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 Mohamet did not know Abu Ali. That he was an Afghan, and that the deaf mute had come with him from India.

"A liar as well!" exclaimed the cadi.

The voice showed Bugs that he had blundered. He could not understand why. The cadi was corrupt, the entire hearing was a farce—but such conditions were common enough. Why had the great name of Abu Ali been of no avail, and done harm?

"I have heard enough," said the cadi. "Thou art a liar as well as a thief and murderer! I judge you guilty, Ben Mohamet! Take him away to prison. Let him lie there while I meditate on his sentence!"

Bugs laughed insultingly. He never in all his life had found it so difficult to laugh. But he had to play the proud Durani to the bitter end. A poor but proud Durani, under whose clothes it was no use looking for money. That gun must not be discovered.

"Cadi" and his voice rose sonorously above his weariness, "Cadi, thou art more of a fool than a knave! Abu Ali would not have thee for his dog. I am his man! God help thee when he hears of this!"

The crowd gasped at this loud insult.

"The sun hath made him mad," droned the cadi. "Put him in the lowest cell, where the heat of the sun can not trouble him. I will meditate on his sentence!"

UGS and the tottering Russian were marched to the filthy jail. As they went the cadi beckoned the camel-driver.

"I think you lied also," he drawled. "If it turns out he spoke the truth concerning Abu Ali—who will protect thee then?”

The camel-driver shivered.

"Get what money you can, and I will do my best for thee,” said the cadi in matter-of-fact tones.

The cadi meditated, but not upon the sentence of Ben Mohamet. He had decided that long ago. Even if he had given the weary Bugs a chance to explain why he had killed the "son of my father by his second wife," such explanation would have made no difference. He did not think for a moment that Bugs had told the truth about Abu Ali and his cousin, but he would have liked to believe it was the truth. For Abu Ali Al Hassen, far above graft and petty cadis, had, after many tales about this particularly rotten one, sent word that his days as a judge were done.

"You may plead that you are no worse than many others," the message had run, "but they go also! Lest it hold the office of cadi up to the scorn of the people more than thou hast done thyself—I give thee the chance to leave Jidda and never again show thy face there. Be gone after tomorrow's judging!"

The cadi, who had made hay for years, was making hay frantically while the sun still shone. His power held until midnight. After that hour began the Mohametan sabbath There were a hundred wretched prisoners in the jail. They lacked a sufficiency of both food and water. Their other conditions can not be described At nine that evening the poor creatures, broken in mind and body, were called out into the yard two by two. There a ring was welded around their necks. A chain was attached to the rings. There was one chain to two rings. Thus two prisoners were chained to one another, and so on. Fifty helpless couples, after the fashion of slaves Two men ringed together can not do much, or escape. And a gang of a hundred men so ringed can be herded, if necessary, until they fall in a strangling mass.

A smith did the work, but two huge, bestial Nubians bossed the job. Then into the dark of Jidda the prisoners were


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WIMJW I‘d-m

288

FAITH.-—MODEBN

LOVE. Mr. Smith’s eyes turn to me, and Albert saw them too. He looked guilty. He knew he had no right to even hint a word against his wife: so he added, to save his credit, ‘My business is so harassing and so confining, that it would cramp my brain into a commercial frenzy if it were not for this blessed relief of the opera.’”

What shall I conclude as to the utility of the opera from this conversation? I don’t know. “It is all a muddle.” I want to banish the whole institution, academy and all, so that Mrs. Lavinia may have one less excuse for her extravagance—but it would go hard with me to refuse its solace to Albert, who, having no peace at home, must either go there for amusement, or to places less innocent, clubs and billiard rooms, where there is not the holy influence of music and ‘the ghoul sensuality” is hostess. He can stay at home and become a martyr killed N by inches if he retain his sense and sensibility, or an automaton calculating machine, heartless and soulless, if he lose them. But I would not like to be the one to condemn him to “evenings at home,” which would have either result. -

FAITH. sr MISS Man! a. Larnauar'.

I am waiting for thee, darling, I am waiting for thee, love; And the night, starlit and lonely, Darkeneth through the deep above: And the hours have driven the sunlight From the laughing West away; And hath crowned her with a coronal Of pale stars—yet I stay.

I’ve watched here for thee, darling, At many a setting sun; I’ve waited on this cliff for thee Tilt the night was almost done: Yet through the golden-pillared gates No sail e’er came to me; No boat came bounding fleetly o’er The moaning, moonlit sea.

They told me, darling, long ago, That the demon winds and wave, Chanted a low and solemn dirge Above thy nameless grave; And they said my heart was breaking, And that reason‘s light had ﬂed; When I smiled, and said that it was false, That my darling was not dead.

I know thou'rt coming back, love; For yestreen, as I came, The sighing leaves of the rowan tree Were whispering o’er thy name; And I’ve built of them a shadowy bower Beneath the cliffs for thee; And strewn with flowers the lonely path That leads down to the sea.

And thou wilt come to-night, love; Thou can’st not stay away; For I have called unto the waves Thy name, love, all the day; And they have hymned a solemn chant For thy safe coming, sweet; And surging o’er the sands, have cast Their white crowns at my feet.

And I have bound my brow With flowers Like those thou gavest to me Upon that morn of agony When thou wast called to sea. But sing, oh, weary-waiting heart! Oh, tearful eyes, be light! And, oh, my shrinking faith, be true, For he will come tonight!

MODERN LOVE BY

FRANCES

HENRIETTA

Ah! yes, I really was in love, I know it sounds romantic, silly, Bnt sure no stoic could resist Such ﬂounces as encircled Lilly!

She was a witching sprite indeed, With crinoline and rings uncommon, The beau ideal of a belle, Tho‘ not so much perhaps of woman.

I courted her a year or so, And then my angel grew quite chilly; Mad jealousy my breast enflamed, What new Adolph had charmed my Lilly?

I sighed and smiled. and lisped in vain, By-gone oaths were unavailing, ’Twas plain, on courtship’s open sea, Some faster craft was mine entailing.

Just then what patron saint of mine Took me beneath his blessed guidance, Without stiletto, rope, or ﬂood, Of my dread rival I had riddance.

A worthy uncle journeyed East, Got rich and died, (event propitious) Oh! what were uncles born for, but At happy moments to enrich us?

And poor Adolph had lately failed, To faithless banker weakly trusting, And banished from his lady’s smile In sad obscurity was rusting.

I took my hat, and took my purse, Each bill a billet-doux to Lilly; She saw prospective city lots And whispered, “I do love you, Billy."

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


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 "Oh, it is not great sum. It will not cause your chain of banks to go crash. I am not sorry of dat, Fletch'r, for you have been such fine partner wit' me, so far, so helpful, dat I rreally wouldn't like to t'ink dat I had cause' all your banks to go burrst"

"Will you tell me the amount this Chinese has agreed to turn over to you?"

"Not so much, I say. Jus' half-million dollar' in cash."

"Only half a million! Only" Fletcher choked. The sum, it was true, would not bankrupt the Sino-American, but it would end his career. Ten years of hard work, building up the institution from one small bank in Shanghai to a great organization with fifty branches in China. Those ten years swept away. How could he go before his board of directors and say, "Yes, I tossed half a million squarely out the window?"

"No!" he began. "What you ask is too much" when a warning cough came to him from the figure squatting in the shadows, almost forgotten. Tsang Ah-bou. Tsang had told him to pretend acquiescence to all the schemes proposed by the Count. But did Tsang realize what he was asking now? Demanding that he, Fletcher, ruin his own career and cripple the bank, just to satisfy the insatiable money-lust of this Mazzino who had but one threat to offer after all, death. Would it not be better to risk that, to explain the true situation to the quiet man in gray serge who had been sitting so patiently while this colloquy in a foreign tongue was going on?

The ship-owner apparently read the conflicting emotions in Fletcher's mind, the thought of treachery, for he said with that same oily infleaion which held so much venom:

"The prroof of the—how you say?—Nesslerode?—is in de eating. I will know ver' easily, my good Fletch'r, w'ether or not you persuade dis Cha to do my bidding. Eith'r I get dis money in my hands, in cash, in good pap'r, or I leave you 'ere, stretch' on de floor of dis summ'r house, mos' unpleasantly dead. Takeyour choice, hein?"

Again Tsang Ah-bou coughed, a dry, rasping sound, accompanied by an asthmatic wheeze.

Fletcher hesitated no longer. The cough he translated as a signal to acquiesce. Tsang Ah-bou had never yet failed him. Nor had Tsang ever asked him to consent to a dishonorable act. He must blindly trust the small detective. He twisted toward the Count, saying dourly:

"All right!"

"Good!" said the ship-owner. "It is much bett'r for you dat you keep de breath of life! And it is bett'r for me dat I get de money!"

Fletcher turned to the Chinkiang banker. This time, he translated the Count's words without evasion or untruth.

"But, of course," quickly answered the gray-serge figure. "When I was first approached to loan the money, I demanded some sort of guaranty that it would go to the right persons. Now that you promise to underwrite the loan, I can ask for no finer security. The Count seems anxious to get away. I will not detain him."

Again he clapped his thin hands. Once more a servant appeared. Cha gave an order in Chinese, but he spoke so rapidly that Fletcher had difficulty in following it. The latter caught the key words, however: "Half a million."

As they waited for the servant's return, Fletcher turned to Cha.

"May I ask an impertinent question? How does it happen that you, a member of the great compradore class of Chinese, are allying yourself with these revolutionists? They are opposed to capital and to capitalists."


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 CHARLES.

BY FRANK LEE BENEDICT.

CHAPTER I.

The brightness of a spring sunset bathed the turrets of the grim old chateau of Vincennes, and waved banner-like over the broad forest beyond.

