The Nation 1908-10-29: Vol 87 Iss 2261
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The N atio i a tp VOL. LXXXVII—NO. 2261. THURSDAY, OCTOBER 29, 1908. GENERAL LIBRARY; UNIV. OF MICH, Qo PRICE TEN CENTS. 7b % Some of Duffield & Co.’s Fall Books NEW NOVELS Heartbreak Hill: A Comedy-Romance By HERMAN KNICKER- BOCKER VIELE, author of “The Inn of the Silver Moon,” “The Last of the Knickerbockers,” etc. Pictures in color by JOHN RAE. A love story full of the most amusing complications. Adventures of a Nice Young Man an anonymous satirical novel of American Be “Ass.” life. The Sword of Dundee By THEODORA PECK, author of “Hester of the Grants.” Frontispiece in color and pictures by JOHN RAE. A spir- ited novel of the time of “Bonny Prince Charlie.” $1.50. ILLUSTRATED BOOKS Jane Austen’s Works In ten volumes, illustrated from water colors by A. WALLIS MiLus; bibliographical and biographical notes, by R. BRIMLEY JOHNSON. Small crown 8vo, cloth, tinted tops, and colored end-papers. $1.25 net per volume; $12.00 net per set. Now ready: Vols. I. and II. PRIDE AND PREJUDICE _ Vols. III. and IV. SENSE AND SENSIBILITY The Letters of Edward Lear Author of “The Book of Non- sense.” Edited by Lapy STRACHEY. [Illustrated and | aa with facsimiles. $3.50 net; | postage 12c. | “y A Group of Soo ‘Shall | flee trom thus ternble cow? 1 will ait on this stile And continue to smle— Scottish Women By HaRRY GRAHAM, author of “Misrepresentative Men,” etc.; a series of attractive biographical portraits. Large 8vo. $3.50 net; postage 10 cents. DUFFIELD 36WEST 37ST Artists of the Italian Renaissance Stories of the Italian Artists as set forth by Vasari, Ridolfi, Lanzi, and the Chroniclers. Collected and ar- ranged by E. L. Seeley. Fully illustrated in half-tones and colors. $3.00 net; postage 10 cents. UNIFORM WITH THE ABOVE: THE LITTLE FLOWERS OF ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI A newly revised and augmented version of the transla- tion by T. W. ARNOLD. STORIES OF THE ITALIAN ARTISTS FROM VASARI STORIES OF THE FLEMISH ARTISTS STORIES OF THE ENGLISH ARTISTS Lisbon and Cintra With Some Account of Other Cities and Historic Sites in Portugal. By A. C. INCHBOLD. Illustrated in colors by STANLEY INCHBOLD. Royal 8vo. $3.50 net; postage 10 cents. From the Foreland to Penzance The Ports and Harbors of the South Coast. By CLIVE HOLLAND. Illustrated in colors by MAURICE RANDALL. $3.50 net; postage 10 cents. REPRINTS OF WORTH AND INTEREST The New Mediaeval Library Whole brown pigskin, antique clasps. $2.00 net; postage 8 cents. The Babee's Book. The Legend of The Holy Fina. The Book of The Duke of True Lovers Of The Tumbler of Our Lady and Other’ Miracles. The Chatelaine of Vergi. Send for special circular. The Shakespeare Library I) Three Sections: I. The Old Spelling Shakespeare, each play a volume. II. Reprints of books from which Shakespeare took his plots, material, etc. III. Shakes- peare’s England, books throwing light on Shakespeare's Time. Send for special circular. A SPLENDID SHAKESPEARE MEMORIAL The Stratford Town Shakespeare The only complete edition of Shakespeare’s Works ever print- ed in his native town of Strat- ford-on-Avon. In ten volumes, each with a photogravure frontispiece, and containing new and original es- says, notes, etc. Limited to two hundred and fifty sets of which only a few remain, priced at $75.00 net; (originally $50.00). Special circular sent on application. COMPANY NEW YORK
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—e —ae The Nation. [Vol. 87, No. 226r The Nation. A WEEKLY JOURNAL. FOUNDED IN 1865. [Bntered at the New York City Post Office as second-clase mail matter.) The Nation is published and owned by the New York Evening Post Co. Oswald Garrison Villard, President; William J. Pattison, Treasurer; Ham- mond Lamont, Editor; Paul Elmer More, Asso- ciate Editor. Three dollare per year in advance, postpaid, in any part of the United States or Mewico; to Can- ada £3.50, and to foreign countries comprised in the Postal Union $4.00. Addrese THE NATION, Bow 794, New York. Publication Office, 20 Vesey Street. CONTENTS OF THIS NUMBER. THE WEEK ...ccccccccccccccsccccccccecs 397 EDITORIAL ARTICLES: The Close of the Campaign ........-- 399 Hughes as a Practical Man .......++. 401 Corrupt Banking and the Panic...... 401 Small Museums .......sccecscseeeeeee 402 SPECIAL ARTICLES: Charles Eliot Norton ......ssseseeeee 403 Recent French Fiction...........ses0. 406 News for Bibliophiles .........s:ccee0+ 407 CORRESPONDENCE: An Independent for Bryan .......... 407 Mr. Bryan as a Consistent Reformer.. 408 Republican Control of Congress...... 409 Bryan’s Financial Heresies .......... 409 Charles Eliot Norton and Leslie BROMMGR coccccccccccccccccocccccccese 409 A Whistler Memorial ...........+.++. 409 Referring to the Chief Justice ...... 410 “Society Women” .ccccccccccccccccess 410 FOOTED cccccccvccecccccscccesccvccesssese 410 Book REVIEWS: The Victorian Chancellors............ 413 Over Bemerten’s....cccccccscccccscces 415 The Great Miss Driver ............+.. 415 An Incarnation of the Snow.......... 415 Cousin Cinderella .......c..sceedeceee 415 Though Life Us Do Part.............. 415 Value and Distribution .............. 416 The English Factories in India, 1622- BED ehctovasstenciseucsiyeducconeses 416 SCIENCE: es PONEE sa ndiuexcseeesansscecens 417 DRAMA: The Life of Henry Irving ............ 418 Music: Michass GisWGRw cvservecceecccccccoces 420 ART Sir Christopher WreB...cccccccccccce 421 FINANCE: Legends of the Panic .......cceceesess 422 BoOKS OF THE WEEK.......ccccessseess 423 *** Copies of The Nation may be procured in Paris at Brentano's, 17 Avenue de l’Opéra; in London of B. F. Stevens & Brown, Trafalgar Square, Charing Cross. Educational. HILLIPS BROOKS SCHOOL PHILADELPHIA, Pa. A boarding and day school for yd boys. Lo jum asd athletic field adjoin school building. Manual =e a. a. and city advantages combined. For ALFRED C. ARNOLD. Head Master. Teachers’ Agencies. WE FISK TEACHERS’ AGENCIES. vasere 0. Fisx & Co., Pro 4 Ashburton P1., Bosto 56 Fifth 1 Ave., Washington 1 Ave. New York 414 Cen. Bid. Minpeapolis 208 Mich. Ave., \— 1200 Williams AY. id Ht Sa 7 Blk Spe 8 Kat rit Boadio "Bi. keley ‘ane udio Send to any addreas above for Agency Manual. ALBANY TEACHERS’ ——— Supplies schools of all grades competent teachers. Vacancies occurring a A the year. Send for bulletin. HARLAN P. FRENCH, 81 Chapel St.,Albany,N.Y. Just Published HOADLEY'S ELEMENTS OF PHYSICS By George A. Hoadley, ©.E., Sc.D. Professor of Physics, Swarthmore College. $1.20 A concise new text-book, covering the en- trance requirements to every college and university, and presenting the fundamental! principles in a logical order. The topics have been selected with the greatest care, and the treatment is simple and practical. AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY New York Cincinnati Chicago Boston For Students of Sociology WARD— Applied Sociology CARVER—Sociology and Social Progress SUMNER—Folkways KELLER— Colonization SCOTT—Social Education GINN & COMPANY, 29 Beacon St., BOSTON Handy Volume Classics where, 155 a packet = “ist 3 cloth, . per vol.; limp leather, 75c. per vol. (Special prices to schools and colleges.) SEND FOR CATALOGUE. Thomas Y.Crowell &Co., New York BOOKS TO OWN Griggs's MORAL EDUCATION. $1.60 net. Piieiderer’s RELIGION AND HISTORIC FAITHS. $1.50 net. Zueblin’s THE RELIGION OF A DEMOCRAT. $1.00 net. INTERESTING LITERATURE MAILED ON REQUEST. B. W. HUEBSCH, Publisher, 225 Fifth ave., New York “FATE’S A FIDDLER is a notable novel” (says the Bos- ton Transcript) “and reveals in Mr. Edwin George Pinkham imagina- tive powers that promise a bril- tant literary future for him.” Illus. $1.50 postpaid. For sale wherever books are sold, SMALL, MAYNARD 4 COMPANY ~- BOSTON JUST PUBLISHED BY THE CENTURY CO. THE AMERICAN COLLEGE By ABRAHAM FLEXNER A remarkable study in contempo- rary education, citing a recent re- port of President Pritchett of the Carnegie Foundation that the Ameri- can college.shows serious weaknesses, and contending that the college is PEDAGOGICALLY DEFICIENT, and that students emerge “flighty, su- perficial, and immature.” Bettering the secondary school s Mr. Flexner’s solution. 237 pp. The AGE of MENTAL VIRILITY By W. A. NEWMAN DORLAND A reply to Dr. Osler’s famous re- mark, proving that the best work of the world has been done and is being done by men over forty. With very complete and interesting tables con- taining lists of the world’s greatest thinkers and workers, with the dura- tion of their mental activity, etc. 228 pp. $1.00 net; postage 7 cents. THE CENTURY CO. UNION SQUARE, NEW YORK. $1.00 net; postage 7 cents. ~ Pett ~ Pt ~ POPPI ID ll itd — The extensive historical index to -Early Western Travels is a comprehensive analytical survey of the entire contents, treated every possible point of view. ‘‘It ought to find a place in every geographical and historical library.’’— The Atheneum, London. THE ARTHUR .. CLARK CO., Catind, Ohio. ‘ OPI API I ’ . ‘ MONTHLY BULLETIN OF NEw Books FREE £. P. DUTTON & CO., 31 West 23d Street, New York THE CLEVEREST BOOK OF THE YEAR ANNE OF GREEN GABLES By L. M. MONTGOMERY oa “Probably the most and dis- criminating art criticism of this year. THE ART OF | WILLIAM B BLAKE Uniquely y iateeted. —— soo ‘net (carriage ). - New York BOOK S—All out of print books matter on what subject; write me, stating books wanted; I can get you any ik ever when in call stock of” England, and inspect my 50,000 rare books. BAKER'S GREAT BOOKSHOP, John Bright St., Birmingham, England. WHY WORRY ? ton’s new book on the sub; 1 J. B. LIPPINCOTT Co., ‘Philadelphia. EIGHTH IMPRESSION THE LIFE OF ALICE 1] PREEMAN PALMER a remarkable wo- man. he With portraits. and "views.$1. 50 net. Postpaid$1.65 FOREIGN sevocior boon co, “AUGHMITZ] BOOKS srr AUTHORS Send for List o NE PUBLICATIONS. Cassell & Co., 45 East 19th St., N. ¥.-
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‘ eo can ae en. Oct. 29, 1908] The Nation. SEX axp SOCIETY Studies in the Social Psychology of Sex By WILLIAM I. THOMAS Associate Professor of Sociology in the University of Chicago 320 pages, 12mo, cloth; net $1.50, postpaid $1.65 | | sion as “Sex and Society.” There is little profit in recalling the storm of ridicule and ‘abuse that burst forth when the book was first published. Many of those who public- ly denounced the work and its author have | since retracted their first opinion and have acknowledged that it was based on an im- perfect understanding of Professor Thomas’s meaning. That there should have been such a misunderstanding is in itself a sur- prising fact, since the book is written with extraordinary clearness and vividness. Few | books of a strictly scientific character can be read with so much pleasure and profit by the intelligent layman. The book does not “preach,” but sums up in a style of singular power and felicity the position of modern woman and the underlying causes that have made her what she is. It is doubtful if any book published in the | last ten years has created as much discus- | TABLE OF CONTENTS. CHAPTER I Organic Differences in the Sexes. CHAPTER II Sex and Primitive Social Control. CHAPTER III Sex and Social Feeling. CHAPTER IV Sex and Primitive Industry. CHAPTER V | Sex and Primitive Morality. CHAPTER VI The Psychology of Exogamy. | CHAPTER VII The Psychology of Modesty and Clothing. CHAPTER VIII | The Adventitious Character of Woman. CHAPTER IX The Mind of Woman and the Lower Races. | | | | | Appress DEPARTMENT 21. The University of Chicago Press CHICAGO AND NEW YORK
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iv The Nation. [Vol. 87, No. 2261 SOME IMPORTANT NEW PUBLICATIONS THE ART OF THE NETHERLAND GALLERIES A Complete History of Dutch Art. By DAVID C. PREYER A scholarly volume dealing with the best and most characteristic works of the great Dutch masters including Rubens, Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Hals, Memling, etc. Profusely illustrated. Net, $2.00; postage 15c. extra. ARTS AND GRAFTS IN THE MIDDLE AGES By JULIA DeWOLFE ADDISON. Author of “The Art of The National Gallery,” etc. A boek invaluable to that constantly growing class of readers interested in the revival of the arts and crafts as well as to the collector of antiques. Illustrated. Boxed ST. BOTOLPH’S TOWN: An Account of Old Boston in Colonial Days | By MARY CAROLINE CRAWFORD. Author of “Old New England Inns,” etc. Miss Crawford’s new book deals with the romantic history of Old Boston from the time of Blackstone to the outbreak of the American Revolution. Illustrated, cloth, $2.50. IN VIKING LAND: Norway: Its People, Its Fjords and Its Fijelds By W.S. MONROE, Author of “Turkey and the Turks.” Illustrated. Cloth. Boxed, $3.00. Whatever else one may have read on Norway, this will give him a better perspective; and, if one has read nothing this will give him an equipment as though he had read much of other writers. else, OLD EDINBURGH «& rrevertcK w. WATKEYS, M.D. Two volumes. The story of Edinburgh is almost a history of Scotland, for Edinburgh was the stage upon which were produced the most striking scenes of all the dramas of love and war and intrigue played within its borders. Profusely illustrated, $3.00 L. C. PACE & COMPANY, 200 Summer St., BOSTON LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO.’S NEW BOOKS THE ORIGIN OF VERTEBRATES By WALTER H. GASKELL, M.A.,M.D. (Camb.), LL.D. (Edin- The Life of Henry Irving burgh, and McGill University, Montreal), etc. With 160 By AUSTIN BRERETON. With Photogravure, 22 Collo- Illustrations, some of which are colored. 8vo, pp. x—537. type Plates, and 23 other lB in 2 vols. 8vo, pp. $6.00 net. 4014-374. $6.50 net. This book is the outcome of twenty years’ work. In it is put forth a theory of the Origin of Vertebrates, which is based upon two This is the authoritative biography of the great actor-man- fundamental propositions, (1) that the essential factor for the up- ager and the complete story of the Life of Sir Henry Irving. It tells ward evolution of all animals is growth of brain power, (2) that the history of his career from bis birth to his death, and it contains a highest group evolved up to that time and not from a lower group. that material some was supplied to the author by Sir Henry him- self, and much of it is taken from original documents—formerly the —w , fately come inte the poss | AN ELEMENTARY MANUAL OF session of Mr. Brereton, who. in 1883, wrote the first biographical book on Irving, and, in 1903, the History of the Lyceum Theatre, for Brereton was an intimate personal friend of the actor of long stand- Telephony for Students and Operators ing, more especially during the last nine years of his life As a By J. A. FLEMING. MA.. DSc FRS Auth t Th , y y J. A. A., D.Sc. -R.S., uthor of “The quarter of a century, and in many places other than London He ; : : was present in New York, in 1883, when Henry Irving began the merous Diagrams and Illustrations. 8vo, 354 pages. $2.00 first played Becket here The numerous illustrations include a fine, and hitherto unpublished, photograph of Sir Henry Irving, taken Spertis" before "bis. death HISTORICAL and POLITICAL ESSAYS each higher group of animals has arisen from some member of the large amount of material which wil! be entirely new to the public. Of personal property of the actor—which have lately come . RADIO - TELEGRAPHY and Radio- beth of which he had the approval and assistance of Irving Mr eritic, Mr. Brereton witnessed Irving's impersonations for over a Principles of Electric Wave Telegraphy,” etc. With nu- first of his eight tours of America, and again, in 1893, when Irving net By WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY. 8vo. pp. viii THE JOURNAL OF ELIZABETH LADY pe tl on History—The Political Value of His- HOLLAND (1791-1811). Edited by the EARL OF ILCHESTER. With 6 Photograv- ure Portraits. 2 vols. 8vo, pp. xxx—594. $6.00 net. Lady Holland is known to the readers of memoirs and historical biographies of her time as the domineering leader of the Whig cir- cle; as a lady whose social talents and literary accomplishments drew to her house the wits, the politicians, and the cognoscenti of the day She is known as the hostess who dared to give orders to such guests as Macaulay and Sydney Smith, and, what is more, ex- pected and exacted implicit obedience. As yet, however, little has been written of her earlier years, and on these her Journal will throw much light tory—The Empire, its Value and its Growth—Ireland in the Light of History—Formative Inftluences—Carlyle’s Message to His Age — Force—Old-age Pensions. THE LAND OF PROMISE net. Israel Among the Nations—Madame de Sta#l—The Private Corre- spondence of Sir Robert Peel—Edward Henry, Fifteenth Earl of Derby—Henry Reeve, C.B., F.S.A. D.C.L.—Henry Hart Milman, D.D., Dean of St. Paul’s. A Biographical Sketch by his son, Ar- thur ‘Milman, M.A., LL.D. London; 1900—Queen Victoria as a Moral An Account of the Material and Spiritual Unity of America. By RICHARD DE BARY. Crown 8vo, pp. xvi—31l. $1.50 LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO., 91-93 Fifth Avenue, New York ba. Pe) a a NT ETT De ae
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: 7 ; - 7 : ' f The Nation. NEW YORK, THURSDAY, OCTOBER 29, 1908. The Week. There is at least no apathy in elec- tion forecasts. That pleasing industry is one of the few that are not waiting to burst into activity after the election. Party leaders think that their great function in the last week of the cam- paign is to “claim everything.” Chair- man Mack is electing Bryan by majori- ties as large as those which Chairman Hitchcock is assigning to Taft. Slight reflection, however, will convince any student of elections that there is little to fasten to in this hurly-burly of cock- sure and conflicting prophecies. If a manager knew the other side was going to win, he could not be got to admit it. What he says, either publicly or pri- vately, is to be taken with the discount that necessarily goes with his position. In 1892, Chairman Carter was just as sure that Harrison would win, as Chair- man Hitchcock is this year that Taft will. The impending Cleveland land- slide had not entered into the imagina- tion of the Republican managers. We do not say that there will be a Bryan landslide this year—for we frankly con- fess that we have no accurate or satis- factory means of knowing how the elec- tion is going—but we do say that it might be about to occur without the Republican chairman being aware of it. The same thing is true, mutatis mu- tandis, of Chairman Mack. As for the confident newspaper seers, their visions have so often shadowed forth the thing which was not to be, that we wonder at the airy grace with which they again mount the Delphian tripod. All the bawling about certainties does not make the judicious shut their ears to the truth that this has been a Presidential campaign so mixed and peculiar, so dif- ficult to judge, owing to the fact that great sections of the population have given no clear sign of their intention, that prediction is more than usually futile. The President’s latest appeals to the labor vote are a confession of acute apprehension. If there were any real confidence among Republican managers that the labor vote was not actually dis- affected, we should not see these re- newed and rather forced efforts to prove that labor unions have every rea- son to be grateful to Taft, and to hope that he will fulfil all their desires. But some general truths are agreed upon by all men who have had to do in a large way with the employment of la- bor. One is that laboring men do not like to be coddled. More can be got from them by honest brusqueness than by wheedling. And especially will they repel condescending advice about who is and who is not their “friend.” They have a sneaking idea that they know it themselves. Judge Taft has spoken for himself, on the labor issue, and has done it with force, courage, and self- respect. He does not need another to urge his suit. In particular, he does not need such advocates as are now being pressed into his service—for ex- ample, the First Vice-President of the New York Central Railroad. In spite of the strong campaign which Gov. Hughes has made, and the dem- onstration of his continued hold upon the reason and conscience of the State, the air is filled with rumors that he is to be defeated by secret opposition and discreditable party “deals.” The talk is of Taft and Chanler as the combina- tion that is to win in New York. This is based, in part, upon the bitter and persistent antagonism to Hughes of Re- publican local leaders, and the strong suspicion that the party machine will not honestly support him. On the oth- er side, it is broadly hinted that Tam- many will not be loyal to Bryan, and will trade votes for Taft in return for Republican votes for Chanler. Ardent Bryan men are already charging openly that such a dicker is afoot. If so, it would only bear out what prominent Western Republicans told their New York friends from the beginning. They said that there need be no fear of Bryan carrying New York, since a _ bargain would be struck with Tammany, where- by Taft would get the electoral vote and the Governorship be thrown to the Democrats. In other words, a repeti- tion of 1888 was to be seen, when Cleveland lost New York, but Hill was elected Governor. Such a plot, if it ex- ists, involves great danger for Mr. Taft himself. We may be sure that he would not bea party to any such “deal,” for the simple reason that it is nefar- ious. He is, in fact, speaking earnestly in behalf of Hughes, as he is bound to do in gratitude and common honor. But even if he were not impelled by such worthy motives, he would strong- ly urge the election of the Governor, if only as a means of improving his own chances of success. Splitting tickets under our complicated election laws, is a difficult and hazardous process. Vot- ers know from experience how great is the danger of having ballots rejected al- together for improper marking, and the probability is great that, if the idea be got into the heads of Republicans that they are to “knife” Hughes, they will find that voting the straight Demo- cratic ticket is the easiest way. There- fore the movement to defeat Hughes cannot help also being a movement to defeat Taft. If Hughes goes down be- fore subterranean opposition, Taft is only too likely to go down with him. If any one has thought that the op- position to Speaker Cannon is confined to the West, he must have been unde- ceived when on Sunday ministers of various denominations denounced his coming to Philadelphia to speak for Taft. One of the leading Methodist clergymen declared that this step would make votes for Bryan, while Episcopal and Presbyterian ministers joined in saying that his coming was “an insult to the city.” Former Representative W. H. Palmer of Wilkes-Barre has announc- ed that, if elected this year, he will not favor Cannon or any one else who op- poses the Taft-Roosevelt policies. In New Jersey, the fight against two Con- gressmen deemed too friendly with Can- non goes on apace. Out ‘West hardly a week goes by that some Representa- tive is not compelled for his own safety to promise to vote against Can- non. As for that gentleman himself, he is so confident of reélection that he is willing to leave his district and speak for the national ticket in the East. But it is clear that, even if the Re- publicans control the next House by a large majority, there will be a determined effort to choose another Speaker.
