changed, is changing fast in almost all departments of social life. We should not like to say what would happen in England in case of a "Labor War"; but it is evident that with the advent of democracy there has come, as was perhaps inevitable, a marked increase of faith in governmental action and control. Government is now popularly regarded as the instrument of the people's will, and it is coming to be believed that the public authorities may with advantage intervene in social and industrial as well as in political affairs. L'Etat c'est moi is now regarded as a final answer to suggestions as to the evils of State interference. Interference is indeed impossible. There can be no such thing. The State is now the nation organized. State action is simply the action of the people in their corporate capacity. So it is being said. And so it is coming to pass that State activity is desired for its own sake, even when private enterprise and voluntary coöperation might be as effective.

Popular faith in the virtues of free competition is visibly shaken. The cry is loud and general for legislation and regulation. The hours of labor are to be fixed, a minimum wage is to be decreed, work is to be found for the unemployed, old-age pensions are to be provided, railways and all other means of communication are to be "nationalized"; houses, buildingsites, labor, capital, machinery, and all the other instruments of production and exchange are to be "municipalized." Government is to “step in " and "see to" this and that, until, by and by, the people will have everything arranged for them. There will be neither room nor need for personal preference, initiative, or enterprise. And so, if we may presume to tamper with the Laureate's line,

The individul withers and the State is more and more.

In this way free-born Englishmen seem inclined to enslave themselves. In this way do the masses of the population seem disposed to look complacently on the tyranny of majorities for that is what is really meant by State control in social life and industry. That there will be a tremendous reaction when the people once begin to feel the yoke, we do not doubt. Meanwhile they seem disposed, if only for a change, to try the fetters on. That the fetters are forged and fastened by the people who wear them will not make them less oppressive or galling, and we cannot doubt that those who have led the way in forging and fastening them will be the first to feel them and to fling them off.

We have abundant sympathy with the toiling millions of our people, and we firmly believe in the possibility of raising and bettering their position. Their aspirations after more wholesome and more helpful surroundings we have always welcomed and fostered. This threatened regress into servitude, however, with its inevitable, if but temporary, lapse into mediocrity and penury, we cannot contemplate without the deepest apprehension and Freedom, industry, economy, association, partnership, coöperation of a voluntary kind in all its forms, these are the watchwords of progress and the only stepping-stones to true prosperity. Restriction and compulsion, save when called for by the law of liberty, are certain harbingers and instruments of national stagnation and decay.

concern.

ARE BUSINESS PROFITS TOO LARGE?
J. B. MANN.

Popular Science Monthly, New York, November. HERE are four essentials to any successful businesscapital, labor, skill, and opportunity. The first three of these must be paid, and our question relates to the porportion of compensation.

To begin with, there are nine competitors for the rewards of labor to one for the rewards of both capital and skill in management. By the law of competition, which cannot be evaded in the long run, this seems to put labor at a great disadvantage, but it is a disadvantage imposed by nature, and so need not be discussed. If we had thirty dollars to divide as the result of an enterprise, and should say that each of the three essentials

should receive a third of the emolument, we would shoot wide of the mark. In that case, one individual (representing the capital and skill) would get twenty dollars, and nine would get only one dollar and eleven cents apiece. That would be absurd; although the poor man, looking upon the owner of a hundred millions, imagines that the division has been about that way.

He is wrong, however. There is no business of recognized legitimacy that pays labor only a third. There is no business that gives to capital and skill combined even ten dollars out of thirty. Labor gets more than two-thirds of most undertakings. No man, employing ten hands at wages of three dollars per day each, expects to make five dollars per day; but that sum would give him three dollars for his time, and two dollars for his skill and use of capital. This is a case where the employer possesses ability to manage the ten men as laborers only, and for such a man five dollars per day for the necessary study, anxiety, and responsibility cannot be deemed out of proportion. When the man of fifty looks over the careers of his boy associates, he probably finds that only one in ten has reached a handsome competence by his own exertions, and that one because he was energetic, faithful, competent, and thorough from the start. If, for a time, he served under another, he was careful to do a little more than was expected of him, and do it well. This won from his employer confidence and a desire to assist him. Soon his employer lends him capital or makes him a partner, and then his fortune is assured. Why did not the other nine boys do the same? Obviously because there was but one chance in ten of that kind.

