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 artists hate him and call him a Philistine or a Puritan. The literary theorists of the stricter æsthetic schools do all they can to bring him into derision. In order to confuse and confound him, they have invented a number of oracular and, I think, quite unintelligible phrases or slogans, which they are constantly thrusting into his pachydermatous hide as the picadero thrusts his darts into the infuriated bull. I refer to such phrases as "Truth for truth's sake," "Art for art," "Art for art's sake," and "Beauty is its own excuse for being."

If this familiar phrase, art for art's sake, has any meaning at all, it means that art, including literary art, is a form of activity radically different in origin and intention from the political, moral, and other social activities of men, all of which we recognize as having a purpose or end in their effect upon the human spirit. If the phrase means anything, it means that artistic expression is not a vital function of human society at all, but is rather an attractive extraneous thing, a lovely parasite feeding upon the central organism, but related to it only as the mistletoe is related to the oak. Those who contend for this view of art do so, no doubt, with the idea that they are somehow ennobling and elevating


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 art by detaching it from all notions of utility, by stoutly denying that it has any uses.

I think these would-be-friends of art are profoundly mistaken, both in their facts and in their strategy. The wise theorists of literature from the ancient Greeks through the English Renaissance and all the way down to the unwise and bewildered theorists of the twentieth century, have recognized that literary expression is a vital function of society. They have also explained frankly what are its uses. They have not sought to ennoble it by relieving it of service but by making its more splendid service conspicuous. Perceiving that the average man is utilitarian, they have sought to open his mind to literature by widening the scope of his utilitarianism till that enfolding concept contained the uses of the imagination.

The average man, I say, is, in theory, a utilitarian. He is afraid even of such pleasure as he embraces. He is afraid it may not be useful. He will never take seriously to art, to beauty, unless taking to them is presented to him as a duty. One knows the average man. One knows well enough why he attends concerts, visits picture galleries, and, in his student days, reads Ward's English Poets. One knows the average club woman. One knows why she reads

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 the authors that she doesn't more than half understand, and why she comes out to look at the poets and novelists, and to hear lectures by the tedious visiting professor. It is not because she enjoys it—not that precisely, certainly not that primarily. Why, then? It is because the average man and the average woman have somewhere fixed deeply in their natures an ethical impulse driving them to it, in spite of indifference of the mind, in spite of fatigue of the body. It is because in some fashion they have become infected by our mysteriously potent common culture with the notion that it is their duty, their social responsibility, their object in life, to bring their souls to the fullest development of which they are capable. This is the most promising fact that we have to build on. This is the most firmly established point for the organization of human nature.

The average man is on a pretty safe track, and I wish to confirm him in it. I shall try to justify literature to him as a utility, which is capable of assisting him in the performance of his duties. I shall try to justify it as the most potent force in the government of men, an object which every sensible person is already predisposed to support. But I warn you in advance that I don't mean by the government of men


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 exactly what is meant in the department of political science.

In the committee rooms, where practical men decide how much money it is proper for the State to invest in the various activities of the commonwealth, there is very little said about literature. It is ordinarily assumed that there is not much that can be said to the hard-headed type of man about literature. We who are its friends are obliged to admit that it does not directly increase the yield of corn per acre, nor reduce the waste in the consumption of coal, nor prolong the life of steel rails, nor multiply the endurance of reinforced concrete, nor intensify the killing power of chemical gases, nor extend the range of projectiles. The practical man concerns himself with strengthening the sinews of the state. He conceives that agriculture and engineering and business are sinews of the state; and he is right.

But even the most practical of men takes pretty seriously one form of activity which is neither agriculture, engineering, or business; and that form of activity is law-making or legislation. Laws, as he conceives it, are the necessary governors of the sinews of the state. In the degree of importance which he attaches to laws in the government of men and their activ-


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 ities, I think the practical man is wrong. There are six million inhabitants in this state. There is a huge volume of legislation. But I suppose it would be a gross exaggeration to assume that one hundredth part of one per cent. of the population is acquainted with a single page of this volume. The laws of the state are a kind of bony excrescence outside the real life of the people. We never hear of a reduction in the tariff or an increase in the school tax but we find by experience the truth in the lines of an eighteenth century poet:

Such life and coercive power as there are in the laws flow into them from the organism which exists inside the political government, inside the bony excresence of the laws. Society—spontaneously organized by self-enforcing needs and economic pressures and common standards and desires—society generates the power, develops the emotions and virtues which sustain the laws. And society expresses and executes its will, say in ninety-nine per cent. of its activities, without formally designated legislators, judges or executives; so that a right-minded member of society has occasion, only two or


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 three times a year, to remember that there are such things as laws in existence.

Society, on the other hand, no member of it ever forgets. For society has infinite functions, and makes itself felt as a formative force upon every member of it on every day of his life. It regulates our intimate personal relations and determines their quality. It gives shape to our hopes and fears, our pleasures and pains and despairs. How does it perform these various, complex and all-decisive activities? How does society get its will accomplished? Well, I might ask those who are so fortunate as to be married, How does one's wife get her will accomplished? Interesting question, to which every one knows the answer. Society gets its will accomplished in a similar way—in a somewhat feminine fashion; by lifting its eyebrows, by a disdainful sweep of its skirts, and, above all, by incessantly, tirelessly, day and night, expressing its mind and unpacking its heart in words, till no one fails to understand utterly what it hates and loves and disdains, its enthusiasm and its antipathies, its taboos and sanctions, its penalties and rewards.

We are now prepared for a preliminary definition of our subject: Literature is the effective voice of the social government. It is


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 that form of human activity which results from society's speaking its mind and unpacking its, heart on all the subjects that concern it, past, present and future. The ideal student of letters must, therefore, like Lord Bacon, take all knowledge for his province. The sharp division of the fields of knowledge into departments is an arbitrary and artificial arrangement which exists in universities and in library catalogues but not in the head or heart of man. The modern attempt to distinguish between the field of belles-lettres and the other fields of learning by reference either to the form or to the substance of the productions breaks down at every point.

Shall we make verse the test of belles-lettres? In both ancient and modern times history, politics, science, theology, philosophy, and applied arts and sciences have been seriously treated in verse by writers like Empedocles, Hesiod, Lucretius, Lucan, Milton, Dryden, and Tennyson. Shall we make the subject matter the test of what is not belles-lettres? Many historians, a tolerable number of philosophers, and a few men of science have been eminent men of letters, masters of every art of expression—I am thinking of philosophers like Plato and Bacon, historians like Thucydides and Gibbon,


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 men of science like Pascal and Buffon and Huxley. Literature broadly considered has one subject: the representation of man in his environment. It has one satisfactory form: that which perfectly expresses the subject. It has one final object: the government of men through their ideas and emotions.

Perhaps it may be asked whether what we call the man of letters has any characteristic purpose by which he can be distinguished from what we call "a mere rhetorician" dabbling in history, dabbling in philosophy, dabbling in economics, dabbling in science? Ideally speaking, I should say yes: he aims to grasp a whole which is greater than the sum of the parts. He aims to know the personality, the moving spirit of life, in society. He seeks to know the character of national literature as one knows a person—by a vital imaginative synthesis of diverse phenomena. Consequently his major interest is in those branches of knowledge in which personality predominates; in those expressions of life which are most individual; in those forms of expression which are most clearly marked with the accent and intonation of the human spirit. If this is his point of view, he will be essentially a man of letters whether his field is philosophy, history, or poetry, or whatever else.


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 The man of letters is studious of the personal and individual elements in literature because he perceives that the social government exists from man to man; and that he who would govern his neighbour must govern him by the stress of spirit upon spirit. It is those men, he sees, that edge the common ideas and feelings of the masses with flame from an enkindled personality who become the chief agents of the social will. "The public," declared Isaac Disraeli, father of the prime minister, "is the creation of the master writers—an axiom as demonstrable as any in Euclid, and a principle as sure in its operations as any in mechanics." The master writers may not in any particular crisis determine the national action taken by the officials in charge of the political government. What they do determine is the national character, which, in the long run, is a far more important object to determine than any particular so-called national act.

In times of critical national action, practical politicians habitually make light of Utopian idealists, doctrinaires, theorists, mere literary men. Any one who occupies himself with the expression of social emotions and sentiments which they regard as inconvenient, they incline to dismiss to limbo as an empty rhetorician.


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 But as a matter of fact, their contempt for the literary men is transparent bravado, masking a secret fear. The practical politicians have betrayed their real attitude towards literature in every age by exhibitions of apprehensive jealousy towards that formidable rival power which is constantly threatening to take government out of their hands—the rival power of the unofficed individual who, by liberating new ideas and emotions, sets the old government building shaking over their heads.