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398 The Nation. [Vol. 87, No. 2261 If, in the coming election, the So- cialists cast anything like the 1,000,000 votes which they are now counting upon, we shall hear them positively forecasting a speedy supersession of the old parties, and a capture, ere long, of the entire political machinery of the nation. But that would not in the least follow. The Socialists, like the rest of us, must deal with the great ca- pacity of men and women to change their minds. They could profitably con- sider, for example, the article on “A Slump in French Socialism,” in the last Contemporary, by Laurence Jer- rold. That keen-eyed and well-inform- ed writer points out the severe reac- tion which Socialism in France has lately undergone. A few short years ago Socialism boasted that no public man could withstand it; with com- rades in the Cabinet and an old asso- ciate as Prime Minister, it was about to complete the conquest of the nation; yet it has now fallen into political feebleness. Many causes have contrib- uted to its present low estate. They were alluded to in the speech which Premier Clemenceau made at Var the other day. It was the spirit of violence displayed by Socialists which had arous- ed the sober citizens of France against them. A decline in their strength set in immediately after the _ terrible strikes at Pas-de-Calais. Clemenceau then put down riot by force, with the result, as he said, of bringing “anathe- mas” upon his head, because, in spite of “long companionship” with the So- cialists, he had conceived it to be his first duty to suppress forms of violence which, if they were not suppressed, “would be the end of civilization.”’ With sure touch, M. Clemenceau pointed out the folly of hoping to attain social jus- tice by a “coup de force,” and reminded the “doctors in revolution” of the un- escapable laws of political evolution which were certain to bring their im- practicable schemes to the ground. On the verge of triumph to-day, they would be plunged into the abyss to-morrow. “We must,” said the French Premier, “accept liberty with all of its risks.” One of these is that the people will grow weary, will hesitate, will draw back. Nothing is so certain in politics as its accompanying uncertainty. Hence the mistake of those who would deal with great masses of men as if they were but so many figures in a mathe- matical problem, and not human beings compact of fallible judgment and chang- ing wishes. The Panama merchants who are com- plaining about the importations by United States commissaries must be si- lenced, if the Republican party is to be spared unnecessary embarrassment. By some oversight, it appears, the Federal government arranged, in its treaty with Panama, to give Americans in the canal zone a taste of free trade (well diluted, to be sure, but still genuine). Commis- saries are allowed to import free of duty all “necessaries of life.” Under this provision, Germany is sending thither her toys, Ireland her linens, England her tobacco and leather, to the great indignation of local traffickers. What objection can our officials raise against the plan of the aggrieved to eancel this privilege? At every turn the Isthmian merchant will meet them with a paragraph from some Republi- can campaign book or platform wherein the rightful appetite of infant indus- tries, the sacred standard of living, and other glorious old orthodoxies are set forth. On the other hand, it will be awkward to accept a tariff schedule and thereby double retail prices. There are several thousand intelligent Yankees in the canal zone, many of whom would carry tales home which might plant more thorns in the “standpatter’s” path. Southern lawlessness is something more than the fruit of race prejudice or the antagonism of industrial classes. The murderers who descended the oth- er night upon Walnut Log, Tennessee, were simply squatters, like those who gave Adirondack residents’ trouble some time ago. Their attack was open, bold, and successful because the State, like all its neighbors, has never inspir- ed respect for order by the only pos- sible means—strong police and prompt, unflinching judges. In proposing that the six most sorely afflicted Southern commonwealths establish a rural pa- trol and coéperate in other ways for the extermination of “night-riders,” the Governor of Tennessee goes straight to the heart of the matter. The sooner his people recognize that they are thought semi-civilized, the better for everybody. Canada, by the creation of the famous mounted police, for whom even desperadoes have wholesome re- spect, long ago showed how a sparsely populated, wild territory must be gov- erned. So long as the South, ignoring this example, leaves the maintenance of peace to village constables, white men and black will be tortured, murdered, or ruined by any gang with a grievance or a grudge. Even though the projected conference of Governors meets at once, conditions will probably grow worse be- fore they are better. Cotton growers all over the South are imitating the night-riders of the Kentucky tobacco counties in their effort to keep up the price of their staple. In the face of ugly opposition from influential plant- ers, who now number about 10,000 and may double that figure before their Memphis convention shall have adjourn- ed next month, Governors may find it hard to secure money or men for State constabularies destined to interfere with would-be cotton monopolists. Uniess legislators are enlightened enough to look beyond narrow, greedy class inter- ests, and unless fearless patrols can be found, the civil war which has been raging in Kentucky may spread through the whole cotton belt. The question whether the War De- partment should rule the Philippines was earnestly discussed at Lake Mo honk last week. At present, the real control is in the hands of a brigadier- general at the head of a special bu- reau of insular affairs of the War De- partment. Upon him the Secretaries of War rely, and it depends largely upon him how much information goes out as to actual conditions. To our mind, if we are to be in the colonial business for a long time, there should be a sep- arate department or bureau. If our for- ests or our Indians are worth placing under an independent head, our Fili- pinos are, and they should profit by the change. The Secretary of War is now much over-burdened, charged, as he is, not only with the army, but with our islands, the Panama Canal, river and harbor problems, and other matters. The result is likely to be, as in the case of Mr. Taft, that the army gets only the remnants of the Secretary’s time. But aside from that, military spirit and tradition are not ideally suit- ed to deal with the activities of civil government. Building needless battleships so as to > STMT.
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Oct. 29, 1908] The Nation. 3899 make work for the unemployed, seems to be the latest thing in statesmanship. The Prime Minister of England has ap- parently taken up with it. In his state- ment in the House of Commons, when asked what the government proposed to do in face of the great numbers of men without work, he said that the Admir- alty would spend $12,500,000 on new construction sooner than had _ been planned. And President Roosevelt went over to the same idea in replying, the other day, to a delegation from a steel company, who urged him to do some- thing to give them government con- tracts and keep the men from starving. “Ah,” said the President, “if Congress had not voted down my recommenda- tion of four battleships, every man in your plant would have had employ- ment.” If this principle is to be frank- ly adopted, we may be perfectly sure that its application will not be limited to vessels of war. A battleship is a most unremunerative investment. It cannot be sold, and produces nothing that can be sold. If the money required to build it were put into a government manufactory—say, of hats or blankets— the capital would go on turning itself over and furnishing continual employ- ment. The workers, moreover, would be highly favored in the matter of hours and privileges. Simply as a means of making work for those who cannot eas- ily find it elsewhere, the building of war- ships is a clumsy expedient. It is also very indirect. A good deal of the money paid out goes to wage-earners, but far too much of it goes to assure employers that “reasonable profit” which, accord- ing to our latter-day Republican doc- trine, it is one great end of lawmaking to provide. To Mr. Thayer’s tribute to Professor Norton, which we print elsewhere, we must add a word in our own behalf. Professor Norton. was, as Mr. Thayer notes, one of the chief founders of the Nation—the last survivor among them, in fact, now that President Gilman is also gone. Mr. Godkin was emphatic in asserting the inestimable aid he ren- dered in those early years of trial. “If the paper succeeds,” said Mr. Godkin in one of his letters, “I shall always ascribe it to you”; and after the suc- cess of the Nation was assured, Mr. God- kin declared: “Its existence is largely due to the support and encouragement which you gave me.” This support and encouragement were continued through the editorship of Mr. Garrison down to the present day. For what it was and is the Nation is Professor Norton’s everlasting debtor. In the Canadian general election of Monday, the Liberal government came out better than anybody expected. The prophets all said that Sir Wilfrid Lau- rier would be supported by the country, but that his majority would be cut in half. In the actual result, it is dimin- ished by only three or four seats, at most. Sir Wilfrid has a new lease of power, though it will be for the last time, as he has announced his retire- ment, after this term in office. His pres- ent triumph is more personal than po- litical. A “native” statesman—as against Sir John Macdonald, who was always thought of as essentially “Brit- ish,” and who left that reproach as a legacy to the Conservative party—Sir Wilfrid Laurier has wonderfully kept his hold on the Dominion. But it must be confessed that he has done it, in part, by stealing the political clothes of his opponents. An old free-trader, he has, since coming to power, simply taken over the “national policy” which he used to attack, and extended it. The system of protection and bounties has been even more strongly intrenched at Ottawa under the Liberal government than it was under the Conservative. With it has unhappily come that intru- sion of business into politics, and that mercenary aspect of public affairs, with which protectionists in the United States have made us too familiar. How deeply the enthusiasm for uni- versal peace has stirred Italy, the cere- monies at the recent unveiling of a monument to Alberico Gentili at San- ginesio, the great jurist’s birthplace, made evident. Three centuries have sped since the distinguished author of “De Jure Belli” died at Oxford, where his lectures on international law had made him famous. The predecessor of Grotius, both in point of time and with respect to his dream of a parliament of nations, Gentili is regarded, partic- ularly in his own country, as the first apostle of world-peace. The monument at Sanginesio was the least of the hon- ors paid to the jurist. A better one was the great assemblage of nobility, officials, and university leaders, Italian and foreign, including Thomas Erskine Holland, the venerable successor to Gen- tili at Oxford, whose investigations have proved that the Italian scholar conceived universal peace before Gro- tius. The highest respect, however, was shown in the eulogies of Gentili’s revolutionary idea, and in the spon- taneous applause they called forth from the large throng of spectators and as- sisting dignitaries. It was doubtless without much exaggeration that the speakers, and after them the Italian press, declared that, could a vote have been taken on the day of the unveil- ing, the whole peninsula would have spoken for that great peace of which the child of Sanginesio dreamed. THE CLOSE OF THE CAMPAIGN. The campaign closes with the issues yet undefined and with many thought- ful men still dubious as to the proper way to vote. Both the large parties and all the minor ones are radical. With the general purpose of this radicalism we are in hearty sympathy. The man- agers of many of our railways, Trusts, and other great corporations have been guilty of stock-watering, stock-jobbing, discrimination, oppression, and extor- tion; they have flagrantly defied both the written and the unwritten laws of fair dealing. Their outrages upon the people cry to heaven for redress, and yet that redress must come by orderly process and must be in accord with the fundamental laws of State and nation. We need public service commissions; we need statutes as drastic, perhaps, as the English Companies Act. Nevertheless, we must frame our healing measures in terms that can be enforced; we must not take away the right of appeal to the courts for the protection of vested in- terests; we must not attempt to abolish an old wrong by substituting such a new wrong as discriminating or class legislation. The essential question in regard to the parties, then, is whether their radicalism is sane and practicable. For controlling the Trusts, the Demo- crats propose a scheme, supported by an elaborate argument by Mr. Bryan, which is fantastic and absolutely im- possible. We have already analyzed (see the Nation of September 3, p. 195), this wild proposal to limit the output of any company to 50 per cent. of the amount of its commodity consumed in the Uni-
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400 The Nation. [Vol. 87, No. 2261 ted States. There could be no more striking instance of a vaguely conceiv- ed and impracticable remedy. As to labor have drawn planks that are unsatisfactory. Of the Republican resolution the best that can be said is that it is probably meaning- less. The Democrats have frankly made a higher bid to labor and have succeed- ed in catching Mr. Gompers and his personal followers. About the only im- portant issue on which the Democratic legislation, both parties platform speaks more intelligently and courageously than the Republican is tar- iff reduction. Both parties are for re- vision; but the Republicans want a tar- iff that will not only protect the dear but will also afford the manufacturer a “reasonable profit.” This workingman, is so gross a piece of favoritism, in its sacrifice of the consumer to the greedy producer, who pays the expenses of po- litical campaigns, that were the plat- forms the only thing to consider, one might swallow Bryan’s absurd plan for regulating Trusts and without many qualms vote the Democratic ticket. But other, and in this case more im- portant, elements are to be reckoned into the account. Between the per- sonnel of the parties there is not much to choose. The Republicans are cursed by the prominence of Aldrich, Cannon, They tariff. Close to them stands a group of cor- Payne, Dalzell, and their tribe. are hidebound devotees of the ruptionists, who have been the subservi- No- torious among these creatures is Sena- ent tools of the large corporations. tor Foraker, whom the publication of the Archbold letters has just exposed. But in fairness it must be admitted that these men are not' the whole par- ty. the North there many capable Republicans of high char- Throughout are acter, like Crane and Guild of Massa- and On the other hand, driven from chusetts, Hughes of New York, Burton of Ohio. Bryan has unfortunately the Democratic ranks those steady and conservative men who formed its main strength under Cleveland. In the North to-day, the Democracy is too largely made up of the rag-tag and bob-tail. Some of the older and wiser heads are returning to the ranks, but they have not control of the organiza- In Massachusetts, the late Wil- liam E. Russell is succeeded by men like tion. George Fred Williams. In New York, Murphy, McCarren, Conners, and oth- ers almost as unspeakable are the dominant forces. The brains of the are to be found in the South; but, in that region, the statesmen—if we party may so dignify them—are parochial. Their views are neither long nor broad. They look at all questions in the light of the “race problem.” The result of this demoralization has been a terrible loss of efficiency. If the Republican party has “stood pat” on the tariff, it must also be said that the Democrats, destitute of leadership divided in have unable to able and purpose, organize an intelligent opposition. For such legislation as we have twelve been and constructive had in the last and there has been considerable of it —the Republicans are entitled to the chief credit. It is this pitiable in- efficiency of the Democrats—to say noth- ing of the probable attitude of a Repub- us doubt whether, in the event of Bryan’s elec- years— lican Senate—that makes tion, we shall secure substantial re- forms in the tariff. The Republicans, who are solemnly pledged to reduction, seem rather more likely to give it to us. In point of party personnel, then, and of probable accomplishment, the Republicans have a certain advantage— slight though it may be—and seem more deserving of support. And the Republican candidate is im- measurably superior. We would not un- derestimate Mr. Bryan’s amiable traits. He has a warm, benevolent heart; he is a kind husband and father, a good neighbor, a worthy member of an evan- church. These are admirable but a man may have them lack the stuff of states- manship. He may be a brilliant orator as Mr. Bryan is, a skilful agitator, an unrivalled campaigner, and yet not be exactly the man for President. There is where Mr. Bryan falls short. Free silver is no longer an issue, but that inability to think straight and clear which made him an advocate of free silver still persists. That is at the bot- tom of his successive vagaries and of his present freakish scheme for the Trusts. That threatens to make trou- gelical qualities; all, and yet ble for us if he ever becomes President. The overshadowing issues to-day, sever- al correspondents assure us, are anti- imperialism, anti-militarism, and tariff reform. But, apparently, that is not Mr. Bryan’s idea. He has spoken on all these topics, but he seems not much in- terested in them, and he is not making a hard fight on any one of them. No man who has read his hourly harangues can seriously regard him as the champion of these causes. His chief energy is devoted to beating the air; he indulges in gener- al denunciation of corporations; he ap- peals to the wage-earner and endeavors to stir up class feeling just as he did in 1896 and 1900. He has not been able to destroy the impression which he then made, that his temperamental inclina- tion is toward noise and irresponsibil- ity. Indeed, his programme is far less lucid and coherent than in the former campaigns. We would not be understood as imagining that Mr. Taft’s speeches have been beyond criticism: far from it. Some of his utterances on the tariff, his attempt to connect the panic of 1893 with the Wilson bill—these have indicated anything but a grasp of the problem. But we be- lieve that Mr. Taft. who on the side of the domestic virtues is quite as strong as Mr. Bryan, far surpasses him as a man of affairs. His successful experi- ence as judge, Governor-General of the Philippines, and Secretary of War have afforded him an _ exceptional train- ing for the executive duties of the Presidency. And Mr. Taft’s speeches, somewhat dull and unimaginative as they are, have been, in the main, tol- erant and broad-minded, free from the bitterness and spirit of class rivalry which Mr. Bryan so constantly pro- vokes. On the labor question, in re- freshing contrast to Mr. Bryan’s soph- istries and flatteries, Mr. Taft has been direct and firm. In the years of slow recuperation from a financial pan- ic, anything like rashness or flightiness in the conduct of government might do incalculable harm. This is the very moment when coolness, sagacity, stead- iness—even phlegm, if you will—are the qualities that should command a pre- mium. Because these are the qualities by which Mr. Taft is chiefly distinguish- ed; because he has been bred in a tra- dition of public service; because he is a man of high ideals and strict integrity, we are persuaded that, in spite of all the arguments for Mr. Bryan, Taft is the man for President.
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Oct. 29, 1908] The Nation. 401 HUGHES AS A PRACTICAL MAN. Before Gov. Hughes was renominated, the chief complaint against him from his own party chieftains was that he was “unpractical.” That is a serious charge; but we are hearing less of it as the progress of the campaign brings out more clearly the facts in regard to his administration and makes more and more evident his effectiveness as a po- litical leader. What Woodruff, Barnes, Hendricks, Ward, and the rest of the little bosses really meant was that Hughes would not let them meddle with his affairs and those of the State. They wanted the offices and the contracts for their henchmen; they desired legisla- tion that would further their personal ambitions and fill their pockets. When Mr. Hughes refused to sacrifice the wel- fare of the people to such base ends, they turned against him and denounced him as “unpractical.” This procedure recalls that pregnant phrase of Buckle’s about those “who, on account of their ignorance, are termed practical men.” But if we take the word in its ordinary meaning—‘“practical: capable of apply- ing knowledge or theory to practice’— we see that Mr. Hughes is the most practical Governor New York has had, at any rate, since Cleveland. He was certainly a capable lawyer. Ask any man of affairs whether, on the basis of achievements as a legal prac- titioner, he would prefer Hughes or Chanler in the conduct of a complicat- ed negotiation, a difficult case, or an important enterprise. He would in- stantly tell you that, from the point of view of practical ability, Hughes has shown himself far superior. His hand- ling of the insurance investigation, to go no farther, was a complete demon- stration of his power. Yet some per- sons are gravely proposing to entrust the most complicated, difficult, and im- portant undertaking in New York State to a man of obvious inferiority. A private business managed on that prin- ciple of throwing the responsibility on the less fit would gq bankrupt in a year. Why, then, should we apply the theories and methods of bedlam to pub- lic business? This question comes home with ten- fold force in view of Mr. Hughes’s ex- traordinary record as an Executive. No thing like it has been seen within a generation. He has, as we have said, kept his eyes steadily on the needs of the State as a whole. He has never turned aside from that aim in order to accede to the demands of the machine hacks or “keep the organization satis- fied” in Albany County, Westchester, or He has never, as Mr. Roosevelt happily turned it, supposed that to be practical was to be base. He has not traded offices for votes for the measures he has urged; he has not won anywhere else. support by threats or promises as to the exercise of the veto. He has relied absolutely on the justice of his cause. He has put pressure on the legislators in but one way—and that of the very essence of a government by the people —an appeal to popular sentiment. He has simply asked the Senators and As- semblymen to consult their constituents rather than the corrupt lobby which has so often dominated the Legislature. This defiance of time-honored tradi- tions was, in the opinion of experienced politicians, bound to lead direct to fail- It did nothing of the kind. It succeeded brilliantly. It secured, for ex- ure. ample, the law establishing the Public Service Commissions—a great piece of constructive legislation. By that we would not say that the law is perfect or the personnel of the Commissions ideal. We mean that here is a prac- ticable device for avoiding the appalling evils of unrestricted private ownership of public-service corporations on the one hand and municipal or State ownership or control on the other. The law will be amended as its defects are disclosed by actual trial, but already it can put a stop to the stock-watering, the loot- ing of shareholders, and the cynical dis- regard of the comfort of patrons which have marked the operation of our street railways and lighting companies. We need not dwell on the other accomplish- ments of the administration—such as the important amendments to the bank- ing laws and the acts against race-track gambling—for the story is a familiar one. It is enough to say that, in the teeth of the bitterest opposition from predatory corporations and race-track gamblers, Gov. Hughes has triumphant- ly carried through his programme of reform. He has been able to do this because the people have been behind him. Thus his career is the most apt illustration we can recall of that noble passage in which Morley denounces those “whose one cry to an advocate of improvement is some sagacious silli- ness about recognizing the iimits of the practicable in politics, and seeing the necessity of adapting theories to facts. As if the fact of taking a broad- er and wiser view than the common crowd disqualifies a man from knowing what the view of the common crowd happens to be, and from estimating it at the proper value for practical pur- poses.” It was Gov. Hughes’s skill in estimat- ing and interpreting the higher aspira- tions of the people that forced the Re- publicans to him. They were aware that in a State which is normally Democratic the ticket is al- ways in danger of defeat; but they were also aware that there is not another Republican who the slightest chance of an election. And as a cam- paigner Mr. Hughes has been exceed- It is the unanimous renominate stood ingly practical. testimony that in the West he was the only Republican speaker who made a strong impression. In this State there is no Republican platform orator with- in sight of him. He has considered the problems of our State government in a disciplined and serious manner, and has presented a definite and coherent policy. It is not too much to say that the op- position of Mr. Chanler has been futile and floundering. He has hesitated to avow his principles and to point out his plan for applying them. He has evaded plain questions on the vital is- sues. Morally and intellectually, he has shown himself far below Gov. Hughes. We grant, of course, that this community contains a large class which cares nothing about principles, because it does not understand them. Had Gov. Hughes disregarded the best interests of these men, they might still have supported him enthusiastically; but because he has interfered with their pet amusement of gambling or, in some cases, of stock-jobbing, they are ready to defeat him. But we trust that there are still enough and to spare of voters who are clear-headed and practical. CORRUPT BANKING AND THE PANIC. Whether regarded as a sidelight on the panic of last October, or as a pic- ture of banking methods which were possible in New York during the pe- riod which led up to that event, the dis- closures in the trial of Charles W. Morse are of great significance. Since
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402 The Nation. [Vol. 87, No. 2261 October, 1907, we have heard much of the “unreasonableness” of the panic. “Inexplicable” is the word some high authorities have used; “senseless” is E. H. Harriman’s epithet; and we are re- minded that the fact that, one after an- other, the suspended New York insti- tutions have resumed payments, is sure evidence that there was no excuse for the public’s sudden fright. On these al- legations the testimony elicited in the Morse trial has an obvious bearing. Of the fact that the disturbance of iast autumn was world-wide, and that, as all trained students of finance now admit, the strain on capital had become so tense that a break somewhere was inevitable, we shall not now speak. Nor shall the stupendous de mands which our railway capitalists and our millionaire stock-speculators had placed on the heavily depleted cap- ital and credit fund of the United States. That of itself might explain why America was the severest sufferer. But tion, we discuss it does not answer another ques- about which more of the subse- quent controversy has arisen than about any other phenomenon of the pan- ic—namely, why New York city, the stronghold of financial resources, should have been the storm centre and the unquestionable point of weakness. Here the run on fiduciary institutions reach- ed proportions not paralleled in thirty- five years; here the actual hoarding of money by depositors touched the larg- est figures in the history of banking; and here the temporary suspension of payments really began. How are we to account for these conditions? Mr. Morse’s character; the power which he had obtained over half a doz- en banks, and the way in which he had obtained it; even the manner in which he had been using it—all this was as well known to observant bankers, months before the panic of 1907, as was the insecure position of the trust com- panies, and the certainty that, with their practices regarding investments and cash reserves, under the imperfect law of the they could not possibly stand a run. All that the pending criminal suit has done is to place the regarding misuse of fiduciary funds plainly in sight. It is now ob- vious to everybody that the Mercantile Bank’s distress, in the week before the panic, had immediate and logical effect Indeed, on read- day, facts on subsequent events. ing the daily testimony one is tempt- ed to suspect that the panic-stricken depositor had, in at least some in- stances, a far clearer view of the real situation than the Wall Street author- ities, who should have known what was going on, but who announced, three days before the panic, that the other banks had made good the Mercantile’s shortage in its daily balances at the Clearing House, and that all the trou- ble had consequently blown over. Briefly summed up, the testimony shows that Morse had bought control of half a dozen depository institutions by raising loans on collateral of one bank’s stock for purchase of another's; that in at least one case, stock of a bank was bought through proceeds of loans obtained from that bank itself; that “dummies” were used with the ut- most brazenness, in procuring these loans—clerks and a woman secretary figuring as Morse’s stool-pigeons; that, as a result, the deposits of these banks were used by Morse in a series of dar- ing gambling ventures on the Stock Ex- change; that he utilized his opportuni- ties for stirring up the Stock Exchange, during three successive years, with “wash sales” and “matched orders’; and that he borrowed half a million dol- lars from one bank, in the manner and for the purposes above described, in the very week of the panic outbreak, when the bank’s cash reserve was below its legal minimum. These operations, let it be observed, did not affect one obscure institution, and they were not confined to one financial adventurer. A “chain of banks,” here in the heart of New York city, was being victimized; and as- sociated with Morse, in his unprinci- pled speculations, were the heads of two or three great industrial corpora- tions and the president of the Knicker- bocker Trust Company. The chief concern of most people, in the light of these disgraceful revela- tions, will presumably be to learn what may be done about it. This question has been answered already, so far at least as banking institutions under the New York State laws are concerned. At the instance of the present Governor of New York, the banking law of the State has put an end, once and forever, to such performances. The law forced upon the statute-books, in the face of angry resistance of interested parties, by Gov. Hughes and Banking Superin- tendent Williams, requires the trust companies to keep an adequate reserve; prevents both them and deposit banks from lending to “inside manipulators” or on private speculative ventures; and forbids the transfer of control of a de- posit bank through purchase in the market, unless the Banking Superin- tendent is convinced of the good faith of the purchaser and gives his public assent to the purchase. There remains the problem of safe- guarding the national banks—three of which, all in New York city, Morse had in his clutches. In view of these re cent revelations, it is not possible that Congress, in considering the banking question in its approaching session, can ignore the matter. The Comptroller of the Currency has given certain drastic instructions as to the future inquiries by bank examiners, especially regard- ing the action of bank directors. The purpose of these inquiries is well enough, but some of them are scarcely practicable, and fail to meet the real needs. The law itself needs intelligent reform, and, as experience has taught, needs it as badly as did the New York statutes. SMALL MUSEUMS. Small museums—we mean especially those in small cities—are mostly dead museums; and since these institutions are increasing rapidly among us, an inquiry into the causes of their failure to attract the public is not without value. One readily understands why the numerous German museums that are composed largely of the leavings of the metropolitan galleries are not be- loved of the local public. But the same indifference is shown in the case of col- lections which, though small, are world- famous. You may have, for example, the Bergamo galleries pretty much to yourself at all seasons, while to enter the superb Wicar Museum at Lille it is frequently necessary to ring and sum- mon a guardian. The neglect of the public for whose benefit these institu- tions have been founded does not seem, then, to depend upon the quality of the exhibits. Good and bad alike, the dear public shuns them. Many reasons might be assigned for this fact. Unquestionably, much of the popularity of the great museums among their own people depends on the stim- ulus afforded by throngs of foreign tour-