Had Commodore Vanderbilt been content with the salary of a steamboat captain, he would never have developed into a great business man and railroad manager. The prospect of great emolument brought into exercise great powers, so that he cheapened transportation in an astonishing degree and yet made money to an astonishing amount. The people who saved four or five dollars in a round trip between Boston and New York, and the people who got their barrel of flour twenty-five cents cheaper because he ran a railway to Chicago, enjoyed the sensation at the time, but when they saw his fortune could not refrain from tears to think of the merciless robbery they suffered at his hands. Vanderbilt succeeded, not because he was a robber, but because he gave better terms to the people who had to travel and had to eat bread. His inducements were such that he got the business. If he and others of the same kind of enterprise had not appeared, we should still be going to Buffalo on canal boats, or journeying in stage coaches. The money-makers have taken pay not out of labor, but out of the increased production and savings which their efforts have secured.

A. T. Stewart did the business of a hundred small shopmen, but the people profited by getting goods at less cost. They enriched him to the tune of thirty millions, clean cash. This is a great fact, but it does not show great robbery. It may show the very opposite. The very class of persons that censure. Stewart for crushing out so many small dealers are the same that say the great curse of society is the number of middlemen it has to carry. Stewart allured customers to his shops by giving better bargains. Something was saved when they patronized him.

Stewart was in business for about forty years, and for many years sold twenty millions' worth of goods per year. Had he sold but fifteen millions per year at five per cent. profit, and invested that with his usual sagacity, he would have been worth more than thirty millions at the end of his forty years. That he had but thirty millions proves that his profit did not average over five per cent. The margin for labor to gain from is, therefore, in the neighborhood of five per cent,, because Stewart proved that the ordinary man cannot part with more than that and continue in business. In other words, business stops when the margin goes down much below that rate.

MANNERS, MORALS, AND FEMALE EMANCIPATION.

BEING A FAMILIAR LETTER FROM A WOMAN OF QUALITY.

DEPEN

Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, October. EPEND upon it, said I to myself, when manners and morals deteriorate in a nation that has once risen to a certain stage of civility, it is we of the softer sex who are most to blame. It is we of the softer sex who are much the most to blame. If I were to express that opinion to my maid, Mrs. Pepper, she would be quite shocked at the aspersion on our common womanhood, yet no maid in any family is a more constant reader of her society journal, and nowhere does she find anything to the contrary in that unflinching mirror of the time's corruptions. In fact all those authorities make it clear, both from their own wonderful collection of news from the boudoir, the barrack, and the bassinett, and their improving comments on what they are told, that society is depraved by nothing so much as the excessive luxury and extravagant freedoms of the ladies in it. Precisely the same thing is implied in the information sent over to the Americans by some amongst ourselves; so that you see there is not the least originality in my remarks. But if there is no novelty in saying that when manners and morals deteriorate in a civilized country, it is Woman that should hang för it, you must admit that there is a deal of sadness in the observation, and that it is one that we ought to be very much ashamed of.

I dare say there was a time, my dear Charlotte, when women were not answerable for any of the wickedness that goes on in the world. We were too low to be responsible; too much in the hands of the sex which we are still accustomed to call brutes, poor things! But then came the Age of Chivalry, then arose the Troubadours-poets all heart, scarf, and guitar, and Woman was advanced to the place of honor, and sat at the custom-house of homage. Now you know what we are. You know that we are naturally gifted with such qualities that, once placed in our right position, it is our own wicked and willful fault if we do not maintain and improve it. Of course, it was our business, as acknowledgedly the more angelic sex of the two, to take watch and ward over the morals and manners of the world about us; and it is only by sweetening both, my dear, that we female folk prosper. And, I think, there cannot be much doubt that it was done. At any rate we know this: civilization has somehow played into our hands by putting into them by far the greatest share in the cultivation of manners and morals.

It is all very well to shake your head; I will give you a wellknown and most familiar example of what I mean and then you will say that I am right. Is it true or not, that every woman has a look at command which confounds Impudence in a moment, and turns the most confident advance into a hangdog retreat? Hasn't it that instantaneous effect, although the look is not even addressed to the offender, but seems intended as a lesson in rectitude to the lady's own nose? But what do I say? Isn't it very well known that the impudence of the very sapeur does not venture on the beginning of advance where there are signs that the look may be held in reserve? To all those questions you answer yes; and now I go on to say that just as it is with the worst attractions, so it is with the minor offenses against social manners and morals. Of course it needn't be published from the house-tops, but in nine cases out of ten, my dear, these offenses are permitted, encouraged, or suppressed as women please.