Wherever the vital part of government is not truly popular and social, the official governors are found attempting to control or to suppress the formation and expression of a public mind. Says the ancient Chinese sage of the Taoist sect, "the difficulty in governing the people [he means by edicts from on high] arises from their having too much knowledge, and therefore he who tries to govern a state by wisdom is a scourge to it, while he who does not try to govern thereby is a blessing." Some two thousand years later, Sir William Berkeley, the Governor of Virginia, a man who seems to have had a Taoist strain in his ancestry, wrote to the English Commissioners of Foreign Plantations: "I thank God there are no free schools nor printing, and I hope we shall not have these


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 hundred years; for learning has brought disobedience into the world, and printing has divulged them and libels against the best governments. God keep us from both!"

Now God has not kept us from schools and printing; but politicians frequently have. The Catholic Inquisition of the Middle Ages, the burning of Bibles during the Counter Reformation, the Russian censorship under the czars, the censorship in all the battling nations during the late war, show us what the practical politician, especially the politician of Taoist ancestry, thinks of printing and literature: "God keep us from them both." The censorship of the press is the highest tribute paid to literature by the practical man. It is his attempt to prevent society from governing itself by the expression of its ideas and emotions.

If, now, we enquire rather particularly why literature is actually such a formidable power in the state that Taoist governors ask God to be delivered from it, we shall be on the track of the true utility of literature. Aristotle declared, you remember, that literature is an imitation of life. At first blush, there should seem to be no more innocent and idle occupation than making, with words, a picture or imitation of life. Why is an imitation of life more feared


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 by the Taoist than life itself? The answer to the question involves the essential nature of the literary art.

In the first place, no imitation of life in art is completely reproductive. No novel or poem or history can be anything more than a selective representation. All that it can possibly give us is a reproduction of the impression which life has made upon a particular author. But to select from life is to criticize life. It is to reshape the world in such fashion as to place upon it the stamp of the author's individual point of view.

We talk a good deal of nonsense nowadays about "scientific" history and "realistic" fiction, as if we had learned some new method of presenting a quite depersonalized imitation of reality. And no doubt writers without much character, writers whose souls have no form, can throw handsful of disordered and unrelated facts between the covers of a book without giving to these facts anything but the stamp of a disorderly personality. But the moment an author undertakes to arrange facts in the most elementary way so that they shall have a beginning, a middle, and an end; the moment one undertakes to compose a book, so that it shall have proportions, sequence, design—in that


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 moment he begins to transmit not merely facts of life but a judgment upon the facts of life. In that moment he betrays his invincible intention of governing his readers by offering his eyes for theirs and making their judgment coincide with his. For the primary object of all the arts of expression, is to subject facts to a design; is by logic, grammar, and rhetoric, to arrange thoughts, words, sentences, cadences, accents, and emotional colorings into a comprehensive design of which the final object is persuasion.

When one studies for the first time Greek and Roman treatments of education one is surprised to find what great stress these people placed upon the arts of expression, upon logic, rhetoric, and oratory. Cicero, Tactitus, and Quintilian seem to include all ancient culture, the entire curriculum of ancient learning, in the training of the orator; and to regard the orator as the typical or standard product of the educational system; as if the whole world for each man were thenceforth to be divided into two parts, himself, the speaker, and the rest of mankind, his audience.

What is the significance of that emphasis upon the arts of expression? Why this, I think, that they could not conceive of any educated


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 man who would not desire to express himself; nor could they conceive of any intelligent education which should consist merely in the reception and acquisition of information or of the mere Epicurean enjoyment of the intellect. Every impression should bear fruit in an expression. Every ideal should blossom in an action. Therefore the crown and culmination of learning was speaking or writing with a view to influencing or governing one's fellow men. And that clear purpose, that unifying principle gave to their educational discipline an incentive, a coherence, and a masculine vigor and seriousness, which are altogether too frequently lacking in the lopsided educational programs of our day.

If we aimed, as universities should, at producing complete men; if we aimed, as universities should, at producing the governors of society, we should knit up our literary, historical and scientific studies into an indissoluble bond with the arts of expression, and cease to send out, on the one hand, such shoals of scholars and technical experts who cannot express themselves and, on the other hand, such shoals of scribblers and babblers who have nothing to express.

Every attempt to make an educated man without connecting him with the historical tradition


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 is myopic and absurd; but, on the other hand, all erudition that does not somewhere ultimately come to a focus in the present hour is out of focus; is presbyopic and inefficient.

The ancient Roman writers who thought much more clearly on these questions than most modern writers, drove, even in their histories, frankly at practice. Says Livy: "To the following considerations I wish every one seriously and earnestly to attend: by what kind of men, and by what sort of conduct, in peace and war, the empire has been both acquired and extended: then, as discipline gradually declined, let him follow in his thought the structure of ancient morals— . . . until he arrives at the present times, when our vices have attained to such a height of enormity, that we can no longer endure either the burden of them, or the sharpness of the necessary remedies. This is the great advantage to be derived from the study of history."

Says Tacitus: "I deem it to be the chief function of history to rescue merit from oblivion, and to hold up before evil words and evil deeds the terror of the reprobation of posterity." There is the Roman point of view in historical literature. The Roman historian brings his learning to a focus in the present


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 hour; he seeks to govern men by a powerful impression made upon their imaginations.

In the English Renaissance, so largely influenced by Latin literature, the same point of view is adopted by poets and writers of imaginative fiction. When William Caxton, the first English printer, published Sir Thomas Malroy's great collection of Arthurian stories, he announced that he had done so, that noble men might learn and imitate the manners and morals of knighthood. In his Fairy Queen Spenser contemplated the fashioning of a gentleman. And Sir Philip Sidney, in his Apology for Poetry, following Aristotle, placed poetry above history and philosophy, precisely because of its power to kindle the will to action; because of its superior potency in the formation of character and in leading and drawing us to as high a perfection "as our degenerate souls, made worse by their clay lodgings, can be capable of."

We are now come to a second reason why literature is such a formidable power in the state. The first reason was that literature is a critical and discriminating and persuasive imitation of life, which sets up in the mind of readers a process of comparison frequently unfavorable to the actual order of the world. The second reason is that life itself is, to a far greater


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 extent than we ordinarily recognize, an imitation of literature. The illustrations which come most promptly to remembrance are perhaps life's imitations of religious literature. These come first to remembrance because it is so obvious that the power and the perpetuation of religion depend directly upon the possibility of governing men through their imaginations by inspiring them to imitate some supreme exemplar whose record is literary; so that what is most affecting in the history of ancient Stoicism is the imitation of Plato's Socrates, and the whole history of Christendom, its churches, its institutions, its saints, its sages, and the Holy Roman Empire itself, are imitations, more or less grotesque, of the Old and the New Testaments, just as the moral and spiritual life of Oriental peoples are imitations of the Vedas, and the Koran, and the sayings of Confucius and other eastern wise men.

When we reflect on the imitation of literature by life, we see that there is a third very great reason why literature is so formidable a power. To put the matter in the ordinary way, literature is responsible for calling in allies from the great nations of the dead to intimidate and overawe the living. Governors, still encumbered with the flesh, and the hot-breathed children of the


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 present, who while they strut and fret their little hour upon the stage, like to flatter themselves that the earth is theirs and the fullness thereof—such governors and hot-breathed children like to think that, while they last, they have a right to do with the world what they please and can. Sufficient unto the day, they cry, are the governors thereof; and they bitterly resent what they call the intrusion of the dead hand of the past into to-day's affairs. Now, as a matter of fact, the dead hand of the past never intruded into anybody's affairs. The hands and voices of the past that are felt and heard in to-day's affairs are living hands and voices; are emancipated hands and voices; hands and voices and personalities multiplied and magnified by the reproductive power of the imagination. They belong to the really great society of the world, which is, and always will be, a spiritual society, exempt from the limitations of time and space and death.

To the eager young radical in politics, who is frequently too busy talking to do much think—ing and too busy writing for the newspapers to do much reading in the classics, the man of letters frequently seems to exhibit an exasperating and incomprehensible conservatism. The young radical exclaims with heat and indignation:


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 "Why don't you join us and help us overturn this miserably unsatisfactory society to which we belong?" The man of letters replies, or is frequently disposed to reply:

"My dear sir: We do not belong to that society which you find so miserable and unsatisfactory. We belong to a cosmopolitan society which is as wide as humanity and as old as the world, and infinitely richer and more satisfactory than that composed of those men in the street, who so highly excite your discontent. The trouble with your radical agitation for an international society is that your associates are all men in the street; your cosmopolitanism is merely geographical; your world has no temporal dimensions. You flutter like flies on the window pane; and exclude the larger part of humanity's best hearts and heads. Can you not count on the fingers of your hands all your great men? You are not wise enough to govern the earth."

"Those of the great society, as wise men from Cicero to Ruskin have reminded us, have poets, emperors, priests, philosophers, saints, and sages for their table companions and for the familiars of their peopled solitude—all who for one great virtue or another have merited eternal life. The ideal world in which these presences move seems


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 to our warm youth, eager for sensuous contacts, somewhat cold and insubstantial; but as we advance in age and discover the fickle and transitory character and the emptiness of many of our relationships with those who seem to be living, and, on the other hand, the fidelity and permanence and richness of our relationships with those who seemed to be dead, then the ideal world begins to grow upon us, and its presences appear to our clearer perception to be the objects in our consciousness of the most indisputable reality. Then indeed we know that Socrates and Cicero are with us; St. Paul and Augustine and Aquinas; Petrarch and Machiavelli and Montaigne; Shakespeare, Bacon, Milton, and Bunyan; Descartes and Locke; Voltaire and Rousseau and Burke and Goethe; Franklin and Adams and Lincoln, Emerson, Whitman, and Mark Twain."