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Oct. 29, 1903} The Nation. 403 ists—an aid that the small museum nec- essarily lacks. Under no circumstances can one imagine the galleries of Paris, Rome, or Florence deserted; but un- doubtedly many of the good citizens who come out regularly of a Sunday would stay at home but for a conscious- ness that what thousands of fore‘gners gladly pay to see during the week, is worth seeing for nothing on a holiday. But perhaps we find the real cause of the attractiveness of the great museum in its character as a vast grab-bag. It furnishes infinite surprises. You can never be sure you have seen it all. You cannot exhaust it. It, on the contrary, exhausts you. You honor it for the achievement, and revisit it humbly. But at the small museum, perhaps really a more visitable place, you pass quickly through its modest suite of exhibition halls, and hurry out with the satisfac- tory conviction that you have seen it all, and need never see it again. Here, founders and managers of small museums, is the enemy. It is this state of mind that you must combat on penal- ty of being reckoned among the con- structively dead. The problem of in- jecting a little disturbing mind into this mass of complacency, is, if difficult, not unlike that which confronts the direc- tor of a small public library or the pas- tor of an institutional church. These bodies, too, though far better establish- ed in public esteem than museums, also lose patronage unless their policy be aggressive. So the management of a small museum cannot feel that its duty is done when deserted halls are hand- somely filled with meritorious exhibits. It is not enough that the people ought to want to come. They must be made to come. The true weapon of the director is va- riety. He can and should turn his stock over, so that some new and attractive exhibit is always dangling before the averted eyes of demos. Obviously, an entire museum cannot be rearranged several times a year. Certain depart- ments lend themselves to the policy of change, others do not. Most of our smaller museums make a feature of an annual display of contemporary art. This is evidently a suitable and attrac- tive fixture, but it provides for only a few months of each year, and it leaves untouched the more serious and impor- tant task of fostering the love of the great art of the past. Lectures in the museum, and informal conferences in the galleries, are also very useful, but they presuppose a public already kindled to the visiting point, and there is some danger that such interpretation may stiffen into pedantry or deliquesce into mere gush. The important thing, after all, is to get people to enjoy certain works of art. The centre of public appeal may ap- propriately be a well-organized depart- ment of photographs of works of art, and prints, both originals and facsimiles. To these should be added a library of art, large or small, according to the means of the museum and the recep- tiveness of the public, and a small gal- lery in which several shows should be arranged every year. Such exhibitions are given successfully in the public li- braries of Washington, New York, and Boston, and doubtless in many other cit- ies. The surprising thing is that the smaller museums have let a work es- sentially theirs go so readily to the li- braries. No possible form of museum benefaction can give such good results for a small expenditure. The price of a dubious Reynolds will start a depart- ment of art facsimiles on an adequate basis, and that of a second-rate Titian would endow it in perpetuity. The curator of such a department may play legitimately upon all the keys of pub- lic curiosity. Surely, no print depart- ment that upon Whistler’s death could hang a dozen of his etchings was un- visited, and there is no reason why every mftseum should not have its little group of fine contemporary prints, be- sides the old masters, in reproductions of almost perfect quality. If the department of prints and fac- similes—uniting as it does the academ- ic and esthetic interests of the mu- seum—must bear the brunt of an ag- many other depart- Almost gressive policy, ments may well do their part. all of the smaller exhibits should be shown in carefully selected groups, and for a limited period, and this implies a system of storage exhibition in which all objects are accessible to accredited persons, while usually withdrawn from the general public. These changing ex- hibits, none too large and tiresome, should keep alive a curiosity in the do- ings of the museums. And those who think they come merely to catch a cas- ual show before it gives place to the next will hardly fail incidentally to re- new their acquaintance with the per- manent exhibits which otherwise they would have taken for granted at home. Of course, methods will vary according to the personnel of museums and the tastes of their public, but without some such observance of the law of variety we are satisfied that even the most for- tunately situated small museum is doomed to join the somnolent ranks of the living dead. CHARLES ELIOT NORTON. At Shady Hill, Cambridge, in the house in which he was born, Charles Eliot Norton died on October 21. For two or three years past his health had been frail, but only during the last few weeks was the end seen to be near. He was born on November 16, 1827, his father being Dr. Andrews Norton, one of the most forcible Unitarian divines of his time, and professor of sacred lit- erature in the Harvard Divinity School from 1819 to 1830. Dr. Norton’s wife, Catharine Eliot, was the daughter of Samuel Eliot (a prosperous Boston mer- chant) and aunt of President Eliot. The Nortons were of Puritan stock, whose pioneers came early to the Massachu- setts Bay Colony. They and their kins- men filled pulpits, feared God, and serv- ed their town and State. Two of Mr. Norton’s ancestors were Mrs. Anne Bradstreet, “the Tenth Muse,” and the Rev. Michael Wigglesworth, orthodox of the orthodox, whose epic poem, “The Day of Doom,” published in 1662, curdled the blood of sinners and brought grim comfort to the elect of at least two generations. Outspokennegs and courage, practised by his forerunners, came to Mr. Norton as an inheritance. He had, further, the tradition of cul- tivation, and, better still, its environ- ment; for, although the Cambridge of seventy years ago may seem in the retrospect provincial, if not parochial, it was a community in which the best men and women devoted themselves to the highest concerns of the intellectual and moral life. Mr. Norton had lessons from a tutor and attended a private school in Bos- ton. He was graduated from Harvard College in 1846, having among his sixty- two classmates Francis J. Child, the first scholar, and George M. Lane, the second—subsequently his colleagues in the university—and George F. Hoar, destined to become a United States Senator. He himself stood tenth, hav- ing “highly distinguished” himself in Greek and Latin, and “excelled” in po- litical economy; and he delivered at commencement a dissertation on “Santa Croce.” He entered the East India house of William S. Bullard in Boston, and for several years had practical ex-
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404 The Nation. [Vol. 87, No. 2261 perience in the business methods of the Sent in 184 as supercargo to Calcutta, he saw something of India and the East, and returned home by way of Egypt and Europe. This first European visit may have confirmed in him the decision, which he had been slowly arriving at, that neither his tal- ents nor his inclination fitted him for a mercantile career; but he did not yet escape from the counting-house. Nor were the years he spent with Mr. Bul- lard wasted, since they taught him a certain businesslike directness in deal- ing with practical affairs which the public in his later years hardly dreamt of, but which was apparent to any one who consulted him. On returning to Cambridge, he receiv- ed a temporary appointment as instruc- tor in French at Harvard, to supply the place of a friend who had fallen ill. Meanwhile, he was already absorbed in the study of the great problems which were then agitating progressive think- ers at home and abroad, and in 1853 he published a volume of “Considera- tions on Some Recent Social Theories.” The death of his father in that autumn caused him to devote the following two years to editing the elder Norton’s post- humous works. Before he had complet- ed this pious task, however, his own health, which was never robust, gave Way; and as soon as he could he went again to Europe, with his mother and sisters, for a long stay. The two years he passed there proved most important in his development. They revealed to him the significance of Italy—-which came later to play a great part in his life-work. It was at this time, also, that he began to form friendships with interesting Englishmen, above all, with John Ruskin, who, although the elder by eight years, found in the young American the wisest and truest friend he ever had. That friendship pro- duced a lasting effect on both. It fired Mr. Norton with Ruskin’s en- thusiasm for the fine arts as a reg- ister of culture, and with admiration for Ruskin’s genius, which he had al- ready -known through his books; but Norton’s poised mind, and his search- ing, critical faculty restrained him from accepting Ruskin’s doctrines in their ex- treme form. He studied the paintings and monuments of Italy for himself, controlled his flood of new opinions by personal examination, comparison, and reflection, and came home after two years equipped for the higher criticism of art which was then almost a sealed book in America. Italy, and his dear friend Lowell, who was now professor of the Italian and Spanish literatures at Harvard, quickened Mr. Norton’s study of Dante, in which he became a master. He printed a translation of time. “The New Life” and, in 1860, a volume and Study in of “Notes of Travel Italy,” which retains, after fifty years, its interest. Mr. Norton settled at Shady Hill and mixed, as “to the manner born,” with the group of scholars and poets and au- thors who gave lustre to Cambridge and Boston. Longfellow and Lowell were at the height of their fame; several of the Harvard professors had a national reputation; Holmes came often from Boston to that circle; Hawthorne and Whittier and Emerson were familiars; Sumner reported news of the great is- sues which were being fought over in Congress before they were settled on the battlefield. It was the time when Boston, including Cebridge, was the acknowledged Athens of America. The Atlantic Monthly had begun its brilliant course, and to Lowell, its first editor, Mr. Norton had brought from England a satchelful of contributions, besides promises of support from many of the eminent British writers of the time. He himself constantly aided Lowell, who was not a willing editor, with ad- vice and with an occasional paper. When the civil war came, Mr. Norton consecrated his energy to upholding the Union cause. From 1862 to 1868 he served with Lowell as joint-editor of the North American Review, which he made a mouthpiece of patriotism. He contributed to it in about equal pro- portion literary and political articles. He believed in Lincoln at a time when stanch supporters of the Federal gov- ernment mistrusted, undervalued, or misunderstood “the Illinois rail-split- ter.” He edited the leaflets of the Loy- al Publication Society, which reached thousands of newspapers throughout the North and spread patriotic doctrines and courage. Recognizing the need of an enlightened journal, which should fur- nish independent authoritative criticism of politics, books, and art, and should represent the best conscience not less than the best scholarship of the time, he discussed with Frederick L. Olm- sted, Edwin L. Godkin, and a few oth- ers the feasibility of starting such a journal, and their discussion led to the founding, in 1865, of the Nation. Mr. Godkin was as dauntless and self-sus- tained an editor as America has ever had; but we know now from his letters that it was the approval of the quiet scholar at Shady Hill that more than once gave him courage to fight on. Mr. Norton’s support of the Nation in its early days was not merely financial and consultative, for he contributed freely to it articles and critiques; and he con- tinued this connection during more than forty years. Mr. Norton married in 1862 Miss Susan Sedgwick, daughter of Theodore Sedgwick, a lawyer of New York. In 1868 he went to Europe with his fam- ily and spent five years in England and on the Continent. Upon his return he found at Harvard a new régime and in Cambridge a new atmosphere; and Pres- ident Eliot, the young head of the uni- versity, persuaded him to undertake a course of lectures in 1874. The next year the Corporation appointed him professor of the history of art, and during the following twenty-three years Mr. Norton's courses were the most not- able in the university. In 1898, having passed three score and ten years, he retired. But his activity did not cease. Up to the last few months nothing that greatly concerned Harvard, or the pub- lic interests, or movements for social and intellectual advance, passed with- out his cognizance: usually, indeed, he was consulted in regard to them, and often he gave the originating sugges- tion.’ Such, briefly, are the dates and out- wardly marking events in the life of Charles Eliot Norton; but how little they convey of the man! How little they explain for a stranger the influence. deep and refreshing, which he exerted during nearly half a century! He held a unique position in America, whether as an expounder of esthetics or as an unwavering critic of the modern ten- dencies towards gilded vulgarity and conscienceless money-making. When he began to utter his protests, the land was still at the stage where public men and popular writers gauged the prosper- ity of the country by the size of its crops, the growth of its population, the expansion of its railways and industries. Mr. Norton taught that these are very fallible meters of civilization. His teach- ing may sound trite now, when all the world repeats it,and yet the number of the vulgar rich increases on one side, and of the joyless, angry poor on the other. The surprising thing to many per- sons who, having known of Mr. Nor- ton merely as a severe critic, came into acquaintance with him, was that the critic was without sourness or asperity. He was a man who had the truth ever before his eyes; he saw her beauty, and desired, by stripping away the false or the ugly, to let others see her as beau- tiful. Hence, he was never a carping critic: he always had a better to sub- stitute for the bad which he condemn- ed. This quality went into all his life, and, being reinforced by sympathy and by charm, made him the chosen friend of the best men of two continents. He had a rare genius for friendship, and it mattered nothing whether its object were Ruskin or Lowell, or a college un- dergraduate in whom he _ discovered signs of promise. And here, two points are to be emphasized which reveal his nature. The terms of his friendship were perfect equality. Even when, as a young man, he entered into comrade- ship with men already famous, with Longfellow and Emerson and Carlyle, he was their companion and not their disciple. He never surrendered his per-
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Oct. 29, 1908] The Nation. 405 sonality, he sat at nobody’s feet. His in- tellectual and moral qualities, coupled with sympathy and downrightness, made men of genius take him for their inti- mate. And in like manner he always treated younger men as equals. He nev- er expected them to conform to his opinions, nor would he have tolerated satellites. Among the hundreds of brighter undergraduates who came somewhat closely under his influence in the course of a quarter of a century— not a few of whom have since made their mark in the world—it would be hard to mention any who could be classed as a “Nortonian.” He would have been sorry to have it otherwise: for he held that the mission of culture is to emancipate and not to enslave, to train up independents, not “echoes or mimics. To his friendships the world owes some of its most precious biographical records of the nineteenth century. He edited the Correspondence of Carlyle and Emerson, the Letters of Ruskin, the Letters and Memorials of Lowell, the Letters and Works of George Wil- liam Curtis. For Carlyle he did even more: because, when Froude brought out the falsified version of the “Remin- iscences,” Mr. Norton gave them in their authentic form, and went on to edit Carlyle’s Correspondence’ with Goethe, and several volumes of Car- lyle’s general correspondence. As edi- tor, perfect veracity and taste guided him: what he printed, was ungarbled, but he had a severe judgment as to what was essential, and as to how much the public has a right to know of the private or petty details of a great man’s life. This body of editorial work will keep Mr. Norton’s memory fresh as long as posterity has any interest in the great names in this list. H's chief orig- inal book, “Church Building in the Mid- dle Ages,” grew out of his lectures on Venetian and Florentine Art. But his translation of Dante’s “Divine Comedy” ought to rank also as original, for it re- moulded in English prose one of the world’s masterpieces, and is not likely to be superseded. A monograph, all too brief, on Dante, and the early transla- tion, already mentioned, of “The New Life,” belong in this reference to his Dantean studies. After resigning from the North American Review, he pub- lished from time to time articles in the magazines, but he was too fastidious to write copiously, and as he held that far too many books are published, he never gathered his essays into a vol- ume. As a part of his activity as critic should be reckoned his work as stim- ulator and suggester. He gave the in- spiration which other men carried out. The Dante Society, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Archeological Insti- tute of America, Radcliffe College— these are some of the causes which he either founded or encouraged during their years of struggle for existence. The secret of Mr. Norton’s influence as a university teacher lay in his pow- er to humanize knowledge. In his eluci- dation the mere special fact became ir- radiated by its connection with gener- al laws. Thus the pertinence, the ap- plicab‘lity to yourself of whatever art or history or nature presents to you, he unfolded very simply, but with unfor- gettable impressiveness. What he touch- ed, lived: there was no dead knowl- edge; even erudition took on an un- wonted glow. If Ruskin first intro- duced him to a perception of the spir- itual significance of the fine arts, he proceeded, as was his habit, to investi- gate for himself; and he found in the beautiful severity of the art of Greece the proper counterpoice to Ruskin’s ro- manticism. So his criticism of art had the long perspective which Ruskin’s lacked, and it was free from the qual- ity of magnificent impressionism, with its inevitable tendency to “pathetic fal- lacy,” which troubled many readers of Ruskin. Here, tov, Mr. Norton’s inborn taste, strengthened and refined by ceaseless cultivation, never failed him. For many years he has been at Cam- bridge the Oracle of the Humanities; and from Cambridge his influence has been shed afar. Any sketch of him, to be true, should lay stress on his strong human -sympa- thies, his helpfulness, his good com- radeship in the highest sense. Persons who suppose that he held himself aloof, in a sort of academic isolation, should be reminded that he was long the genial president of the Boston Tavern Club. So, in earlier days, those who imagined him to be a pre-Raphaelite esthete were as mistaken as those who imagined that he read nothing more recent than Plo- tinus. In fact, Mr. Kipling’s “Plain Tales from the Hills,” and Mr. Dooley’s first papers, were read at Shady Hill, and appreciated there, long before the general public had heard of them. The best contemporary works seemed to gravitate naturally to his library. But although he was up-to-date in his mani- fold interests, he believed in the rights of the individual to privacy, and he set himself firmly against the shameless eavesdropping and reporting which mod- ern newspapers practice. Such reti- cences and reserves as his are called old-fashioned now; but they ought never to go out of fashion. His books remain: the memory of his personal charm, of his friendliness and varied conversation, will live as long as those live who had the privilege of en- joying them; but the one aspect of him which has been too little dwelt upon, the aspect by which he would prefer to be longest remembered, must not be passed by here. This was his citizen- ship. He had an abiding sense of duty to his town, his State, his country. In his young manhood he organized and taught a night school. During the Civil War, he went regularly to the city hall to pack boxes for the soldiers; he took part in every movement for their bene- fit and for promoting patriotic enthu- siasm at home, besides editing the leaf- lets of the Loyal Publication Society—a work of immense service. And thence- forth, although ill-health and aversion for the controversies of the platform kept him out of active politics, he al- ways let his position be known, whether on local or national issues, and, if there were need, he joined in organizing a cor- rective movement. His attitude in these matters is shown by the fact, for exam- ple, that he labored with zeal for the Massachusetts Reform Club, for the Cambridge Hospital for Incurables, for no-license and honest government, and for the welfare of his farmer neigh- bors at Ashfield. The measure of his influence was given in 1898, when his condemnation of the Spanish War brought down upon him a storm of abuse from all parts of the country. That the sober censure of one private scholar should so infuriate the politi- cians and the jingoes in and out of Wash- ington, together with the great horde of manufacturers and camp-followers who saw their opportunity in the war, not to speak of innumerable yellow jour- nals which profited by every sensation, and clergymen of many,sects who tem- porarily forgot their worship of Christ, the Prince of Peace, in order to propi- tiate and exalt the God of Battles—all this, I think, constitutes the highest tribute ever paid in America to the voice of conscience uttered through the lips of one man, indefectible in cour- age and in moral vision. Happily, Pro- fessor Norton lived ten years longer, to see the country which in its wrath had vituperated him, acknowledge his wisdom and regret the consequences of its own folly. Even Senator Hoar, one of the most virulent of his abusers, sought a meeting and apologized to him. The last years were filled with public recognition. Harvard, Columbia, Yale, Cambridge, and Oxford Universities be- stowed on him their highest honors. The King of Italy, in acknowledgement of his Dante studies, made him a Grand Officer of the Order of the Crown of Italy. The Harvard Alumni elected him their president, and a member of their Board of Overseers. But what grat- ified him most was the creation of a fund, by his former pupils and friends, for the preservation of his library at Harvard as a memorial, and the remem- brances which distinguished friends and several hundred Harvard undergraduates sent him on his eightieth birthday, a year ago. And so his life closed amid urbanity, as those who loved him would prefer. In his last weeks he was reading Shakespeare and Scott, and John Mor-
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406 The Nation. [Vol. 87, No. 2261 ley’s latest volume of Miscellanies, and writing letters full of characteristic cheer to his friends. He had lived his life out, filling it with activity and with public and private benefits, and he wel- comed death. Brought up in the sim- ple piety of Unitarianism, instructed from childhcod to cherish the reason- ableness of religion, endowed with strong religious sentiments—he h‘mself taught a ciass in the First Par'sh Sun- day-school and edited a book of hymns —he grew naturally into agnosticism, and his passage from the old to the new, being accomplished without wrench, left neither scars, nor bitter- ness, nor regrets. He had always faced life bravely and cheerfully: what had he to fear from death? He seemed to be the very embodiment of the spirit of Marcus Aurelius, his favorite religious companion. “Habituate yourself,” says that sweetest of Stoics, “to the percep- tion of all-pervading change; dwell on it continually, and order your thoughts accordingly; nothing more elevates the mind, and emancipates it from the body. He who realizes that at any moment te may be called upon to leave the world and to depart from among men, commits himself without reserve to justice in all his actions, and to Nature in all that befalls. To what will be said or thought of him, to what will be done against him, he does not give a thought; but is content with two ttings only—to be just in his dealings and glad at his apportioned lot. Free of all hurry and distractions, he has but one wish—to run the straight course of law, so with a straight course following good.” These sentences may serve as a valedictory for Charles Eliot Norton Wittram Roscoe THAYER. Cambridge, Mass., October 23 RECENT FRENCH FICTION. Paris, October 10 Some years ago Mark Twain used Zola's “La Terre” to retort on a French critic of our ancestry-hunting by a slur on millions of French wives and mo- thers. Since then English readers have been able to learn from other French novelists the high ideal of family life which, through all revolutions, persists everywhere in France. And these oth- er novelists are what Zola never was— part and parcel of the people whom they describe lovingly. Zola, the son of a foreign father, reared by a mother struggling bravely against the poverty which debarred from social life, trans- ferred from the narrow college town to Paris, where poverty and, perhaps, in- nate Bohemianism kept him in the cir- cle of literary frequenters of cafés and coteries, with a married life that was unconventional—in these circumstances Emile Zola viewed French society from beginning to end as an outsider, and al- most as an outlaw. He saw in relief only that which fell in with his own methods of story-writing; he was affect- ed by a definite tinge of animosity against a world of which he was never a part. Those who, for fairness sake or be- cause they like the common people, care to read a genuine novel of the French soil (roman de la terre) can do no bet- ter than take up “Les ‘Pagés,’”” by Enée Bouloc, with its preface by the poet Charles de Pomairols (Plon-Nourrit). The author has book-learning enough in economical and social sciences to look closely into the corner of France of which he writes; and he has the love of his own people, which alone can give true knowledge. His theme is “the poetry of a whole race, eager, hard, coarse; but eager only in its toil, hard only toward itself, coarse because we look only on hands and clothes; keeping in its rut, but along the line of duty; jealous and grasping, passionately so, but only for the soil that feeds it—the great race which makes the bread and defends the fatherland.” The one cor- ner of France thus described is the old Rouergue of the central south, with characters from the aged Pierrounel of Napoleon's time to the young fellows who seek fortune in the new cities, leav- ing homes “amid the keen fragrance of broom and fern.” “Un Grand Homme,” by Gaston Rageot (Calmann-Lévy), is a novel by a writ- er distinguished in more serious work. M. Rageot is the professor of philoso- phy who succeeded so brilliantly some years ago with a book on success; he should know what constitutes the great man—and his method of arriving—in France of to-day. Anatole France’s “L'lle des pingouins” (Calmann-Lévy), as might be expected from the detached pieces of the story which the author has intermittently confided for several years to the Paris edition of the New York Herald, is a highly symbolical story of the weaknesses of present so- ciety. It has all its maker's likes and dislikes, and, from its wilfully compli- cated windings, is not the easy reading we associate with the literary reputation of Anatole France. Of course, the wit, the grace of language, the persistent skepticism are the same. “La Vie secréte” (Perrin). by Edouard Estaunié, is in many ways one of the most powerfui of recent novels. This author made a deep impression on his contemporaries of twelve years ago when the question of religious education was becoming uppermost by his third novel, “L’Empreinte’—the “imprint”. which persisted in the mental being of his hero from early training in a Jesuit col- lege. The expression was happy, and has entered into current use; the French Academy crowned the work. Other novels have since appeared from his hand, with art criticism and a book of high science in his own field—for in tke world of action he is director of constructive engineering at the Minis- try of Posts and Telegraphs. This new novel is a strong character description, weaving together for the reader's pleas- ure and instruction the hidden lives of various French men and women repre- senting the mental divis‘ons so pro- nounced in modern communities, partic- ularly in France. The religious aunt, perhaps too fossilized for one that acts so independently; the Socialist nephew, who is a doctor; the rich young manu- facturer, whose efforts to coéperate on a level with his workmen only set them bitterly against him; the emancipated young woman of university learning; littlenesses of half-developed minds and sway of elementary passions—all fur- nish mang pages of intense interest, written in that clear French, most definite in its shading, which seems peculiar to those who have the “im- print” of clerical education. The Margueritte brothers were long occupied with this seething of new thoughts against the old. One of them —for they are now working separately —Victor Margueritte, is faithful to his past in “Jeunes Filles” (Fasquelle), a novel whose title shows it deals with the new woman. Paul Margueritte; on the contrary, begins a quite different pe- riod of activity, by a romance of ad- venture—“La Princesse noire” (Juven). “La Folle Aventure,” by André Lichten- berger (Calmann-Lévy), is also pure romance of a time when life was large- ly comic opera, with précieuses and spadassins and provincial grands sei- gneurs, mighty drinkers and hunters be- fore the Lord. “L’Epouvante,” by Mau- rice Level, is a romance of terror, with an unnecessarily grimacing face on the cover; “Popote,” as its name imports, is a good-natured story, by Henri Duver- nois (these two are published in book form after periodical use by the cor- rect Monde illustré). Marie Anne de Bovet continues the series of her well- known short stories by “La Jolie Prin- cesse” (Lemerre). “L’Eté de Guille- mette,” by Henri Ardel, is of the idyllic present (Plon-Nourrit). “L’Lle de volupté,” by Myriam Harry, is in the usual style of the curiously brilliant cosmopolitan and travelled au- thor. The island, propitious to light and tragic loves, is Ceylon. The absent husband, the present passing lover who forgets, the unhappy wife who cannot forget and dies, are not, as literature, of equal importance with the dainty, sen- suous description of voyages over sum- mer seas into cloudless climes. The manner of publication (by Fayard) is interesting as an experiment in France. The volume is octavo like a magazine, with glazed paper, to receive the hun- dred wash-drawings at which French illustrators are so good; and the price is but one franc fifty—less than half