There was s chamber overlooking the wide expanse of woodland, and situated at the side of the castle, where it was entirely hidden from the court-yard with its restless throng of servitors and armed men. Heavy purple draperies hung before the casements, through which the suntight faintly streamed, making s gloom in the apart- ment more oppressive than the grey of evening. Gorgeous tapestry lined the walls, and in that atrenge tight the figures stood boldly out, a if endowed with vitality and holding communion amid the silence.

At the farther end of the room was a couch, upon which Jay a young man buried in slumber, He seemed to have flung himself carelessly down and fallen into that restless sleep which was not repose, for his features worked convulsively, and his hands knotted themselves together, like one beseeching forgiveness for one mortal sin,

‘The face was that of = mere youth, but so worn and pallid by illness and evil passions, that it appeared never to have been young, The thin lips were bloodles: and the temples throbbed with feverish violence. At intervals the tread of heavy feet came up from the court-yard below, but the martial sounds, instead of arousing him, blended with his dreams, and brought new images of terror; for, at every repetition, he would start wildly, sometimes uttering a faint mean, while a cold dew broke out upon his forehead, and stood there tike drops of rain.

While he slept, the hangings before a secret door were flung aside, and e young girl entered the apartment with cautions steps, shading her eyes with her hand to accustom them to the gloom. When ehe saw that restless form upon the couch, she stole toward it, and sat down pon a low seat, bending over the sleeper with painful solicitude. For a time her presence appeared to have produced a tranquilizing effect, for the youth's arms folded themselves upon his breast, the heavy breathing ceased, and once a smile stole over the whiteness of his lips. He murmured a name in his dream, as one might utter a blessing, and, at the sound, a rich color shot over the face of the watcher, and her large eyen filled with tears.

But the peaceful vision gave place again to those terrible reflections, and he threw up his hands with a wild gesture, while his teeth ground themselves together in renewed suffering. The girl drew back in affright, for the face was fearful to look upon; then abe leid her hand upon his forehead, anying softly,

“Waken, Charles. It is I”

He sprang from the couch, glaring round the room, but unable to fasten bis eyes upon any object.

“Who is there?” ho gasped. . “Am I never to be at peace?”

“It is I—Clemence,” she replied, in the game low whisper, twining one arm about his neck, and trying to draw him back upon the cushions.

After au instant he recognized her, and the wildness of hia look gave place to a smilé of tonderness, which, a moment before, hin face seemed incapable of expressing.

“Clemence,” he said, strainiog her to him, it you, my bird? Ob! I was seeing such horrible things!”

“They are gone now, Charles; lie down again and I will ait by you.”

“Don’t leave me,” be said, grasping her hand in his trembling fingers, ‘don’t leave me alone.”

I will sit here and talk to you, Charles, only be calm, It was nothing but a dream.”

Charles IX. flung himself heavily back upon the cushions with a shudder of relief. “It was fearful,” be muttered, “fearful! See, my face is wet as if I had been out in a tempest.”

The girl smoothed the matted hair back from his forehead, and pressed her hand upon the fevered pulses.

“You will be better in a moment, Charles, Do not think of it.”

“But it was so real, Clemence! I saw a sea of blood, its crimson billows were rushing ever me, and dead men floated by, brushing me with their icy arms, and cursing me with their glaring eyes as they passed.”

“But it is over now. Do not tremble so, Charles, it is past.”

239 �


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Author talk:Henry Charles Low

= sources =

publications

 * The dictionary of British book illustrators and caricaturists, 1800-1914
 * lived Wimborne, Dorset, active 1914-1939

census
Name 	Henry Charles Low Age in 1911 	17 Relation to Head 	Nephew Gender 	Male Birth Place 	NSW Newcastle Resident Civil parish 	Wimborne Minster County/Island 	Dorset Country 	England Street Address 	68 West Borough, Wimborne Marital Status 	Single Occupation 	Architectural Student Registration District Number 	260 Sub-registration district 	Wimborne ED, institution, or vessel 	17 Piece 	12261 Household Members (Name) 	Age 	Relationship Selina Lucy Low 61   Head Agnes Alma Low  50   Sister Fanny Edith Low  41   Sister Henry Charles Low 	17 	Nephew Rosalie Helena White  18   Servant
 * 1911 England

Name 	Henry Low Age 	7 Relation to Head 	Son Gender 	Male Birth Place 	New South Wales, Newcastle Civil parish 	Whitstable Urban Search Photos View blank form Ecclesiastical parish 	Whitstable All Saints County/Island 	Kent Country 	England Registration district 	Blean Sub-registration district 	Whitstable ED, institution, or vessel 	2 Neighbors Piece 	799 Folio 	30 Page number 	5 Household schedule number 	35 Household Members (Name) 	Age 	Relationship Tom Frank Low 42   Head   Solicitor May Agness Low  32   Wife May Mildred Low  14   Daughter Victoria Australia Low  12   Daughter George William Low  10   Son Frank Low  9   Son Henry Low 	7 	Son Kathleen Low  5   Daughter Arthur Low  3   Son
 * 1901 England

1939 Register
Name 	Charles H Low Gender 	Male Marital Status 	Single Birth Date 	22 Feb 1894 Residence Date 	1939 Address 	68 West Bow Residence Place 	Wimborne Minster, Dorset, England Occupation 	Artist Line Number 	16 Schedule Number 	121 Sub Schedule Number 	3 Enumeration District 	Wktd Borough 	Wimborne Minster Registration district 	259/1 No 22 Household Members (Name) 	Gender Fanny E Low  Female Mary Anne White Female Charles H Low 	Male

death
Name 	Henry C Low Death Age 	72 Registration Date 	Sep Q. 1965 Registration district 	Bournemouth Volume 	6b Page 	132
 * FreeBMD

probate
Name 	Henry Charles Low of Brightlands Crabton Close Road Boscombe Death Date 	4 Sep 1965 Death Place 	Strathallan Nursing Home 3 Owls Road Boscombe Probate Date 	12 Jan 1966 Probate Registry 	London, England
 * Calendar of the Grants ...

birth
Name 	Henry C Low Birth Date 	1894 Birth Place 	New South Wales Registration Year 	1894 Registration Place 	Waratah, New South Wales, Australia Father 	 Tom F Low Mother 	May A Low Registration Number 	35085
 * NSW BDM

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THE

To Dr. GARTH.


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THE

To Mr. WYCHERLEY.


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Author talk:Charles Alexander Robertson

Charles Alexander Robertson
C A Robertson was a teacher in Auckland in the late 1800s. He died in 1888 following a fall from a horse. The New Zealand Herald published a lengthy obituary which notes he was a Senior Warden of a Masonic Lodge. (Masons were frequent contributors of papers to the Institute) https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NZH18880102.2.22 New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 8940, 2 January 1888, Page 5

The NZ Death Index for 1888 for males named Robertson lists Charles Alexander Robertson - reference 1888/248 Noracrentiss (talk) 00:52, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

 * "Mr C. A. Robertson of the Auckland Grammar School, followed by a well-written essay on "Education as a Science," which, we learn, will be followed by a second paper on the same subject." https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/AS18780716.2.20
 * JUNIOR MAster [of the Grammar School]—C A. Robertson, late Head master of the Thames School https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/DSC18740203.2.2.7 Wainuiomartian (talk) 02:39, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

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THE

To the of Mrs. TEMPEST.


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To the Right Honourable

GEORGE Lord LANSDOWN.


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 kinde, and vertue of waring and growing, to the perfection thereof. Alſo to this vertue Vegetabilis: that giueth life, ſerue foure vertues, that is to be vnderſtoode.

The vertue of appetite, that taketh what is néedfull to foode: the vertue of Digeſtion, that parteth the thing that is couenable, from a thing that is not couenable in foode: retentiue, which tranſmitteth or conueieth it, that is conuenient in foode, to all the partes in beaſts, and to all the boughes, twigges, ſprings, and plants, and faſtned to them, to reſtore the luſt or liking ſap or iuyce as well in plants, as in beaſts: The vertue Expulſiue is, which expelleth and putteth awaye that that is vnconuenient and hurtfull to kinde. Alſo there bée other vertues that ſerue and miniſter to the vertue Vegetabilis, Immutatiue, Informatiue, Aſsimulatiue, Perforabilis, Aſpera, Leuis: the differences of which is not our intent to purſue: For they be openly knowen in ''Liber Iohannicij. Chap. 2.''

Therefore gather you ſhortlye of this that is ſayde, that the ſoule by the vertue Vegetable in plantes, bringeth forth other of the ſame kinde, and multiplieth and kéepeth that that is brought foorth in kinde. And whatſoeuer is néedfull to foode, it deſireth, receiueth, incorporateth, and inioyeth. And it putteth and excludeth awaye that that is not according. Alſo by the vertue Generatiue, to whome ſerueth Paseitiue, it multiplyeth and bringeth forth things of kinde. And by the vertue Nutritiue, it comforteth and féedeth kindes that bée multiplied. Alſo by the vertue that is called Augmentatiua, it maketh the bodie increaſe and growe, and bringeth it to a due ſtatute and quantitie, and maketh it perfect.

Alſo by age and paſſing of time this manner ſoule faileth, & at the laſt when the bodie dieth, it conſumeth. And theſe things that be ſayd héere of the ſoule, called Anima Vegetatiua, ſhall ſuffice.

¶Of the ſoule ſenſible. Chap. 9.
. of the Soule that giueth féeling, ſomewhat ſhall ſhortlye be ſayde, touching the diuerſitie of the might and vertues thereof. For the vertue of féeling hath place in the moſt ſubtile Chambers of the braine, and giueth quicke moouing and féeling in all the limmes, and that by ſinewes and ſmall vaines that ſpring out of the braine, and ſpreadeth into all the partes of the beaſt. The Soule ſenſible, that giueth féeling, hath double might and vertue, that is to wit, of apprehending and of mouing. The vertue of apprehending, that is a manner knowing, is departed in twaine: into common or innerwitte, and into perticular or vtter wit. The vtter wit conteineth the ſight, hearing, ſmelling, taſting, and touching. And this wit in his Organes is brought to effect in this manner. There is a ſinew that in the crafte of Anathomia, is called Obticus, and is an hollowe ſinewe, and commeth from the braine to the eyes, or to the blacke of the eien, parting.