"Our association with this company makes our standards of a 'good society' a little exacting. Till you give us better assurance of the splendor of your own projected commonwealth, we shall retain our free citizenship in this ideal community. You will set up in vain a tyranny of shop keepers over this august republic. We shall not be subject to it. We shall obey and follow the commands of the great society, whose


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 members we have known longer, and more intimately, and more profitably than we have known any one of you; for all the great men of letters have infinitely more power to-day than they had in their bodily life-time; and they retain all the essential and interesting attributes of life. We know their habits and opinions; we hear their voices; we feel their influences; we change our relations to them; we hate and love them; we are intellectually and emotionally begotten and reared and governed by them."

Literature, then, is formidable because it emancipates a man from bondage to the present and makes him a citizen of this state which is as wide as humanity and as old as the world. He may conform outwardly to the government of the men in the street, but his true inward' allegiance is to a state which transcends national society, which transcends the international society of the present; and which has no sovereign but God. I have called it a republic; it is more strictly speaking a natural and entirely free aristocracy where no man has any power whatever but the power of his own spirit upon other spirits.

Living habitually in the company of a true spiritual aristocracy has certain decisive effects


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 upon the character. It creates above all a certain internal serenity of an ineffable sweetness. Yet this serenity is not in its essential nature passive but intensely active. It is the serenity of the will bent with steadfast intention upon accomplishing that whereunto it was sent. I have talked with many artists, some in the flesh and many more in the spirit, and have asked them why they chose a career so arduous and so little regarded by the men in the street. And one, an American writer, who but recently joined the company of pure spirits, answered that he had chosen this career because "the cleanness and quietness of it, the independent effort to do something which shall give joy to man long after the howling has died away to the last ghost of an echo—such a vision solicits one in the watches of the night with an almost irresistible force." And when I asked him whether he had been happy in his work and what had been his chief reward, he replied that "he floated in the felicity of it, in the general encouragement of a sense of the perfectly done." His chief reward, he said, smiling with celestial serenity—his chief reward—was "the sense which is the real life of the artist and the absence of which is his death, of having drawn from his intellectual instrument the finest music


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 that nature had hidden in it, of having played it as it should be played."

Now these spirits of the great society are ranked in three orders according to the completeness of their felicity, which is almost the same thing as saying, according to the completeness of their powers of expression, the perfectness with which they have accomplished their will. In the lowest order, are those who have managed only to stammer forth some truth; in the second order are those who have expressed some truth beautifully; and in the third and highest order are those who have expressed a great truth beautifully in speech and act. But not even the spirits in the highest order are utterly satisfied with their achievements. Continually before them, imagination projects an elusive vision of the perfect truth, the perfect beauty, the perfect goodness of which the reality is hidden in the bosom of the All-Perfect. Dreamers like Plato and Augustine represented this vision as an ideal republic and as the city of God. Even the strongly practical, the utilitarian, society of ancient Rome, the masters of the world, felt this teasing, irresistible impulse towards the absolute, recognized this impulse in themselves and deified it in their temples to Fides, Cle-


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 mentia, Concordia, and other types of beneficent impulse—divine projections of human desire and unfulfilled hope.

There is a truth for the imagination in all the myths of religion and in all the fables of the poets. Homer tells us that Ulysses sailed to the limits of the world and poured out the blood of sheep, and up from the darkness of Erebus came clamoring the frustrate ghosts of Teresias and Agamemnon, and the shades of many pale passionate women who had fared tragically in their mortal life. Even so, whenever imagination unseals the gate, there return, clamoring for the light and warmth of mortal life, there return the pale frustrate ghosts of Fides, Clementia, and Concordia clamoring for incarnation. And, with their coming, one feels the rushing current of an impulse, like a mighty wind that has blown from eternity, the impulse of the unappeased human passion for perfection. And when the wind of this impulse strikes upon a man with imagination barbaric and carnal, he burns with a desire to erect palaces, and coliseums, and towering pyramids; and he prophesies like the mad King Herod:


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But when this breath of inspiration from the ideal world touches upon a great man of letters, a poet like Milton or Sophocles, it wakens his most dangerous and divine faculty; it fills him with the creative Apollonian madness, with a clear luminous dream, in which he seems to himself to behold a law above the law of the State, above the custom of society, beyond the practice of the individual man. His highest function it is, a truly religious function, to declare the new law. For this, he is a member of the great society; for this, he is a free man, acknowledging no sovereign but God: namely, that when the call comes, when new light breaks, when his pulses throb with urgent moral life, he may rise from the slumbers of his old opinions, and, girding up his loins, lead the faithful


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 another march through the wilderness toward the unabiding City of God.

Always the political government lags behind the customs of society; always the customs of society lag behind the practise of the foremost individuals; always the practise of the individual lags behind their private vision and conscience. All the world's bitterest tragedies, its colossal wars and devastations, the execution of Socrates, the crucifixion of Christ, the burnings of saints and sages, the hanging of John Brown, have been due precisely to this, that the imagination of the world was not yet permeated by the light which shone through its heretics and martyrs. That which makes every massacre of innocents so horrid, that which makes so unbearable the destruction of youth and beauty in war, that which gives to the murderous extinction of humanity's light-bringers so piercing a pathos, is that always, in the very hour and place of destruction, there are meek unprotesting witnesses who know that what is being enacted is a mistake; there are souls already on the scene, pure and humane, who pray for a divine interposition, and murmur unheeded by the howling populace, "They know not what they do."

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 our old habits and customs, breaks the thin radiance of new truth. His last and highest function, his divinely dangerous function, committed to him by the great society, is to promulgate the new law in despite of the old one, and, by every power of imaginative representation at his command, to make it prevail from end to end of society, and govern in the ideas and emotions of men. His function, in short, is precisely that performed by Sophocles in his Antigone. You will recall that, after the war against Thebes, Creon, the governor, a precisian and a formalist, ordered the body of Polyneices, who had made war against the city, to be left in the fields to be devoured by the dogs, with penalty of death for disobedience. Antigone, the sister of Polyneices, one of those marvellous women of ancient tragedy, who are vessels incandescent with divine light, recognizes a natural law of kinship and humanity above the law of the state, and in defiance of Creon resolves to go out and perform the last services for the dead. To her sister who tries to dissuade her she says:


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She is captured and brought before Creon for judgment and sentenced to death by starvation. Says Creon:

She replies:

The Antigone of Sophocles never lived; and yet she lives forever, and preserves about her that atmosphere of sacred awe without which human life becomes flat and unprofitable. Antigone lives forever: and on this fact rests the case for Antigone and Alcestis and Iphigeneia; and for all those proud and gracious figures that sweep along the frieze of the Parthenon; and


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 for all the heroic creations of the poetic mind which fight at humanity's side in the contested passes of history. They never lived; and yet they live more truly than many great ones whose footsteps once left visible imprints on the earth. They live in our hearts and imaginations; and, as truly as Socrates or Lincoln, they augment the power and majesty of that great society in which alone it is worth while to be immortal, in which alone it is desirable to be happy, through which alone it is possible wisely to govern men—because in this society, preserved and in part created by literature, in this alone it is possible to assure victory and reward to those who please the souls they ought to please.


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A2208 Notes:

(1) In respect of items 1 to 5 and 9, the person described in those items is an exempt person only to the extent that the relevant statutory provisions apply to his relevant income derived from employment the subject of those provisions, and not to other income (if any) derived from other sources which may be otherwise subject to the provisions of this Ordinance or to any obligation under this Ordinance in his capacity as an employer, if applicable.

(2) In respect of item 7, the relevant employee described in that item is an exempt person only to the extent of his relevant income.

(3) In respect of item 8, the employer described in that item is an exempt person only to the extent of the relevant income of persons or relevant employees described in items 1 to 7 and not to other income (if any) derived from other sources which may be otherwise subject to the provisions of this Ordinance. PART II Notes:

In this Part—

“domestic employee” (家務僱員) means an employee whose contract of employment is wholly or substantially for the provision of domestic services in the residential premises of the employer;

“hawker” (小販) has the same meaning as in the Public Health and Municipal Services Ordinance (Cap. 132). Rh

$20,000 Rh

$4,000 Rh


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Rh

Rh

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A2212 Rh

Bankruptcy Ordinance 1. Priority of debts

Section 38 of the Bankruptcy Ordinance (Cap. 6) is amended—
 * (a) in subsection (1) by adding—
 * “(ch) any amount of unpaid contribution under, or any amount of unpaid contribution calculated in accordance with, the Mandatory Provident Fund Schemes Ordinance (80 of 1995) which should have been paid by the bankrupt in accordance with the provisions of that Ordinance before the commencement of the bankruptcy:
 * Provided that where such amount exceeds $50,000 in respect of an employee, 50% of such part of the amount that exceeds $50,000 shall not be paid in priority to all other debts under this subsection;
 * (ci) any amount deducted by the bankrupt from the relevant income of his relevant employees for the purpose of making contributions in respect of such relevant employees to the approved trustee of a registered scheme within the meaning of the Mandatory Provident Fund Schemes Ordinance (80 of 1995) which have not been paid to that approved trustee;
 * (cj) any sum and interest thereon payable to the Mandatory Provident Fund Schemes Authority under section 17(7) of the Mandatory Provident Fund Schemes Ordinance (80 of 1995);”;
 * (b) in subsection (3) by repealing “and (cg)” and substituting “, (cg), (ch), (ci) and (cj)”.