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Oct. 29, 1908] The Nation. 407 that of ordinary editions of unillustrat- ed novels. “Le Vaisseau des caresses,” by Jules Bois, is less a genuine romance than a dramatic showing forth of what we owe to Buddha—“king of contempo- rary thought”—under starry nights of Egypt and fragrant dawns of Ceylon, with sentimental adventures in between. The author began years ago with an en- tertaining book on “the little religions” of Paris; he continued with the mys- teries, ill-tasting, of contemporary Satan- ism; he went on to India, where the filth and fecundity of the religious life of the much-belauded Hindus rather re- pelled him; but he has evidently yield- ed to the charm. Ss. D. NEWS FOR BIBLIOPHILES. The dates have now been fixed for the auction, by Sotheby, Wilkinson, & Hodge, London, of Lord Ambherst’s great library, which was offered in a block in 1906 for about a million and a half dollars. Lots 1 to 450 will be sold on December 3-5; and lots 451 to 1,031 on March 24-27, 1909. In recent years it has been customary to break up great libraries into several sales, but in the old days there was one contin- uous sale. Topham Beauclerk’s 30,000 vol- umes were disposed of on “Monday, April 9, 1781, and the Forty-Nine following Days (Good Friday excepted).”” A list of Lord Amherst’s Caxtons was given in this col- umn (August 22, 1907, p. 160). They are seventeen in number, eleven perfect. The most famous and valuable, “The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye’’ by Raoul Le- fevre, issued probably in 1474, is the first book printed in the English language. It was “translated and drawen out of frenshe in to englisshe by Willyam Caxton, mercer of ye Cyte of London.” Further, he tells us that the “translacion and werke was begonne in Brugis in the Countee of Flaun- dres the fyrst day of March,” 1468, and “ended and fynysshid in the holy cyte of Colen the xix day of Septembre the yere of our sayd lord god a thousand foure honderd sixty and enleven.”’ In the Prologue to the third part, Caxton says: For as moche .. . that Age crepeth on me dayly, and febleth all the Bodye, and also because I have promysid dyverce Gen- tilmen, and to my Frendes to addresse to hem as hastely as I might this said Book, therefore I have practysed & lerned, at my grete Charge and Dispence, to ordeyne this sayde Book in Prynte. Lord Amherst’s copy, the finest extant, was purchased for him by Quaritch at the sale of the Osterley Park library, belonging to the Earl of Jersey, in 1885, for £1,820. It contains on a blank leaf in front the in- scription “Sir Th. Fairfax the elder, Knight, oweth this booke.”” When in 1756 the Earl of Jersey’s ancestor, Mr. Child, bought the Fairfax library from Bryan Fairfax, this volume was valued at eight guineas. The Roxburghe copy, which had cost the duke £50, went for £1,060 10s. in 1812, though it lacked the last leaf (an imperfection not noted in the catalogue). The fine Amherst copy may be expected to bring a sum ap- proaching £5,000, and may take its place as the most costly of all printed books. It is far rarer than the First Folio Shake- speare, which now holds that distinction. Not less than four of the other Caxtons are from the Fairfax and the Jersey li- braries. In addition, the collection includes several fifteenth century books from the presses of Wynken de Worde, Pynson, and Notary, and the Oxford and St. Albans presses. It contains only Vol. I. of the Gutenberg Bible, the first book printed with movable types; but this volume, de- scribed as “absolutely perfect and sound throughout,” is of the first issue, and was bought at the sale of the Gosford library in 1884 for £500. Lord Ashburnham’s copy of the two volumes, printed on vellum (now Robert Hoe’s) brought £4,000 in 1897. There is also a copy of the first edition of Balbus de Janua’s ‘“‘Catholicon,”’ 1460, the fourth book printed with a date, and sup- posed to be from Gutenberg’s press. From Fust and Schoiffer’s press are Cicero’s “De Officiis,” 1465, the first printed edition of any classic; also the edition of 1466, on vellum; and St. Augustine’s “De Arte Pre- dicandi,” 1466. From Mentelin’s firs: Strasburg press there are two 1465 editions of the ‘same work. The Lactantius, the first book printed in Italy (at the monas- tery of Subiaco, by Sweynheym and Pan- nartz, 1465), is a fine and perfect copy, and is said also to be the last book bound by Francis Bedford. The Beckford copy, which sold for £285 in December, 1882, went in the Ives sale in 1891 for $540. The second edition of Lactantius, by the same printers in 1468, after their removal to Rome, is also in the Amherst collection. Another important early printed book is a genuine “block-book,” the “Apocalypse of St. John,”” printed in Holland about 1455 on forty-eight leaves, blank on re- verse, but bearing manuscript notes, in exceptionally good condition. It is the second edition, according to Heineken, or the fourth, according to Sotheby; and it was bought at the Crawford sale in 1887 for £500. Five leaves of another edition of the Apocalypse and a single leaf of a Bib lia Pauperum are other xylographic pro- ductions. On November 2, Sotheby, Wilkinson & Hodge sell the library of C. W. Cowan, containing a collected set, uniformly bound, of first editions of Dickens, a number of books illustrated by Cruikshank, and a ser- ies of sixty-seven autograph letters of Sir Walter Scott, addressed to Charles Kirk- patrick Sharpe, filling about one hundred and sixteen pages, partly unpublished. On November 3, the same firm offers the li- brary of the late Dr. John Newton of Liv- erpool, containing early printed books, with woodcuts; a manuscript Book of Hours; the Nuremberg Chronicle, 1493; the first edition of the “‘Hypnerotomachia Poliphili,” Aldus, 1499; the ‘“Schatzbehalter,”’ 1491; and the “Speculum Humane Salvationis,”’ Zainer, 1491. On November 5, the Anderson Auction Company of this city sells a _ collection from the library of the late Julia W. Bry- ant, daughter of William Cullen Bryant. There are a number of books with Bryant’s autograph, others with presentation in- scriptions addressed to him, and presenta- tion copies of several of his own books. Bryant’s own copies of his translation of the Iliad and Odyssey, with scraps of po- ems, notes, etc., in his autograph laid in are perhaps the most interesting volumes. The “Poems,” of 1832, 1834, 1842, and 1848, each have Bryant’s autograph on the title. The first edition .of Longfellow’s “Tales of a Wayside Inn” is a presentation copy, as are also the first editions of Dana’s “Two Years Before the Mast,” and T. W. Parsons’s “Magnolia.” Included are two travelling desks which belonged to Bryant, and other souvenirs, On November 4 and 5, C. F. Libbie & Co., Boston, sell the library of the late Albert S. Wait of Newport, including a collection of book-plates formed by Eben N. Hewins of Boston. Correspondence. AN INDEPENDENT FOR BRYAN. TO THE EDITOR OF THE NATION: Str: I am probably one of many thou- sand readers who have for a quarter of a century or more usually agreed with your position in important campaigns. I remem- ber the thrill of satisfaction which went through us who were then young, when, in 1884, Mr. Godkin spoke for Cleveland, as only he in that generation could speak. There was no doubt, no hesitation, in his endorsement. But for nearly three months past I have read your editorial page for reasons to persuade me to support the Re- publican ticket—in vain. The great issue, as I see it, is the tariff issue. This is not merely a fiscal, not an economic, but a moral issue. In thirty years, the high tariff has corrupted our political life, debauched our business stand- ards, and hurried forward the expansion of the great Trusts which seem to menace our liberties, and to prepare the field for Socialism and anarchy. It is idle for President Roosevelt to muck-rake the Trusts and leave the tariff alone. Trusts are the children of the tariff smitten with elephantiasis. Last month, when W. R. Hearst har- pooned Senator Foraker, who had for so long enjoyed the monopoly of being the spouting whale of Republicanism, some of us exclaimed with Cowper: God moves in a myster‘ous way, His wonders to perform. Foraker was one of those fire-eaters, who, as Gen. Grant said. did not get heated up until the war was safely over; then he became a blatant waver of the bloody shirt, a pension-monger, a professional patriot. By a perfectly natural transition, his pa- triotism latterly took the form of watch- ing the Standard Oil’s interests, in return for those certificates of deposit which Mr. Archbold frequently refers to in the letters which Hearst, true patriot that he is! has shared with his countrymen. Well, Fora- ker 1s harpooned, Quay and Gorman are dead, Cannon is being so hard pressed in his district that respectable men of all parties have cause to hope that he will be beaten. But even so, protection, the Bastille of the Republican party, is un- shaken. Senator Aldrich, whose tariff brokerage business probably quadruples that of any other man in Washington, felt so secure of his hold that he spent his vacation in Europe, remote from the searchlight of a political campaign. What hope can you give us that, if Mr. Taft is elected, Aldrich will not continue to dictate
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408 The Nation. [Vol. 87, No. 2261 the tariff which we long-suffering Ameri- cans shall pay to Aldrich’s employers— the protected manufacturers? And Judge Taft himself—what have we to expect from him in behalf of tariff re- form? He made an excellent judge—a non- partisan judge. But in all his political life he has been an obedient Republican. He was singled out for promotion by Mc- Kinley—the apostle of protection—and, so far as appears, never in the past dozen years, when he has been a great figure in the Republican party, has he done any- thing effectual for tariff reform. His friends say that he has held himseif in out of loyalty first to McKinley, and later to Roosevelt, but that when he is elected he will think with his own mind, speak with his own tongue, dare with his own will. But history is largely against this pleasant prophecy. History shows that men who reach fifty and more years, without using their powers, men whose excess of defer- ence or of professional courtesy has been a gag and restraint to them throughout their prime, cannot suddenly learn to think, speak, and act for themselves. If Judge Taft is elected I predict that he will be mere clay in the hands of the veteran tariff potters. You will hardly urge that the Republicans will begin in March, 1909, to perform their long-promised, long-de- ferred miracle—‘‘the reform of the tariff by its friends.’” Have you forgotten that in a previous Bryan campaign they were loud in their promises, and that after Mc- Kinley was elected they laughed with de- rision at the poor mugwum” and anti-im- perialist dupes who had been led to sup- port them? I submit, therefore, that since the tariff issue is the great issue, our first duty is to defeat the Republicans. Elect Taft, and you will have the tariff more firmly riveted on the country. In order to appease the insatiable beneficiaries of the tariff the Re- publican party has enormously increased the national expenses; it is adding to our national ideals militarism and navalism, re- quiring hundreds of millions outlay yearly. Through the exorbitant pension list, it has connived at the dishonesty of tens of thou- sands of unworthy and fraudulent pen- sioners, and it has undermined and demor- alized hundreds of thousands more who were perfectly able to support themselves. A vote for Taft helps to perpetuate these tremendous national abuses. If Taft is elected, the Republican managers will be very quick to proclaim that the country has endorsed their party in everything. The chief reason urged by the Republi- cans is: “If you elect Bryan, you will cause a terrible financial panic.” Well, suppose the panic come—has not the nation outlived many panics? And is not mere financial inconvenience infinitely to be preferred to moral degradation? The land is full of men who have experienced hard times in business, but have not sac- rificed their honor. But protection, with all that it entails, corrodes, debauches, prostitutes our commercial, our industrial, our political, our civic life. The Aldriches, the Quays, the Cannons, the Gormans, the Forakers, represent the business immoral- ity of America. It is idle to hope that, by electing on their platform Mr. Taft, you will reform that immorality. But it is urged that Mr. Bryan will be as powerless as Taft against protection, and that personally he is very undesirable. I yield to no one in my microscopic esteem for Mr. Bryan. I think that, for the sober work of statesmanship, we might as well put an over-inflated air-cushion in the Presidential, chair. But this is a crisis in which candidates are merely symbols. Now Bryan’s election will mean that the Ameri- can people have turned against protection. It will mean also that we have an Opposi- tion at Washington. For twelve years this country has practically been governed with- out an Opposition—yet this is the balance- wheel essential to the proper functioning of our political system. The Opposition may be timid and unsatisfactory at first—but if it exists at all, it may be made the instru- ment for the reforms which you and many of us have preached these many, many years. Can you show cause why we may hope that, if Taft is elected, the tariff evil will be more easily removed? It is in the nature of a cancer to grow, and not to dwindle. By defeating Taft we may not immediately secure tariff reform, but we shall have written our warning on Belshaz- zar’s wall, and we shall have taken an in- dispensable step forward. What considera- tions of “averting a panic” or of the per- sonal flimsiness of Mr. Bryan can offset this attainment which may be coupled with the resurrection of a genuine Opposition party in Congress and in the nation? INDEPENDENT. Cambr'ige, Mass., October 18. MR. BRYAN AS A CONSISTENT RE- FORMER. To THE EDITOR OF THE NATION: Str: Will you allow an old subscriber, one who has taken and read your paper al- most from the start, and been in general sympathy with its positions, to express his regret at the distinctly partisan flavor you are giving it in the present campaign, and especially at your treatment of Mr. Bryan. I don’t object to your support of Mr. Taft; your right to do so is a part of the inde- pendent game; but it seems to me it could be done, indeed, that independency re- quires it be done, without so much injus- tice to his opponent. As an Independent myself, who after carefully looking the sit- uation over, have decidedto vote the Demo- cratic national ticket this year, as is the case with many of your subscribers, I have been pained to read in your issue this week, to go no further back, such flings as ‘Mr. Bryan is nothing if not a noisy agitator,” “the instability and untrustworthiness” of Mr. Bryan,” “the most charitable view is that he is a happy thought states- man,” “Bryan's comparative indiffer- ence through many years to the in- iquities of the tariff,” ‘“a dangerous demagogue,”” and a little further back, “a wholly unsafe and untrustworthy political reformer”’—indeed, in almost every issue of the Nation something in this spirit and this vein. By the use of such language you fail to do justice to yourselves. And you cer- tainly fail to do justice to Mr. Bryan—fail to treat him in the admirable way in which, I am glad to say, you treat Mr. Taft. Mr. Bryan is a great deal more than a “noisy demagogue,”’ this, too, not only in the estimation of his thick and thin follow- ere, but of such men, if their words mean anything, as Mr. Taft, his opponent, and of such Democrats as Richard Olney, E. M. Shepard, and Judge Alton B. Parker, all three of whom will give him their votes as so much more than “a noisy demagogue” as to be worthy of being made President of the United States. What evidence have you of his “instabil- ity and untrustworthiness?” I do not know of a position or a principle that he has held in the past that he does not hold to now. Indeed, in the very number of your paper containing the words quoted you have an editorial on ‘What Bryan Could Do,” the point of which is fear that as President he will stick to and seek to carry out the things that from the first he has advocated in his speeches—bi-metallism, the govern- ment’s ownership of railways, and the like. And again in your editorial, September 24, on “The Old Bryan and The New” you say with regard to “the propaganda for half a dozen propositions” of which “in the main Mr. Bryan’s career has been made up, “by no sign or word has he abandoned them; in regard to every one of them he stands obstinate, silent, and apparently unrepen- tant.” Pray where does the “instability” come into the career of a man which is made up of the propaganda of half a dozen propositions with regard to every one of which he still “stands obstinate, silent, and apparently unrepentant?” Your idea of stability and trustworthiness seems to be that a man must drag out and present his opinions on every subject he had once stood for every time ever after that he opens his mouth, no matter how far the occasion and circumstances into which they once fitted and which first called them forth may have passed away. Mr. Bryan has evidently more good sense than to do such a thing; is not so pig-headed as you would thus have him be; does not talk silver now because silver is not now a living issue, and because, as he himself has said, the large addition of gold to the currency has taken away the need of it which he felt there was eight and twelve years ago. On the other hand that he is not a “‘dan- gerous demagogue” seeking for selfish ends to adjust his utterances to what is popular for the passing hour, is shown by such things—to mention only two out of many— as his advocacy of bi-metallism at the time of his second Presidential canvass, when his simply keeping hushed about it would have saved him thousands of votes, and again by his speech on the ownership of railroads, two years ago, on his return from Europe, when his words on the sub- ject were a direct slap in the face of his overwhelming popular reception. Worse still as regards fair treatment of him is your assertion of his “‘comparative indifference through many years to the in- iquities of the tariff,” an assertion, as your correspondent September 24 has clear- ly shown, which is directly counter to the widely open facts of his career. How can you charge such indifference against a man who, on his first entrance at Washington into public life, made one of the most in- telligent, intelligible, and convincing speeches on the subject that it has ever called forth, a speech which in this very campaign is reprinted as the expression of his views, and who on every proper oc- casion since has reaffirmed his position? Does a man once known to be veracious have to go about the country shouting every time he opens his mouth that he a
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_—— Oct. 29, 1908] The Nation. 409 tells the truth in order not to be charged with indifference to the evils of lying? You speak of his “comparative indifference” on the subject. Comparative with whom? With Judge Taft? Well, compare the lat- ter’s silence in the past, his hedging on the subject in his recent speeches at the West, his mistakes, if not misrepresentations, as to the relation of Democratic administra- tions to financial hard times, and his preaching at one place revision, pure and simple, and at others the possibility of revision upwards—all this with Mr. Bryan’s record, and say whether the difference be- tween them is not a great deal more than the Nebraska man’s “indifference.” It is not necessary for the voter to en- dorse all Mr. Bryan’s positions in order to support him as “a genuine reformer.” Worse than an academic visionary is the citizen who is waiting for any real leader upward whose views on all points are in harmony with his own or even with the end ultimately reached. God does not make reformers in that way. Even Mr. Cleve- land had his bad break in the Venezuela affair. The man who never dares. the wrong will never do the right. All the world’s great attainments in science, art, liberty, civilization, and even religion have been made not along one straight road where the end was seen from the begin- ning, but by feeling for them, often blindly, along false tracks and amid scores of mis- takes. A thousand worthless fads are a cheap price to pay for one workable eco- nomic truth. There are three great issues overtopping all others in the present po- litical campaign—anti-imperialism, anti- militarism, and tariff revision. Mr. Taft with all his virtues on minor matters is weak and wavering on these great ones. Mr. Bryan with all his vagaries on lesser issues stands as firm, I will not say as a rock, but as a strong, live man, on these that are vital. And that is why I be- lieve he should receive from us Indepen- dents not only fair treatment, but vigorous support. JoHN C. KIMBALL. Greenfield, Mass., October 17. REPUBLICAN CONTROL OF CONGRESS. To THE EDITOR OF THE NATION: Str: Allowing everything you say as between Taft and Bryan for argument’s sake, what about the Congressional cabal, Cannon as Speaker, Dalzell, Sherman as Vice-President, etc.? In championing the Republican ticket you help the Republican party retain its supremacy, while it seems to me a change is sorely needed. Taft and a Republican Congress will be in a position to continue indefinitely not mere- ly an absurd tariff, but also high-handed blocking of legislation necessary to pro- tect against the saloon power the territory which has voted prohibition. In both di- rections we have reasons for expecting bet- ter results from a Democratic Congress than from a Republican. Your expectation that Taft as President would have more influence with a Congress of the same party than Bryan with a Democratic House and a Republican Senate is not supported by Mr. Taft’s experiences as secretary and administrator of the Philippines. His rec- ommendations have been ignored, even more than the President’s. By advocating the election of Taft you are not merely repudiating Bryan, but you thereby en- dorse and accept in fact the whole Re- publican policy, tariff and Imperialism in- cluded. BH. R. Wisconsin, October 19. BRYAN’S FINANCIAL HERESIES. TO THE EDITOR OF THE NATION: Str: Your criticism on September 24 of the perversion of Mr, Olney from an ardent advocate of the gold standard to a sup- porter of the high priest of fiatism, right- ly emphasizes Mr. Bryan’s hallucinations on the subject of sound money as of funda- mental importance. In its immediate ef- fects, the question of sound money is of greater importance to our country’s pros- perity than the tariff or any other present political issue; for the reason that the in- cidence of tariff taxation is indirect; and since the enhanced cost of our supplies is gradual, we are able to adapt ourselves to the increased cost of personal and busi- ness expenses. On the other hand, financial panics, which may result, as in 1893, from an unsound currency system, come suddenly upon us, suddenly close factories and in- dustrial establishments of every kind, and instantly throw thousands of wage-earners out of employment. Upon this vital subject Mr. Bryan is dis- cretely silent, and he assures us that the “money question is a dead issue,’ because of the increased production of gold. The artful iteration of this fallacy (just as many another untruth, by constant repeti- tion, is finally accepted as fact) seems to have fooled Mr. Olney and other former strenuous opponents of fiat money. As was pointed out in the Nation of September 17, in the editorial ‘“‘The Old Bryan and the New,” Mr. Bryan asserted in 1900 that, “although 16 to 1 had been defeated in 1896, that did not end the discussion.”” Fraught with even more danger was his intimation as to “saving the greenback from impend- ing annihilation.’’ It should not be for- gotten that Mr. Bryan has not recanted or changed his financial theories; all he says is that conditions have changed. The natural inference is that when conditions revert to what they were in 1896, and at other times of panic or business depression, as inevitably will be the case in this land of speculation and inflation, then, in re- sponse to the demand from all quarters for “‘more money”’ will come the opportunity for Mr. Bryan to resuscitate his silver ~»- phistries or to propose some other equally vicious form of fiat money. ALFRED SHERLOCK. Minneapolis, October 4. CHARLES ELIOT NORTON AND LESLIE STEPHEN. To THE EDITOR OF THE NATION: Str: May I call attention to what seems to be Charles Eliot Norton’s most characteristic friendship across the wa- ters? In the late Prof. F. W. Mait- land’s delightful biography of Sir Leslie Stephen, some of the most intimate and characteristic letters are to the late Pro- fessor Norton, and Stephen himself recog- nized that Norton represented the tone of thought about life, art, and letters which was most congenial to himself. Consider- ing that Leslie Stephen was in touch with all that was most distinguished in Eng- lish life, this was indeed a high tribute. It was a remarkable testimony to the es- sential unity of the Anglo-Saxon spirit that one of the finest types among Englishmen should have found his most congenial friend in one of the noblest of Americans. JOSEPH JACOBS. Yonkers, October 22. A WHISTLER MEMORIAL. To THE EDITOR OF THE NATION: Str: Doubtless many of your readers are aware that a memorial to the late James McNeill Whistler, designed by M. Auguste Rodin, is about to be erected in London. The reason for the memorial, the nature of it, and the hopes of those who have worked for it are, however, not so well known. The memorial was suggested at a meet- ing held in London shortly after Whist- ler’s death, in 1903. It was called at the suggestion of the International Society of Sculptors, Painters, and Gravers—of which Whistler was the founder and later presi- dent, an office he held till his death. This International Society is truly internation- al, and counts among its members such distinguished Americans as John S. Sar- gent, J. W. Alexander, W. M. Chase, Celia Beaux, Timothy Cole, Henry Wolf, Howard Pyle, Gari Melchers, Paul Bartlett, F. Mac- monnies; and the late Augustus Saint- Gaudens was an original member. M, Rodin succeeded Whistler as president, and he was asked to undertake the memorial to his predecessor, and at once consented. The work is now well under way. It has al- ready been exhibited in the Salon this year in Paris. It has taken the form of a life- size figure of Fame, bearing a bust or me- dallion of Whistler. Those who have seen it pronounce it one of Rodin’s masterpieces. The original bronze will be set up in Chel- sea. on the Embankment, where Whistler found so many of the subjects of his pic- tures, near the houses where he lived all his life, and opposite the church from which he was buried. And no more ap- propriate spot could have been chosen. Within the last week, the city of Lowell, Mass.—the city in which Whistler was born, in which his birthplace still stands and has been preserved, shortly to be opened as a museum—through its Art Association has secured the American replica of the me- morial, and will, by the generosity of the citizens of Lowell, and their generosity alone, erect it in the centre of the city. The sites of both these memorials are now not only definitely settled, but the bronzes are paid for. But there is still another replica—for the committee arranged that two should be cast if the funds after acquiring the orig- inal for London should permit—one for America and one for France. The French critics already are regretting that France has not secured the second replica, and are praising the figure shown in the Salon. Why could not America present this re- plica to France? There have been interna- tional exchanges or presentations of works of art before. Why not again, and with great fitness and honor? Why cannot the artists and the art students of this coun- try, who owe much to France, much to Whistler, much to Rodin, present the memorial to the republie? France has done much for American artists. We