And an other commeth to the eares: and the thirde to the noſethrilles: the fourth to the tongue, and to the roofe of the mouth, and the fifte brauncheth and commeth in cordes to the inſtrumentes of touching, and ſpreadeth through all the bodye. By theſe ſinewes the ſpirite of féeling is diſpearſed into all the bodye: and by vertue thereof all the bodye is able to féele and to moue. And ſo by vertue of ſpreading and of ſhedding of that ſpirite into all the ſinewes, arterye vaines or Muſcles, all the matching or making of the bodye, is founde able to moue.

¶Of the inner Senſe. Chap. 10.
THE inner vertue is parted in thrée, by thrée diuiſions in the braine. For in the braine bée thrée ſmall celles,

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AN

ESSAY

ON

CRITICISM.

Written in the Year 1709.


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AN

ESSAY

ON

CRITICISM.


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by the vertue Generatiue, to whome ſerueth Paseitiue,

 * by the vertue Generatiue, to whome ſerueth Paseitiue,

I don't know what Paseitiue is. The Latin says something like

so I figure it means "passion", which fits the sense of the line. But what's the word Batman used? Marnanel (talk) 01:23, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

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THE

AN

HEROI-COMICAL

Written in the Year 1712.


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 dropped in her clasp, and she laid him back in the blankets, it was piled thick on her protecting shoulders. She gently kissed the eyes she knew would never look into her own again.

Standing upright, she cast a quick, searching glance into the swirling eddies, through which she could not see fifty feet. Already it was colder.

Shaking her head, she fastened her haik. She kicked off her heavy sandals. Saying the Mahometan prayer for the dead, she lay down by Yenne's side. Her face wore an expression of ineffable content as she lightly kissed his pallid lips. Composing herself at his side, she drew the blankets over them.

''Naseeb! From the first it is written.''

HAVE found that there are but three kinds of women in the world, effendi: those whose memory readily departs from us; those whose memory we deliberately put away from us; and those who, were we to live beyond the age of a thousand, we could never forget.

Such a woman was Mariam—a pearl of great price and a jewel among a million—yet for that she was not of the true faith, I nightly ask Allah to forgive me for cherishing her memory. I have had many singular and startling adventures, but none to quite compare with those which befell me when Mariam came into my life.

You would hear the tale, effendi? It is one which I have never dared relate to a Moslem; yet I have longed, these many years, to unbosom myself to an understanding friend. You are of a different faith, and might sympathize. But can I trust you with the secret?

Well then, here is the coffee shop at Silat, where we can sit in privacy and comfort, away from the glare of the noonday sun.

Ho, Silat! Two shishas stuffed to overflowing with the best Syrian leaf, and cof¬fee, bitter as aloes, black as a Nubian at midnight, and hot as the hinges of Johannim's innermost gate.

Aihee! You, who know me as Hamed bin Ayyub, the bent and wrinkled dragoman, should have seen me in the days of my youth—tall and straight as a Rudaynian lance, with hair of raven blackness, a bold and handsome countenance, and the heart of a lion. Those were the days when rare and interesting adventures befell me.

As I told you, effendi, I have at times attained considerable wealth. There was one time when, through a series of singular circumstances, I fell heir to the wealth, the home, and the beautiful slave girl of a rich young goldsmith.

For two years I lived with her in great joy and happiness, at the end of which time she bore me a daughter. But when she presented me with the child, Allah saw fit to receive my beloved into His clemency.

As I was unable to care for the child, I


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 CHARLES.

farther end of the room, and before the girl garments entered the apartment and stood looking at the pair. A muttered curse hissed from the lips of Charles, and Clemence cowered back in her seat trembling with fear.

“My son,” said the intruder, in a voice of singular sweetness, “an invalid should be more cautious, this night air is dangerous to you.”

“Any air that I breathe is dangerous to me, madam,” he replied, in a sharp, quick tone; “but this spot has proved less prejudicial than elsewhere.”

Catharine paid no attention to his words, and crossing the room, laid her hand caressingly upon his shoulder.

Charles shrunk from the touch of those slender fingers with a gesture of repulsion, but the woman appeared unconscious of the abhorrence in every look and movement, and turning toward the girl with her softest smile, said gently,

“Had I known that you were beguiling his majesty’s loneliness, I should have been at no loss to understand why he has grown so fond of solitude.”

Clemence trembled so violently that she could not speak.

“Madam,” she began, but her voice failed, and she shrunk toward the king as if seeking protection.

“Nay, sweet one,” continued Catharine, “I am uot chiding you; I cannot sufficiently thank you for your kindness to this wayward invalid.”

“I hear nothing from your lips but that horrible word!” exclaimed Charles. “Are you anxious to make me believe I must die?”

“Oh, my son!” sighed Catharine, ‘will you never understand your mother’s heart?”

“Believe me, madam, I do you entire justice,’ he replied, with a bitter laugh, “and fully appreciate your maternal anxiety.”

“You see, Clemence,” said the queen, with a pained smile, ‘how all my affection is rewarded; I shall look to you for justice.”

“Have you tidings from Poland?” asked Charles, abruptly, without giving the girl time to reply.

“Surely you know that I have not, my son; your own courier brought me the last letters.”

The king laughed pleasantly; a sure sign with the Medici that successful treachery had been practiced. Catharine comprehended that she had been foiled in some of her deep laid schemes, but evinced no emotion. “You are merry, my son,” she said; “it is long since I have heard you laugh so gayly.”

“I heard with much regret that the private courier which you sent to my brother d’ Anjou— I crave his pardon, the king of Poland—yesterday morning, had met with an accident.”

“I grieve to hear it,” Catharine replied, composedly, though her Italian blood shot seething to her heart, for the letters had contained tidings for her favorite son, which would be useless unless he received them by a certain day.

“Fortunately,” continued Charles, in the same light tone, “the papers which he lost were found and confided to my keeping—permit me to restore them to your majesty.”

He took from his breast a sealed packet and placed it in Catharine’s hand. For an instant a change passed over even her well-tutored face, then it grew calm as before.

“‘I thank you for your care,” must remain your debtor.”

“‘Not long, I warrant me,” retorted the king, “those of your house are faithful in discharging such debts. But I would advise you to send off another courier at once, and bid him take better heed.”

He laughed again, but Catharine only bowed her head in token of assent. This was the third time of late that he had thwarted her plans, in spite of the secrecy in which they had been carried out.

“Shall I see you in my apartments tonight?’ she asked.

“Perhaps; but your circle is too gay for me.”

“Nay, your majesty knows that it is never complete without you.’

“I know, I know; but, mort de dieu, I should add more to the gayety were I there shrouded in a coffin.”

“Another of your distempered fancies, my son; I warn you to banish them before they produce ill effects upon your health.”

“Perhaps your favorite Rene could give me a cure?” he said, with a sneer.

“Heaven forbid that I should meddle with your illness,” Catharine answered, coldly; “you suspect the whole world already. But now good night; dear Clemence, I must thank you again.”

She bent down, pressed her lips to the girl’s forehead, and glided from the room noiseless as she entered.

When she had disappeared, Clemence threw herself into the king’s arms with a burst of weeping.

“We are lost!” she exclaimed. “never rest until we are separated.”

“Nay, mignonne, she dare not—she begins to fear me. Wipe off her kiss, I feel as if a viper had crawled over your forehead.”

He brushed the spot where her lips had rested,


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 fair, Circassian face, dressed in the Russian worker's blouse and boots. He smiled.

"Dubra utra!" he greeted; and as Stoddard shook his head, he continued in English: "Good day! You speak no Russian? But I speak the English, so we will be able to talk, n'et? I am Kazanovitch. You are Tovarish Stoddard. Welcome to Russia!" He extended his hand.

"Thanks!" smiled Stoddard, shaking the proffered hand. "Glad you speak English. Russian's rather difficult for me, though I've been studying it. I've just been admiring the view here from the window."

The other nodded, smiling. "It gives one to think, not?" he answered. "Moscow is truly Muscovite. I am engineer, Tovarish Stoddard. I am to bring you to the Tovarish Direktor, then to take you to the technician's quarters. I was not told"—he looked around the room swiftly—"you have brought a wife with you?"

"No. I'm not married."

"Not? Many of the foreign engineers bring their wives with them. You will like the technicians' quarters. There are other American engineers; also English and Italian and German. I think, me, all the young engineers are come to help us with the Piatiletka. Thanks! I enjoy the American cigarette so much—they are very good. You are one of the American comrades?"

"No,” smiled Stoddard. "This is just a job to me. I needed it. Conditions are rather slow back home."

Kazanovitch nodded knowingly.

"The capitalist world is destroying itself," he announced, inhaling hungrily at his American cigarette. "When the Piatiletka is finished, we will overthrow it with its own weapons." He was tremendously sincere; his eyes fairly sparkled with a misty fanaticism.

Stoddard said: "Never had time to think about it. I'm merely an aviation engineer. I came here to build high-speed planes. The first one, I understand, is to make a good-will flight—non-stop—to Tokyo."

Kazanovitch nodded. "Come," he smiled. "I take you to the Tovarish Direktor. He do not speak the English, so I will tell you what he will say; then I take you to the technicians' quarters. I do not live there, but I go often to be with the men."

"You are an engineer?"

"Oh, yes! I am aviation engineer. We all work together for the Piatiletka. But I live in another place. I have the girl." He smiled.

"Oh, you're married?"

"Married? Oh, no. I live in free union. My Olga she do not believe in marry. But it is just the same. My sister, she live with me. She is young. She member of party too, division of education. She is—what you say?—detail by bureau to be guide for you." He chuckled. "Our Tovarish Direktor do not like that, but he can not change executive ukase. It is nothing. You come one day too soon, and she can not come today. So I come instead."