Companies Ordinance 2. Preferential payments

Section 265 of the Companies Ordinance (Cap. 32) is amended—
 * (a) in subsection (1) by adding—
 * “(ch) any amount of unpaid contribution under, or any amount of unpaid contribution calculated in accordance with, the Mandatory Provident Fund Schemes Ordinance (80 of 1995) which should have been paid by the company being wound up in accordance with the provisions of that Ordinance before the commencement of the winding up:
 * Provided that where such amount exceeds $50,000 in respect of an employee, 50% of such part of the amount that exceeds $50,000 shall not be paid in priority to all other debts under this subsection;
 * (ci) any amount deducted by the company being wound up from the relevant income of its relevant employees for the purpose of making contributions in respect of such relevant employees to the approved trustee of a registered scheme within the meaning of the Mandatory Provident Fund Schemes Ordinance (80 of 1995) which have not been paid to that approved trustee;
 * (cj) any sum and interest thereon payable to the Mandatory Provident Fund Schemes Authority under section 17(7) of the Mandatory Provident Fund Schemes Ordinance (80 of 1995);”;
 * (b) in subsection (3) by repcaling “and (cg)" and substituting “, (cg), (ch), (ci) and (cj)”.


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has been organized "to increase and diffuse geographic knowledge," and the publication of a Magazine has been determined upon as one means of accomplishing these purposes.

It will contain memoirs, essays, notes, correspondence, reviews, etc., relating to Geographic matters. As it is not intended to be simply the organ of the Society, its pages will be open to all persons interested in Geography, in the hope that it may become a channel of intercommunication, stimulate geographic investigation and prove an acceptable medium for the publication of results.

The Magazine is to be edited by the Society. At present it will be issued at irregular intervals, but as the sources of information are increased the numbers will appear periodically.

The National Capital seems to be the natural and appropriate place for an association of this character, and the aim of the founders has been, therefore, to form a National rather than a local society.

As it is hoped to diffuse as well as to increase knowledge, due prominence will be given to the educational aspect of geographic matters, and efforts will be made to stimulate an interest in original sources of information.

In addition to organizing, holding regular fortnightly meetings for presenting scientific and popular communications, and entering upon the publication of a Magazine, considerable progress has been made in the preparation of a Physical Atlas of the United States.


text: The Genius of America (collection)

title: The Genius of America (collection)


text: The Genius of America (collection)/The Genius of America


text: The Genius of America (collection)/What Is a Puritan?


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 The Society was organized in January, 1888, under the laws of the District of Columbia, and has at present an active membership of about two hundred persons. But there is no limitation to the number of members, and it will welcome both leaders and followers in geographic science, in order to better accomplish the objects of its organization.

October, 1888.

Correspondence with the Society should be addressed to Mr., Corresponding Secretary, No. 1318 Massachusetts Avenue, Washington, D. C.


text: The Genius of America (collection)/A Conversation on Ostriches


text: The Genius of America (collection)/The Shifting Centre of Morality


text: The Genius of America (collection)/The Superior Class


text: The Genius of America (collection)/Education by the People


text: The Genius of America (collection)/Vocation


text: The Genius of America (collection)/The Point of View in American Criticism


text: The Genius of America (collection)/Literature and the Government of Men


text: Mandatory Provident Fund Schemes Ordinance


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Rh Isidore's work. Alcuin and Theodulf took their inspiration from it, and for jurists it was long one of the principal sources of information concerning the Roman Law before the time of Justinian.

Of the artistic productions which the Visigoths left behind in Spain, there is not much to be said. In addition to the undoubted Byzantine influence, which, however, did not exactly reveal itself through the medium of Visigothic art, since it had its own province like that of other Western countries, it is possible that the work of the Visigoths shewed other traces of Eastern art. We have much information concerning public buildings — palaces, churches, monasteries, and fortifications — built during the Visigothic period, and more especially during the reigns of Leovigild, Recared, Receswinth, etc. But none of these buildings have come down to us in a state of sufficient preservation to enable us to state precisely the characteristic features of the period. The following buildings, or at least some part of them, have been assigned to this period: the churches of San Roman de la Hornija, and San Juan de Baños at Palencia; the church of San Miguel de Tarrasa, and possibly the lower part of Cristo de la Luz at Toledo; the cathedral of San Miguel de Escalada at Leon; Burguillos and San Pedro de Nave, and a few other fragments. It is also thought that there are traces of Visigothic influence in the church of St Germain-des-Près at Paris, which was built in 806 by Theodulf, bishop of Orleans, a native of Spain. But the capitals found at Toledo, Mérida, and Cordova, and, above all, the beautiful jewels, votive crowns, crosses, and necklaces, of gold and precious stones discovered at Guarrazar, Elche, and Antequera, must assuredly be attributed to the Visigoths. We possess numerous Visigothic gold coins, or rather medals struck in commemoration of victories and proclamations, modelled on the Latin and Byzantine types and roughly engraved. They furnish information concerning several kings whose names do not occur in any known document, and who must probably be regarded as usurpers, rebels, or unsuccessful candidates for the throne, such as Tutila or Tudila of Iliberis and Mérida, and Tajita of Acci, who are supposed to belong to the period between Recared I and Sisenand, and Suniefred or Cuniefred, who possibly belongs to the time of Receswinth or Wamba.


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192 which was mainly municipal, and restored the rural system, which in their hands proved very efficient, as we see from the distribution of the local communities and from the system of local administration, although the Roman scheme of country-houses (villae) in some respects coincides with this; they also improved the condition of agriculture. With regard to the family, the Visigoths were less susceptible to Latin influence, inasmuch as they retained the form of the patriarchal family and of the Sippe, which found its ultimate expression in solidarity of the clans in matters relating to the family, to property, and to punishment of crime, etc. Nevertheless, here too Roman influence did not fail to produce some effect; in the legislation, at least, it modified the Gothic law in an individualistic sense.

Of the original language, script and literature of the Visigoths, nothing remained. The language left scarcely any trace on the Latin, by which it was almost immediately supplanted in common use. Modern philologists believe that most of the Gothic words — a bare hundred — contained in the Spanish language have not come from the Visigoths, but that they are of more ancient origin, and had crept into vulgar Latin towards the end of the Empire, as a result of the constant intercourse between the Roman soldiers and the Germanic tribes. The Gothic script fell rapidly into disuse in consequence of the spread of Catholicism, and the destruction of many of the Arian books in which it had been used. Although there is evidence that it survived down to the seventh century, there are but few examples of it; documents were generally written in Latin, in the script wrongly termed Gothic, which is known to Spanish palaeographers as that of Toledo.

The literature which has come down to us is all in Latin, and the greater part of it deals with matters ecclesiastical. Although amongst the writers and cultured men of the time there were a few laymen, such as the kings Recared, Sisebut, Chindaswinth, and Receswinth, duke Claudius, the counts Bulgaranus and Laurentius, the majority of the historians, poets, theologians, moralists and priests were ecclesiastics; such were Orosius, Dracontius, Idatius, Montanus, St Toribius of Astorga, St Martin of Braga, the Byzantines Licinianus and Severus, Donatus, Braulio, Masona, Julian, Tajon, John of Biclar, etc. The most important of all, the best and most representative exponent of contemporary culture, was Isidore of Seville, whose historical and legal works (Libri Sententiarum) and encyclopaedias (Origines sive Etymologiae) — the latter were written between 622 and 623 — reproduce, in turn, Latin tradition and the doctrines of Christianity. The Etymologiae is not only exceedingly valuable from the historical point of view as a storehouse of Latin erudition, but it also exercised considerable influence over Spain and the other Western nations. In Spain, France, and other European countries, there was scarcely a single library belonging to a chapter-house or an abbey, whose catalogue could not boast of a copy of


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 CHAPTER VII

ITALY UNDER THE LOMBARDS

The Lombards are mentioned first at the time of Augustus and Tiberius by Velleius Paterculus and Strabo, and a hundred years later by Tacitus. Their first residence was the Bardengau on the left bank of the lower Elbe, and here they were conquered by Tiberius at the time before the battle in the Teutoburgian forest, when the Romans still intended to subdue the whole of Germany. After the deliverance of the inner part of Germany by Arminius, the Lombards were ruled by Marbod, who went over to Arminius and later on brought back to his compatriots Italicus, the son of Arminius, whom the Cherusci had fetched from Rome and then driven away again. They are generally described as a small tribe, the fiercest of all German tribes, and only their bravery enabled them to hold their position between their stronger neighbours. On the whole their habits seem to have been the same as those of all other Germans at the time of Tacitus; some of their laws of a later period shew a certain resemblance to those of their former neighbours by the North Sea. As with all Germans, their kingdom is no original institution, and whatever tradition tells about it is only fabulous. It is the smallness of their tribe which accounts for their principal quality — the tendency to assimilate the allied or subdued individuals and tribes. Roman influence seems to have touched them only in the slightest degree during the first five centuries of our era. At the time of their wanderings they began to shew differences from their neighbours.