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410 The Nation. [Vol. 87, No. 2261 American artists in return have done something for France, but here is a chance to do more, and we owe a great debt still. The sum needed to obtain this replica and present it to France is ab- surdly small—$5,000 is all that is wanted. Cannot the artists, the art students, and the art patrons of this country raise the amount in a week, as the citizens of Lowell did? I am sure they can, and now, for art triumphs always over hard times, over wars and rumors of wars, even over elec- tions. Here is a wonderful opportunity to strengthen our artistic ties with France, and to honor two great men—one Whistler, the greatest artist America has produced; the other, Rodin, the greatest living sculp- tor. In Europe, most of the subscriptions came from artists, art students, and au- thors, for it must not be forgotten, as it too often is, that Whistler was an au- thor, and a most distinguished one, nor must it be forgotten that he was an Amer- iean and among the great Americans. Therefore will not American artists and authors do for their own countrymen what Englishmen have done for a foreigner? Among the Englishmen who have con- tributed are George Meredith, Rudyard Kip- ling, Edmund Gosse, Austin Dobson, Mau- rice Hewlett, Sir Gilbert Parker, Bernard Shaw, Sir John Hare, Sir Squire Bancroft, Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema, Sir Herbert Herkomer, Sir Charles Holroyd, Sir Walter Armstrong, Walter Crane, Sir James Guth- rie, Roger Fry, John Lavery, and many others. The subscriptions have ranged from sixpence to five hundred pounds. Will not you take up this matter in the Nation, and help us to raise the sum be- fore election day? JOSEPH PENNELL, Honorary Secretary Whistler Memorial Committee. New York, October 20. {Subscriptions may be sent direct to Mr. Pennell, at the Century Club, No. 7 West Ferty-third Street, or to Harrison L. Mor- ris, No. 215 West Fifty-ninth Street.—Eb. NATION.] REFERRING TO THE CHIEF JUSTICE. To THE EDITOR OF THE NATION: Sir: There is a familiar old story of a lord chief justice, who, when called upon to pass judgment on a broker charged with dishonest practice, ruled regretfully that the evidence was insufficient to warrant conviction, but added: “If any one wishes to know my opinion of the defendant, I hope he will refer to me.” The next morn- ing the broker's advertisements in the Lon- don papers bore the conspicuous addition: “Refers by permission to the lord chief justice.” The tale is brought fresh to mind in read- ing a publisher's circular received this week. It has the imprint of The Herrick Book & Stationery Co., Denver, and of Keagan Paul, Trench, Truebner & Co., Lon- don, and sets forth the merits of a costly book by Allison Emery Drake, Sc.M., M.D., Ph.D., in which is demonstrated, to the sat- isfaction of the author, the thesis that a great part of the vocabulary of most Aryan languages is derived from Hebrew. From two pages of commonplace notices the long- est leaps to the eye by virtue of black- faced type and the appended name of Prof. Walter W. Skeat. As printed, with indica- tions of some omissions, it is an unquali- fied and enthusiastic endorsement of the book. That the honored dean of English etymologists should applaud so light-heart- edly a work which, if accepted as authori- tative, would at once relegate to the lum- ber-room the “Etymological Dictionary,” the thorough revision of which, now near- ing completion, is to be the crowning achievement of his life, seemed an act of generosity so nearly superhuman as to arouse suspicion, and led to an examina- tion of the original review in the Academy of April 11, 1908. It is impossible to be- lieve that any reader could misunderstand Professor Skeat’s intention. The clear- ness of arrangement of Dr. Drake’s book and the method of transliterating He- brew consonants are sincerely praised; but the review as a whole is a sweeping con- demnation of the work, couched in terms of rather gentle irony. Brief quotations will sufficiently illustrate the tenor of the review and the method of the compiler of the circular. The sentences omitted in the circular are here printed in italics: Grimm's Law,ag it is called, is really of no value. Just as the schoolboy, when ask- ed whether the sun went round the earth, or the earth around the sun, impartially said that it was sometimes one and some- times the other; so it is with this famous “sound-shifting.”’ We doubt whether justice has been done to the root “quatal,” to kill, slay. All that is obtained from it is the Gael. “‘Gaidhcal,” a@ Gael, which is entered here “in query, of course, as the real meaning has long been forgotten.” But we would remark that it is exactly preserved in the EB. word “kettle,” with an obvious reference to 2 Kings iv., 40, “there is death in the pot.” We regret that want of space forbids us from doing justice to this great work. It is quite certain that it must be estimated in one or other of the only two possible ways; either it is the most important book on philology that has appeared of late years, or it is the most worthless. The au- thor’s methods are so clear and explicit that no moderate opinion is possible. The reader must judge for himself. There is an amusing side to this per- formance that may perhaps mitigate the harshness of our judgment, though the evi- dence seems sufficient to convict somebody of either gross stupidity or disingenuous- ness. And let writers, especially of signed reviews, take warning. Ironical praise may easily be perverted to strange uses. ALBERT K. POTTER. Brown University, October 17. “SOCIETY WOMEN.” To THE EDITOR OF THE NATION: Sir: Is it not time to make a concerted effort against allowing that most vulgar phrase, “society woman” (or man), to creep into the English language? Incredible as it may seem, it has appeared now and again in quarters that are otherwise above re- proach, and when once an indefensible phrase passes beyond the region of news- paper slang, where it lad its birth, aoth- ing but distinct and conscious effort can arrest it. Frivolous society is not the same thing as society. It is the. social intercourse of les intellectuela which con- stitutes the really important part of so- ciety, and to devote the term, unmodified, to describing its noisy froth and foam is to throw away a most honorable and a most useful word to no purpose. Debasing the coinage in speech is (as George Eliot has ardently pointed out) a crime. There is not the least necessity for the use of the term in this restricted sense. The English language furnishes plenty of good descriptive phrases for the people whom it is sought to characterize. They may be called the “ultra-rich,” the “ultra- idle,” the “fashionable,” the “smart,” or the “worldly.” It might even be possible to bring back that good old English word, the “‘worldlings.” Any of these terms would do, but “the worldly” is probably the best —les mondaines is the word devoted to this use by the French; and Esperanto warns us to put our languages into harmony, where we can actually gain by doing so. Of course, if one goes far enough back, the same objection held originally to con- sidering that the ultra-rich constitute the world, as holds now to considering that they constitute society, but the significa- tion of worldly is so ingrained in the English language that it would be foolish to take exception to it now. The “smart” is a good term in England, but in this country it has acquired a bad connotation. Collectively, the group in question could be called “the gay world,” or “the fash- fonable world,” or “the idle world’ (or, with Veblen, “the world of ostentatious ex- penditure’’); while the other and more im- portant group would naturally be called “the grave world,” “the serious world,” “the weighty world” (‘‘the better world” has been, unfortunately, preémpted for an- other sense),—or—here, again, the French have given us the right model—simply “the intellectuals.” The word bas as good ground for its use as has, for instance, the noun, “the criminal.” It is to be hoped that a word of warn- ing will be sufficient for those who belong to the class in which good English pre- vails. CHRISTINE LADD FRANKLIN. Baltimore, Md., October 18. Notes. To their Riverside Press editions Hough- ton Mifflin Company will add this season three volumes: Shelley’s “Banquet of Plato,” 400 copies; “A Bibliography of Henry David Thoreau,” by Francis H. Al- len, 500 copies; and “The Life and Work of Geofroy Tory,” by Auguste Bernard, 350 copies. The last-named is a large quarto lavishly illustrated. This week Houghton Mifflin Company is publishing ‘“‘The Calico Cat” by C. M. Thompson, “The Home Builder” by Lyman Abbott, “The Poems of Richard Watson Gilder,” “Buddhism and Immorality” by W. S. Bigelow, Defoe’s “Robinson Crusoe,” in four volumes, and “The Story of the Greek People” by Eva March Tappan. Henry Frowde is adding “The Poetical Works of George Crabbe” to the series of Cxford Poets. The editors, the Rev. A. J. and Mrs. Carlyle, give the author’s own text, with the additions and notes made by him. The John McBride Company announces a new translation of Sir Thomas More’s “Utopia,” by Valerian Paget, to be publish- ed under the title of ‘““More’s Millennium.” ——E
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—$_——_.. Ort. 29, 1908] The Nation. 411 It has been put into “thorough-paced mod- ern English.” The publication of the love letters of the Carlyles, recently announced, has been post- poned, for the present year, at least, and perhaps indefinitely. The Clarendon Press (Henry Frowde) has issued two more volumes of Scott’s novels in good paper, print, and binding at the low price of fifty cents: “Woodstock,” edited by J. S. C. Bridge, and “Rob Roy,” edited by R. S. Rait. Both volumes are well illustrated, and provided with notes and glossary. Each editor in a brief in- troduction tells the circumstances under which the novel was written and the his- torical facts on which it is based. The edition is particularly valuable to young people who are making their first venture into the field of historical fiction. Fleming H. Revell Company publishes an “English-Esperanto Dictionary,” compiled by Joseph Rhodes, who testifies to his con- viction by signing himself “Esperantisto 6260.” As a summary of the grammar is included this book will be almost sufficient alone for writing the language. But an Esperanto-English supplement would be needed for reading. There is no more appealing story in Eng- lish history than that of Henry the Eighth’s great-niece, who, during the brief reign of Edward, passed from the hands of the Seymours to their enemies the Dudleys, was married by the head of the latter house to his son Guilford, taken to the Tower on the death of Edward as Queen Jane, a queen of nine days, and left there as a prisoner under Mary until she and her protectors, if that word be not too ironical, went to the scaffold. It is a pathetic fig- ure, little more than a shadow among the passionate self-seeking realities that thronged the Tudor courts, of which we have only one vivid glimpse, when Roger Ascham found her alone in her father’s house, while the others were hunting in the park, a girl of thirteen, reading the “Phedo” of Plato “with as much delight as some gentlemen would read a merry tale in Boccaccio.” I. A. Taylor has made what was possible of this slender story in “Lady Jane Grey and Her Times” (Appletons), al- though “the times” bear, necessarily, a disproportionate relation to the heroine. This lack of balance might have been somewhat reduced if more emphasis had been laid on the religious complications of the day and less on the political, for on that side lay the real concern of Lady Jane herself. In this respect more might have been made of the Zurich Letters, and especially of the girl’s own correspondence with the learned Bullinger. But it is the fault of all these popular biographies to avoid any- thing that is not superficially interesting. With Lady Jane Grey and her husband Lord Guilford Dudley, in the Tower, was another son of Northumberland, Robert, who is made the subject of a special biog- raphy by Mrs. Aubrey Richardson, under the title of “The Lover of Queen Eliza- beth” (Appletons). It takes some courage to continue reading in a book which be- gins in this key: In the great firmament of human person- ality, no star shines with a fiercer light than Elizabeth, Queen of England. And of the numerous satellites that revolve about her, radiating an effulgence that is their own and hers, the one whose beams most dazzle star-gazers is Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. That is sufficient warning that, however familiar the author may be with the easily accessible material of Elizabeth’s reign, she has little acquaintance with good style. As a matter of fact, she soon forgets this highfalutin and gives a clear account of Leicester’s relations to the Queen, and es- pecially of his connection with her intri- cate marriage schemes. Where it is pos- sible Mrs. Richardson takes a kindly view of the lovers. She exculpates Leicester, rightly we believe, of direct responsibil- ity for the death of Amy Robsart; she makes of Leicester and the Queen mere philanderers, to which one can only say, Perhaps. Our quarrel] with her, however, is that she confines herself so closely to “the lover.”’ Leicester’s discreditable do- ings in the Netherlands she slurs over rapidly; she speaks of his influence as chancellor of Oxford, but gives no clear account of the state of education at the university or of the changes introduced; she hints at his interest in literature, but fails to connect him with the work of the Areopagites to which his nephew, Philip Sidney, belonged; she mentions his position as patron of the “Leicester players,’’ but has next to nothing to say of the stage; she even slights the pageant at Kenil- worth with its opportunities for gorgeous description. It is always the lover, or lovers, of the great Queen. , There are in- dications that she was prudent in avoiding matters literary. In the Euphuistic jargon of the day Leicester was ‘“‘eyes’’ to Eliza- beth, Hatton was “‘lids.’’ “In the entranc- ing presence of Hatton,”’ she says, “Eliza- beth could ‘steep her senses in forgetful- ness’ of every anxious care;”’ and she thinks that Elizabeth and her court must have been familiar with the words of Ovid which Dryden subsequently rendered ‘“‘their lids in slumber steep.’’ Doubtless; but it happens there is nothing at all in Ovid about “lids,” only “‘lumina.’”’ There is something piquant in the title chosen by Harry Graham for bis book, “A Group of Scottish Women” (Duffield & Co.). The mixture of canniness and independence in the Scotch character promises a store of humorous anecdotes; while for substance there is the full background of history from the days of that Lady Devorguilla who endowed Balliol College in the thir- teenth century, through those of the Lady Jane who was repudiated by Bothwell for Mary Stuart, of Elizabeth the wife of the Lauderdale who harried Scotland under Charles II., of the Whig and Jacobite dames of the eighteenth century, down to the Miss Clementina Stirling Graham who died in 1877. It should seem easy to put together an entertaining volume of such material, but as a matter of fact the very li- cense of the genre makes it difficult. A reaction takes place in the reader’s mind when he sees through the procédé and dis- covers that the author is selecting among materials for the purpose merely of amusing. This is felt most emphatically perhaps in the chapter on the Duchess of Queensberry, Gay’s “cheerful Duchess,” “Prior’s Kitty,”’ who has a place amongScottish women only by virtue of her marriage, and who is in- cluded by Mr. Graham frankly on account of the literary anecdotes about her. The sketch of that wilful lady is en- tertaining, but would be still more so if arranged with some respect for chronology, and if the intent to amuse were a little better concealed. After “the female Phaeton,” as Prior described her, the most interesting characters are Isobel Pagan and Lady Louisa Stuart. Isobel, who died in 1821, will not be so well known to the readers as most of the other ladies, al- though she was the author, probably, of the famous ballad: Ilk lassie has a laddie she lo’es aboon the rest, Ilk lassie has a laddie, if she like to confess ‘t, That is dear unto her bosom, whatever be his trade; But my lover's aye the laddie that wears the crook and plaid. Mr. Graham gives a brief but striking pic- ture of that strange, misshapen, violent creature, whose hovel was the resort of the curious gentlemen of the neighborhood. It is she who put her head into the tent where a worthy divine was holding forth one Sun- day at great length, and astonished the reverend gentleman with a nod and the words: Weel, ye’re still borin’ awa’, I see.” Mr. Graham gives also a pleasant account of Lady Louisa, the granddaughter of Mary Wortley Montagu, and the friend of Wal- ter Scott. He might have made his chapter delightful if he had quoted more freely from the lady’s correspondence. T. Rice Holmes, to whom we are already indebted for a valuable study of Czsar’s conquest of Gaul, has recently issued a com- panion volume on “Ancient Britain and the Invasions of Julius Cw#sar” (Henry Frowde). The plan of the work, comprising a general account and an appendix of elaborate studies on special points, is essentially the same as that of the earlier volume, but the place of Cesar in the two books must ob- viously be different. Tacitus long ago ob- served that Cesar showed Britain to the Romans, but did not give it to them, and while his expeditions stimulated trade and intercourse with the Continent, they had none of the wider significance of the con- quest of Gaul, which Ferrero has gone so far as to declare the most important fact in Roman history. Mr. Holmes has ac- cordingly sought to place the Roman in- vasion of Britain in its proper setting by telling with some fulness “the story of man’s life in our island from the earliest times,” and in the narrative the men of the Stone Age get more space than the Romans. The account of the pre-history of Britain is distinctly readable, and is based upon the results of archzological as well as philological research. Not only has the author worked through the enormous lit- erature of the subject, both British and foreign, but he has kept his head in the mass of technical and controversial detail, so that his conclusions, though sometimes announced with too great positiveness and finality, generally carry weight. In the appendix Cesar comes to his own, and the topography of his campaigns is treated in great detail. On the two points which have aroused most discussion Mr. Holmes holds that the Portus Itius from which Cesar set sail must be identified with Boulogne, and that he landed in eastern Kent. The latest addition to Sir Charles Lucas’s series of Historical Geographies of the British Colonies (Henry Frowde) is de- voted much more to history than to geog- raphy. Canada as the leading colony of
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412 The Nation. [Vol. 87, No. 2261 Great Britain has had two volumes allotted to it. Vol. IV., by J. D. Rogers, deals with the geography; while in Vol. V., now be- fore us, Hugh E. Egerton is chiefly con- cerned with the history of the provinces and of the Dominion. Undoubtedly there is a great advantage in approaching the history of newly settled countries from the point of view of geography. Internal de- velopment and relations to neighbors de- pend so much upon contour of land, upon lakes, rivers, mountains, deserts,and fertile plains, that a knowledge of these physical conditions is indispensable. In the case of Canada, the geographical influence has been very great. Neighbored for nearly three thousand miles by the United States, from which for a vast part of the dis- tance it is divided by no natural barrier, bounded on the north by inhospitable arc- tic regions, and provided with one mighty highway to the sea, Canada, until the age of railways had well begun, was the coun- try of the St. Lawrence. With this ap- proach to his subject, Mr. Egerton has been able to make his history both more intelligible and more interesting than the historian who gives slighter attention to physical features But Mr. Egerton has not neglected other sources vf information. That he was well prepared to write a his- tory of Canada will be readily acknowl- edged by students who have profited by his excellent work in association with W. L. Grant in the volume of “Selected Speeches and Despatches Illustrating Ca- nadian Constitutional Development.” His clearness and fairness are seen in his treatment of such disputed questions as the settlement of the boundary between Maine and New Brunswick and Quebec, or the difficulties with the United States over the fisheries. Mr. Egerton is not the first historian to do justice to Gov. Carleton; more than one recent writer on the British North American colonies has vindicated the fame of the great Englishman who held Canada for Great Britain during the war of the Revolution. But Mr. Egerton is among the first to assign full and discrimi- nating credit to Lord Durham for his broad-minded and patriotic, though perhaps not always technically legal, management of affairs after the Canadian Rebellion of 1837 Like the previous volumes of the series, Mr. Egerton’s “Canada” is emi- nently readable. Perhaps the greatest drawback to the publication, in a series of geographical handbooks, of such volumes as the present, and as J. D. Rogers’s on Australasia, is that their interest for general readers is likely to be overlooked. Certainly it would be difficult to find a fairer or more generally readable history of Canada than is contained in the 350 pages of this work. For some years the Historical Manu- script Commission of Great Britain has been engaged in the work of calendaring the confidential letters and papers of Lord Grenville, Foreign Minister in Pitt’s min- istries, 1798-1801, Prime Minister in the “All Talents” Ministry, 1806-1807, and Tory lead- er until his retirement in 1823. This vol- uminous correspondence, now preserved at Dropmore Lodge in Buckinghamshire, pass- ed, on the death of Grenville’s widow in 1864, to the collateral line of Fortesque, and has been placed at the disposal of the Commission by the present owner, J. B. Fortesque of Dropmore. Five volumes have already been issued, and now the sixth, covering the period November, 1799, to March, 1801, has appeared. The first three volumes deal with papers of the seven- teenth century and of the eighteenth until about 1797; the fourth records chiefly the formation of the second coalition against France and the abortive attempts to carry an act of union through the Irish Parlia- ment; the fifth relates mainly to the Con- tinental campaigns of 1799, while the sixth concerns the secession of Russia from the coalition, the new alliance of Great Bri- tain and Austria, the abolition of the Irish Legislature in 1800, the negotiations and military operations of Bonaparte and the allies during the same year, the peace of Lunéville, and the resignation of Pitt's first ministry in February, 1801. The im- portance of the papers for English and Continental history has already been fully recognized, though the information which they furnish has not been embodied as yet into the histories of the period. The last three volumes are also of value as throw- ing light on Anglo-American relations, par- ticularly in connection with the Jay treaty and the irritating controversies that arose over the interpretation of some of its clauses. Grenville’s view of the political situation in America in 1800, as expressed in a letter to Robert Liston, is worth quot- ing: The whole system of the American gov- ernment seems to me to be tottering to its foundations, and so far from being able to enforce upon ‘the country good faith to- wards foreign Powers, I much doubt their power of maintaining internal tranquility. “A Calendar of Confederate Papers, with a Bibliography of Some Confederate Pub- lications” (Richmond, Va.), is the title ofa recent volume which has an interest be- yond the actual scope of the work itself. It is the outcome of an attempt to apply modern methods of calendaring historical documents to the record material of the Confederacy. In 1907 a Southern Historical Manuscript Commission was appointed, un- der the auspices of the Confederate Memo- rial Literary Society, and a systematic ef- fort was begun to gather and publish docu- ments relating to the war. The commis- sion proposes to locate, examine, and re- port on large or inaccessible collections, to gather into the Confederate Museum in Richmond as many of these collections, either originals or copies, as possible, and to issue from time to time reports, in the form of calendars, upon selected groups of documents. It is significant as showing the new historical spirit and energy prevailing in the South that within little more than a year after the inception of the enterprise a volume of 600 pages, admirably conceived and executed, should be put forth as a guarantee of good faith. The editor, Dr. Douglas S. Freeman, a graduate of the Johns Hopkins University, has shown great industry, and, in the main, excellent judg- ment in the performance of the task en- trusted to him. Occasional lapses show the handiwork of the beginner in the difficult business of calendaring, but the technique is correct and the annotations illuminating. The list of publications, constituting Part ii. of the Calendar, is a noteworthy addi- tion to bibliographical literature and the promise of an exhaustive bibliography to come is encouraging. Such bibliography should, however, be published as a separate volume. An elaborate index of more than fifty pages completes a work which de- serves all praise, not only for itself, but also as representative of a courageous and scholarly undertaking. With the appearance of the fifth volume of the late E. J. W. Gibb’s “History of Ot- toman Poetry” his work, so unhappily un- finished, has been put before us, exactly as he left it, by the care of Prof. E. G. Browne of Cambridge. This, undoubtedly, is as it should be. No one could take up Mr. Gibb’s personal attitude of complete knowledge, entire sympathy, and yet absolute detach- edness, and if Professor Browne’s half-prom- ised seventh volume ever appears, giving a complete account of the modern school by a native Turkish scholar, its point of view will, of necessity, be essentially different. A sixth volume is now in the press con- taining the Turkish text of the poems trans- lated in the whole work. In the present vol- ume only the first 111 pages are by Mr. Gibb. They fall into three chapters; one pre- liminary on the three founders of the modern school, Shinaésf Efendi, Kem4l Bey, and Ziyé Pasha; a second on the career of Shindsi Efendi; and a third on that of Ziya Pasha. There the thread of Gibb’s life was cut, and the account of the still more im- portant Kem4l Bey remains unwritten. Of the three chapters, that on Ziy4 is by far the fullest and most interesting. It contains a very charming little autobiographic sketch of his childhood and childish essays in poetry, and of his playing the sedulous ape to popular poets of his time until the lit- erature of France claimed him and taught a more perfect way. These chapters have all the more interest in that, under the new régime, an indefinite development of Turkish literature may be looked for, and has, in- deed, already begun. The last 140 pages of the volume give very full indices to the whole work by R. A. Nicholson. C. H. Beck of Munich announces as soon to be published the second and concluding volume of Karl Berger’s “Schillerbiogra- phie.” The Zeitungs-Katalog, published by Ru- dolf Mosse, has made its appearance for 1908 with a noteworthy wealth of statisti- cal data on the journalism of Germany. Exclusive of the technical journals, the number of periodicals of Germany has, dur- ing the twelve months covered by the cata- logue, increased from 3,807 to 3,887. This increase is almost entirely confined to pa- pers that appear six times a week. The largest circulation is reported by the Ber- liner Morgenpost, with about 300,000 sub- scribers, closely followed by the Berliner Lokalanzeiger, with a quarter of a million. The Vorwdrts of the Social Democrats has more than 100,000, and the city edition of the Cologne Gazette, 88,300. In his “Volk und Schule Preussens vor hundert Jahren und jetzt,”’ Paul Natorf, au- thor of the well-known “Schulpidagogik,” sketches the weakness of the educational system of Prussia one hundred years ago and to-day, chiefly as the background for what he regards as an ideal scheme for na- tional popular education. He proposes a pian covering twelve years in all (Giessen: Tépelmann). A new metrical translation of the Nibel- ungenlied into modern German by Dr. H. Kamp has just appeared under the title ——