"I see!" said Stoddard. Free union! Well, this was Russia, and there wasn't any use in marriage anyway, when either party to a marriage could appear before the proper authority and get a divorce in a few minutes by simply asking for it.

walked along the busy streets, Stoddard avidly examining the crowds. This was a new world, started from a new beginning; this was the proletariat, engaged in the greatest social experiment in history. Piatiletka! The


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The Tempest, II. i

There is some space.

Ant. A space whose every cubit

Seems to cry out, 'How shall that Claribel

Measure us back to Naples?—Keep in Tunis,

And let Sebastian wake!'—Say, this were death

That now hath seiz'd them; why, they were no worse

Than now they are. There be that can rule Naples

As well as he that sleeps; lords that can prate

As amply and unnecessarily

As this Gonzalo; I myself could make

A chough of as deep chat. O, that you bore

The mind that I do! what a sleep were this

For your advancement! Do you understand me?

Seb. Methinks I do.

Ant. And how does your content

Tender your own good fortune?

Seb. I remember

You did supplant your brother Prospero.

Ant. True:

And look how well my garments sit upon me;

Much feater than before; my brother's servants

Were then my fellows; now they are my men.

Seb. But, for your conscience,—

Ant. Ay, sir; where lies that? if it were a kibe,

'Twould put me to my slipper; but I feel not

This deity in my bosom: twenty consciences,

That stand 'twixt me and Milan, candied be they,

And melt ere they molest! Here lies your brother,

No better than the earth he lies upon,

If he were that which now he's like, that's dead;

 267 Measure: trace

273, 274 make chat: teach a jackdaw to chatter as profoundly

277 content: contentment

278 Tender: provide for

281 feater: more gracefully

284 kibe: chilblain

287 candied, etc.; cf. n.

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36

Whom I, with this obedient steel,—three inches of it,—

Can lay to bed for ever; whiles you, doing thus,

To the perpetual wink for aye might put

This ancient morsel, this Sir Prudence, who

Should not upbraid our course. For all the rest,

They'll take suggestion as a cat laps milk;

They'll tell the clock to any business that

We say befits the hour.

Seb. Thy case, dear friend,

Shall be my precedent: as thou got'st Milan,

I'll come by Naples. Draw thy sword: one stroke

Shall free thee from the tribute which thou pay'st,

And I the king shall love thee.

Ant. Draw together;

And when I rear my hand, do you the like,

To fall it on Gonzalo.

Seb. O! but one word.

Ari. My master through his art foresees the danger

That you, his friend, are in; and sends me forth—

For else his project dies—to keep them living.

'While you here do snoring lie,

Open-ey'd Conspiracy

His time doth take.

If of life you keep a care,

Shake off slumber, and beware:

Awake, awake!'

Ant. Then let us both be sudden.

Gon. Now, good angels

Preserve the king!

 296 suggestion: prompting (to disloyalty)

297 tell; cf. n.

304 fall: let fall

314 sudden: swift to act

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The Tempest, II. i

Alon. Why, how now! ho, awake! Why are you drawn?

Wherefore this ghastly looking?

Gon. What's the matter?

Seb. Whiles we stood here securing your repose,

Even now, we heard a hollow burst of bellowing

Like bulls, or rather lions; did 't not wake you?

It struck mine ear most terribly.

Alon. I heard nothing.

Ant. O! 'twas a din to fright a monster's ear,

To make an earthquake: sure it was the roar

Of a whole herd of lions.

Alon. Heard you this, Gonzalo?

Gon. Upon mine honour, sir, I heard a humming,

And that a strange one too, which did awake me.

I shak'd you, sir, and cry'd; as mine eyes open'd,

I saw their weapons drawn:—there was a noise,

That's verily. 'Tis best we stand upon our guard,

Or that we quit this place: let's draw our weapons.

Alon. Lead off this ground, and let's make further search

For my poor son.

Gon. Heavens keep him from these beasts!

For he is, sure, i' the island.

Alon. Lead away.

Ari. Prospero my lord shall know what I have done:

So, king, go safely on to seek thy son.

 318 securing: keeping guard over

329 verily: verily so

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38

Cal. All the infections that the sun sucks up

From bogs, fens, flats, on Prosper fall, and make him

By inch-meal a disease! His spirits hear me,

And yet I needs must curse. But they'll nor pinch,

Fright me with urchin-shows, pitch me i' the mire,

Nor lead me, like a firebrand, in the dark

Out of my way, unless he bid 'em; but

For every trifle are they set upon me:

Sometime like apes, that mow and chatter at me

And after bite me; then like hedge-hogs, which

Lie tumbling in my bare-foot way and mount

Their pricks at my foot-fall; sometime am I

All wound with adders, who with cloven tongues

Do hiss me into madness.—

Lo now! lo!

Here comes a spirit of his, and to torment me

For bringing wood in slowly: I'll fall flat;

Perchance he will not mind me.

Trin. Here's neither bush nor shrub to bear

off any weather at all, and another storm brew-

ing; I hear it sing i' the wind: yond same black

cloud, yond huge one, looks like a foul bombard

that would shed his liquor. If it should thunder

as it did before, I know not where to hide my

 3 By inch-meal: inch by inch

9 mow: make mouths

18 bear: ward

21 bombard: a large wine-skin

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348 A certain death from golden cup; Recall to mind how ills befall, And that a stubborn heart's the cause.
 * Ollantay (kneeling). Plunge that dagger in my breast,

Thou holdst it ready in thy belt; Cut out my sad and broken heart— I ask the favour at thy feet.
 * Uillac Uma (to Piqui Chaqui). Gather me that flower, boy.

 * (Piqui Chaqui gives him a withered flower and lies down again, pretending to sleep.)

(To Ollantay). Behold, it is quite dead and dry. Once more behold! e'en now it weeps, It weeps. The water flows from it.

 * (Water flows out of the flower.)

More easy for the barren rocks Or for sand to send forth water, Than that I should cease to love The fair princess, the joyful star.
 * Uillac Uma. Put a seed into the ground,

It multiplies a hundredfold; The more thy crime shall grow and swell, The greater far thy sudden fall.
 * Ollantay. Once for all, I now confess

To thee, great and mighty Priest; Now learn my fault. To thee I speak, Since thou hast torn it from my heart. The lasso to tie me is long, 'Tis ready to twist round my throat; Yet its threads are woven with gold, It avenges a brilliant crime. Cusi Coyllur e'en now is my wife, Already we're bound and are one;

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The Whistle (Franklin)

 * "The Whistle" (1779), the original letter
 * "The Whistle" (1793), in Works of the late Doctor Benjamin Franklin
 * "The Whistle" (1828) in Way to wealth, or, Poor Richard's maxims improved

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Rh My blood now runs in her veins, E'en now I am noble as she. Her mother has knowledge of all, The Queen can attest what I say; Let me tell all this to the King, I pray for thy help and advice. I will speak without fear and with force, He may perhaps give way to his rage; Yet he may consider my youth, May remember the battles I've fought; The record is carved on my club.

 * (Holds up his macana.)

He may think of his enemies crushed, The thousands I've thrown at his feet.
 * Uillac Uma. Young Prince! thy words are too bold,

Thou hast twisted the thread of thy fate— Beware, before 'tis too late; Disentangle and weave it afresh, Go alone to speak to the King, Alone bear the blow that you seek; Above all let thy words be but few, And say them with deepest respect; Be it life, be it death that you find, I will never forget thee, my son.

[Walks up and exit.

No place in thy heart for fear; Cusi Coyllur, surround me with light. Piqui Chaqui, where art thou?
 * Piqui Chaqui (jumping up). I was asleep, my master,

And dreaming of evil things.
 * Ollantay. Of what?

Piqui Chaqui. Of a fox with a rope round its neck.

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If this book fulfils in any degree the intention of its author, its tendency will be to encourage readers to keep open the channels of their national traditions and to scrutinize contemporary literature in the light of their national past. I am aware of the current feeling that no national past will bear scrutiny. At the present time, there appears to be no "popular" nation anywhere in the world, and the feelings with which many people regard any encouragement of "nationalistic sentiment," either at home or abroad, are as curiously mixed as those which the ancients entertained towards the daughter of Tyndareus, that beautiful and dangerous woman whose fame has outlasted all their empires.

The old bard Stesichorus, we are told, for reviling Helen was stricken blind; but he afterwards "unsaid all the evil he had sung of her," and accepted a legendary account according to which Helen was never actually in Troy but only her phantasm, while she herself, miraculously transported to Egypt, there awaited the return of her lord. Euripides based his Helen upon this story.

Virgil's treatment of the character exhibits the same sense of a perilous impiety in any attempt to

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 molest her. During the sack of Troy, while Aeneas was wandering desperately among the flaming relics of his city, he espied the seductive cause of all that woe, cowering on the threshold of a temple, a silent, terror-stricken fugitive. To the beauty that had launched a thousand ships his anguish made him blind. The smoke of a world in ruins smarted in his eyes. Hot wrath possessed him. Though he knew there was no glory to be had from slaying a woman, it seemed to him "very stuff of the conscience" to end that hateful life. He clutched his sword. In the instant, his divine mother appeared to him, stayed his hand, and assured him that the real cause of the war was not Helen but the inclementia divum, the merciless will of the gods.

Many intellectuals look malignly upon nationalism as the baleful Helen of our recent international disaster. Through the smoke of the conflict they thought they heard an angel with vials of wrath crying: "There shall be no more flags!" As an act of the higher piety, holding nothing sacred which is less than Humanity, they dedicated themselves to the destruction in themselves and in others of all those complex beliefs and emotions which the waving flag of one's land stirs in the heart of the ordinary man. The war multiplied the number of refined young liberals, American, English, Jewish, French, Italian, who in the confidences of the midnight hour, aflame with the "higher piety,"

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 conscientiously spit upon what they would call the time-dishonored notion that, in certain circumstances, it is sweet and beautiful to die for one's country. In order to become men, in the higher sense of the word, our disillusioned youth imagine they must slay the thing they loved—they must cease to be Americans.