We know nothing about the way the Lombard wanderings took, though tradition says a good deal about them. The extensive farming they practised, consisting more in cattle-breeding than agriculture, and the loose organisation of the tribe made it easy for them to leave their dwelling-places. Perhaps here, as is so often the case, the first motive was need of land, a natural result of the increase of population, while at the same time so small a tribe had no possibility of enlarging its boundaries. A division of Lombards invaded Pannonia with the Marcomanni about the year 165, but were repulsed by the Romans and obliged to return. They did not again reach the old Roman frontier, the Danube, till 300 years later, under a certain king Godeoch,


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Rh people. These, after an existence which, to the modern observer, seems buried in obscurity — for they are not mentioned in any contemporary document — came to the surface in the legislation of the medieval Fueros, which was founded on custom, as soon as the political unity of Visigothic Spain had been destroyed. It has been shewn by several modern scholars who have investigated the subject, such as Pidal, Muñoz, Romero, Ficker, and Hinojosa, that many of these principles or Fueros faithfully reflect the ancient Gothic law. Here, then, is a new social factor of medieval Spain, which descends directly from the Visigoths.

Conversely, in matters of social life and culture, the Visigoths were deeply affected by the Byzantine and by the Spanish-Roman element. The Roman spirit first affected them when they came in contact with the Eastern Empire in the third and fourth centuries. Afterwards in Gaul, and still more in Spain, a Western and properly Roman influence produced a much deeper effect, as is shewn by the advance in their legislation. Subsequently the Byzantine influence was revived by the Byzantine conquests in south and south-east Spain (554-629), and also by the constant communication between the Spanish clergy and Constantinople; indeed, we know that many of them visited this city. Some scholars have attempted to trace Byzantine influence in matters juridical, but it is not perceptible either in Visigothic legislation, or in the formulae of the sixth century, or in the legal works of Isidore of Seville. On the other hand, the influence of Byzantine art and literature is manifest at every stage in the literary and artistic productions of the period. In the territory in subjection to the Empire, Greek was spoken in its vulgar form, and learned Greek was the language of all educated men. Moreover, Byzantine influence played a considerable part in commerce, which was chiefly carried on by the Carthagena route — this city being the capital of the imperial province — and by the Barcelona route, which followed the course of the Ebro to the coast of Cantabria.

As might have been expected, the Roman-Latin influence was more powerful than the Byzantine. On the whole, the Visigoths conformed to the general system of social organisation which they had found established in Spain. According to this system, property was vested in the hands of a few, and there was great inequality between the classes. Personal and economic liberty was restricted by subjection to the curia and the collegia. The Visigoths improved the condition of the curiales, and lightened the burden of the compulsory guild, which pressed heavily on the workmen and artisans; but, on the other hand, they widened the gulf between the classes, by extending the grades of personal servitude and subjection on the lines followed by the Roman Empire in the fourth century; and these, owing to the weakness of the State, became daily more intolerable. With regard to the economic question of population, the Visigoths reversed the established Roman practice


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118 which is still the religion of the people, is of the sort derived originally from China. Loyalty and filial piety, which are the foundations of Japanese ethics, are Confucian virtues, imported along with the rest of ancient Chinese culture. But even before the irruption of European influences, China and Japan had had such different histories and national temperaments that doctrines originally similar had developed in opposite directions. China has been, since the time of the First Emperor (c. 200 ), a vast unified bureaucratic land empire, having much contact with foreign nations—Annamese, Burmese, Mongols, Tibetans and even Indians. Japan, on the other hand, was an island kingdom, having practically no foreign contact except with Korea and occasionally with China, divided into clans which were constantly at war with each other, developing the virtues and vices of feudal chivalry, but totally unconcerned with economic or administrative problems on a large scale. It was not difficult to adapt the doctrines of Confucius to such a country, because in the time of Confucius China was still feudal and still divided into a number of petty kingdoms, in one of which the sage himself was a courtier, like Goethe at Weimar. But naturally his doctrines underwent a different development from that which befel them in their own country.

In old Japan, for instance, loyalty to the clan chieftain is the virtue one finds most praised; it is this same virtue, with its scope enlarged, which has now become patriotism. Loyalty is a virtue naturally praised where conflicts between roughly equal forces are frequent, as they were in feudal Japan, and are in the modern international world. In China, on the contrary, power seemed so secure, the Empire


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 put in hand, for in those days Britain was at the extremity of her war effort, and labour and material were unobtainable without special permits and great exertion. Sundering on Sea was as convenient a place as anywhere from which to write letters, but his idea of going to London to see influential people was resisted by Mrs. Huss on the score of the expense, and overcome when he persisted in it by a storm of tears.

On her arrival at Sundering Mrs. Huss put up at the Railway Hotel for the night, and spent the next morning in a stern visitation of possible lodgings. Something in the unassuming outlook of Sea View attracted her, and after a long dispute she was able to beat down Mrs. Croome's demand from five to four and a half guineas a week. That afternoon some importunate applicant in an extremity of homelessness—for there had been a sudden rush of visitors to Sundering—offered six guineas. Mrs. Croome tried to call off her first bargain, but Mrs. Huss was obdurate, and thereafter all the intercourse of landlady and her lodgers went to the unspoken refrain of "I get four and a half guineas and I ought to get six." To recoup herself Mrs. Croome attempted to make extra charges for the use of the bathroom, for cooking after five o'clock, for cleaning Mr. Huss's brown boots with specially bought brown cream instead of blacking, and for the ink used by him in his very voluminous correspondence; upon all of which points there was much argument and bitterness.

But a heavier blow than any they had hitherto experienced was now to fall upon Mr. and Mrs. Huss. Job in the ancient story had seven sons and


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190 the time of Recared, the clergy ruled the kings. We have seen that the kings controlled the bishops, that they appointed them, deprived them of their sees, and convoked them, so that they always had the means of checking any encroachment. We know that there were frequent disputes between the Crown and the prelates, that the latter often made conspiracies, headed rebellions, and were in consequence punished by the kings; we also know that for some time there was difference of opinion between the kings and the upper clergy on the subject of the Jews. Lastly, we must not forget that, in legislative matters, not only did the kings issue provisions motu proprio without consulting the Councils — there is no lack of examples — but also that, even with regard to the decisions and suggestions of the latter, they always reserved for themselves the right of approval, as we may clearly see from the royal declarations at the eighth, thirteenth, and sixteenth Councils, apart from their general power of confirmation, without which the decrees were not valid. So far as we know, the kings always enforced the decisions of the Councils; and they could well afford to do so. It was a currupt bargain. The Councils sanctioned the worst acts of hypocritical kings like Erwig, while the kings allowed their theological and political doctrines to creep into the legislation. This appears to be the truth of the matter.

The fall of the Visigothic State did not put an end to Gothic influence in Spain. Like the Roman Empire, the Visigothic rule made a deep impression on the race and on the character of the Spanish people. Portions of Visigothic law were incorporated into their legal constitution: in the sphere of legislation, not only did their principles survive for several centuries, but some of them have come down to the present day, and are amongst those regarded as most essentially Spanish. The Forum Judicum remained in force in the Peninsula for centuries; in the thirteenth, as it was still thought indispensable, it was translated into the vernacular — that is, Castilian — and, down to the nineteenth, its laws continued to be quoted in the courts. No sooner was the new monarchy established in Asturias, than it attempted to restore the Visigothic State, seeking for precedents in the latter and claiming to be its successor. This influence is proved by various passages of the chronicles which treat of the Reconquest and by the texts of the laws of Alfonso II, Bermudo II, Alfonso V, and other kings. The word Goth survived to denote a Spanish Christian, and, in the sixteenth century, the victorious Spaniards introduced it into America.