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Oct. 29, 1908] The Nation. 413 “Unser Nibelungenlied,” in two editions, one with a commentary and one without (Ber- lin: Mayer & Miiller). R. Rost, editor of the Augsburger Post, one of the leading Catholic journals of Germany, has recently published a work entitled “Die Katholiken im Kultur- und Wirtschaftsleben der Gegenwart,” in which he attempts to prove that the Catholics are retrograding intellectually and material- ly, because they devote such immense sums to the luxurious equipment of their church- es. Thus e. g., in Prussia, where the Cath- olics constitute only 43 per cent. of the population, they have in the past decade spent for church purposes nine million marks more than the Protestants. The Cologne Volkszeitung, next to the Berlin Germania, the leading Catholic political pa- per of Germany, declares that these facts are correct, and protests especially against the expense of pilgrimages to Lourdes and other shrines, and insists that more money should be given to the Albertus Magnus Verein, the Catholic association that sup- ports poor university students of the Cath- olic faith in their endeavor to make schol- ars of themselves in secular as well as theological fields. Although the Catholics constitute one-third of the population of Germany, they furnish only about one-fifth of the students in the universities, tech- nological institutes, and other institutions of higher learning. Holland is to have its own Hakluyt So- ciety, or Linschoten Society, to use its prop- er name. It will begin with the “Itinerario” of Jan Huygen van Linschoten, edited by Professor Kern, and will thereafter bring out two volumes a year. The extent to which the “laicisation” of public instruction is being carried by the dominant party in France is shown by a new edition of the “Tour de la France par deux enfants.” This is one of the most widely used schoolbooks, and has been re- printed 330 times. From the new edition every reference to religion has been wiped out. All mention of churches and hospitals called “hétels-dieu” has been expunged. The picture of Rheims Cathedral has been replaced by a map. In the list of famous Frenchmen the names of St. Bernard, Bos- suet, Fénelon, and St. Vincent de Paul are not to be found, and the masterpiece of Puget, the Martyrdom of St. Sebastian, has been taken out. The death is announced of Hiram Bing- ham, a prominent missionary to the Ha- waiian Islands. Dr. Bingham was born in Honolulu, H. 1., in 1831, to which place his parents lad gone from America in 1820. He was ordained in this country in 1855, and in 1856 went to the Gilbert Islands as a missionary. He reduced the Gilbertese lan- guage to writing, and wrote a number of books in that tongue. News comes from London of the death on the thirteenth of this month of R. E. G. Kirk, the well-known antiquary and record- agent. He had been connected with the Public Record Office for forty years, and Was an unfailing help to searchers. He ed- ited the “Accounts of the Obedientiars of Abingdon” for the Camden Society, and wrote many papers for antiquarian journals. Francois Désiré Mathieu, cardinal-priest of Sainte Sabine, has died at the age of sixty-eight in London, whither he had gone last summer to the Eucharistic Conference. He was a member of the French Academy, and the author of several works, including “L’Ancien Régime des Lorrains’’ and “Etude sur Jean de Vandiére.” The death is announced of Emmanuel Pradier (“Georges Pradel”’), a well-known journalist of Paris and the author of a number of novels which in their day were fairly popular. THE VICTORIAN CHANCELLORS. The Victorian Chancellors. By J. B. At- lay. 2 vols. Vol. II. Boston: Little, Brown & Co. $4 net. Mr. Atlay’s second volume brings his admirable “Victorian Chancellors” to its close. His work is distinguished by conciseness, research, preéminent fair- ness, and, in short, by every one of the virtues which is not to be found in Campbell’s “Lives of the Chancellors.” The high merit of Mr. Atlay’s workman- ship is nowhere better shown than in his life of Lord Campbell. To this in- teresting piece of biography we purpose to confine our attention. John Campbell was a representative man. He possessed no touch of genius, even in the modified sense in which that term can be applied to his rivals, Brougham; Lyndhurst, and _ Scarlet. There was little in his character which could be called strange or out of the way; his powers, though noteworthy, were in kind the talents possessed by hundreds of his countrymen. The pe- culiarity of his nature was that he ex- hibited in an exaggerated form all the qualities, good and bad, which have led one Scotchman after another to, suc- cess in the arduous battle of practical life. He was what we have heard hap- pily called “a very uncommon common man.” His ambition was itself common: like scores of men before and since his time, he joined the bar with the deter- mination that he would rise to emi- nence and become Lord Chancellor. In a letter written to his sister, just when he had abandoned the idea of becoming a minister of the kirk and had resolved to seek success at the English bar, he lays down this maxim: “Say every day ‘I will be Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain,’ and you will be made a Puisne Judge of the Court of Com- mon Pleas”; and it is plain enough that he had no intention of limiting his suc- cess by the acquisition of a puisne judge- ship. Thousands of men better and worse than Campbell have, in youth, started in the race for the Chancel- lorship, and have perceived, as he did, that their end could be gained only by assiduous labors. The trait wherein Campbell differed from the mass of am- bitious youths is that, having made up his mind to achieve success, he acted on the principles by which alone success could be gained. He almost literally followed his own maxim. There was not, we may be sure, a day on which he did not in effect repeat to himself, “I will be Lord High Chancellor.’’ He was right, too, in the belief that he possessed the talents necessary for the achievement of his end. He was strong in body and strong in mind. His ca- pacity for work was boundless. His in- dustry was not spasmodic, but assid- uous. He was as hard as nails. He was as bold as brass. He knew not the meaning of modesty, of sensibility, or of tact. He was richly endowed with the talent for getting on. He also pos- sessed two admirable qualities which are preéminently Scotch, and demand respect. He knew that success in life depends upon conduct; he foreswore all self-indulgence which could possibly in- terfere with his ambition. He also felt in the strongest way the ties of kinship. He was an excellent son. He was a good brother, and repaid with ardent and well- deserved affection the essential help given him by his brother, George Camp- bell, when such help was needed. He was a kind husband and an affectionate father. Unfortunately it is difficult not to feel that with Campbell family af- fection looked much like clannishness. Still, though clannishness will never be a popular virtue, and though in the case of John Campbell love of home and family contributed to success, the com- bination of real and self-sacrificing love for, his kin, with self-engrossing am- bition, ought not to conceal from a crit- ic that in his family relations Lord Campbell displayed the best side of his character. The talents and virtues on which we have dwelt brought to him their pre destined reward. When, at the age of eighty-two, he closed his life, he had achieved three memorable feats. He had, in the first place, more than fulfilled the dream of his youth: he had sat in the seat of the Lord Chief Justice of England. He died Lord Chancellor. He had, in the next place, by sheer energy, rather than by any rich literary endow- ment, forced his way into the kingdom of letters; his “Lives of the Chancel- lors” and his “Lives of the Chief Jus- tices” cannot be called classics, but they can still be read with pleasure. He had, lastly, in his letters and memoirs painted a portrait of himself far more truthful than any of the pictures or caricatures he has drawn of his con- temporaries. Campbell’s “Confessions,” for such his “Life” may well be term- ed, rival the Confessions of Rousseau in self-revelation. Books colored by in- tense personal feeling have always an attraction. Campbell’s autobiographic memoirs and letters have throughout the charm of individuality. To this, and to a high appreciation of the strength of Campbell’s family attach- ments, must be ascribed the attraction which he apparently has for Mr. Atlay,
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414 The Nation. [Vol. 87, No. 2261 who ends the life of his hero in these words: Many hard things have been said and written about “Jack Campbell,” but it is impossible for the student of his letters and his diaries to part from him without a feeling of something very like affection. Why was it that “hard things were constantly said and written about Jack Campbell?” The answer is that to many of his contemporaries, and espe- cially to his rivals, he appeared to be a selfish and a not very scrupulous in- triguer. His career was one of self- centred ambition. To the attainment of success everything except family affec- tion was sacrificed. His ambition was perfectly legitimate, but in men of great ability, especially if they occa- sionally boast of their public spirit, something more is expected than the mere pursuit of personal success. The element of greatness, which consists in concern about matters beyond the sphere of personal interest, seems to have been lacking in Campbell. In the midst of his career, when he had been Chancellor of Ireland, he published in a most unfortunate moment, but to the delighted amusement of his foes, a eulogy of himself wherein he states that his children “will be better pleased with the obscurity of their father than if he had gained dishonest fame; and they will have the consolation to reflect [sic] that he never abandoned his prin- ciples or his party, and that by remain- ing true to the cause of civil and relig- ious liberty he always sought the good of his country and the happiness of mankind.” As Mr. Atlay himself tells us, we have here nothing but the pride which apes humility. “What sacrifice,” he adds, “it was pertinently asked, did Sir John Campbell ever make to prin- ciple? What opportunity of distinc- tion did he ever forego from diffidence? When was he ever prevented from ask- ing for anything he wished by deli- cacy?” Every one knew the answer which these questions must receive, and all those who watched Campbell’s profes- sional course knew something more. Al- most every stage of his progress was marked by suspicion of self-seeking or intrigue. When the Reform Bill was first produced, he believed that it meant revolution, and more than suspected that it would bring ruin upon the Whig Ministry. Within a week or two, he became a supporter of the bill. Not many months passed before he joined the Whig Ministry as Solicitor General. In 1834, he became Attorney-General. His rise was the fruit of some strange intrigue; his predecessor, Horne, was elbowed out of office without obtaining the compensation of even a _ puisne judgeship. A few years later Camp- bell demanded, as of right, the vacant Mastership of the Rolls. His strange claim was, he alleged, made in defence both of his own dignity and of the hon- or of the bar. He called upon the Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, bringing in his pocket, the resignation of the office of Attorney-General. The resignation was never delivered. Lady Campbell was raised to the peerage, Sir John appar- ently obtained promise of further ad- vantage to himself. His own dignity, and the honor of the bar were forgot- ten. Of the miserable management, pressure, or manceuvres, by which Lord Plunket was forced to resign the Irish Chancellorship which he had every right to hold, it is unnecessary to say much. Take the most favorable view possible for Campbell, assume that he had no hand in a discreditable transaction, he at any rate, at no call of public duty, accepted, if he did not thrust himself into, an office which under the circum- stances a man of sensitive or of delicate moral feeling would have refused to oc- cupy. He later became Chief Justice of England. To fill this high post, he was well qualified. Unfortunately, his ap- pointment, whether by Campbell’s fault or Campbell’s misfortune, was connect- ed in the public mind with the pres- sure which compelled Denman’s retire- ment. It is a relief to know that the offer of the Chancellorship came upon him as a surprise. Lord Campbell’s devotion to literature must, it will be urged, be treated as a set off against the purely personal char- acter of his ambition. Great faults are often pardoned in a man who is a real lover of letters. But Lord Camp- bell’s literary achievements in reality stand on the same footing as his profes- sional triumphs. They prove his as- tounding energy; they exhibit his rest- less ambition; they do not show any love of literature for its own sake. He worshipped the muses, if at all, only for what he could get from them. Expres- sions may be found in his memoirs and letters which suggest that in his eyes a main reason for reading Shakespeare was the conversational advantage of be- ing able to make appropriate quotations. Strange though the assertion sounds, Campbell’s “Lives of the Chancellors” lays open to the world some of his worst faults. His “Lives,” it has been well said, is “among the most censurable publications in literature. The whole work is disfigured by unblushing plag- iarisms, and, as the writer approaches his own time, by much unscrupulous mis- representation.” He is utterly un- trustworthy. “No one who has ever fol- lowed him to the sources of his infor- mation will trust him more.” This se- vere condemnation, Mr. Atlay, a critic as lenient as he is competent, confirms from facts lying within his own ex- perience as a writer. Campbell’s Lives of Lyndhurst and of Brougham are among the worst but also among the most interesting of his writings. They are defaced by inaccuracy and misrepre- sentation; they fully justify the proph- ecy of Brougham or of Lyndhurst that Camphell would revenge himself upon both his rivals by writing of them with hatred, malice, and uncharitableness, and that he would do this, because “such is his nature.”’ These particular lives are interesting because malignity gives to them a point and wit not commonly found in Campbell’s works. They are even more interesting because they show the fundamental defects of Campbell’s character. These defects illustrate and are il- lustrated by that “Life of John Lord Campbell,” which in reality, though not in form, is an autobiography. Take the posthumously published volumes of his “Lives of the Chancellors” and compare them with Campbell’s au- tobiographical memoirs, and Campbell’s typical and yet peculiar character stands revealed. You have before you a re- vival, or a survival, of the Scotch ad- venturer who, during the sixty years or so which immediately followed the Act of Union, excited both by his virtues and by his faults, the detestation of or- dinary Englishmen. Campbell, the last born and the most successful of his class, displayed all its typical traits. Energy, conduct dictated by pru- dence, intense clannishness, guided him to success, but these qualities brought upon him unpopularity both be- cause they enabled him to elbow his way to greatness, and because qualities cred- itable in themselves masked closely al- lied faults. The belief that success is in itself a virtue deprived his ambi- tion of all generosity. Irritation at ev- ery obstacle which delayed his rise to wealth and greatness excited in Camp- bell’s mind something like hatred of ri- vals, who shone by qualities more bril- Nant than his own clear-headedness and indefatigable industry. If something too like envy disturbed the philosophy and detracted from the moral dignity of Carlyle we can hardly wonder that John Campbell looked with jealousy on the geniality and the genius of Lynd- hurst and the rhetoric and the power of Brougham. Nor is it possible that an adventurer of the class now extinct should, in spite of his honest belief in prudential morality, have avoided con- duct which excited suspicion and blame. Mr. Atlay has the weaknesses of a biographer. He retains affection for his hero, to whose faults, however, he can- not shut his eyes. He tells us how Lyndhurst, with characteristic generos- ity, defended in the House of Lords the most censured, yet assuredly one of the most laudable, of Campbell’s acts— namely, the appointment of Blackburn to a judgeship in the Common Pleas. Let our readers listen to Mr. Atlay’s comment, and consider all that it im- plies. This was the occasion of his [Lyndhurst’s) celebrated and most felicitous quotation
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Oct. 29, 1908] The Nation. 415 over the attainment by the aged Chancellor of everything that he had ever looked for- ward to. “We may say of him, in the words of the poet, Thou hast it now, King, Cawdor, As the weird woman promised.”’ The object of the compliment was happily undisturbed by the unquoted words that fol- low in the text: Glamis, all, and I fear Thou play’dst most foully for it. CURRENT FICTION. Over Bemerton’s. By E. V. Lucas. New York: The Macmillan Co. An Englishman, who comes back to London after an absence of thirty years in Buenos Ayres; a step-cousin (or some such relation; no matter, she is a charming young woman, and that is all that matters in the end), who helps him to select lodgings, their choice fall- ing upon rooms over a second-hand book shop kept by one Bemerton; an amusing set of relatives into whose fam- ily net the idle bachelor is gradually drawn; odd books borrowed from Be- merton and used as the source of whim- sical reflections on modern life—there could be no better material for Mr. Lu- cas’s genial, clever pen. Irrelevance and discontinuity are here a legitimate device, but it does seem at times as if Mr. Lucas was irrelevant from haste rather than from design. His hero, for instance, picks up a copy of Giles’s “Chi- nese Biographical Dictionary” and uses it throughout the story as an arsenal of apt anecdotes and apothegms. Any one who is familiar with the wit of the Chinese as reflected in Professor Giles’s volumes will be ready to applaud the ingenuity of Mr. Lucas in finding such a chorus, so to speak, for his puppets. The point is that Mr. Lucas in his haste does not appear quite to have appreciat- ed the cleverness of his own scheme; with a little more attention he might have welded his reflections on modern London and these Chinese illustrations into as piquant a compound as has al- lured the reader for many a year. As it is, “Over Bemerton’s” affords enough happy entertainment to make such criti- cism a little ungenerous. The Great Miss Driver. By Anthony Hope. New York: The McClure Co. In this story Mr. Hawkins favors us with neither of his two most familiar veins. He does not offer us the stir- ring romance which inevitably provokes comparison with “The Prisoner of Zen- da”; nor does he indulge in such fan- tasy as his recent “Helena’s Path.” “The Great Miss Driver” is the more conven- tional novel of character and manners, a@ careful and somewhat elaborate work, on a rather large scale—that is, for these days when brevity is the body as well as the soul of wit. The story is of a young girl who inherits a vast for- tune, is in a fair way to establish her- self among the county folk, makes what the world cannot but regard as a ter- rible step aside from the straight road, but, thanks to her money and her clev- erness, finally rehabilitates herself. It is a study of character, not a tale of incident; and the characters are well enough drawn to excite interest and hold attention to the end. Miss Dr‘ver is the person upon whom the author has expended the greatest effort, but as so often happens in novels, she is less distinct and real than some of the minor figures. Young Lord Lacey, Cart- mell the family lawyer, and Lord Fil- lingford—all are firmiy sketched. They stand on their feet and walk about like human beings; while Miss Driver, with all her greatness, still leaves us cold and unconvinced. But when the worst has been said, the fact remains that Mr. Hawkins is a skil- ful literary craftsman. In this book he shows less humor and verbal dexterity than he has led us to expect; but he goes about his task with the air of a man who can handle the tools of the trade, and he produces a novel that, if not extraordinary, is at least entertain- ing. An Incarnation of the Snow. By F. W. Bain. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. This is a tale of strange terrors and beauties, told in a style rising to a kind of intoxication, by a belated hunter of the Blue Flower who has found refuge from modern civilization in the moun- tain solitudes of India. The main nar- rative, called the “King’s Amour,” is put into the mouth of a swan, who relates it to a lovely lady sitting by a dark blue mountain tarn. Quintessential ro- mance! But the story, passionate, vivid, shimmering though it is with light and color, is symbolical, as the author in his preface takes care to inform us: What the Swan is to the Lake, what the Moon is to the Sky, what P&arwéti (the Daughter of Him4laya) is to her Lord, that is woman to the world: the Haunter, the Indweller, the Ornament, the Fixed-Idea, the Mystic Solitary Swan in the heart of the dark blue lake of Time. Still another veil must be removed: swan, lake, moon, and sky, the visible universe, time and space themselves are but the illusions with which deity be- guiles itself. With this ancient philoso- phy of illusion the author is infatuated; referring again to the preface we read: Learn, once for all, that the Ganges is more sacred than the Thames, and that all the London churches contain less religion than Benares, where calm-eyed sages sat of old by the purifying water, repeating: One is the Deity, but the wise call him by many names: when Oxford and Cambridge were as yet only for the bittern and the snipe. These words the narrator heard uttered from the heart of India as he lay at noon alone in profound revery among the high hills on the edge of a dizzy precipice backed by the flaming jungle, listening to time pulsing into eternity. Whatever of fascination and of futility the literature of “escape” has for the human spirit is represented in this book. Cousin Cinderella. By Mrs.Everard Cotes (Sara Jeanette Duncan). New York: The Macmillan Co. This is in much the same vein of pleasant satire as Mrs. Cotes’s “American Girl in London.” It is a narrative of the “monologue” order, the speaker be- ing a Canadian heiress resorting to Lon- don for the first time from “Minnebiac, Ontario,” with her brother, also unmar- ried. The plot amounts to nothing—let us admit that she marries a lord, and have done with it—but the humor of the monologue is delightful, just that species of well-controlled inner humor which the English continue to exercise in spite of our lessons in the art of the thump and the guffaw. Though Life Us Do Part. By Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Boston: Houghton Mif- flin Co. If Mrs. Herbert Ward were not so anx- ious to impress upon the world her per- sonal tastes and favorite moral convic- tions, she might not be tempted to ma- nipulate her material so artificially, and her novels would perhaps reflect some- thing more like an image of life. We applaud her dislike of brutality, intem- perance, and other forms of immoral- ity; but we cannot commend the ve- hicle of her displeasure. Her hatred of cruelty to animals, for example, has re- sulted in the creation of a dog that never was on sea or land. This remark- able being has a weird power of detect- ing the Hyde under the Jekyll of the vivisectionist, and nourishes revenge for many years; yet ’tis a creature of the noblest feelings, and, on two occasions, rescues the drowning, and, on a third, prevents a suicide. She dislikes the modern girl with muscles hardened and complexion tanned on the links, and so, to show the ill end of such abandoned creatures, marries the female golf-cham- pion to the wooden abomination, the vivisectionist. The man of her choice is a clergyman with “a great white heart,” whose chin points upward, and whose hands are constantly blessing peo- ple, in season and out. Her affections are lavished upon ana old-fashioned girl of very white mind, sweet—we have it on the writer’s authority—and with the power to faint at the appropriate mo- ment, but with little else to recommend her. With some reluctance she gives this lady in marriage to a young physician of agreeable personality, who enters upon the wedded state
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416 The Nation. [Vol. 87, No. 2261 in the same refined and exalted mood as that inhabited by his wife. One turns over a page or two, and, lo, it has pleas- ed the doctor’s creator to transform that chivalrous gentleman, almost as abruptly as it is here related, into a coarse, disloyal drunkard and wife-de- serter. To punish him for this miscon- duct, so undeservedly thrust upon him, the amiable author shoots him through the head, depriving him of memory, through the throat, altering his voice, turns his hair white, gouges out his cheek, cripples him, macerates him in a shipwreck, and sends him back to his wife repentant, Rather rough treatment from an anti-vivisectionist; but what a lesson for a careless husband! Value and Distribution: A Critical and Constructive Study. By Herbert Jo- seph Davenport. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. $3.72. This volume of 575 closely packed octavo pages is the most notable achievement in systematic economic crit- icism that has appeared on this side the Atlantic. The author takes rank easily with Boehm-Bawerk and Can- nan. It is the irony of fate that the work must be a sealed book except to that inconsiderable number of trained economists who have followed the wind- ings of the higher economic analysis of the past two decades. Even for many of these it will be hard sledding. The style is a bit Meredithian, and the ar- rangement of the page, where commonly three phases of the topic in hand are synchronously treated, is taxing. Expos- ition runs in double-leaded lines; mis- givings, qualifications, alternative ren- derings coalesce in single-leaded para- graphs; and the ubiquitous and plethoric small-type footnote pursues a related or collateral query. To read the book is altogether too much like trying to fol- low Lasker playing three games of chess at the same time. It is quite out of the question to attempt, except in an extended and very technical review, to sift the author’s conclusions upon the numerous issues — interpretative, critical, and constructive—which he ad- vances. An indication of his point of view and an opinion thereupon may, however, be essayed in briefer compass. In general, Professor Davenport chal- lenges the relevancy of the social and technological concepts current in eco- nomics, and insists, exclusively, upon the private or acquisitive point of view. In “a competitive entrepreneur society” that only is to be accounted capital which appears “expedient expenditure” from the point of view of expected prof- it, not that which technologically is ca- pable of increasing society’s command over goods. The trade-secret bought up to prevent competition is capi- tal to the purchaser, even if his secret stands as an obstacle to the enrichment of society. Not that Pro- fessor Davenport denies that social well- being or technical processes are in them- selves of moment. But a consistent log- ic of actual prices, costs, values, and dis- tributive shares is attainable, he von- tends, only by conformity to the private, acquisitive point of view, and ideas con- gruous therewith. As he puts it, “for purposes of competitive production the only important fact for cost is outlay— and not at all the direction of it’—whe- ther for appliances that put a greater product at the service of the consumer, or for an anti-social advantage, so long as the advantage carries the chance for private gain to its possessor, In a man- ner somewhat akin to David Hume, who reduced knowledge to sensations and impressions, the author reduces econom- ic ideas to categories of private gain predominantly expressed in terms of the monetary standard. When legislatures or city coun- cils must be bought, the necessary outlays are, for cost and value purposes, precisely like expenditures for machinery or for the control of patented processes. (p. 153). Hence, the dominance of the point of view of the profit-seeking entrepreneur. As he says in the preface, the important thing is “to rid the science of doctrines that do not belong to it, e. g., labor-time, labor-pain, utility, the social organism; . . the tripartite class- ification of productive factors.” (p. ix). By a curious inversion of Aristotle’s dictum, Professor Davenport makes the art of money-making, not only not inseparable from economics but economics’ very self. It goes without saying that there attaches no shadow of censure upon the author on the ground that he inculcates for the indi- vidual or society the acquisitive point of view. He holds that for a self-consis- tent organon, the dominance of this point of view is imperative. It must be admitted that in his searching analysis of various cost the- ories from Adam Smith to the present day, logical chasms in the authors re- viewed are disclosed which render their theories untenable as _ scientific conclusions. Something similar is true of his effective undermining of mod- ern doctrines of social utility—the notion that society is a great animal and that market prices but reflect the valuations of a corporate consciousness. But if one’s judgment is swayed by the incisiveness of the criticism, one’s hu- man sympathies go out to most of those whom Professor Davenport dethrones. It was a false theory of relative values that real cost, the exertion of toil and sacrifice, regulates them. But the dis- carded economic dictum imaged broken- ly a sound moral judgment as to work and reward. Abstinence as the al- leged source of capital may and does wholly fail to explain the phenomenon but the strength of tue of interest, mistaken notion lay in a vital recog- nition of the difficult individual duty of frugality. It may be indefensible to say with Adam Smith that men act- ing each in self-interest “are led by an invisible hand” “to advance the interest of the society” to which they belong. But the stubborn tenacity of conviction that private initiative in in- dustry working under reasonable and honorable competition is the best attain- able guarantee of social solvency will survive the crumbling away of unten- able economic doctrines that have en- shrined this belief. Professor Daven- port may be right in his cardinal con- tention. If so it but emphasizes the in- dispensability of a complementary and authoritative ethics of industry. The English Factories in India, 1622- 1623. By William Foster. New York: Henry Frowde. $4.15. From January 1, 1622, to December 31, 1623—the period covered by the let- ters from the East India Company’s agents to each other in the East, which are here calendared quite fully—the two events of greatest importance were the taking of Ormus from the Portuguese, and the so-called Massacre of Amboyna. The first was a high-handed, daring proceeding, for the English had to carry two well-built forts, and at the same time fight the Portuguese fleet. The English sailors, hesitant to engage in an exploit for which they had not been hired, and in which they might easily be knocked on the head, were only with difficulty, by the promise of extra pay, persuaded to embark on the dubious en- terprise. Furthermore, the heathen Per- sians, recently become the allies of the English, were not to be depended upon. Nevertheless the English were deter- mined to fight a good fight, and did so. On April 23, 1622, the Portuguese flag, which had proudly waved for more than a century over Albuquerque’s fort, final- ly fluttered down. The luckless garrison of some 3,000, including women and children, was shipped off to English fac- tories. The English lost only twenty killed, but among them was William Baffin, the Arctic explorer. He was on shore with a battery getting a range “for the better leavelling of his peece,” when he “received a small shot from the castle into his belly, wherewith he gave three leapes and died immediatly.” The taking of Ormus made the English mas- ters of the Persian Gulf trade, but the . cost of the expedition was greater than the actual plunder taken—£18,000 in money and ten heavy guns. When the news reached England, rumor had in- creased the figure for the plunder to £100,000, whereupon Buckingham, as Lord High Admiral, demanded one-tenth of this sum as his lawful due. Although the company had already, at the sug- gestion of the King, presented £2,000 to