It was about the year 1917 that I began to meditate rather frequently upon the relation between civilization and the existence of separate nationalities, national traditions, national sentiments, and the national literatures through which the life of vanished generations survives as a living power among the powers of the present day. That sense for Humanity above all nations, which was quickened by certain appeals of the war, it seemed to me that every intelligent man must applaud, and must desire to strengthen. Sentiments which interfered with the growth of this sense, I thought, should be suppressed, and sacrifices which must be made for the extension of it should be courageously offered. An inflamed and egotistical nationalism appeared to me, as to so many others, the prime cause of the world's catastrophe.

And yet if even for a moment it occurred to me that true citizenship in "the country of all intelligent beings" might necessitate the sacrifice of one's essential Americanism and the use of the knife at

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 the root of all fond sentiments related to it, in that instant there came to me, as if in a vision, our "divine mother," the spirit of America as the clear-eyed among our poets and statesmen have seen her, assuring me that the higher piety demands no such immolation. That which we have loved in our country, she declared, that which we have honored in her, that which reveals her to our hearts as proudly beautiful is in no way dangerous to Humanity. On the contrary, the more deeply we loved the true constituent elements of her loveliness, the more clearly we understood her inmost purposes and set ourselves to further them, the more perfectly we should find ourselves in accord with the "friends of mankind" in all nations.

Shall we shun music because we know that barbaric music arouses the cave-man in us and sets the pulses throbbing, the feet dancing, to the "blood-lust song"—forgetting that music of another sort, seizing upon these same impressionable quivering senses of ours, may masteringly attune us to the most harmonious impulses of our nature? Because we fear the tom-toms shall we smash the cathedral organ? All things which have great power are greatly dangerous till they are controlled to right ends; but they are not more dangerous than weak things put in a place where strength is required. At the present moment the isolated individuals and scattered bands of pale

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350 :Ollantay. Sure enough, thou art the fox.
 * Piqui Chaqui. It is true that my nose is growing finer,

And my ears a good deal longer.
 * Ollantay. Come, lead me to the Coyllur.
 * Piqui Chaqui. It is still daylight.

[Exeunt.

A great hall in the Colcampata, then the palace of the Queen or Ccoya Anahuarqui. ''In the centre of the back scene a doorway, and seen through it gardens with the snowy peak of Vilcañota in the distance. Walls covered with golden slabs. On either side of the doorway three recesses, with household gods in the shape of maize-cobs and llamas, and gold vases in them. On a golden tiana or throne. On two lower seats covered with cushions of fine woollen cloth.''

 * (, the Queen or Ccoya (in blue chucu, white cotton bodice, and red mantle secured by a golden topu or pin, set with emeralds, and a blue skirt), and the princess (in a chucu, with feathers of the tunqui, white bodice and skirt, and grey mantle with topu, set with pearls) discovered seated.)

Cusi Coyllur! great Inti's prunelle? Since when hast thou lost all thy joy, Thy smile and thy once merry laugh?

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 browed intellectuals striving to realize at once "the federation of the world" by the renunciation of their nationalities—these are weak things where great strength is required.

The most powerful instruments yet existing in the world for the destruction of international order are the nations; yet they are still the most powerful instruments for creating it. The most powerful agents for the corruption of the world's civilization are corrupt national civilizations; yet they are still the most powerful redemptive agents. Power is the good which the world craves. We cannot afford to waste it or to turn away from it. The friends of Humanity will make less progress by attempting to destroy the national spirit than by criticizing it and purifying it, and by seizing upon and fostering those elements in it which are truly humane. With this program in mind no wise student of the national past will be an indiscriminating upholder of traditions. While seeking to conserve their vital energy, he will steadily subject their direction to a critical scrutiny in the best light of his own time.

The studies in this book, though originally published separately as occasion offered, all had their origin in a fresh interest in American life and letters, which has strengthened side by side with a strengthening interest in the cause of those young men to whom the war brought a new vision of the

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 old Humanitas. Some years ago, while preparing a book on Matthew Arnold, I found in his letters a passage which I read with pleasure and envy. It was written when he was putting together the first volume of his Essays in Criticism: "I think the moment is, on the whole, favorable for the Essays; and in going through them I am struck with the admirable riches of human nature that are brought to light in the group of persons whom they treat, and the sort of unity that as a book to stimulate the better humanity in us the volume has." The "admirable riches of human nature" are, I am sure, also present in my group of Americans, and something I hope of this unity, may also be found here.

For permission to reprint these revised essays acknowledgments are due as follows: to the New York Times Book Review for the Mr. Mencken and the New Spirit in Letters; to the Bookman for Tradition; to G. P. Putnam's Sons for the essay on Franklin from The Cambridge History of American Literature; to Harcourt, Brace, and Co. for the essay on Emerson from my edition of Essays and Poems of Emerson; to Charles Scribner's Sons for the Hawthorne and the Walt Whitman from my editions of The Scarlet Letter and Leaves of Grass in the Modern Student's Library; to G. P. Putnam's Sons for the biographical essay on Joaquin Miller from a forth-

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 coming collective edition of Miller's poems; to the newly erected Step Ladder for the Note on Carl Sandburg; to The New York Nation for the essays on Carnegie, Roosevelt, and the Adamses; and to the Weekly Review for An Imaginary Conversation With Mr. P. E. More.

S. P. S.

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A woman whose husband has made money in the war likes to have her portrait painted and her friends coming in to admire it. So a new public, grown conscious of itself, demands a new literature and a new literature demands a new criticism. Fine gentlemen with a touch of frost above the temples, sitting at ease in quiet old clubs under golden-brown portraits of their ancestors, and turning the pages of the Athenæum or Mr. More's Nation, have seen with disdainful yet apprehensive glance through plate-glass windows the arrival of all three: the formation of a reading public of which they are not a part, the appearance of a literature which they do not care to read, the development of a criticism in which their views are not represented. Since a critic is of no importance except with reference to what he criticizes, you will please bear with me while I bring in the new literature and the new readers. When the stage is properly set, Mr. Mencken will appear.

How shall one indicate the color and spirit of

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 it?—this new public now swarming up the avenues of democratic opportunity; becoming prosperous, self-conscious, voluble; sunning itself in the great cities; reaching out greedily to realize its "legitimate aspirations." This latest generation of Americans, so vulgar and selfish and good-humored and sensual and impudent, shows little trace of the once dominant Puritan stock and nothing of the Puritan temper. It is curiously and richly composed of the children of parents who dedicated themselves to accumulation, and toiling inarticulately in shop and field, in forest and mine, never fully mastered the English definite article or the personal pronoun. It is composed of children whose parents or grandparents brought their copper kettles from Russia, tilled the soil of Hungary, taught the Mosaic law in Poland, cut Irish turf, ground optical glass in Germany, dispensed Bavarian beer, or fished for mackerel around the Skagerrack. The young people laugh at the oddities of their forbears, discard the old kettles, the Mosaic Law, the provincial dialect, the Lutheran pastor. Into the new society breaking without cultural inheritance, they derive all their interests and standards from their immediate environment, and gravitate towards refinement through more and more expensive gratifications of the senses.

The prettiest type of this swift civilization—and I must have something pretty to enliven a discourse on current criticism—the prettiest type is the jeune

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 fille, who, to modernize the phrase of an old poet, aspires to a soul in silken hosiery and doeskin boots. She springs, this young creature with ankles sheathed and shod like a Virginia deer—ankles whose trimness is, æsthetically speaking, quite the finest thing her family has produced in America—she springs from a grandmother who clumped out in wooden shoes to milk a solitary cow in Sweden. She has no soul, the young thing, but she trusts that the tailor, the milliner, the bootmaker, the manicurist, the hairdresser, and the masseuse can give her an equivalent. Wherever art can work on her surfaces, she is finished. When the car is at the door in the morning—"a distinctive body on a distinguished chassis"—and she runs down the steps with somewhat more than a flash of her silken perfections, she is exquisite, what though the voice is a bit hard and shrill with which she calls out, "H'lo, kiddo! Le's go't Brentano's."

She is indeed coming—the new reader! She will bring home an armful of magazines, smelling deliciously of the press, books with exciting yellow jackets, plays newly translated and imported, the latest stories, the most recent ideas, all set forth in the current fashion, and all, as it will seem to her, about herself, her sort of people, her sort of world, and about the effort which her fair young ego is making to emerge from the indiscriminated mass and to acquire physical form and line congruous with that "distinctive body mounted on a distinguished

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 chassis," which bears her with such smooth speed up Riverside Drive. She will have no American literature of the "classical period" in her library; for the New England worthies who produced it wrote before the public of which she is a part began to read or to be noticed in books. The jeune fille, though a votary of physical form, feels within herself an exhilarating chaos, a fluent welter, which Lowell and Longfellow and James and Howells do not, but which her writers must, express.

Therefore, she revels in the English paradoxers and mountebanks, the Scandinavian misanthropes, the German egomaniacs, and, above all, in the later Russian novelists, crazy with war, taxes, hunger, anarchy, vodka, and German philosophy. She does enjoy, however, the posthumous pessimism of Mark Twain—it is "so strong and virile"; and she relishes his pilot oaths—they are "so sincere and unconventional." She savors Mr. Masters' hard little naturalistic sketches of "passion" on Michigan Boulevard; they remind her of her brother. Sherwood Anderson has a place on her shelves; for by the note of revolt in Winesburg, Ohio she recognizes one of her own spirit's deserted villages. Lured by a primitive instinct to the sound of animals roving, she ventures a curious foot into the fringes of the Dreiserian wilderness vast and drear; and barbaric impulses in her blood "answer the wail of the forest." She is not much "intrigued" by the frosty fragilities of imagist verse; but at Sandburg's viking

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 salute to the Hog-Butcher of the World she claps her hands and cries: "Oh, boy, isn't it gorgeous!" This welter of her "culture" she plays, now and then, at organizing on some strictly modern principle, such as her father applies to his business, such as her brother applies to his pleasures—a principle of egotistical combat, a principle of self-indulgence, cynical and luxurious. She is not quite happy with the result. Sometimes, I imagine, she wishes that her personal attendants, those handmen and maidens who have wrought so wonderfully with her surfaces, could be set at work upon her interior, so that her internal furnishing and decoration could be brought into measurable concord with the grace and truth of her contours, the rhythm of her hair.