It was not only on legislation and politics that the Visigothic influence left its mark. It has now been proved that the Visigothic codes, even in their final and most complete form, by no means included all the legislation which existed in Spain. Apart from the law, and, in many cases, in direct opposition to it, there survived a considerable number of customs, almost all Gothic, which were firmly rooted in the


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 the reverse, and give great or little scope for healthy human energies. From idle wonder to active speculation is but a step; and he seems to have been early struck with the inefficacy of literature and its extreme unsuitability to the conditions. What he calls "Feudal Literature" could have little living action on the tumult of American democracy; what he calls the "Literature of Wo," meaning the whole tribe of Werther and Byron, could have no action for good in any time or place. Both propositions, if art had none but a direct moral influence, would be true enough; and as this seems to be Whitman's view, they were true enough for him. He conceived the idea of a Literature which was to inhere in the life of the present; which was to be, first, human, and next, American; which was to be brave and cheerful as per contract; to give culture in a popular and poetical presentment; and, in so doing, catch and stereotype some democratic ideal of humanity which should be equally natural to all grades of wealth and education, and suited, in one of his favourite phrases, to "the average man." To the formation of some such literature as this his poems are to be regarded as so many contributions, one sometimes explaining, sometimes superseding, the other: and the whole together not so much a finished work as a body of suggestive hints. He


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487-568] who occupied the desolated Rugiland after the destruction of their empire by Odovacar in the year 487. Meanwhile during the troubles of their wanderings and continual wars the institution of a constant commander-in-chief in form of kingship seems to have taken the place of the Tacitean duke who was invested for every single war. From Rugiland they wandered into the land which was called "Feld" (in Hungary) but were subdued by the Heruli and forced to pay tribute. At that time they were probably landlords, leaving the land to subjected half-freemen (aldiones) for culture; we may suppose that they were at that time strongly influenced by their neighbours, the Bavarians, and it was then that they adopted Christianity in its Arian form. But not very long afterwards, during the Franco-Ostrogothic war in Gaul, the Lombards, under the reign of their king Tato of the family of Leth, shook off the yoke of the Heruli, who were allied with Theodoric, succeeded in beating them completely in a battle somewhere in the Hungarian plain, and entirely destroyed their realm. The Lombards now had the Gepidae on the south and the Danube on the west. Tato's nephew and successor, King Vacho, who had married one daughter to a Frankish king and another to Garibald, duke of Bavaria, considered himself friend and ally of the Roman Emperor.

When after the death of the last "Lethingian" king his guardian Audoin had mounted the throne, the Lombards crossed the Danube and, while the Ostrogothic land was in great confusion, occupied the south-west of Hungary, and also Noricum, the south of Styria, both belonging in name to the Roman Empire, but left to them for settlement by Justinian. In this way they were loosely federated with the Empire, which paid them subsidies, but was nevertheless troubled by their raids. They assisted Narses in his decisive expedition to Italy, bringing him 2500 warriors with 3000 armed followers, but the Byzantine soon sent them back after the deciding battle, seeing how dangerous they were to friend and foe through their fierceness and want of discipline. Meanwhile the Lombards and Gepidae, stirred up by the Roman Emperor, were engaged in constant battles and struggles. After Audoin's death his son and successor Alboin, well known to fable, concluded a league with the Avars, engaging himself to pay the tenth part of all cattle for their help in war and, in case of victory, to give up the land of the Gepidae to the Avars. The latter made their invasion from the north-east, the Lombards from the north-west. In the decisive battle Kunimund, king of the Gepidae, was slain by Alboin's hand, the king's daughter taken prisoner and made queen by Alboin. Part of the Gepidae took flight, another part surrendered to the Lombards; their realm existed no more, their land and the few who stayed behind fell under the government of the Avars, who were now the Lombards' most dangerous neighbours. But the Lombards renewed their confederacy with them, and left to them the land they had themselves occupied till then, intending to


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 three daughters, and they were all swept away. This Job was to suffer a sharper thrust; he had but one dear only son, a boy of great promise, who had gone into the Royal Flying Corps. News came that he had been shot down over the German lines.

Unhappily there had been a conflict between Mr. and Mrs. Huss about this boy. Huss had been proud that the youngster should choose the heroic service; Mrs. Huss had done her utmost to prevent his joining it. The poor lady was now ruthless in her anguish. She railed upon him as the murderer of their child. She hoped he was pleased with his handiwork. He could count one more name on his list; he could add it to the roll of honour in the chapel "with the others." Her baby boy! This said, she went wailing from the room.

The wretched man sat confounded. That "with the others" cut him to the heart. For the school chapel had a list of V.C.'s, D.C.M.'s and the like, second to none, and it had indeed been a pride to him.

For some days his soul was stunned. He was utterly exhausted and lethargic. He could hardly attend to the most necessary letters. From dignity, hope, and a great sheaf of activities, his life had shrunken abruptly to the compass of this dingy lodging, pervaded by the squabbling of two irrational women; his work in the world was in ruins; he had no strength left in him to struggle against fate. And a vague internal pain crept slowly into his consciousness.

His wife, insane now and cruel with sorrow, tried


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119Rh was so vast and immemorial, that the need for loyalty was not felt. Security bred a different set of virtues, such as courtesy, considerateness, and compromise. Now that security is gone, and the Chinese find themselves plunged into a world of warring bandits, they have difficulty in developing the patriotism, ruthlessness, and unscrupulousness which the situation demands. The Japanese have no such difficulty, having been schooled for just such requirements by their centuries of feudal anarchy. Accordingly we find that Western influence has only accentuated the previous differences between China and Japan: modern Chinese like our thought but dislike our mechanism, while modern Japanese like our mechanism but dislike our thought.

From some points of view, Asia, including Russia, may be regarded as a unity; but from this unity Japan must be excluded. Russia, China, and India contain vast plains given over to peasant agriculture; they are easily swayed by military empires such as that of Jenghis Khan; with modern railways, they could be dominated from a centre more securely than in former times. They could be self-subsistent economically, and invulnerable to outside attack, independent of commerce, and so strong as to be indifferent to progress. All this may come about some day, if Russia happens to develop a great conqueror supported by German organizing ability. But Japan stands outside this order of possibilities. Japan, like Great Britain, must depend upon commerce for power and prosperity. As yet, Japan has not developed the Liberal mentality appropriate to a commercial nation, and is still bent upon Asiatic conquest and military prowess. This policy brings with it conflicts with China and Russia, which the


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196 conquer for themselves a better and richer land in Italy, which many of them already knew. At the command of Alboin they assembled on 1 April 568, with family, goods and chattels, with a mixed multitude of all the subjugated races already assimilated by their people. With a great number of allies — 20,000 Saxons among others — and grouped in tribes (fara) they crossed the Alps under the guidance of Alboin. About the same time Narses was recalled by Justinian's successor: hence arose a rumour, reporting that the commander had committed treason, by calling the Lombards; and this became the saga of Narses.

In spite of the well-organised defensive system which Narses had established, the Romans seem to have been surprised and made no attempt at defence. The Lombards threw down the Friulian limes with its castles and, marching into the Venetian plain, took Cividale (Forum Julii), the first important place that fell into their hands, and afterwards the residence of the ducal dynasty of the Gisulfings; they also destroyed the town of Aquileia, whose patriarch fled to Grado, the later New-Aquileia, with his treasure, part of the population, and of the soldiers. But the imperialists succeeded in holding out in Padua, Monselice, and Mantua, thereby defending the line of the Po, while Vicenza and Verona fell into Alboin's hands, so that the important limes of Tridentum, which bordered on Bavaria in the north, was separated from the bulk of the imperial army. On 4 September 569, Alboin entered Milan; the archbishop Honoratus fled to Genoa, which for two generations remained the asylum of the bishops of Milan. Ticinum (Pavia) alone offered resistance for a time and could only be taken after a long siege, during which and afterwards other Lombard troops scoured the country up to the Alps and took possession of the land except a few fortifications. Undoubtedly the Lombard bands had as little idea of systematic attack as the imperialists of systematic defence: and it seems the latter judged the Lombard invasions to be like other barbarian invasions, which soon passed away. Alboin himself seems to have dated his reign in Italy from the time of his occupation of Milan.

Alboin did not long enjoy his fame. Revolted by her husband's insolence, who forced her to drink from a cup made of her father Kunimund's skull, Rosamund conspired with Alboin's foster-brother Helmechis and a powerful man called Peredeo; the barbarian hero-king was murdered in his bed (in spring 572). But as Rosamund could not realise her plan of taking possession of the throne with Helmechis, against the Lombards' opposition, the two fled to Ravenna, taking the royal treasure with them. Here the queen wanted to get rid of her accomplice and marry Longinus, praefect of Italy; but Helmechis forced her to finish the poison she had given him. So the praefect could only deliver Alboin's daughter and the treasure to Constantinople, This is what the saga related, and we can neither


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Picture Show

 * "Picture-Show" (1919), a poem by Siegfried Sassoon
 * Picture Show (1919), a poetry collection by Siegfried Sassoon
 * Picture Show (1919–1939), a British film magazine

title: Picture Show


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 to put a great quarrel upon him about wearing mourning for their son. He had always disliked and spoken against these pomps of death, but she insisted that whatever callousness he might display she at least must wear black. He might, she said, rest assured that she would spend no more money than the barest decency required; she would buy the cheapest material, and make it up in her bedroom. But black she must have. This resolution led straight to a conflict with Mrs. Croome, who objected to her best bedroom being littered with bits of black stuff, and cancelled the loan of her sewing-machine. The mourning should be made, Mrs. Huss insisted, though she had to sew every stitch of it by hand. And the poor distraught lady in her silly parsimony made still deeper trouble for herself by cutting her material in every direction half an inch or more short of the paper pattern. She came almost to a physical tussle with Mrs. Croome because of the state of the carpet and counterpane, and Mrs. Croome did her utmost to drag Mr. Huss into an altercation upon the matter with her husband.

