Cymbeline asks the physician for some poisons that he may try the effect of them

On such creatures as

We count not worth the hanging (but none human).

STRA

ALEXANDER IVANOFF.

JAC. AHRENBERG.

Finsk Tidskrift, Helsingfors, September.

II.

YTRAUSS'S "Life of Jesus" made such an impression upon Ivanoff that he resolved to go to Germany to see Strauss, and get his ideas upon the subject of the painting, "Christ Before the People." He carried out his purpose, but not with any satisfactory result. Strauss spoke in Latin, and Ivanoff in Italian, but they barely understood each other, for, as Ivanoff said, "I do not understand Latin, and Strauss. knows but little of Italian." However, Ivanoff broke with his past, both religiously and aesthetically. He became a revolutionist in ideas. In 1848 he stood in intimate relations to Alexander Herzen. In 1857 he wrote to Herzen, in London, that he would visit him to get new ideas, and to be helped to understand his call. Ivanoff actually managed to go to London to see Herzen. His conflict was with himself, because he thought he could not paint religious pictures, for the reason that he disbelieved in the historical reality of Christianity. The superintendence of the paintings in the St. Isaac Church in St. Petersburg was offered him, but was refused for the same reason. "I could have no respect," he said, "for myself if I worked in the Lord's temple with a doubting soul. Rather will I be poor than touch a brush in that condition." His large painting was about finished at this time. He had made twenty-six sketches of it, and some were thoroughly worked out. Together with drafts for single figures on it, his sketches numbered more than two hundred for that one painting. It was sent to St. Petersburg, and Ivanoff followed later,

Ivanoff's repute preceded him. When he arrived home, he found himself famous. The foundation of this fame he owed to Gogol, who had written from Rome that Ivanoff's painting was a "creation" and unlike anything since the days of Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci. Gogol was at that time in his mystical period and represented Ivanoff as the forerunner of "the Slavic-Russian people's world-renewing mission." As such he praised him before the leaders of the Slavophile's Society, just then started in Moscow. Professor Pogodin also praised Ivanoff. The public began to believe in the painter,