Of course, there is the question how far it is true that the morals and manners of Mayfair are going to the dogs. Were I asked, I should first answer by declaring that I don't believe it, and next I should inquire what is meant by Mayfair.

But oh, my dear! Don't I know that all the time I swaggered in this way I should be aware that there is a great deal of truth in what is so unkindly taught to the Americans? All that is wrong about it is the representation of the most ruf

fianly part of society as if it were all; or as if the riff-raff portion of it was overrunning our drawing-rooms in every direction, and corrupting the whole monde with their fascinating freedom and go. We know that this is not the case. But yet

I do not make my little excursion to town in the season without seeing that there is an epidemic of looseness, of vulgarity, of boulevard smartness, amongst people who ought to know better, and do. In speech, in gait, in coming into a room, in going out of a room, in what is said, in what is listened to, and more particularly, my dear Charlotte, in what you might call the abolition of atmosphere between men and women, there is a great change, and it has been going on for years.

Of course, if you have a “society" four times as large in '92 as in '42, you will hear of more smart people who are daringly improper now than were heard of then; but the rest is grossly exaggerated. It is possible that Society morals are a trifle worse than they were when you were in short frocks, my dear, but not much, I feel sure. It is simply our lot to sit upon the pendulum just as it is going down and about to make a backward kick-up.

But then, you will say, what about the freedom of manners that now prevail, the freedom of speech, the smiling of matrons at dinner-table scandals, which, when I was a girl, were only heard at tea-tables ungraced (I wish I had the courage to say, unregulated!) by gentlemen, and perhaps in smoking-rooms before ladies carried their cigarette cases into them. Well that is just the point I have been coming to all this while. Trust my penetration, and believe me that all this looseness of speech and manners is no evidence of loose conduct or licentions indulgence. The two generally go together, but the peculiarity of this age is that they do not. The immorality of the "smarter" classes is much more bark than bite, and we must cast about for another explanation of the vulgarity, the looseness, the degradation of manners which are so very obvious to the middle-aged. Well, is it far to seek? For my part I don't think so. What do you say to the Emancipation of Woman craze as an explanation?

If I am not much mistaken, we have in this determination of women to square shoulders with men, the secret of the degradation of manners in good society. The men couldn't have done it, my dear, if they had tried, unless they had been enthusiastically backed by us. Of course men are, like ourselves, weak creatures, and they would have been ashamed rot to meet our jolliness and chumminess with a handsome amount of reciprocation.

THE

PHILANTHROPY AND MORALITY.

FATHER JAMES O. S. HUNTINGTON. International Journal of Ethics, Philadelphia, October. 'HERE is a widely diffused notion nowadays that in our relations with our fellow-men we have simply to wish them well and to do them good, and this is a perfectly simple and easy matter. The popular demand is "practical" beneficence as opposed to a charity based on theory. It is assumed that what sets men at odds is the fruitless and age-long controversy about "ultimate truths and abstract propositions' that if men would only devote themselves to doing good they would all fall into line and the sufferings of the world would be removed. The service of humanity is set forward as a substitute for adherence to creeds, and dogmas, and formularies of devotion, or the development of ethical systems. And yet it. is worth while to ask whether there is not an error involved in setting the practical" against the theoretical, in assuming: that men will continue to act unselfishly when the grounds for self-subdual and unselfishness have been forgotten or denied', in believing that a morality that rests on no moral sanction, and is guided by no light but its own, can be a factor in social progress.

Philanthropy would not be philanthropy if it did not make for human progress, and the progress of human society is the

fulfillment of the moral law; consequently, a philanthropy that does not contribute to morality is false to its name.

One corollary to the position taken can be stated at once. It is this, that when a fundamental social injustice has come to be known and recognized, any efforts towards correcting special evils, that are not contributive to the movement against the underlying wrong, tend to become nugatory and abortive. If that principle were to be generally accepted a gauge would be furnished by which we could in some measure test the worth of any philanthropic movement in the direction of social reform.