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Oct. 29, 1908] The Nation. 417 the Duchess of Buckingham, nothing would satisfy the Duke but he must have his £10,000. The company finally paid it, for otherwise he would have stayed their ships. Every one knows what an uproar was caused when the news of the Dutch treatment of the English at Amboyna reached London, in May, 1624, fifteen months after the event. A demand for an indemnity from the Dutch was in- stantly raised and continually repeated for the next thirty years, until Crom- well, with characteristic force, made them pay up. The story of the ‘“Mas- sacre” grew into a veritable legend, to which Dryden, appealing to the English middle-class hatred against the Dutch, gave a final poetic but unhistoric ac- count. The most striking thing about the letters in this volume is that this Amboyna affair is mentioned but once (Matthew Duke, at Masulipatam, to the Surat Factory, September 8, 1623), and then in a most casual, matter-of-fact way. If the Dutch seized without cause a dozen Englishmen, put them to tor- ture, and drove them from their settle- ment, that was nothing to get excited about. It was only one of the natural vicissitudes of Oriental trade. Such, ap- parently, was the attitude of men who had lived out in the East and were fa- miliar with the state of constant semi- war and its deeds of violence. But it was a different matter to trades people in London who lived in peace and slept in snug beds. Writers commonly speak of the Massacre of Amboyna as the cause of England’s final withdrawal from the Spice Islands. This is an error. The real cause was the inability of the English to compete in trade with the Dutch east of Cape Comorin. Even be- fore they heard of the massacre, the English at Batavia had decided to dis- solve all factories in the Moluccas, Am- boyna, Banda, and Japan. There is almost as much about the Dutch as about the English in these ‘etters. The masterful Coen, while Gov- ernor of Batavia, did much to increase the discipline, morality, and European population in the Dutch possessions. One of his proclamations that no “mar- chant or souldier should keepe a wench, but should presentlie marie her or cast her of, caused such a feare that heer are 30 coupells that have joyned in marrage.” To the English this seemed practical morality—‘“‘a good policie to gaine men perpetually to their service.” Science. Typhoid Fever: Its Causation, Transmis- sion, and Prevention. By George C. Whipple, with an introductory essay by William T. Sedgwick. New York: John Wiley & Sons. This is the most important work on the subject, in English, since Cursch- mMann’s monograph was translated and edited by Dr. William Osler seven years ago. It differs radically from the earlier work in its method of approach; for it deals with typhoid fever, not mere- ly as a disease of the individual, to be studied and cured by the physician, but as a social phenomenon, to be dealt with on broad preventive lines by the Sanitary expert. Thus the book is the expression of one of the most striking tendencies of the last two decades—the growth of sanitation and preventive medicine. The author’s experience as biologist to the water departments of Boston and New York and as an epi- demiologist in the Kennebec Valley, at Cleveland, O., and elsewhere, make him a worthy exponent of the new depar- ture in science. The present volume, like his earlier works (“The Microscopy of Drinking Water” ana “The Value of Pure Water”) is sound and scholarly in substance, as well as orderly and pleasing in presentation. He writes primarily for the epidemiologist anéd the sanitary engineer, on the one hand, and, on the other, for the intelligent physician who wishes to go beyond his immediate concern, the individual dis- eased body, into the broader biological and sociological facts which underlie the etiology of disease. Even the lay reader, however, will find the work ab- sorbing; for, as Professor Sedgwick says in his introduction: There is a fascination, a dramatic inter- est, in working out, even in imagination, the dark and devious paths and bypaths along which the microscopic parasites that afflict the human race travel] to their ap- pointed victims. Mr. Whipple treats briefly of the typi- cal symptoms of typhoid and its bac- teriology, including the new blood tests which are proving of such importance in diagnosis. He then proceeds to his main problem, the natural history of the disease. The statistics of typhoid, which tell “a story of shame in many an American city,” indicate a loss of 35,000 lives a year—a loss of which at least three-quarters could be prevented. Typhoid is essentially a disease of warm weather, rising to a maximum in early autumn, except in cities with pol- luted water supplies, where floods from melting snow cause a_ characteristic spring epidemic. The disease increases as one goes South, partly because of the high temperature and partly because of the larger proportion of negro popu- lation. In Mr. Whipple’s book, how- ever, his discussion of seasonal, racial, and geographical prevalence serves only as a background to the central prob- lem—the chain of infection by which typhoid spreads in widening circles from one patient to another. The ingenious diagram which forms the frontispiece puts the matter in the clearest light. At one extreme is the infectious pa- tient; at the other, the susceptible vic- tim. Lines of varying length connect the two, corresponding to the common- est channels of infection: water, milk, contact, flies, shellfish, raw vegetables and fruits, and other factors now un- known. Across these lines of danger are drawn lines of defence. The phys- ician, the householder, and the public authorities form three barriers around the patient to prevent the spread of the typhoid bacillus “at large”; their methods are disinfection and cleanli- ness in the disposal of excreta. From the point of view of the potential vic- tim the most important weapons of de- fence are supervision of food supplies and personal hygiene. Mr. Whipple discusses with admirable clearness and conservatism the life of the typhoid bacillus at large, outside the human body. The germ is a para- site adapted to life in the body, and in water or earth or milk it is in a hos- tile country and more or less rapidly dies out. The more direct the trans- fer from one person to another, the greater the danger. In water, for ex- ample, the reduction of typhoid germs 1s so rapid that 90-99 per cent. are gone after two weeks. A few resistant organisms may persist, however, for longer periods and cause isolated cases; while a sudden flood, such as_ that which washed the contents of an out- house into the water-supply of Plym- outh, Pa., in 1885, may strike down a large proportion of the population. Hence the proper filtration of public water is the only certain safeguard; and Mr. Whipple shows how municipal filters have reduced the typhoid death- rate by four-fifths at Frankfort, Zurich, Hamburg, Lawrence, Albany, Newark, and other places. Milk is even harder to protect than water. As a recent proof of this fact, the Jamaica Plain epidemic in the spring of the present year, in one of the most carefully guarded com- munities in this country, might be cit- ed. Dealing with the milk question, Mr. Whipple says “the cause of pasteuriza- tion seems to be steadily gaining ground. Before many years the general pasteurization of milk in large cities is likely to be as common as the filtra- tion of water.” Behind all protection of food, however, lies the care of ex- creta. If the wastes of human life are not properly disposed of, the infection of food surely results. Dirty hands or flies or some other agent will always be found to complete the vicious circle. In the Spanish war one-fifth of our vol- unteer army suffered from typhoid, due not to bad water or milk, but simply to camp pollution. As long as typhoid is thus spread by more or less direct con- tact, the movement for pure water and milk and food must be supplemented by a vigorous campaign against uncleanli- ness in the disposal of excreta. Mr. Whipple’s chapter, “The Typhoid Pa-
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418 The Nation. [Vol. 87, No. 2261 tient as a Focus of Infection,” is there- fore most timely in its clear statement of the imperative need for sewage dis- posal in general, and in particular for the disinfection of the excretions of the sick. These general statements of the prin- ciples underlying the spread and the prevention of typhoid are supplemented by a summary of the particular circum- stances of the more important classic typhoid epidemics, those of Plymouth, Lausen, Lawrence and Lowell, Somer- ville, Springfield, Stamford, New Haven, Ithaca, and many more. This chapter is followed by a brief discussion of ex- pert methods of studying and control- ling epidemics. As Mr. Whipple says: To trace an epidemic to its source is not so much a study for the doctor as for the statistician, the detective, the bacteriol- ogist, the chemist, and the engineer. The specialist has to be all of these at once. It is well-merited praise to say that Mr. Whipple’s book will help to make more men of this type. Prof. Harry Snyder presents in his text- book, “Soils and Fertilizers” (The Mac- millan Co.), a large amount of well-ar- ranged information which should prove in- teresting to many general readers. At first sight it seems as if sluggish soil offers little that can engage the attention of those who are not directly or indirectly occupied with farming or gardening. But the soil has a marvellous side. Its re- markable power of separating impurities from water is one of the most puzzling phenomena in nature. If a slow current of foul water passes over and through heavy soil, it emerges sparkling and pure. It has left behind the substances which made it an offence to sight and smell, and these substances speedily become the food of plants. Dirt removes dirt, but just how, nobody can tell. Again, the immense sur- face of all the particles of soil in a given space is a surprise to every one. Professor Snyder quotes Prof. Milton Whitney of Washington, D. C., as saying that a gram (about fifteen grains) of rich productive soil contains from two thousand million to twenty thousand million particles. Each is irregular in shape, and hence it is im- possible to estimate exactly the surface of the whole number taken together; but, if one assumes that these particles are minute spheres, the computation becomes easy. On such a basis it can be shown that a cubic foot of soil contains a surface area of from two acres to three and a half acres. It is among these minute particles that the filtering takes place, and it is here that the activities of roots are dis- played, But there are other activities in this workshop: it is here that minute forms of life (certain microbes) are busy in de- stroying organic compounds with which they come in contact, and out of the con- stituents building up new compounds. Thus it comes to pass that the subject of fer- tilizers as well as that of soil itself proves to have many features of attractiveness for the general reader. Of course, in a text- book, many of these topics are discussed in a formal manner, and some of them are touched with merely a slight reference, such for instance, as Darwin’s study of earth- worms and their relations to the soil; but the treatise is likely to be stimulating and suggestive to many besides the students for whose use it was prepared. The second and concluding volume of Dr. Hans Solereder’s “Systematic Anatomy of the Dicotyledons” (New York: Henry Frowde) increases the indebtedness of bot- anists to the author and the translators, L. A. Boodle and F. E. Fritch. In our no- tice of the early volume (July 30, p. 101) attention was called to the thoroughness with which the literature of the subject had been ransacked and coérdinated. In this instalment the thoroughness is as marked, and the vast amount of material brought together is made accessible by a copious index. Although it seems a hope- less task to adjust the conflicting termin- ologies employed by different observers, one can say that the author has gone very far towards complete and satisfactory ac- complishment of this result. In a well- proportioned glossary, equivalent terms are placed in instructive juxtaposition, so that any student can form his own opinion as to the synonym. But this is not all: the author has appended what he modestly calls “concluding remarks,” in which he has given a masterly exposition of histological morphology. He indicates with clearness the characteristic features of groups which are separated by their anatomical struc- ture, and in this way puts every possible aid in the hands of theoretical and prac- tical students. To the experts who are en- gaged in the investigation of vegetable sub- stances liable to adulteration, the treatise will be especially helpful. Dr. Solereder’s important contribution to our knowledge has been much aided by the effective edi- torial supervision of Dr. D. H. Scott, who has a remarkable sense of proportion and perspective. The third fascicle of Oakes Ames’s “TIllus- trations and Studies of the Family Orchida- (Boston: The Merrymount Press), adds another important chapter to the al- ready voluminous literature of this at- tractive group. The present fascicle, deal- ing with certain species from the Philip- pines, contains descriptions which, from their technical character, cannot be of general interest, But there is one feature of the volume which should be brought to the attention of all lovers of fine etching: The illustrations are worthy of careful study, not only on account of their fidelity to nature, but on account of their effec- tiveness as simple line work. It is evident that facility in expression increased from the earlier plates as the etching proceeded. The latest illustrations leave little to be desired in delicacy or force. “Graf Ferdinand von Zeppelin: Bin Mann der Tat,” by A. Vémel (Constance: Johannes Blancke), is an interesting story of an interesting character, and is not a mere panegyric. The book contains sixteen full-page illustrations. cer” Prof. Odilon-Mare Lannelongue has com- municated to the Académie des Sciences the results of an entire year’s widely var- ied trials of anti-tuberculous serum on hu- man patients. The experiments have been made on both children and adults by such responsible doctors as Noir, Legry, and Kiiss. Jules Comby, Le In pulmonary tu- berculosis of the first and second degree the results are summed up as follows: The serum has been used in human be- ings without danger; and it appears to be, in cases still liable to treatment, a useful aid to ordinary therapeutics. Moreover, it seems to result from certain observations of Kiiss that the bacilli, under the influ- ence of the regression processus, diminish in number and may even disappear—a re- sult which seems to indicate that the fac- ulties of generation or multiplication of the bacillus are lessened. This is regarded as a definite along this line of research. The Royal Scottish Geographical Society will confer the society’s gold medal upon Lord Avebury, and another gold medal upon Sven Hedin. advance Drama. The Life of Henry Irving. By Austin Brereton. New York: Longmans, Green & Co. $6.50 net. In the beginning of his preface to these two substantial volumes Mr. Brereton says: “As this book tells the story of the life of Henry Irving, it follows that, in regard to the author, it is almost entirely impersonal.” Actual- ly, it is nothing of the kind, being in- spired throughout by the zeal of ardent friendship and almost unqualified ad- miration. No proof is needed of the power and charm of Irving’s character beyond the devotion which he excited among those who worked with or under him. As an authoritative record of the actor’s professional life and. triumphs, both on and off the stage, the book is what it professes to be, setting forth all essential facts with much fulness of detail—including financial statistics of a most interesting kind—and in admir- able order. Its unexceptionable sources of information and capital index make it an exceedingly useful work of refer- ence for the student of the theatre./ Though on the historical side it is com- plete and accurate, on the critical it is less trustworthy. Mr. Brereton, of course, has no difficulty in giving chap- ter and verse for his extracts from the great body of contemporaneous eulogy of which Mr. Irving, more than any other player of his time, was the ob- ject; but he is not always judicious or ingenuous in his selections or suppres- sions. He quotes, for instance, many pages of the inconsiderable rhapsodies of Clement Scott and of innumerable less-known newspaper writers, but only refers briefly and slightingly to the not altogether insignificant minority who declined to swell the pean of reckless adulation. It is true that he reprints passages from some scurrilous attacks, manifestly grounded in ignorance or malice, to which no sensible person could give any credence, but of the mass of discriminating but not unkindly crit- icism, which by provoking discussion was of such inestimable value to his hero in his early prime, Mr. Brereton
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Oct. 29, 1908] The Nation. 419 scarcely gives a sample. This one-sid- edness greatly detracts from the value of what is in many respects an excel- lent piece of work. No attempt can be made here to fol- low, even in briefest outline, the course of Irving’s full and meteoric career, nor is it necessary. There is nothing equal to it in theatrical history, at all events since the days of Garrick. A poor boy. reared in a little Cornish village, by a choleric old uncle and his Puritan wife, set to work in London, while still in boyhood, with only the rudiments of education and no one to back him, mak- ing his way to the stage, in the face of all sorts of opposition and discourage- ment, and ever struggling onward and upward, until, at the age of forty, he had attained to the dramatic leadership, which he held to the day of his death —and, more than that, to a position of social and intellectual distinction which reflected new credit upon a profession fallen into general contempt—it is a wonderful story. And the most precious moral in it for all actors lies in the opening chapters, an inglorious record of incessant application, unrelieved drudgery, constant disappointment, and dauntless ambition. In these years he enacted four hundred and twenty-eight characters of every imaginable variety. Then it was that he acquired that mas- tery of the actor’s technique, the subtle- ties of vocal inflection—for he was a most delicate elocutionist in his quieter moments—the extraordinary control of feature, the eloquence of his hanas, his picturesque and appropriate attitude, significant gesture, and superb repose. He was a finished artist long before he was recognized as a great actor. That he had genius, if only of that degree which has been described as an infinite capacity for taking pains, is indisput- able. But it was the keenness and vigor of his intellect that raised him above his fellows. In this respect, ne was an improved Macready. In the realms of the higher tragedy he could not soar with Edmund Kean, with the elder Booth, or with Salvini. In such a part as Lear, he had not the power or the pathos of Phelps or of Edwin Booth. Nevertheless, Irving, though never a Sreat tragedian, was a great actor in many directions, especially in eccen- tric, imaginative, romantic, intellectual, and melodramatic parts, and his growth along these lines may be followed by any careful reader of this latest biog- raphy. His earlier successes in such purely melodramatic characters as Bob Gassit (“Dearer than Life”), Bill Sykes and Robert Redburn (“The Lancashire Lass”) are not particularly significant, except as regards their eccentric qual- ity. From these he advanced to the far finer achievement of Digby Grant, in Albery’s “Two Roses,” in which his gift of vivid eccentric characterization was brilliantly displayed. Next came his ex- traordinarily imaginative and melodra- matic Eugene Aram, which also comes fairly within the category of the eccen- tric. This is followed by his master- piece of Matthias in “The Bells,” in which imagination, eccentricity, ro- mance, and melodrama were blended in wonderful combination. There was trag- ic quality in it also, but not of the high- est order. His next triumph was as Charles I., an impersonation full of ro- mantic charm, noble dignity, and ex- quisite pathos. In his Richelieu again power of eccentric characterization and melodramatic effect were the predom- inant features. A famous critic re- marked that in addressing Baradas— “Thou hast lost the stake’—he illus- trated the fascination of the cobra. In “Macbeth” he offered a study of intel- lectual cowardice, in which terror of the mind overcame the valor of the sol- dier. His Othello was weak, whereas the intellectual devilry of his Iago was magnificent. Intellectuality, again, was the predominant attribute of his re- markable Richard IJI. His Vander- decken was thrillingly weird, romantic, and pathetic. In Shylock, a splendidly intellectual performance, he revealed many of his most striking qualities, but Booth sounded a clearer tragic note. His Hamlet, brilliant in its variety, its orig- inality, its distinction, and its insight, was only melodramatic in the crises where it ought to have been tragic. His Louis XI. was the most perfect exam- ple of intellectual, romantic, and eccen- tric melodrama known to the modern stage. In his Becket there was the ele- vation of tragedy, without the demon- strative power. It was the suggested might of a lofty intellect that made this impersonation so impressive and also in- vested Wolsey with a nobility that did not belong to him. The list might be extended indefinitely, without revealing a part in which Irving triumphed solely by force of tragic genius. The fact is that he was not a man of violent emotions or passions and lacked the necessary organs to give them utter- ance, even if he comprehended them in all their heights and depths. He had a fine mind, noble instincts and aspira- tions, the gifts of pathos and humor— especially of the sardonic kind—a rare sense of personality (in spite of his mannerisms), and a wonderful actor’s face. The finest side of him was reveal- ed in such parts as Becket, Charles I, King Arthur, Dr. Primrose, Wolsey, and Hamlet—his most perfect embodiments were those of Louis XI, Matthias, Mal- volio, whom he dignified with a touch of Quixotic pathos whose beauty and truth Mr. Brereton does not appear to appre- ciate, and Corporal Brewster in “Water- loo.” His absolute failures, during his prime, were very few. All his charac- ters were endowed with a large meas- ure of his own dominating and attrac- tive personality. As a man, indeed, he was almost more remarkable than as an actor. Mr. Brereton’s plain records of his energy, his artistic devotion, his courage in times of trial, his prodigal- ity as a host, and the number and va- riety of his social and other interests excite wonder and admiration. The amount of money that he spent, chiefly, it should be said, upon his productions, was prodigious. His profits on his eight American tours alone amounted to $580,000, and yet he died comparatively poor. But he had raised the stage from a slough of despond, had been honored by learned bodies on both sides of the Atlantic, had enjoyed the friendship and esteem of many of the most notable men of his time, had lived in a blaze of glory, had been knighted by Victoria the Good, and had won a place in West- minster Abbey. “Shakspere and His Forerunners,” by Sid- ney Lanier; and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” liberally illustrated by Arthur Rackham, are promised this month by Dou- bleday, Page & Co. Smith & Elder are publishing a sixth edi- tion of Sidney Lee’s “Life of Shakespeare” in its original book form. Mr. Lee has add- ed a new preface, in which he discusses re- cent discoveries. Clyde Fitch has written a new comedy, “The Happy Marriage,’ which will be played in London by Sir Charles Wyndham and Miss Mary Moore. In this city the part of the heroine will be assumed by Miss Doris Keene. Next month W. S. Maugham’s comedy, “Lady Frederick,’ which has been exceed- ingly popular in London, will be produced in this city. The principal feminine char- acter—a dashing woman of the world of the type long associated with the brilliancy and varied humor of Mrs. John Wood—will be assumed here by Ethel Barrymore. Charles Frohman has obtained for Eng- land and for America a new play, “‘Arséne Lupin,” a kind of French “Raffles,’’ writ- ten by Francois de Croisset. its story con- cerns the meeting of a man and a woman who are both thieves, but who abandon their criminal careers because of their love for each other. Mr. Frohman will produce the piece first in New York. “The Sway Boat,’’ by Wilfred T. Colby, which Lena Ashwell has produced at her Kingsway Theatre, in London, is described as a poignant and clever little play. It certainly is not in any sense agreeable or edifying. Lady Kilross is bullied by her mother-in-law and taunted by her husband, because she has not provided an heir for the house. Therefore she throws herself into the arms of a lover, with whom, how- ever, she declines to elope. Still, she does not think it right to conduct an intrigue behind her husband’s back, and drowns her- self, as the best way out of the dilemma. Miss Ashwell is said to find great emotion- al possibilities in the character of the hero- ine. It is announced that John Drew is plan- ning to abandon modern society drama and to appear in “The School for Scandal,’’ and other old English comedies, including “Much Ado About Nothing,’’ in which he will again play Benedick. Such a change
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420 The Nation. [Vol. 87, No. 2261 would doubtless help him to get out of the rut into which he has been sinking deeper and deeper for some years. The announcement is made that Miss Nance O'Neill is to appear as a star in a series of Shakespearean tragedies, begin- ning with ‘“Macbeth.’’ She has already played the part of Lady Macbeth, with some success. Fritz Lienhard has in his recent drama “Luther auf der Wartburg” completed his Wartburgcycle and arrangements have been made for its appearance on the Weimar stage this coming winter. The cycle con- tains also the dramas “Heinrich von Ofter- dingen” and “Die heilige Elizabeth.” The new drama “Der reiche Jiingling,” by Karl Résler, the scene of which is laid in the Jerusalem of Christ’s day, is to be giv- en for the first time in Vienna. Musie. Richard Strauss. By John Lane. $1 net. An industrious writer of books is Ernest Newman, yet it cannot be said that he produces too many. Unlike some of the composers he discusses, he never writes a page not worth reading, and seldom one not worth preserving. He is a trained musician as well as a bril- liant writer; he has ideas and opinions Ernest Newman. of his own, and expresses them with vivacity and audacity. His little book on Richard Strauss is one of the best things he has dove, yet it is likely to exasperate both the detractors and the admirers of that sensational com- poser; the one class because of what they will regard as over-praise, the oth- er because of what they will resent as over-censure. The skeptics will be sure to sneer at the author’s reference to Strauss as “the most commanding figure in contem- porary music,” and accuse Mr. Newman of confounding notoriety with fame; they will laugh at his assertion regard- ing Liszt, the iaventor of the sym- phonic poem, that his “powers of con- struction were not equal to his powers of invention”; they will see a grave in- justice not only to Liszt, but to Saint- Saéns, in the statement that Strauss carried the symphonic poem—which is the typical modern art form—‘“as far beyond anything of the kind that his predecessors had written, as Wagner in ‘Tristan’ had swung himself beyond t*e ken of all earlier or contemporary com- posers of opera”; they will hoot at the assertion that Strauss applied the Wag- ner-Liszt system of theme-transforma- tion “with an audacity and brilliance of which they never dreamt”: and in view of the warm battles that have been wag- ed against and between clever charla- tans, they will gravely question the view that the great commotion raised over Strauss proves that he must be a man of “first-rate importance.” The admirers, on the other hand, will be wroth because Mr. Newman, after placing their idol on such a lofty pedes- tal, riddles him with so many bullets that at the end he presents but a sorry spectacle. What makes this procedure the more interesting is the fact that our author starts out with a page or two of citations—“wild and malodorous lan- guage” he calls them—from the book of an American critic who concludes that Strauss is leading music along a path that can only finish “in the corruption and rank odor of the morgue’; and then Mr. Newman proceeds to lay bare the infirmities of Strauss in language which is sometimes almost as _ livid, though it must be admitted that the American keeps down the loud pedal more persistently. It is the opinion of Mr. Newman that there is a tendency in Strauss to “burden music with extra- neous and inassimilable literary con- cepts”; that in “Don Juan” he sets his foot for the first time on “the false path that has led him into so many marshes and quicksands”; that even in his best work there are “crude deformities in the building that sadly mar the total ef- fect”: that there has “grown up in him a deep love of the grotesque for its own sake (and music happens to be the art in which the grotesque most jars upon us and most quickly wearies us)”; that the marches he wrote for the Kaiser “say next to nothing in a very highly colored way” (Mr. Newman might have said this of most of Strauss’s works) ; that most of his songs represent “a wo- ful waste of time and labor’; that in many of them he “relies on a display of pumped-up excitement that he hopes may be mistaken for genuine passion”; that “the score of the ‘Symphonia Do- mestica,’ for example, would sound just as well with a third of the notes and several of the players omitted.” The last citation we can make in regard to the “greatest living master of orchestra- tion” is that “he often falls a victim to the modern mania for using a pot of paint where a mere brushful would do equally well, or better.” Mr. Newman says in his preface that he does not know Strauss personally, but maintains that from one point of view this is an advantage to a biograph- er because it makes possible a more independent critical attitude. The “per- sonal note” is contributed by another London critic, Alfred Kalisch, who de- fends Strauss against everything, in- cluding the charge of commercialism; in doing which he misses the real point. No one chides Strauss for getting all he ean for his pieces; what his censors hold up for reprobation is the fact that, although he is very ich (his mother is the daughter of a millionaire brewer and he himself has made a fortune by his pieces), he continues to write pot- boilers and to choose operatic subjects chiefly because of their sensational ad- vertising value. The story of his life is told briefly, of necessity, for there is little to tell, apart from his evolution from a conservative composer of abso- lute music to the most audacious and grotesque of programme-music makers. The symphonic poems are not analyzed in detail, but considerable space is giv- en to the operas, including “Salome.” Few names of living French musicians are more widely known than that of Cécile Chaminade, who made her American début last Saturday afternoon at Carnegie Hall in this city. Im America, as well as in France and England, her songs and piano pieces have a great vogue in the drawing rooms; statistics of the music trade a few years ago indicated that more of her works were sold than of any other composer for the salon, and in this matter there has probably been no change. This music seems to appeal especially to American women; Chaminade clubs are scattered broadcast throughout the country, and they will as a matter of course welcome the visitor from Paris with open arms. She had a cordial reception at Carnegie Hall, which was crowded. Men were in an even greater minority than usual, there being not more than twenty in that vast audience. it must be frankly said that the men were lucky not to be there, for a less entertain- ing entertainment cannot easily be im- agined. Mme. Chaminade has written one song, the “Sérénade Sévillane,” which may be called inspired, but that was not on her programme. The eleven piano pieces and thirteen songs presented were characterized by a singular monotony and superficiality; they were mere musical small-talk. In listening to all this one could easily fancy one’s self transported back to the times when Herz and Kalkbrenner and Thalberg and Gottschalk held their own with their drawing-room pieces against Chopin, Schu- mann, Liszt, and other great men. Mme. Chaminade’s music is sometimes piquant, but it is too insipid to be called beautiful; at best there is a doll-like prettiness. And this woman’s playing is as unemotional as her music. Composers, in playing their own pieces, often show a lack of the necessary technical skill, but more than atone for this by bringing out details of expression that escaped other performers. This is not true in the case of Mme. Chaminade; she plays neither like a virtuoso nor like a composer. It is a singular phenomenon. But her tour is an assured success. There are indications that women will some day monopolize chamber music per- formances. One of the most successful— and deservedly successful—organizations in the country is the Olive Mead Quartet, con- sisting of four young women who are busy every day of the season, travelling from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The Adele Mar- gulies Trio has a woman at the piano, and last Sunday a new organization, the Maud Powell Trio, had its first hearing at Hermann Klein’s popular concerts. The pianist, Miss Anne Ford, was new to the local public, but Miss Powell and Miss May Mukle are among the local favorites, and to hear them together, especially in a nov- elty by Schuett entitled ‘““Walzermarchen,” was a treat.