Imagine a thousand jeunes filles thus wistful, and you have the conditions ready for the advent of a new critic. At this point enters at a hard gallop, spattered with mud, H. L. Mencken high in oath—thus justifying the Goethean maxim: Aller Anfang ist schwer. He leaps from the saddle with sabre flashing, stables his horse in the church, shoots the priest, hangs the professors, exiles the Academy, burns the library and the university, and, amid the smoking ashes, erects a new school of criticism on modern German principles, which he traces through Spingarn to Goethe, but which I should be inclined to trace rather to Eckermann.

Of my own inability to interpret modern Germany, however, I have recently been painfully re-

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 minded by an 86-page pamphlet sent to me from Hamburg, with blue-pencil marks kindly inserted by the author, one Hansen—apparently a German-Schleswigian-American who has studied rhetoric in Mr. Mencken's school—inquiring what the masses can possibly know of the real Germany, "so long as the Shermans squat like toads in the portals of the schools and the Northcliffes send their Niagaras of slime through the souls of the English-speaking peoples." I was amused, of course, to find a great lord of the press so quaintly bracketed with an obscure teacher of literature in a Middle Western university as an effective obstacle between the sunlight and Germany. All the same, my conscience was touched; and I remembered with satisfaction that, on the appearance of Mr. Mencken's Prefaces, I made a conscientious effort to tell my countrymen where they should go, namely, to Mr. Mencken, if they desired a really sympathetic presentation of the modern Teutonic point of view with reference to politics, religion, morals, women, beer, and belles-lettres.

On the appearance of Mr. Mencken's new volume, Prejudices—continuing my humble service as guide to what I am not thoroughly qualified to appreciate—I can only say that here I find again the Nietzschean "artistocrat" of yesteryear, essentially unchanged. He is a little sadder, perhaps, since democracy has unhorsed the autocrats; but his skepticism of democracy is unshaken. He is a shade

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 more cynical since the extension of women's suffrage; but he is as clear as ever that he knows what girls were made for. He is a little more sober since the passage of the national prohibition act, and a bit less lyrical about the Pilsener-motive in the writings of Mr. Huneker; but, come rain come shine, he still points with pride to a digestion ruined by alcohol. In other respects, former patrons of his school for beautifying American letters will find his familiar manners and customs essentially unaltered.

If we are to have a Menckenian academy, Mr. Mencken shows the way to set it up—with vigor and rigor, with fist and foot, with club and axe. The crash of smashed things, the knocking of heads together, the objurgations which accompany his entrance have a high advertising value, fascinating to all the gamins of the press and attractive to our jeune fille, who will pay for a copy of Prejudices and form her taste upon it. And far be it from me to deny that she may learn something from her heavyhanded disciplinarian. Mr. Mencken, like most men, has his merits, of which it is a pleasure to speak. He is alive; this is a merit in a good man and hardly a defect even in a bad critic. He has a rough, prodding wit, blunted by thrusting at objects which it cannot pierce, but yet a wit. He is passionately addicted to scoffing; and if by chance a sham that is obnoxious to him comes in his way, he will scoff at a sham. He has no inclination to the softer forms of "slush" or to the more diaphanous

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 varieties of "pishposh." He has a style becoming a retired military man—hard, pointed, forcible, cocksure. He likes a sentence stripped of baggage, and groups of sentences that march briskly off at the word of command, wheel, continue to march, and, at word of command, with equal precision, halt. He has the merits of an efficient rhetorical drill-sergeant. By his services in pointing out to our fair barbarian that she need not, after all, read Mr. Veblen, she should acknowledge that he has earned the royalty on her copy of Prejudices. He has given her, in short, what she might expect to get from a stiff freshman course in rhetoric.

When he has told her who fits sentences together well and who ill, he has ended the instruction that was helpful to her. He can give her lessons in derision, lessons in cynicism, lessons in contempt; but she was mistress of all these when she entered his school. He can offer to free her from attachment to English and American literary traditions; but she was never attached to these traditions. He will undertake to make her believe that Baptists and Methodists, professors and academicians, prohibition societies and marriage covenants are ridiculous; but she always thought them ridiculous. He is ready to impregnate her mind with the wisdom of "old Friedrich," Stirner, Strindberg, and the rest of the crew; but her mind is already impregnated with that sort of wisdom. "When one has turned away from the false and the soft and the silly," this is the ques-

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 tion she is asking, "where does one go to find true and beautiful things?" She has heard somewhere by chance, poor girl, that one who pursues truth and beauty is delivered from the grosser tyrannies of the senses, escapes a little out of the inner welter, and discovers serenity widening like a fair dawn in the mind, with a certain blitheness and amenity. This is æsthetic liberation.

For one seeking æsthetic liberation there is a canon of things to be thought on which the worldliest of sound critics, Sainte-Beuve, pronounced as clearly and insistently as Saint Paul. The Germans, as the great Goethe explained to the saucer-eyed Eckermann, are "weak on the æsthetic side." Aesthetic appreciation is superficially an affair of the palate, and at bottom an affair of the heart, embracing with elation whatsoever things are lovely. Mr. Mencken has no heart; and if he ever had a palate he has lost it in protracted orgies of literary "strong drink." He turns with anguish from the pure and simple flavors that please children as the first gifts of nature, and that delight great critics as the last achievements of art. His appetite craves a fierce stimulation of sauces, a flamboyance and glitter of cheeses, the sophisticated and appalling ripeness of wild duck nine days old.

He devotes, for example, two pages to leading the jeune fille away from Emerson as a writer of no influence. He spends several more in showing her that Howells has nothing to say. He warns her

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 that Mr. Garland's Son of the Middle Border is amateurish, flat, banal, and repellant. He gives a condescending coup de pied to the solider works of Arnold Bennett and singles out for intense admiration a scarlet-lattice scene or so in his pot-boilers. As the author of a work on the American language, over-ambitiously designed as a wedge to split asunder the two great English-speaking peoples, and as an advocate of an "intellectual aristocracy," it has suddenly occurred to him that we have been shamefully neglecting the works of George Ade; accordingly, he strongly commmendscommends [sic] to our younger generation the works of Mr. George Ade. But the high light and white flame of his appreciation falls upon three objects as follows: the squalid story of an atrocious German bar-maid by Sudermann; an anonymous autobiographical novel, discovered by Mr. Mencken himself, which exhibits "an eternal blue-nose with every wart and pimple glittering," and is "as devoid of literary sophistication as an operation for gallstones"; and, third and last, the works of Mr. Mencken's partner, Mr. George Jean Nathan, with his divine knack at making phrases "to flabbergast a dolt."

I imagine my bewildered seeker for æsthetic liberation asking her mentor if studying these things will help her to form "the diviner mind." "Don't bother me now," exclaims Mr. Mencken; "don't bother me now. I am just striking out a great phrase. Aesthetic effort tones up the mind with a kind of high

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 excitement. I shall say in the next number of the Smart Set that James Harlan was the damnedest ass that America ever produced. If you don't know him, look him up. In the second edition of my book on the American language I shall add a new verb—to Menckenize—and perhaps a new noun, Menckenism. The definition of these words will clear up matters for you, and summarize my contribution to the national belles-lettres. It is beginning to take—the spirit is beginning to spread."

While Mr. Mencken and the jeune fille are engaged in this chat on the nature of beauty, I fancy the horn of a "high-powered" automobile is heard from the street before the Menckenian school. And in bursts Mr. Francis Hackett, looking like a man who has just performed a long and difficult operation under the body of his car, though, as a matter of fact, he has only just completed a splashing, shirtsleeve review for The New Republic. "Let's wash up," cries Mr. Hackett, stripping off his blouse of blue jeans, "and go out to luncheon."

"Where shall we fressen?" says Mr. Mencken.

"At the Loyal Independent Order of United Hiberno-German-Anti-English-Americans," says Mr. Hackett. "All the New Critics will be there. Colum, Lewisohn, Wright, and the rest. I tried to get Philip Littell to come along. He's too gol darn refined. But I've got a chap in the car, from the West, that will please you. Used to run a column in the World's Greatest. Calls Thomas

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 Arnold of Rugby 'that thrice-damned boor and noodle.

"Good!" Mr. Mencken exclaims. "A Menckenism! A Menckenism! A likely chap!" And out they both bolt.

The jeune fille, with a thoughtful backward glance at Mr. Hackett's blouse, goes slowly down into the street, and, strolling up the walk in the crisp early winter air, overtakes Mr. Littell, who is strolling even more slowly. He is reading a book, on which the first snowflake of the year has fallen, and, as it falls, he looks up with such fine delight in his eye that she asks him what has pleased him.

"A thought," he replies gently, "phrased by a subtle writer and set in a charming essay by a famous critic. Listen: "Où il n'y a point de délicatesse, il n'y a point de littérature."

"That's a new one on me," says the jeune fille.

