considerable a part of the whole that Boileau ventures the suggestion that the novel was written to furnish a fit setting for them (Dialogue des héros du roman, Préface), though they are neither original in subject nor polished in execution, so that there is little reason to dwell upon them. It is far more likely that the motive of the "Astrée" was to react against the coarseness which had overtaken French manners under the vert galant reign of Henry IV. Urfé's book, taken as a whole, and with some discordant notes, is a praise of all the social virtues, which are rewarded with the same precision that deals out condemnation to vice. It is not improbable that this kindly sermonizing of the aristocratic reformer assisted the popularity of the “Astrée” as much as it was assisted by it. It is certain that it had an immense influence in this direction. The first Parisian literary salon, the Hotel Rambouillet, of such cardinal importance in the evolution of French society and literature throughout the century, both for good and for ill, and at the zenith of its influence from 1624 to 1648, seems to have had its origin in a desire to approximate, so far as might be, to the aristocratic republic of the "Astrée." It has even been said, and by Frenchmen, that bon ton in French society dates from the "Astrée." Nor can one wonder at its influence when one considers the evidences of its astounding popularity. It came at the right moment. It met a longfelt and universal want, and the salt of its humor saved it from the penalty of its sentimentality. Even Sorel, the declared enemy of the whole pastoral school, whose "Berger Extravagant" is a sort of " Joseph Andrews" to Urfé's "Pamela; or Virtue Rewarded," pronounced it "an exquisite work." Bishops and saints, Camus and Francis de Sales, echoed the sentiments of the author of "Francion." The Bishop of Avranches, the scholarly Huet, writer of a treatise on the origin of novels, says in a letter to the novelist Mademoiselle de Scudéry: "This work was received by the public with infinite applause, and especially by those who were distinguished by the polish and beauty of their minds. I was almost a child when I first read it, and I was so

affected by it that I used to avoid seeing or opening it, fearing that I should be forced to read it again by the pleasure that I foresaw from it, as by a sort of enchantment." Later he yielded to the sweet temptation and read the novel "repeatedly aloud to his sister." Lafontaine, who surely was a man of good and unconventional taste, says: "When I was a boy I read his novel, and I read it still as a graybeard." Strangest of all is to find the crusty old Marquis de Larochefoucauld and the sprightly Fontanelle rejoicing in the love affairs of Céladon. The book was not only the "breviary of courtiers," but, if we may credit the satirists, was read and studied by all who had social aspirations. Sorel makes the hero of his "Berger Extravagant" belong to "a company of boys and girls who took all the names from the book of 'Astrée,' so that their talk was a perpetual pastoral," and the Javotte of Furetière's "Roman Bourgeois" cannot lay it down until she reads herself almost sick over its five thousand pages. Among such people it seems for two generations to have been a sort of book of reference on questions of deportment and breeding, and it was imitated on the popular stage in pastorals as countless as they were contemptible.

There is no end to the evidences that might be gathered of the universal and continued popularity of this work whose memory is now but a legendary mockery. It may suffice to state that twenty-nine German princes and princesses, with nineteen lords and ladies of high nobility, addressed to the author of "Astrée" in 1624 a petition, reciting that they had constituted themselves an Académie des vrais amants, had taken to themselves names from his work, and begged him for its speedy completion. This surely makes all other evidence superfluous.

The "Astrée" is a novel in a sense that no work preced

ing it is. It showed as no preceding work of fiction had done the possibilities of a new genre, which, however, neither Urfé nor his successors clearly defined. Indeed, the whole century is taken up with an effort, or rather with manifold efforts, to find out what the novel is, what limita

tions set it off from the drama and from history, from the epic and from satire. Gradually from these efforts there emerges a clear conception of what prose fiction could be and attempt, and what it should leave to other forms of literary art. The first novel that marks this demarcation is "Gil Blas." B. W. WELLS.

CONTEMPORARY BRITISH PAINTING.1

THERE are now in Christian lands only two schools of painting, the English and the French. The former embraces the British Isles; the latter, the rest of the world.

movement.

France has been to the art of the nineteenth century what Italy was to the art of the Renaissance, the center whence almost all light has radiated and the instigator of almost every When she painted in the classic style of David, the world acknowledged David as the supreme master. When Géricault and the Romanticists established their revolt in Paris, the world became romantic. When Millet had depicted the low life of brutal peasants with a power and a poetry that rank him with the greatest masters, the world discovered that peasants were the only things worth painting. When the Impressionists arose, so anxious to paint the atmosphere that they lost sight of the opacity of solid objects, the world turned Impressionist. And her hold upon the domain of art has rather strengthened than decayed as the century has moved onward to its close. Nearly all painters go to Paris to study, learning in the Parisian ateliers the French. method; and those who are not able to go there study at home under masters who have received a Parisian education. Hence the whole world paints in the French manner. Whether you go to New York or to Moscow, to Stockholm or Madrid, to Berlin or Rome, you see only French painting. Subjects and costumes may differ, but the handling and the method are the same. Every picture is such as some French artist might have produced had he taken up his abode in the foreign land whence it comes.

But when you go to the England of the last half of the nineteenth century you seem to be transported to another

"English Contemporary Art," by Robert de la Sizeranne, translated by H. M. Poynter. New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company. "British Contemporary Artists," by Cosmo Monkhouse. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.

planet. The stout little isle that yielded not one jot to the great Napoleon when all the world was crouching at his feet has remained in the domain of art equally independent of French influence. English pictures are rare in the galleries of the Continent, but when you do see one you have no difficulty in recognizing its origin at a glance. The difference is not easily defined, but it is most distinctly felt.

For a long time the French ignored English painting entirely, except that they borrowed from Constable his method of treating landscape and improved upon his teaching. It was accepted as a truism in the Parisian ateliers that the English had no art, and the world at large reëchoed the dictum with the same docility with which it adopted the French technic. But the Paris Exposition of 1889 was a rude. awakening. England was too important a nation to be ignored, and a generous allotment was made to her, with the expectation that she would fill it with dogs, cats, and crying babies, in her old-fashioned genre style; but to their amazement it was filled to overflowing with great masterpieces which were a revelation of grace and beauty and replete with deep significance. Then for the first time the great revolution that had taken place since 1850 burst upon them, and they saw that England not only had an art worthy to compete with their own, but one which in many respects was its superior. High medals were conferred on English pictures, and since then the attitude of French critics toward English art has been one of respectful, though distrustful, consideration.

As we have said, you can distinguish the English pictures from all others at a glance, but it is not so easy to indicate the difference in words. There is a certain family resemblance in their style, but there is no school whose members differ more widely from one another. That marked individual independence so characteristic of the Englishman is apparent in his art. In what respects, then, do the English artists of the last fifty years differ from those of the rest of the world?

In the first place, their pictures always mean something.