The very existence of many of our charitable associations, in spite of the checks imposed by organization, are absolutely baneful and degrading. It keeps before the minds of the poor the dream of a life of dependence on others' bounty. It fosters the preaching of that travesty of the gospel" alms-giving to the rich, and resignation to the poor"; it invests poverty with a kind of sentimental and sickly romance, and it makes many people, who might otherwise be fulfilling the great and sacred law of self-respecting labor, regard their work as a mere misfortune, and do their stent with grudging spirit, one eye on their task, the other squinting aside to catch sight of some chance to imitate the higher classes and live on other people.

But," it may be objected, “in this sweeping condemnation of philanthropic endeavor to assuage the sufferings of the poor, you must certainly make an exception in favor of the many institutions which, in various ways, are ministering to those who, as children or old people or invalids, cannot possibly take care of themselves." But I have to deal with the question whether these various institutions, regarded as dispensers of charity, are a blessing or a curse. And I ask, is it well that the family-taking that word as including near relations as much as father, mother, and children-is it well that the family which most of us probably regard as a necessary factor in social progress, should be relieved of the support of its dependent members? Is it to the advancement of morality that the poor, the toilers, the ignorant, those who must be taught by life rather than books, should be released from the sense of responsibility for their own children, or the children of their near kindred, of the maintenance of their own fathers and mothers, or their grandparents, of tenderness to the sick and feeble and imbecile among their kith and kin? Can we complacently look forward to a time when only able-bodied individuals among the working classes shall be at large, all the children, sick, and aged being grouped in institutions, called by a kind of refinement of cruelty and contempt of the divine appointment of the household, "homes"? The hope in a man's heart of having a home whose roof may shelter father and mother when they are old, and where his children may grow up sheltered from the dangers of the world, has been a potent factor in the progress of humanity. No philanthropy that weakens this motive, no philanthropy that does not aim at all costs to preserve and strengthen it, can contribute to social progress.

Of course, the most important side of this question is the moral effect of philanthropic institutions on children. "The child is father of the man," and it is in childhood that theories of life are formed. The number of children trained in institutions is something considerable. The number given for New York State last year was twenty-nine thousand. Annually three or four thousand of these children are drafted out into the community, and in due course marry, and society must necessarily show something of the effects of their training. The question is, then, how far does this training make for morality? What is the effect upon the children of the deep révérence and obsequious servility with which the authorities of the asylum greet the advent and seek the favor of the trustees, patrons, and patronesses of the home, when they arrive with all the evidences of weaith about them? In the minds of the many, to generate a feeling of dependence and unreasoning submissiveness to anybody who wears good clothes and rides in a carriage—a dispiriting acquiescence in

life-long inferiority to the rich—this in the minds of many; in a few of the keener and more intelligent, the result is an attitude of silent but bitter antagonism—a warped and distorted view of society under the influence of which they will grow up to look upon the rich as their natural enemies and oppressors. In the orphanage, the children all seem obedient and well, but there is no foundation of moral or physical strength, no preparation for the battle of life; they are like conservatory plants which wither in the open exposure to sun and storm. The first class become the helpless victims of circumstances. The girls are easily led astray, not necessarily from inherent badness, but from a long habit of unthinking surrender to anyone who seems above them. They are unequal to the struggle; and after a few years they find their way back to the institution life again-only this time it is the reformatory, the penitentiary, or the workhouse. Poor, helpless sheep, fleeced and shivering, it is like getting into the fold again. Once more they can throw off all responsibility for food or lodging or raiment.

The race run by the second class, the bolder spirits, is usually shorter still. Life is for them a desperate struggle for reprisals upon a community which has robbed their childhood of a home. In one respect both classes are alike; the sense of corporate life, of oneness with humanity, of fellowship, is wanting; and so the very foundation and groundwork of morality has not been laid.

Most of us have not quite forgotten our “Oliver Twist." And it is the calm conclusion of many modern philanthropists that any home, not actually vicious, is a better place for a child to grow up in than the most perfectly appointed orphan asylum.

A

THE SOCIAL PROBLEM.

M. DE MARCERE.

La Nouvelle Revue, Paris, October 1.

FTER Ravachol and the propaganda by deeds, we have Carmaux, Saint-Ouen, and the minutes of the Socialist Congresses, with their watchwords. This time, however, it has not been all talking. At Carmaux, for example, they have come dangerously near the crime at Watrin, where the director of the mine was threatened with death; and in the Pasde-Calais, personal violence and acts of pillage have been the accompaniment of the expulsion of Belgian workmen by French. All the same-is it because after the dynamite explosions anything appears mild?-there have been discussions in words and theories which, apparently, dominate in the recent reappearance of Socialism.