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To lengthen the childhood of the individual, at the same time bringing to bear upon it the influences of tradition, is the obvious way to shorten the childhood of races, nations, classes, and so to quicken the general processes of civilization. Yet in the busy hum of self-approbation which accompanies the critical activities of our young people, perhaps the dominant note is their satisfaction at having emancipated themselves from the fetters of tradition, the oppression of classical precedent, the burden of an inherited culture. By detaching the new literature from its learned past they are confident that they are assuring it a popular future. Turn to any one of half a dozen books which discuss the present movement, and you will learn that people are now discovering, for example, "often to their own surprise," that they can read and enjoy poetry. That is because poetry has been subjected to "democratization." The elder writers, such as Shakespeare, Milton, Emerson, and Longfellow, constantly gravelled them with strange and obsolete phrases, like "multitudinous seas incarnadine," and

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 like "tumultuous privacy of storm." The ancient writers sent them to out-of-the-way reference books to look up obscure legends about Troy, not the city where collars are made, and old stuff about war in heaven, and the landing at Plymouth Rock. It is therefore a relief to countless eager young souls that Mr. Mencken has dismissed all this as "the fossil literature taught in colleges," and that Mary Austin insists that native verse rhythms must be "within the capacity of the democratically bred." It is a joy to hear from Mr. Untermeyer that modern readers of poetry may now come out from the "lifeless and literary storehouse" and use life itself for their glossary, as indeed they may—or the morning's newspaper.

Those who encourage us to hope for crops without tillage, learning without study, and literary birth without gestation or travail are doubtless animated by a desire to augment the sum of human felicity; but one recalls Burke's passionate ejaculation: "Oh! no, sir, no. Those things which are not practicable are not desirable." To the new mode of procuring a literary renascence there may be raised one objection, which, to minds of a certain temper, will seem rather grave: all experience is against it. Such is the thesis recently argued by an English critic, Mr. H. J. Massingham, who reviews with mingled amusement and alarm the present "self-conscious rebellion against tradition." In the eyes of our excited young "cosmopolitans," whose culture has a

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 geographic rather than an historical extension, Mr. Massingham's opinions will of course appear to be hopelessly prejudiced by his Oxford breeding, his acquaintance with the classics, his saturation in Elizabethan literature, and his avowed passion for old books in early editions, drilled by the bibliomaniac worm, "prehistoric" things, like Nares' Glossary and Camden's Remains. But it is not merely the opinion of our critic that is formidable: "The restoration of the traditional link with the art of the past is a conservative and revolutionary necessity." It is not the supporting opinion of Sir Joshua Reynolds: "The only food and nourishment of the mind of an artist is the great works of his predecessors." Sir Joshua, too, was prejudiced by his position as a pillar of the robust English classicism of George III's time. It is not even the opinion of Henry James, whom Mr. Massingham proclaims the profoundest critic since Coleridge, and who even our own irreverent youth seem to suspect should be mentioned respectfully: "It takes an endless amount of history to make even a little tradition and an endless amount of tradition to make even a little taste and an endless amount of taste, by the same token, to make even a little tranquillity."

The formidable arguments against the radical engineers of renascence are just the notorious facts of literary history. The fact that a bit of the "fossil literature taught in colleges," the story of Arthur, written in Latin by a Welsh monk in the twelfth

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 century, has flowered and fruited in poetry, painting, and music generation after generation pretty much over the civilized world. The fact that Chaucer and his contemporaries, in whom poetry had a glorious rebirth, had previously devoured everything in what Mr. Untermeyer would call the "lifeless and literary storehouse" of the Middle Ages. The fact that the Elizabethans, to quote Mr. Massingham's vigorous phrase, flung themselves on tradition "like a hungry wolf, not only upon the classics but upon all the tradition open to them." The fact that Restoration comedy is simply a revival of late Caroline in the hands of men who had studied Molière. The fact that the leaders of the new movement in the eighteenth century, when they wished to break from the stereotyped classicism, did not urge young people to slam the door on the past, but, on the contrary, harked back over the heads of Pope and Dryden to the elder and more central tradition of Milton, Shakespeare, and Spenser; and sluiced into the arid fields of common sense, grown platitudinous, the long-dammed or subterranean currents of mediæval romance. The fact that "Childe Harold," "Adonais," "The Eve of St. Agnes," "The Cotter's Saturday Night," and "The Castle of Indolence" were all written by imitators of Spenser or by imitators of his imitators. The fact, to omit the Victorians, that Mr. W. B. Yeats, the most skilful living engineer of literary renascence, set all his collaborators to digging

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 around the roots of the ancient Celtic tree before we enjoyed the blossoming of the new spring in Ireland. The fact that John Masefield, freshest and most tuneful voice in England, is obviously steeped to the lips in the poetry of Byron, Shakespeare, Spenser, and Chaucer.

Why is it that the great poets, novelists, and critics, with few exceptions, have been, in the more liberal sense of the word, scholars—masters of several languages, students of history and philosophy, antiquarians? First of all because the great writer conceives of his vocation as the most magnificent and the most complex of crafts. He is to be his own architect, master-builder, carpenter, painter, singer, orator, poet and dramatist. His materials, his tools, his methods are, or may be, infinite. To him, then, the written tradition is a school and a museum in which, if he has a critical and inventive mind, he learns, from both the successes and the failures of his predecessors, how to set to work upon his own problems of expression. As Mr. Yeats is fond of pointing out, the young poet may find Herbert and Vaughan more helpful to him than the work of his own contemporaries, because the faults in the elder poets, the purple patches that failed to hold their color, will not attract and mislead him.

But tradition is more than a school of crafts. It is a school of mood and manners. The artist who is also a scholar cannot fail to discover that what distinguishes all the golden periods of art, what

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 constitutes the perpetual appeal of the masters, is a kind of innermost poise and serenity, tragic in Sophocles, heroic in Michelangelo, skeptical in Montaigne, idyllic in Sidney, ironic in Fielding. This enviable tranquillity reigns only in a mind that, looking before and after, feels itself the representative of something outlasting time, some national ideal, some religious faith, some permanent human experience, some endless human quest. Nothing begets this mood and manner, the sovereign mark of good breeding in letters, like habitual association with those who have it, the majority of whom are, in the vulgar sense of the word, dead. Izaak Walton, a minor writer in whose work there is a golden afterglow of the great age, calls, in one of his Angler's Dialogues, for "that smooth song which was made by Kit Marlowe, now at least fifty years ago," and for the answer to it "which was made by Sir Walter Raleigh in his younger days." If some of our modern imitators of the auctioneer and the steam calliope would now and then, instead of reading one another, step into the "lifeless and literary storehouse" and compare these "fossils" conscientiously with their own recent efforts to make verse popular! "They were old-fashioned poetry," says Piscator apologetically, "but choicely good, I think much better than the strong lines that are now in fashion in this critical age."

Out of the tranquillity induced by working in a good literary tradition develops form. The clever

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 theorists who insist that form alone matters, that form is the only preservative element in literature, forget that form is not "self-begotten" but a product of the formative spirit. Mr. Massingham is a bit fastidious in his use of this word. He denies form, for example, to Pope and to Swinburne. Though both have technique, that is another matter. "Form," he declares, "is a vision contained and made manifest." He attributes the unproductiveness of our age in the field of satire to a vision without a traditional base, reeling and shifting in the choppy waters of contemporary opinion. His remarks on the deficiencies of Gilbert Cannan as a satirist and novelist further elucidate his idea; and they may serve also as a comment upon many of the younger writers in America:

Now, many of the young writers in America are disposed to reject the English tradition as unservice-

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 able lumber. They scorn equally the greater part of the American tradition as puritanical, effeminate, or over-intellectualized. If they seek foreign allies, it is with those who help them forget our national characteristics, our native bent and purposes, our discovered special American "genius." In what measure is the revolt due to the conduct of the movement by writers whose blood and breeding are as hostile to the English strain as a cat to water? Whatever the answer, I suspect that the young people who are being congratulated right and left on their emancipation from tradition are rather open to condolence than to felicitation. They have broken away from so much that was formative, and they suffer so obviously in consequence of the break. Their poets have lost a skill which Poe had: though they paint a little, and chant a little, and speak a great deal of faintly rhythmical prose, they have not learned how to sing. Their novelists have lost a vision which Howells had: though they have shaken off the "moralistic incubus" and have released their "suppressed desires," they have not learned how to conceive or to present a coherent picture of civilized society. Their leaders have lost a constructiveness which a critic so laden with explosives as Emerson exhibited: though they have blown up the old highways they have not made new roads.

Am I doing the "young people" an injustice? I turn from their anthologies of verse, where I keep

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 searching in vain for such music as the angler's milkmaid sang; and from the novels of Mr. Cabell, in whom I have not discovered that ascending sun heralded by the lookouts; to A Modern Book of Criticism, recently collected and put forth by Mr. Ludwig Lewisohn. The editor's desire is to show us that "a group of critics, young men or men who do not grow old, are at work upon the creation of a civilized cultural atmosphere in America." The idea resembles that, does it not? of Mr. Waldo Frank, who recently informed us that literature began in America in 1900—or was it 1910?—at Mr. Stieglitz's place in New York. It is related also to that recent comprehensive indictment edited by Mr. Harold Stearns and ironically entitled Civilization in the United States. The implication is clearly that the country which developed Bradford, Franklin, Emerson, Lincoln, Thoreau, Whitman, Mark Twain, here and there in villages and backwoods, had no "civilized cultural atmosphere" worth mentioning. It does not seem quite plausible.

But let us proceed with Mr. Lewisohn. His critics:—"Like a group of shivering young Davids—slim and frail but with a glimpse of morning sunshine on their foreheads—they face an army of Goliaths." The slim and shivering young Davids turn out on investigation to be Mr. Huneker, Mr. Spingarn, Mr. Mencken, Mr. Lewisohn, Mr. Hackett, Mr. Van Wyck Brooks, and Randolph Bourne. It is not a group, taken as a whole, how-

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 ever it may be connected with the house of Jesse, which should be expected to hear any profound murmuring of ancestral voices or to experience any mysterious inflowing of national experience in meditating on the names of Mark Twain, Whitman, Thoreau, Lincoln, Emerson, Franklin, and Bradford. One doesn't blame our Davids for their inability to connect themselves vitally with this line of Americans, for their inability to receive its tradition or to carry it on. But one cannot help asking whether this inability does not largely account for the fact that Mr. Lewisohn's group of critics are restless impressionists, almost destitute of doctrine, and with no discoverable unifying tendency except to let themselves out into a homeless happy land where they may enjoy the "colorful" cosmic weather, untroubled by business men, or middle-class Americans, or Congressmen, or moralists, or humanists, or philosophers, or professors, or Victorians, or Puritans, or New Englanders, or Messrs. Tarkington and Churchill. A jolly lot of Goliaths to slay before we get that "civilized cultural atmosphere."