"Croome don't interfere much, but some things he or nobody ain't going to stand, Mr. 'Uss."

For some days in this battlefield of insatiable grief and petty cruelty, and with a dull pain steadily boring its way to recognition, Mr. Huss forced himself to carry on in a fashion the complex of business necessitated by the school disaster. Then in the night came a dream, as dreams sometimes will, to enlighten him upon his bodily condition. Projecting from his side he saw a hard, white body that sent round, worm


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 like tentacles into every corner of his being. A number of doctors were struggling to tear this thing away from him. At every effort the pain increased.

He awoke, but the pain throbbed on.

He lay quite still. Upon the heavy darkness he saw the word "Cancer," bright red and glowing—as pain glows

He argued in the face of invincible conviction. He kept the mood conditional. "If it be so," he said, though he knew that the thing was so. What should he do? There would have to be operations, great expenses, enfeeblement

Whom could he ask for advice? Who would help him?

Suppose in the morning he were to take a bathing ticket as if he meant to bathe, and struggle out beyond the mud-flats. He could behave as though cramp had taken him suddenly

Five minutes of suffocation he would have to force himself through, and then peace—endless peace!

"No," he said, with a sudden gust of courage. "I will fight it out to the end."

But his mind was too dull to form plans and physically he was afraid. He would have to find a doctor somehow, and even that little task appalled him.

Then he would have to tell Mrs. Huss

For a time he lay quite still as if he listened to the alternative swell and diminuendo of his pain.

"Oh! if I had someone to help me!" he whispered, and was overcome by the lonely misery of his position. "If I had someone!"


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 For years he had never wept, but now tears were wrung from him. He rolled over and buried his face in the pillow and tried to wriggle his body away from that steady gnawing; he fretted as a child might do.

The night about him was as it were a great watching presence that would not help nor answer.

Behind the brass plate at the corner which said "Dr. Elihu Barrack" Mr. Huss found a hard, competent young man, who had returned from the war to his practice at Sundering after losing a leg. The mechanical substitute seemed to have taken to him very kindly. He appeared to be both modest and resourceful; his unfavourable diagnosis was all the more convincing because it was tentative and conditional. He knew the very specialist for the case; no less a surgeon than Sir Alpheus Mengo came, it happened, quite frequently to play golf on the Sundering links. It would be easy to arrange for him to examine Mr. Huss in Dr. Barrack's little consulting room, and if an operation had to be performed it could be managed with a minimum of expense in Mr. Huss's own lodgings without any extra charge for mileage and the like.

"Of course," said Mr. Huss, "of course," with a clear vision of Mrs. Croome confronted with the proposal.

Sir Alpheus Mengo came down the next Saturday, and made a clandestine examination. He decided to


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Show-Down

Films

 * The Showdown (1928), a silent film directed by Victor Schertzinger

Short stories

 * "The Show-Down" (1922), a short story by Frederick Ritchie Bechdolt
 * "The Show-Down" (1915), a short story by Holworthy Hall

title: Show-Down


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 operate the following week-end. Mr. Huss was left at his own request to break the news to his wife and to make the necessary arrangements for this use of Mrs. Croome's rooms. But it was two days before he could bring himself to broach the matter.

He sat now listening to the sounds of his wife moving about in the bedroom overhead, and to the muffled crashes that intimated the climax of Mrs. Croome's preparation of the midday meal. He heard her calling upstairs to know whether Mrs. Huss was ready for her to serve up. He was seized with panic as a schoolboy might be who had not prepared his lesson. He tried hastily to frame some introductory phrases, but nothing would come into his mind save terms of disgust and lamentation. The sullen heat of the day mingled in one impression with his pain. He was nauseated by the smell of cooking. He felt it would be impossible to sit up at table and pretend to eat the meal of burnt bacon and potatoes that was all too evidently coming.

It came. Its progress along the passage was announced by a clatter of dishes. The door was opened by a kick. Mrs. Croome put the feast upon the table with something between defence and defiance in her manner. "What else," she seemed to intimate, "could one expect for four and a half guineas a week in the very height of the season? From a woman who could have got six!"

"Your dinner's there," Mrs. Croome called upstairs to Mrs. Huss in tones of studied negligence, and then retired to her own affairs in the kitchen, slamming the door behind her.


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 The room quivered down to silence, and then Mr. Huss could hear the footsteps of his wife crossing the bedroom and descending the staircase.

Mrs. Huss was a dark, graceful, and rather untidy lady of seven and forty, with the bridling bearing of one who habitually repels implicit accusations. She lifted the lid of the vegetable dish. "I thought I smelled burning," she said. "The woman is impossible."

She stood by her chair, regarding her husband and waiting.

He rose reluctantly, and transferred himself to a seat at table.

It had always been her custom to carve. She now prepared to serve him. "No," he said, full of loathing. "I can't eat. I can't."

She put down the tablespoon and fork she had just raised, and regarded him with eyes of dark disapproval.

"It's all we can get," she said.

He shook his head. "It isn't that."

"I don't know what you expect me to get for you here," she complained. "The tradesmen don't know us—and don't care."

"It isn't that. I'm ill."

"It's the heat. We are all ill. Everyone. In such weather as this. It's no excuse for not making an effort, situated as we are."

"I mean I am really ill. I am in pain."

She looked at him as one might look at an unreasonable child. He was constrained to more definite statement.


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26 question whether the Government has not done too much; for, as the Secretary of State wrote in 1864, the true principle by which the expenditure of the Government upon education ought to be governed is this—‘That, as far as possible, the resources of the State should be so applied as to assist those who cannot be expected to help themselves, and that the richer classes of the people should gradually be induced to provide for their own education.’

“However this may be, whether we have done, in this respect, more than was necessary or not, the duty that remains to be performed is clear. It was described as follows in the Despatch of 1854, which has been quoted above:—“Our attention should now be directed to a consideration, if possible, still more important, and one which has been hitherto, we are bound to admit, too much neglected, namely, how useful and practical knowledge, suited to every station in life, may be best conveyed to the great mass of the people who are utterly incapable of obtaining any education worthy of the name by their own unaided efforts.

“While the Governor General in Council is not content to bear any longer the reproach that almost nothing has been done for the education of the people of Bengal, it is altogether out of the question that the Government can provide the funds without which the removal of that reproach is impossible. At the present time, the total number of pupils in Government and in Aided Schools is probably 630,000, and the estimate of the expenditure upon Education, Science, and Art amounts, for the current year, to £904,000.

“It is evident that if the Imperial expenditure on education be allowed to go on increasing much longer at the present rate, the result must be a serious aggravation of the financial difficulties of the Government.

“While the Governor General in Council will always be ready to view, in the most liberal spirit, all questions that may arise, and to afford every help that the Government can reasonably be expected to give, he will decline, in future, to listen to any proposition, the effect of which would be to throw upon the State the main burden of the cost of educating the people of Bengal. The only way in which that cost can be met is, unless some voluntary arrangement be possible, by means of local taxation, especially imposed for the purpose.

“The Home Government, in the Despatch of 1859, pointed to ‘the levy of a compulsory rate as the only really effective step to be taken.’ ‘The appropriation,’ it was stated, ‘of a fixed proportion of the annual value of the land to the purpose of providing such means of education for the population immediately connected with seems, per se, unobjectionable; and the application of a percentage  construction and maintenance of roads appears to offer a suitable precedent for such an impost.’

“The Despatch then regarded, in terms which are not altogether applicable at the present time, to the manner in which this principle had been already acted on in the North-Western Provinces, and went on to say, with special reference to Bengal, that ‘it seems not improbable that the levy of such a rate under the direct authority of the Government would be acquiesced in with far more readiness and with less dislike than a nominally voluntary rate proposed by the local Officers.’

“This principle has been already carried out in Bombay, in the North-western Provinces, in Oude, in the Central Provinces, and in the Punjab. Although the educational cess in those Provinces is imposed as a percentage on the Government demand, it is, as was stated in my letter of the 28th October last, ‘clearly taken from the proprietors of the soil as a separate tax for special local purposes.’ Not only can there be no reason why a similar tax should not be imposed for similar purposes in Bengal, but in the opinion of the Governor General in Council there is no part of India in which the proprietors of the land can be so justly expected to bear local burdens of this nature.’