Without other information than that given by the newsgatherers and collected by the press, it would be rash to pass judgment on the character of the different incidents and on the conduct of the public authorities. Such is not my design. Still less do I desire, à propos of these various facts, to give an opinion ex cathedra about that which, under a name as obscure in meaning as it is widespread, is called Socialism. It is impossible, however, not to give earnest attention to all the manifestations of ideas, of changes, of renovation, of revolt even, which in our day pass current under this generic name. Do these ideas seriously threaten the society of which we are members? Can they be, and ought they to be, defended? Are they just or false? Do they make part of a doctrine which can be acceptable to free men ? Are they anything more than symptoms of a malady which a better social condition will cause to disappear, just like a disease which has not yet g firm hold on a healthy body still robust? Whether you wish it or not, these questions will spring up in the mind. And who is the man in our day who, either in domestic relatio ns, or in the fields, or in the workshops, and still more in deliberative bodies, does not find himself sometimes confronted with a difficulty of this kind and forced to find a solution of it?

got a

In presence of the malady various kinds of doctors give their

opinions. Some, timid by nature, predict frightful results from existing social disturbances, talk of abysses, cataclysms, and the total destruction of society. Others, again, consider these disturbances as of little moment—as manifestations of silliness, about which it is needless to disturb yourself. This talk of the people who are afraid of everything, and those who are afraid of nothing, of the timid and the confident, has little value in the face of the reality.

The reality is that human societies are not the terrestrial paradise; that those who are badly off in such societies strive to be better off; and that they have to aid each other. Whether the difference in conditions proceeds from inequality of strength or faculties, whether it is the result of natural fatality, of vices, or of passions, matters little. That difference begets suffering and a rebellious spirit. If it be true that human misery has existed and will exist through all time, it is equally true that the obligation to help it, to lessen it, to soften it is as perpetual. To discover these truths it was not necessary to wait for the advent of the apostles of Socialism.

What is peculiar to our time, however, and what renders a grave matter the claims of those who suffer, is that they make these claims in the name of a right, which, according to them, is legitimate and results from the very nature of things and from the constitution of society itself. Society, they think, has given them rights equal to those of their fellow-citizens; it ought then to guarantee them the enjoyment of those rights, with all the consequences which that phrase imports-that is, equality of goods and the common enjoyment of all social advantages. And when they speak of these advantages, they give free rein to their imagination.

The Socialists-they make no mystery about it-propose two ways of forcing open the door which leads to the happy Eldorado in which this equality of goods and enjoyment of all social advantages will prevail. One way is violence, a method attended with many inconveniences. The other way, much more accessible, is universal suffrage.

Those who support and direct the strike at Carmaux know very well that it is absurd to pretend to impose on a manufacturing company a negligent and insubordinate workman, on the pretext that this workman has been appointed to a municipal office. The more absurd the pretense, however, the more firmly they adhere to it. For if they can succeed in making this pretense prevail, that will be the most striking consecration of the inviolability, of the infallibitity, of the absolute sovereignty, of universal suffrage and of its decisions. And this is a doctrine which can be carried out to great lengths.

It is this doctrine which the theorists of the revolt strive to make an article of faith. Consider what that means! It means to persuade the people that it is sovereign, that it can effect everything by universal suffrage, that, being the majority, it has the power, that it can make that power permanent. It means that there will glisten before its eyes perspectives of happiness, of wealth, of enjoyment without work, of social iniquities avenged, and that the people will be convinced that it has on its side right and justice. It means, at the same time, to inflame the lust of the people and fill its soul with all the ardor of a faith, almost religious, in a superior right, of which it will be the source, the instrument, the regulator, and the beneficiary.

Where, then, is the key to this problem? It is to be found in respect for individual rights. This is the guarantee which at any expense the law ought to give, and which it is the duty of government to assure. What are individual rights? They are the rights which distinguish humanity from other living beings, which cause humanity to organize itself in societies, to improve, to make progress, and to advance more and more in the path of civilization. What is, then, this respect for individual rights save respect for our personality, respect for others, protection guaranteed to the most sacred possessions of man, his property, his thought, his conscience, his family, his quality of citizen, and his part in the advantages which that quality confers? All these can be comprised in a single word, and that word is liberty.