By faithfully studying the writings of Mr. Mencken, Mr. Lewisohn, and other "shivering young Davids," I have obtained a fairly clear conception of what a "civilized cultural atmosphere" is not. It consists of none of those heart-remembered things—our own revenue officers probing our old shoes for diamond necklaces, our own New York newspapers, and Maryland chicken on the

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 Albany boat—which cause a native American returning from a year in Europe to exclaim as he sails up the tranquil bosom of the Hudson and rushes by a standard steel Pullman, back to the great warm embrace of his own land, "Thank Heaven, we are home again." No, it is none of these things. If, without going to Munich, you wish to know what a "civilized cultural atmosphere" really is, you must let Mr. Lewisohn describe it for you as it existed, till the passage of the Volstead act, in one or two odd corners of old New York: "The lamps of the tavern had orange-colored shades, the wainscoting was black with age. The place was filled with a soothing dusk and the blended odor of beer and tobacco and Wiener Schnitzel. I was, at least, back in civilization. That tavern is gone now, swept away by the barbarism of the Neo-Puritans."

To the book from which this quotation is made, Mr. Lewisohn's recently published autobiographical record, Up Stream, students of contemporary critical currents and eddies are much indebted. The author, like many of the other belligerent young writers who have shown in recent years a grave concern for the state of civilization in America, has ostensibly been directing his attack against our national culture from a very elevated position. He has professed himself one of the enlightened spirits who from time to time rise above the narrowing prejudices of nationality into the free air of the republic of letters, the grand cosmopolis of the true

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 humanist. From his watch-tower—apparently "in the skies"—he has launched lightnings of derision at those who still weave garlands for their Lares and Penates, at the nationalist with his "selective sympathies," at the traditionalist with his sentimental fondness for folk-ways. Those who feel strongly attracted, as I do myself, to the Ciceronian and Stoic conception of a universal humanity and by the Christian and Augustinian vision of a universal City of God, may easily have mistaken Mr. Lewisohn for a "sharpshooter" of the next age, an outpost from the land of their heart's desire. But in Up Stream, Mr. Lewisohn drops the mask and reveals himself, for all his Jewish radicalism, as essentially a sentimental and homesick German, longing in exile for a Germany which exists only in his imagination.

Even the purified and liberated mind of a Child of Light, living according to nature and reason, is unable to rid itself wholly of "selective sympathies." It betrays under provocation a merely "traditional

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 emotion" for a cultural atmosphere compounded of the odors of beer, tobacco, and Wiener Schnitzel, with perhaps a whiff of Kant and a strain of Hungarian music floating through it, while two or three high philosophical spirits discuss what a poet can do when his wife grows old and stringy. I do not think it necessary to remonstrate with a man merely because his affective nature responds powerfully to a vision of felicity thus composed; but I think it a bit impractical to ask "a nation of prohibitionists and Puritans" to accept this vision as the goal of cultural efforts in America. It is a help to fruitful controversy, however, when a man abandons his absurdly insincere professions of "universal sympathy"—his purring protestation that he desires "neither to judge nor to condemn"—and frankly admits that he likes the German life, what he knows of it, and that he regards American life, what he knows of it, as "ugly and mean."

The militant hostility of alien-minded critics towards what they conceive to be the dominant traits of the national character is, on the whole, to be welcomed as provocative of reflection and as a corrective to national conceit. But the amendment of that which is really ugly and mean and basely repressive in our contemporary society is less likely to be achieved by listening to the counsels of exiled emancipators from Munich than by harking back to our own liberative tradition, which long antedates the efforts of these bewildered impressionists.

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 When we grow dull and inadventurous and slothfully content with our present conditions and our old habits, it is not because we are "traditionalists"; it is, on the contrary, because we have ceased to feel the formative spirit of our own traditions. It is not much in the American vein, to be sure, to construct private little anarchies in the haze of a smoking-room; but practical revolt, on a large scale and sagaciously conducted, is an American tradition, which we should continue to view with courage and the tranquillity which is related to courage. America was born because it revolted. It revolted because it condemned. It condemned because its sympathies were not universal but selective. Its sympathies were selective because it had a vision of a better life, pressing for fulfilment. That vision, and not a conception of life as a meaningless "surge of base and beautiful forces" liberated its chief men of letters. Thence their serenity, in place of that "gentle but chronic dizziness" which a critic of Young Germany, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, says "vibrates among us." Thence, too, their freedom from ancestor-worship and bondage to the letter. Listen to Emerson:

Thence, too, the traditional bent of the American spirit toward modernity, toward realism. It was

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 nearly a hundred years ago that our then-leading critic wrote in his journal: "You must exercise your genius in some form that has essential life now; do something which is proper to the hour and cannot but be done." Did he not recognize what was to be done? I quote once more from him a finer sentence than any of our impressionists has ever written: "A wife, a babe, a brother, poverty, and a country, which the Greeks had, I have." The grip and the beauty of that simple sentence are due to a union in it of an Athenian vision with Yankee self-reliance. It is the kind of feeling that comes to a man who has lived in a great tradition.

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Americans who desire to know the breadth and humanity of their own traditions should give some days and nights to the study of the eighteenth century, in which the minds of our colonial ancestors definitely turned from the problems of mediæval theology to the assimilation of classical culture and to the practise of a rational philosophy. The civilizing force of even the English eighteenth century has been greatly neglected by English-speaking students, in favor of the excitement and glamour offered by the Romantic Movement. But to the civilizing force of the American eighteenth century the present generation is for assignable reasons singularly inattentive.

Early in the nineteenth century reactionary village clergymen began the practice of referring in the pulpit to conspicuous "liberators" of the preceding age like Franklin, Jefferson, and Paine as "horrible examples," as men of brilliant intellect and patriotic motives, but of "infamous character"; and this clerical tradition is foolishly perpetuated

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 in some metropolitan pulpits to this day. In the second place, German metaphysics and the romantic deluge swept over us quite as devastatingly as over England; and the color and humor and emotion of Scott, Cooper, and then Dickens made the wit and solid sense of our classical period seem flat and unprofitable. Finally, when popular curiosity about our origins is awakened, it is quickly satisfied by a few familiar pictures of the Puritan colonists in the seventeenth century before the dawn of the Age of Enlightenment, here or elsewhere.

It is only by some such considerations as these that one can understand the affrontery of recent critics of civilization in the United States who date the emancipation of the American mind from seventeenth century theology with the introduction of Goethe and Kant to New England. And it is only by assuming the existence of wide general ignorance, the picturesque ignorance of legend, with regard to our own eminent men, that one can explain the friendly condescension with which the average journalist, for example, refers to that "simple," or to that "homespun" fellow, "our honest Franklin."

In a respectful and indeed laudatory notice in the Edinburgh Review of July, 1806, Lord Jeffrey employed the case of the "uneducated tradesman of America" to support his contention that "regular education is unfavourable to vigour or originality of understanding." Franklin attained his eminence, so runs the argument, without academical instruc-

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 tion, with only casual reading, without the benefit of association with men of letters, and "in a society where there was no relish and no encouragement for literature." This statement of Franklin's educational opportunities is manifestly inadequate; but it so pleasantly flatters our long-standing pride in our self-made men, that we are loath to challenge it.

The hero presented to the schoolboy and preserved in popular tradition is still an "uneducated tradesman of America": a runaway Boston printer, adorably walking up Market Street in Philadelphia with his three puffy rolls; directing his fellow shopkeepers the way to wealth; sharply enquiring of extravagant neighbours whether they have not paid too much for their whistle; flying his kite in a thunderstorm and by a happy combination of curiosity and luck making important contributions to science; and, to add the last lustre to his name, by a happy combination of industry and frugality making his fortune. This picturesque and racy figure is obviously a product of provincial America,—the first great Yankee with all the strong lineaments of the type: hardness, shrewdness, ingenuity, practical sense, frugality, industry, self-reliance.

The conception is perhaps sound enough so far as it goes, being derived mainly from facts supplied by Franklin himself in the one book through which he has secured an eternal life in literature. But the popular notion of his personality thus derived is incomplete, because the Autobiography, ending at

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 the year 1757, contains no record of the thirty-three years which developed a competent provincial into an able, cultivated, and imposing man of the world.

The Franklin now discoverable in the ten volumes of his complete works is one of the most widely and thoroughly cultivated men of his age. He had not, to be sure, a university training, but he had what serves quite as well: sharp appetite and large capacity for learning, abundance of books, extensive travel, important participation in great events, and association through a long term of years with the most eminent men of three nations. The object of our colleges and universities is only to provide a feeble substitute for the advantages which Franklin enjoyed. In touch as printer and publisher with the classic and current literature produced at home and imported from abroad, he becomes in Philadelphia almost as good a "Queen Anne's man" as Swift or Defoe. His scientific investigations bring him into correspondence with fellow workers in England, France, Germany, Italy, Holland, and Spain. Entering upon public life, he is forced into cooperation or conflict with the leading politicians, diplomats, and statesmen of Europe. In his native land he has known men like Cotton Mather, Whitefield, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin West, Ezra Stiles, Noah Webster, Jay, Adams, Jefferson, and Washington. In England, where his affections strike such deep root that he considers establishing there his permanent abode, he is in relationship, more or less inti-

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