“The Governor General in Council is aware that it has been sometimes asserted that the imposition of such a tax would be an infringement of the conditions under which the permanent settlement of the land was made. He does not think, and he believes that His Honor the Lieutenant-Governor


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Author:Charles Desmond

Works

 * Wooden ship-building (1919)

title: Author:Charles Desmond


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60 Although John Breckinridge was thus, from the very beginning of his residence in Kentucky, connected with politics, it was not until December, 1795, that he held office, and the interval was full of activity in the prosecution of his profession. His practice was soon very large, both in civil and criminal law, but he turned his attention particularly to real-estate law. This was at once the most important and the most lucrative law business. The colony of Virginia under the crown had contained many large and unoccupied grants beyond the mountains. The State of Virginia early began to make others, and after the war immense tracts were given to the soldiery. These grants were made on worthless or mere paper surveys to a large extent, and late comers, finding this to be the case, and that it left many "gores" and corners unconveyed, even while the neighboring lands were covered by several conveyances, obtained "blanquet" grants covering immense tracts, for the purpose of obtaining the unconveyed portions. In addition to the complications naturally incident to such a state of things, further vexations had arisen out of the conflicting claims of Virginia and Kentucky. Virginia, in the acts enabling Kentucky to erect herself into a State, had always conditioned it upon the recognition of her land grants and the protection of the holders of those lands who remained in the mother State. Bickerings arose on this score, as was natural, from the vexatious questions that sprang up. Mr. Breckinridge bent his energies to thrid the mazes of this tangle,


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Rh and with distinguished success. All but the most acute minds found themselves hopelessly at fault before they had progressed far, and the few who succeeded were consequently rewarded by a large practice. Mr. Breckinridge's reputation in this department penetrated to the Virginia capital, and he was asked to take charge of the claims of that State. But the retainer reached him just after he had accepted from Governor Shelby the post of Attorney-General of Kentucky, and he was forced to decline the flattering offer.

The election of a governor to succeed Governor Shelby took place on the 17th day of May, 1796. Under the old first constitution, then in force, this was by electors, after the manner of the Federal Constitution. There were properly fifty-seven members of the electoral college, but only fifty-three voted on the day appointed by law. The vote stood: For Benjamin Logan, 21; for James Garrard, 17; for Thomas Todd, 14; for John Brown, 1. The electors proceeded to another ballot, assuming that there was no election and that a majority vote was necessary to a choice. Todd and Brown were summarily dropped, and Garrard receiving a majority was declared elected. Benjamin Logan appealed to Mr. Breckinridge, as Attorney-General, for his construction of the constitution upon the point. He declined to answer as Attorney-General, thinking it beyond the scope of his office, but prepared for him an able and elaborate opinion as a lawyer, which was published in the Lexington, Kentucky, Gazette for May 28th,


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62 and led to a sharp controversy. Mr. Breckinridge thought that the electors had plainly exceeded their powers; that under the constitution Logan was elected, and that even if Logan was not elected that Garrard was certainly not elected, as the article of the constitution having been modelled on the national Constitution the same procedure would be properly applicable if any, although the Kentucky article omitted the provision for a reference to the house except in case of a tie, seeming to imply a plurality election. Logan appealed to the senate, by the law made arbiter of gubernatorial contests, but after a sharp fight the senate dodged the matter by declaring the law which gave them jurisdiction unconstitutional, and Logan's case went by default. But Mr. Breckinridge's argument was never refuted.

Governor Garrard was installed on the 1st of June, 1796, and in December of that year Mr. Breckinridge resigned his office. During his incumbency one thing had been brought home to him with great force. The Kentucky Criminal Code then in use prescribed the death penalty in no less than one hundred and sixty cases, extending it to some of the most trivial offences. The other penalties it prescribed were equally severe. To his broad and humane mind such a code was barbarous and a blot upon the State; but his judgment condemned it even more, on the ground that its very severity was an effectual barrier to its application, since juries shrank from convicting criminals where the punishment was so


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Rh to the offence. A vacancy occurring in the legislative representation from his county he was elected to fill out the term with the avowed purpose of carrying through a thorough revision of the code. He took his seat in December, 1797, and at once addressed himself to this self-imposed task. The bill embodying the desired reforms was passed in the following February, and the death penalty was abolished for all offences with the single exception of murder in the first degree, and a code efficient and yet humane was secured.

Thus began the year 1798, a year destined to be of the greatest influence upon his rising fortunes, and filled to overflowing with ceaseless and untiring labors. It was not till past mid-summer that the great questions of the year arose. The first note of resistance to the alien and sedition laws called him to the front, when, side by side with George Nicholas, he began the work of refuting their doctrines, breaking their force, and securing their repeal. Active as was his great friend, the leading part was by general consent conceded to Mr. Breckinridge, and with untiring industry and broad statesmanship he gained the best opinion of the leading men in Virginia and Kentucky as to the wisest course to pursue, and introduced the results of his labors into the House of Representatives in the form of the famous Resolutions of 1798. These resolutions meeting with universal applause throughout the State, greatly increased his popularity in his own State and with the Republican statesmen throughout the country. His future


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64 preferment now seemed secure, and thenceforth his rise was rapid. He strenuously opposed the means used to bring about the second constitutional convention of 1799, but when that convention became a settled fact, he accepted a place in it, and was so active that it has been said that the constitution then produced was more the work of his hand than of any other man's. He was elected to the legislatures of 1799 and 1800, and by both of them he was chosen Speaker. In the former he further distinguished himself by the resolutions of 1799, and in the latter the promise of six years before was fulfilled, and he was elected to the Senate of the United States, to succeed his old competitor, Humphrey Marshall. He was now just forty years of age, and had been in politics twenty years, during which time he had surely and steadily risen in the eyes of the people with an almost unbroken career of success.

Mr. Breckinridge took his seat in the Senate upon the inauguration of his old chief, Mr. Jefferson, in March, 1801. He had set out from Kentucky taking his whole family with him, but was advised in Virginia to leave them with his relatives in that State, as the much-talked-of "Federal town" of Washington had very ill accommodation to offer the great throng of people crowding thither. He followed this advice, and upon arriving in the town, if it can be dignified with such a name, found it difficult to obtain even a lodging for himself. The new President and the new Congress were alike Republican, the Senate for the first time, and


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Rh the era of Republican simplicity, which the President introduced by riding horseback to his inauguration and on dismounting tying his democratic steed to the fence, was continued by a close attention to business. The "midnight appointments" first fell under the President's hand, and in close connection therewith a bill to repeal the judiciary act of the last session was to be introduced. The reconstitution of the houses consequent upon the new administration and the formation of the Cabinet left the now dominant party without leaders, and the President's influence was such that whomsoever he should select would be regarded as the leaders of the administration in the two branches of the Congress.

Although Mr. Breckinridge now made his first appearance in national affairs, he was intrusted by Mr. Jefferson with the business of introducing the bill to repeal the judiciary act. This extraordinary exhibition of confidence and esteem placed Mr. Breckinridge in the front rank of statesmen, and he so well justified the trust by his conduct of this matter, and in his subsequent career in the Senate, that his comrades readily acquiesced in the estimate of the President. The repeal of the judiciary act having been carried through, Mr. Breckinridge was not called upon to act in any matter of first-class importance until the Louisiana purchase came up. As a Kentuckian he naturally was prompt to second a measure which secured finally and completely the darling object of his State. In every way he lent his aid and


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 out any embarrassment; he said it every moment, and repeated it continually. Compliments, which almost gave Poldik the cramp to pronounce, Francis turned off as easily as a tennis-ball. What a piece of work there was before Poldik had said, “He hoped they would make a pair.” And lo! here the jolly waterman had said it the first time she sat in his boat, “What a pity Poldik anticipated me, else we might have made a pair.”

And Francis repeated it to-day when Malka stepped into the skiff.

“But, of course, now we shall not make a pair”, Malka answered, meaning, however, by this that she and Poldik would not make a pair.

“Is it possible?” looked Francis.

And thereupon Malka recounted what had taken place in the ale-house.

Francis, however, in place of one consolation had ten at least, and each one was such that it would have been sufficient by its unaided self. When Francis and Malka parted to-day they clasped hands, and Malka must consent to be on the beach early next Sunday morning. Malka gave her consent, looked forward to Sunday morning with intense longing, and when Sunday came, was standing on the beach at the trysting-place, long before the appointed hour.

And then Francis came, light-hearted and versatile—like his own skiff, full of smiles and bedizened in the style of our Prague dandies which every one recognizes at the first glance. And to-day his skiff was much the same as he. Light and pliant and bedizened—with pennons and ribbons streaming—dressed out in silken kerchiefs and divers garlands—the skiff was a dandy like his owner. Malka must have been without eyes and with little good taste, if she had not been at once captivated by the whole affair. For, for whose sake was all this ornamentation? Malka was not one of those who would be unaffected by these considerations.

Fair dames and gentlemen! If any of you have already passed judgment upon Francis as a dangerous and fickle fellow, perhaps even a Don Juan, and in like manner upon Malka as perhaps little better than his victim, I pray you be not too hasty in your decision.

Surely it was past all conception natural that Malka should at once prefer the lively eddying Moldau to the long monotonous streets of Prague. And Poldik was an embodiment of those streets of Prague, and Francis was an embodiment of the water