EDUCATION, LITERATURE, ART.

SOCIOLOGY IN THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF WOMEN.

THER

SAMUEL W. DIKE.

Atlantic Monthly, Boston, November.

HERE is need, in our colleges for women or elsewhere, of a new class of studies touching sociology and those specific subjects that are more intimately related to the life of women and their work in society. Studies of this kind should be greatly increased; and until special institutions for this purpose exist (should they be found necessary, as have medical and normal schools for women) we must look to the colleges to supply the need as best they may. This would be only repeating the old practice of having the colleges supplement their general work with professional training until the separate schools of theology, law, and medicine could be founded. So far as highly educated women have special occupations in life, just so far they demand special training for their work. Either the college work for young women must be, like that for young men, only a preparation for the special school, or else its own curriculum must include the special studies. Those who say that we best educate liberally by resort to special study, must support this contention regarding the need of sociological education for women. Everything points to the call for the development of such particular educational courses as young women may need, both as being women rather than mere individuals, and also with reference to their relations to the problems and employments of educated women who are to be social leaders and guides in the philanthropic work of society, and I would give special emphasis to the sciences that touch the home, and the social life more closely connected therewith.

That colleges for men do not educate in special ways affords no fair excuse for neglecting these subjects. The time has come for advance to higher ground. The problem is to put the education young women are now getting into its true relation to their future and the future of the higher education. It needs to do more to equip the girl for what I may call the great profession of being a woman, in her social trinity of wife, mother, and member of society. Can that, as a rule, be a truly liberal education of woman which ignores or minimizes this part of her culture? Is there not something worthy of serious attention in that shrinking from the collegiate education of their daughters which many thoughtful parents now feel? Are those young men entirely in the wrong who are reluctant to have their sisters educated in precisely the same studies with themselves, and who are hardly willing to marry the average college-bred woman?

To accomplish these ends requires some slight surrender of studies. Several of the subjects can find their place in additional lectures in the present department of ethics and political economy. One course, running through a year or halfyear, three or four hours a week, would accomplish much. This should include an elementary study of sociology and the social sciences; for I would distinguish between the two. Enough should be done in sociology to give the outlines of the structure, forms, and principles of human society in its present form and historical development. This should make a sociological survey of the social sciences, which depend upon sociology for their best interpretation, but are distinct from it. A few weeks of this sort of work might properly precede the study of a dependent science, like economics or politics, in order to give the student a better perspective in these latter studies. The immediate loss of time to the other studies would be amply made up by the larger grasp and more rapid advance in the special sciences.

Later, sociology should be again taken up and pursued further. At least one course on the family should be required. The family in its present and past constitution and relations; its

relations to the individual, to man, to woman, and to children; its great functions in religion, industry, education, and the State, is of the greatest practical importance. We should include the homestead, going over the entire range of domestic science. Beyond these lies the great field in which sociology and the social sciences lead into ethics, politics, law, literature, and history. Some of this is now covered briefly in the present department'; but there would be a gain by taking some of the work into distinct courses, so that sociology and the family could be more distinctly seen and better understood.

Such study will open new occupations to woman and help her to enter them. She will see the old, familiar social order with new eyes. Her thought will be quickened, her heart warmed, and her purpose formed by it. She will become inventive, fertile in resources, and wise in plans. She will find new interest in the old, common round of domestic duties. There will be that gain in the relations of husband and wife which comes from the fellowship of educated minds whose subjects of study have not been wholly the same.

TA

FINLAND'S POET.

OLA HANSON.

Samtiden, Bergen, No. 7, II.

AVASTSTJERNA'S main work is "Barndomsvenner." It is a description of the higher Swedish-Finnish bourgeosie of to-day. It is the work of a poet who is both a Finn and a man of the world.

Benjamin Thomén, the hero of the book, is the son of a wealthy landowner and circuit-justice. His youth is spent under idyllic surroundings upon the parental estate, only interrupted by school-lessons half of the year. He is a courageous, warni-hearted and willful boy and develops as a "sport"; but is a coward in the presence of his father and the friend of his youth, Sigrid Walborg. At last he goes to the university at Helsingfors and begins a new life. Tavaststjerna's delineation of student life at Helsingfors Swedish-Finnish university is the best in all Scandinavian literature. The Swedish-Finnish student is a unique creature, and Benjamin Thomén is a type of the race.