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Oct. 29, 1908] The Nation. 421 The Hess-Schroeder String Quartet will give a series of three chamber music con- certs in Mendelssohn Hall, in this city, on the evenings of January 14, February 10, and March 3. The quartet is also to give eoncerts in Boston during the season. No tours will be made by this organization until April, when it will make a _ four weeks’ trip in the Middle West. One of the most important publications of the autumn will be the fifth and final volume of Thayer’s Life of Beethoven. It is based on material collected by Thayer, worked out by Hermann Deiters, and put into final shape by Dr. Hugo Riemann. The volume covers the years 1824-1827. The publishers are Breitkopf & Hartel. Other impending publications by this house are Liszt’s correspondence with Carl Alexanr- der, Grand Duke of Saxony, and the third and last volume of Litzmann’s biography of Clara Schumann. Prof. Paul Kleinert, a veteran of the theological faculty in the University of Berlin, in his new volume, “‘Musik und Re- ligion: Gottesdienst und Volksfeier’’ (Leip- zig: J. C. Hinrichs), discusses the relation of music to the hymnology of the church and to popular song, and especially the ser- vices rendered by music to religion. Art. Sir Christopher Wren. By Lena Mil man. Pp. xii.+367; 64 illustrations. New York: Imported by Charles Scribner’s Sons. $2 net. In every country of Europe the renais- sance in architecture, as for that mat- ter the renaissance in literature, has a history of its own. Gothic died hard, and in proportion as it was rooted in the soil, left its traces upon the new pseudo-antique. In Italy and in Spain Gothic was a precarious exotic, and the deracination was easy. The French chateaux, down to Francis I., attest how hard the native architecture died there, and how building was Italianized only by a superficial decorative application to fabrics still essentially native. Eng- land had followed France through the medieval development at the respect- ful distance of from a generation to a century, and in the same manner fol- lowed the new Continental fashion. To the ordinary reader it seems that Wren was the pivot of the transformation from the architecture of craftsmanship to the architecture of formula, and that the importation of classic, like the con- temporaneous Gallicization of English literature, was the result of the Restor- ation. But this is far from being the case. From the death of Henry VIII. to the accession of Charles I. was only eighty years. But the interval had suf- ficed to complete the transformation through the transitions of Elizabethan and Jacobean. Inigo Jones, brought back to his native land in the train of Anne of Denmark a quarter of a century be- fore ‘Wren was born, was already, by dint of his Italian studies, as convinced a classicist as Sir William Chambers. Wren, however, as court architect— “Surveyor-General of the King’s Works” —at the time of the clean sweep of the great fire of London, had probably the most extensive professional opportunity that ever fell to the lot of a single architect. He found the British capital Gothic, and he left it classic. But the battle of the styles, so far as there had been any battle between native crafts- manship and imported scholarship, was lost and won before his time. “Gothick,” in his mouth or on his pen, was a badge not only of “bad taste,” but of barbar- ity. Wren had undergone no apprentice- ship in architecture. He designed no- thing before he was thirty. He was properly a cognoscento, a _ dilettante. “There I found Dr. Wren and several virtuosos looking upon the paintings,” reports Pepys in 1668. The present biographer, writing of him as arn under- graduate, notes: Among the scanty information we have concerning this period of Christopher Wren’s life, there is not a hint or sug- gestion of any leaning towards art. Wren was, in fact, rather a scientist than an artist. Mathematics, extending to mechanics on the one side and astronomy on the other, absorbed him. Pepys, again, in 1669, sets down: This morning I did visit Mr. Oldenburg and did see the instrument for perspective made by Dr. Wren; and the sight of this do please me mightily. Appointed to the Gresham professor- ship of astronomy at twenty-four, and transferred to the Savillian university professorship, warmly praised by New- ton as a geometrician, president of the Royal Society, Wren would have been memorable among British worthies if he had built nothing. It was before he had built anything that Isaac Barrow, in language that did not seem hyperboli- cal to the Oxford of that day, describ- ed him as “once a prodigy of a boy, now a miracle of a man.” But, of course, it is Wren’s work as an architect that is to justify another biography of him at this day. Lives of architects which are worth writing at all are worth writing over since pho- tography came to let the reader see upon what the claims of the subjects are founded. The material available in this case has been judiciously sifted, and is very well presented. It is hard- ly to be supposed that any architectur- al pilgrim will visit all even of the memorable works of Wren that survive, in Ireland as well as in England, at Ox- ford, Cambridge, Lincoln, Greenwich, as well as in London. The present biog- rapher has an advantage in being at once a devoted admirer of her subject and a churchwoman of the kind to which, as a rule, the works of Wren are anathema. “We cannot all feel warmly towards Wesley or Laud,” ob- serves Stevenson. She manages to feel warmly towards Laud, and the execu- tion of Charles is always “the treason of Whitehall.” And yet, in the same breath, as it were, the restoration of the north transept of Westminster from what Wren made of it, becomes vandal- ism. The biography relieves Wren’s memory of the common ascription to him of the west front of the abbey, as we know it. Doubtless, Wren’s con- tempt for Gothic proceeded from a deep ignorance and from an_ insensibility that he shared with his contemporaries. There is a dreadful example of his Gothic at Warwick. But it is reassur- ing to learn that this particular out- rage he did not commit. The illustra- tions include not only the monuments which posterity is challenged, as in the case of the most famous of them, to “circumspect,” but also some quite un- pretentious and unfamiliar works. As to these, it is curious to note how mod- ern they look. If one were not told, one would take them for rather humdrum examples of Georgian; or, on this side of the Atlantic, “colonial.” Upon the whole, the biography justifies itself. It was well worth doing, and it is well done. The title of “The House Dignified: Its Design, Its Arrangement, and Its Decora- tion,” by Lillie Hamilton French (G. P. Putnam’s Sons), is evidently a variant for that trite phrase, “The House Beautiful.” But “The House Swell” seems to be rather what the writer had in mind, or, to use an adjective which she overworks, “The House Important.” For the humble dweller in the suburbs, who resorts to his weekly or his monthly for “Hints on Household Taste,” will discover at a glance that this volume was never meant for the likes of him. One of George Ade’s heroes was ad- vised that the duty of a man who had noth- ing to do, and was “all clogged up with funds,” was to build a country house “and work up features for the Sunday papers.” To that young man and that young man’s wife this work is dedicated. It is to tell them how they may defy a much more ex- acting criticism than that of the omnivor- ous writer for the Sunday papers. The path, indeed, is plain enough. Out of the 75 original illustrations, including Euro- pean examples, mainly from Fontainebleau and Versailles, 21 represent the work of one firm of architects; and no fewer than 14 show the possessions of one owner, seven being of his town house, and seven of his country house. The moral for the conscientious but distrustful millionaire is tolerably obvious. But the author is careful to explain that money will not do it all. Neither, apparently, will the choice of an architect. The Thoughtful Spender must cudgel his own brains, under the penalty of being found wanting in the esti- mation of a severe and austere critic, who takes these things with the solemnity of a Hebrew prophet, and is strict to mark in- iquity, though, of course, in general terms and without personality. “Rugs: Oriental and Occidental, Antique and Modern,” by Rosa Belle Holt (A. C.
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422 The Nation. [Vol. 87, No. 2261 McClurg & Co.), has been issued in a re- vised and enlarged edition, with thirty- four full-page illustrations, twelve in color, and a map of the Orient. When the book first appeared it was reviewed at length in the Nation of November 14, 1901 (p. 383). We then said: For one who knows nothing of Oriental carpets, to whom Persian, Turkish, Cau- casian are but names, who cannot distin- guish handmade and machine work, the book is a mine of information. It is, in fact, written for the ignorant but interested public, who are many, and not for the car- pet students, who are few. Its importance and worth lie in its putting together in convenient form, systematically and with accuracy, a large amount of practical knowledge on a subject which hitherto, with rare exceptions, has been treated in large expensive publications, often in a foreign language. Since 1901 a number of other works on the subject have appeared; and in this new edition the author gives us “the results of recent investigations made in the United States, in the art centres of Europe, and in the Orient.’’ The volume is handsomely printed and well indexed. In Pagasw, on the Gulf of Volo, in Thes- saly, where the Archsological Society of Athens is engaged in research, two tow- ers were recently laid bare, one dating from the fifth pre-Christian century, and the other probably from the first. The lat- ter was built entirely of tombstones which evidently had once stood along the road leading to it. Unlike stones of this sort, which generally have reliefs or inscrip- tions on the front, these bear colored pic- tures, like those found near Saida, several years ago, marking the spot where Greek mercenary soldiers were buried. The num- ber of such stones found at Pagas@ is more than a thousand, and many are well pre- served. Photographic reproductions of some of these finds have recently been pub- lished in the Ephemeris, and a solid vol- ume, with complete tablets in colors, is to be issued by the Archzological Society in Athens under the editorship of E. Gilliéron, The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Philadelphia Water Color Club will hold under their joint management an exhibition of orignal work in water color, black and white, pastel, drawing with pen- cil, crayon, or pen, and illustrations in whatever medium, November 23 to Decem- ber 20. The jury of selection consists of Hugh H. Breckenridge, William S. Robin- son, Colin Campbell Cooper, William L. Lathrop, George Walton Dawson, and James Henry Moser. The Autumn Salon at Paris, begun a few years ago as an experiment, seems to have been accepted as an accomplished fact. This autumn, as usual, the exhibition has been eked out by a retrospective part and a foreign section—Finnish paintings. And there is a bit of sculpture and considera- ble decorative art. Of the contemporary painters, some are not so young or un- known. Maurice Denis, who for nearly twenty years has been a delight of the Nationale, shows a History of Psyche, made up of great decorative panels, full of nude grace, amid the charm of tender- tinted sky and water, mountain, trees, and flowers. He has already done impor- tant work from orders in Germany; and the present series is for a dining room in Moscow. René Piot exhibits another im- portant piece of decoration, for a mortuary hall, in three divisions, Requiescat—In Pace—Miserere Mei. This artist has stud- ied the old fresco masters in Pisa and Flor- ence and Naples for many years. His work is the true fresco painting, meant to be executed on the wall surface, and not pasted on it. The Rest is that of eternal springtime; the Peace is the forgetfulness of the tomb; Mercy is craved for the mor- tal sins, pride domineering. Maufra has a great marine painting, ordered by the French state to adorn the wall of some public building. The immense advance in quality and variety of French mural paint- ing is due to this buying public at home and abroad—for public buildings and sump- tuous residences, with a church or chapel thrown in between. Some of the younger artists have surprisingly good and new work, along with direct insults to eyes and understanding. Such is Henri Matisse, who forgets that beholders are not all fools, and that it is not necessary to do differ- ently from all other artists. The exhibits of foreign artists are in many cases pleas- ing. John Lavery of Glasgow has a por- trait of Pauline Chase as Joan of Arc, The work of the Finnish painters is interesting, and often shows great technical skill; but the paintings are singularly unbeautiful. The figures are of a people without heavi- ness, but without grace. The landscapes are of dazzling snows or long, strained twi- lights. The retrospective sections consist of a few samples of El Greco; of forgotten engravers and designers, who deserved bet- ter fate, Bresdin and Chifflart; and a com- plete representation, some 175 works, of all different ages and manners of one painter whose place in historic art is assured— Monticelli. Monticelli will be finally known as a sort of Watteau of the Second Empire —courtly figures in falbalas, painted, not drawn, with what has since been named impressionism, and colored like the land- scapes of Diaz. At the Exposition of 1900 a few superb works of Monticelli (who died in 1886) were a revelation to many. It is not probable that any other collection of his works will be made as complete as the present; but, wherever found, they have been shown to be worth studying in the order of time of their painting. They leave permanent impressions of life and nature during the years when France glided from romantic poetry and Corot to the splendors of Imperial country life under Eugénie, with imaginations of Francis the First and his ladies. The pictures and art objects of Charles Séguin have been left as a bequest to the Louvre. The Museum is to choose from his collection such objects as seem desir- able up to the value of a million francs. The Merwin Clayton Sales Company of this city holds its first auction November 9. The offering will be a collection of Japanese prints, each signed. The French Académie des Beaux-Arts has awarded two prizes to pensionnaires of the Villa Médicis at Rome—the Prix Santour te M. Bussiéres, an engraver, and the Prix Henner to Jean-André-Edouard Monchab- lon, a painter. From Rouer comes the report of the death of Edmond Lebel, honorary conserva- tor of the picture gallery of that city. M. Lebel was born at Amiens in 1834, and studied under Coignet. He was one of the first to introduce engravings into provin- cial museums, and made the museum at Rouen notable in this respect. ee Finance. LEGENDS OF THE PANIC. Last Saturday was the anniversary of what economic history will hereafter describe as the “panic day.” October 24, 1907, now seems as far in the past as July 26, 1893, September 20, 1873, and October 13, 1857. No event of such far-reaching significance ever oc- curs without producing a mass of leg- end. What may be called the folk-lore of a panic is created in the same way as other kinds of folk-lore; namely, through efforts of the ignorant to ex- plain, in a way that appeals to their own imagination, phenomena which they cannot understand. We do not have to go far to find such survivals from earlier panics. Mr. Taft’s naive talk in South Dakota, about the way in which the tariff bill of July, 1894, caused the panic of July, 1893, is a case in point, but it is not the only one. Bryan and “Coin’s Financial School” in 1896 told us how the Money Power per- sonally caused the panic of 1893 in or- der to punish Free Silver and rivet the hold of the Great Gold Conspiracy—a legend which had a vogue even wider than the story of 1873, that “London” deliberately brought on the panic to punish America for growing into so dangerous a competitor. Naturally, those other legends of se- cret powers of darkness in the circles of High Finance, who pursue their enemy and crush him, even though a panic be necessary for the purpose, are always present. Wall Street itself knew all about this in 1893 and 1873, and it was almost superfluous for a New York newspaper to revive last week the tale that the panic of 1907 was the engine used by T. F. Ryan to crush his com- petitors in the street-car field, by E. H. Harriman to get possession of the Georgia Central Railway, and by J. P. Morgan to grasp the Tennessee Coal Company for the Steel Trust. The pan- ic of 1907 has, in fact, an unusually full crop of legends. The notion of a “Roosevelt panic” seems not to have passed into folk-lore; even the simple- minded see the absurdity of supposing that people ran the banks because of the Railway Rate law and the fine on the Standard Oil. But the floor of Con- gress has heard at least one legend, told with the detail of a Grimm, as to the origin of the trouble last October. Senator La Follette—“proprement nom- mé,” a caustic Paris financial critic re- marked, in reviewing the incident—was the authority, last March, for the tale of one hundred millionaires who cor- nered $500,000,000 cash, precipitated the panic, and then doled out their money at exorbitant interest. People who
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Oct. 29, 1908 | The Nation. 423. think that the ‘Wisconsin statesman’s dream is not an article of faith in thousands of humble minds, know little of after-panic legend. Yet even La Follette’s fairy tale had a basis in Wall Street gossip. If not five hundred million dollars, then at least twenty-five millions, were sud- denly, as the phrase ran, “thrown into the Stock Exchange” at the in- stance of Mr. Morgan, when the strain was at its worst. Where had Mr. Mor- gan been hiding that money, and why? One heard this question often enough, within a stone’s throw of Trinity Church. Serious and unimaginative peo- ple might reply: what. happened at noon on October 24, 1907, was the represen- tation by the president of the Stock Ex- change, to the Clearing House commit- tee, that relief must be had at once; that the banks were themselves in un- warranted panic; and that, with $250,- 000,000 cash still in their vaults, and with reserves barely down to 25 per cent. of deposits, it was their duty to grant credit where it was so desperately needed. Then came the assent of the banks, and the consequent entrusting of the Morgan banking house with the duty of lending $25,000,000 for their ac- count on the Stock Exchange. All this may be recited, and it explains the facts; but how little appeal it makes to the instinct of the picturesque, as com- pared with La Follette’s account! Even fin sober history, the report that the Bank of England, in the panic of 1825, applied the Bullion Committee’s rule of discounting freely in the crisis, competes very poorly with the tradition of the paying teller who discovered a dusty and forgotten box of one-pound notes in the bank’s secret vaults, and used them to save Lombard Street. Last of all, it would be interesting to learn just how large a portion of the general public still believes that the panic of 1907 was stopped wholly by the personal intervention of Mr. Morgan and Mr. Rockefeller, and how many believe that the Treasury’s announcement of its “plan of relief’ on November 17, was the cause of the subsequent recovery by the banks. It is not impossible that both these notions will figure hereafter in financial history. BOOKS OF THE WEEK. Actors’ Birthday Book: Johnson Briscoe. Moffat. Addison, Julia De Wolf. Arts and Crafts ~ the Middle Ages. Boston: L. C. Page. Aked, Charles F. 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424 The Nation. [Vol. 87, No. 2261 Rust, Lieut.-Commander Armistead. Ex- Meridian Altitude, Azimuth and Star- Finding Tables. John Wiley & Sons. Shortt, Adam. Lord Sydenham. Toronto: : Morang & Co. Smith, F. Hopkinson. Captain Thomas A. Scott, Master Diver. Boston: American 60 cents net. A Group of Brief American Unitarian Unitarian Association. Sons of the Puritans: Biographies. Boston: Association. $1.50 net. Stenton, Frank Merry. William the Con- queror and the Rule of the Normans. Put- Thackeray, William Makepeace. Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, and the Miscellaneous Pa- pers written between 1843 and 1847; Yel- lowplush Papers and Early Miscellanies; Paris Sketch Book and Art Criticisms. Henry Frowde. Thomas, Augustus. Harper. $1.50. Treasury of Verse for Little Children. Se- The Witching Hour. lected by M. G. Edgar. Crowell. $2.50. Tuttle, Hudson. Arcana of Nature. Still- man Publishing Co. $1.50 net. Van Buren, James H. Sermons That Have Vincent, E. A Modern Judas: and Other Rhymes. 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