Benjamin Thomén sings, and to be able to take the high C is, in the land of Bellmann and Christina Nillson, enough to settle a man's fate. It means no time for study, but plenty of concerts, etc. It means that one must live high, stay at the university for years, and one day wake up to find that the hairs have grown gray and thin, while debts have increased enormously. This brings us to a peculiar phase of student life in Sweden and Finland: the chapter on business. These two countries are the poorest in the world, yet nowhere do the students live so high as there. The poor student working for examination lives as if he already had attained the coveted office and its emoluments. A peculiar financial system has developed out of these ideas. It has become a custom for bankers to open an account with students. When two or three students endorse a note, the banks will honor it, and pay the son of the muse several thousand crowns, though none of the endorsers may own a penny; the bank believes in their honesty, and trusts to payment at some future time when the borrower or the endorsers shall have come into a public office.

In Sweden the system developed in all its natural consequences, and a few years ago brought disaster and suicide in numerous cases. This feature of college life has been made the motive for a story, 'Forpligtelser," by Tavaststjerna. To-day most of Sweden's office-holders have all they can do, to pay off interests and amortizations. For a few years of revelry they and their families now pay dearly. The system expresses the Swede's "go-as-you-please" idea and his romantic recklessness. Benjamin Thomén lives such a life.

He

sings, enjoys himself, engages himself to Sigrid Walborg, but passes no examinations. At last he gives up the idea of study to become a 66 famous" singer. He breaks his engagement to Sigrid, and goes abroad to be developed. But soon his Paris teacher tells him that his voice is gone forever. Without means, without prospects, but proud and stiff-necked, he returns to Finland. His friends procure him a small position on a railroad, and manage to get some order in his accounts. Among these friends is Sigrid, though he does not know it. Sadness and despair settle upon him, Sigrid dies, and Benjamin is a wreck. The author's physiognomy is easily recognized behind that of Benjamin Thomén. In all Taveststjerna's productivity he is himself personally present, so objectively that it is almost impossible to separate him from the product. He is one of those good, impressionable, and all-around personalities, whose heart-blood courses through all their work. It is this characteristic which has so soon made him popular. In reading one of Tavaststjerna's books, one feels as though he was sitting in familiar conversation with a good friend, who tells his story in easy conversational style.

Tavaststjerna is a man of many resources, but does not know how to use them. He is like a man full of the strength of a powerful frame, and well-developed muscles, and who, accustomed to breathe the free and fresh air, suddenly finds himself locked up in a badly ventilated hut. His wants and capacities are immense, but the narrowness of the hut cramps, and the bad air enervates him. Tavaststjerna begins with a spring song in the woods, with a joyful student's song of the first of May, but he always ends in melancholy tones, and becomes moody, heavy, and winds up in such heartrending gloom as only a Finn can feel and portray. Summing him up, he is full of noble and unpolluted human feelings, yet the mark he will leave upon his age and country is as transient as the golden line a falling star draws upon Finland's clear sky in a winter night.

In exteriors, Tavaststjerna corresponds to our impressions of him. He is small, but strongly built; his face has the energetic expression of his race, and his beard is blonde; his eyes are dark, hide an impenetrable gloomy depth, and reveal mystical dreams. An author has said that Tavaststjerna is "the most melancholy poet in the earth's most melancholy country." It is true. His melancholy is the spirit of Finland.

represents Russian art-progress for the last fifty years, showing how it liberated itself from Byzantium, how it rose out of industrial mechanism, from lifeless "obrasie" to free creations. Among religious painters, I then heard for the first time the name of Alexander Ivanoff.

When I first saw his "Christ Before the People," and saw the painting alongside of Semigradis's brilliant pictures from old Rome, Rjäjun's realism, Harlamoff's seriousness, and Makovski's master-works, I thought it looked like something childish, something long ago passed in the history of painting, something outside Russian art. His colors particularly seemed to be defective and too contrasted, and some figures looked as if they were anatomical models with all the muscles laid bare. These studies reminded me of the Swedish painter, Karl Plageman, in whose study one found figures destitute of flesh, children of the Overbeck pre-Raphaelism, found in such an abundance in the Villa Massini and Casa Bartholdi in Rome. 1 remarked this to Professor Botkin, the well-known collector, friend of art, and good and kind Russian. Botkin spoke with great enthusiasm about the painter, called