such, have been deemed a class specially endowed with political virtue, and the idea, held by so many people only a few years ago, that the degradation of our politics would be ameliorated by introducing gentlemen into them, has not been confirmed by experience. As a rule, instead of politics having been elevated by them, they have been degraded by politics. Some of them have no sooner seen office dangling before their eyes than they have forsworn their whole early training, thrown aside independence and principle, become blind partisans, and made ferocious war upon the causes they had been brought up to fight for. Others have, as in this city, thrown overboard all pretence of decency, made common cause with thieves and blackmailers, and assured their amazed friends that this was what "politics" really meant, and the only way in which government could be carried on. A very few have been driven out of politics because they were too good for it. The greater number have brought a good deal of discredit upon the class from which they came, and the republic would have taken no harm had their places been filled from any other.

Our experiment cannot be cited to show that there is any magical effect produced by making use of gentlemen to elevate politics or keep them pure. Are there any facts which point to a different conclusion?

To answer this or any other question about gentlemen is not easy, because the word gentleman is used in two senses very wide apart. Mr. Morley's criticism of Mr. Lecky illustrates this. When Mr. Lecky speaks of the advantages to be derived from gentlemen taking part in government, what he has in mind is either himself and his friends and acquaintances, or else an ideal gentleman, who has all the best qualities of the class and none of its defects. When, on the other hand, Mr. Morley ridicules the idea of gentlemen's being of much use in politics, he has in mind bigoted Tory squires, bad Irish landlords, and young clubmen who curse the followers of "Gladdy," and wonder how they are going to put their tailor off a few months longer.

Now, everybody has a great respect for gentlemen of the first sort, and no respect at all for gentlemen of the second. To say with emphasis that a man is a gentleman, in our language is proverbially, so far as this world goes, the highest encomium that he can receive. No epithet adds anything to it; on the contrary, it is reduced by epithets, because it implies in our usage all the highest qualities that a man can have among men. A truthful gentleman, a brave gentleman, a reliable gentleman, are pleonastic and even vulgar expressions-pleonastic because the word gentleman implies all these other qualities; vulgar because no one who is a gentleman would be capable of failing to recognize this fact. As the Roman vir had by the term itself the qualities which virtus im

plied, so our gentleman has all the qualities which in medieval theory or fancy went with "gentle" blood. This can be seen by the qualities left out as well as by those included. Virtues peculiar to women are not "connoted "; it has been very justly said that a woman cannot by any possibility have the feelings of a gentleman. It is a man's ideal, and it is not altogether an ideal of moral perfection by any means.

If there were in any country any numerous body of men of this sort in control of the government, the question could hardly arise whether they had qualities adapted to make their services in politics valuable. Inasmuch as they represent the ideal of a race, held up to be admired for generations by its bards, philosophers, romancers, and historians, there can hardly be too many of them in any government. A celebrated lord chancellor, asked by some one what principle he adopted in selecting judges for nomination, said, "I always pick out a gentleman; and if he knows a little law, so much the better." What he meant was that learning could be acquired, but the qualities of character which constitute our ideal must be there already. Unfortunately, however, the gentleman of actual social existence means something very different from this. It is impossible to define the word exactly, but for practical purposes it means any man who either shares in or is recognized as fitted to share in the society which is generally regarded in any community as the best. The qualifications

for admission are so different at different times and in different places that it is impossible to enumerate them. In one place family alone will answer; in another mere wealth, accompanied by a very slight modicum of manners, will be enough; in all, occupation counts, but very differently in different countries. We rarely meet apothecaries or dentists in society. In Austria, however, a country governed in great measure by an aristocracy, we have known an apothecary at the head of a Spa administration, and an officer compelled to fight a duel with another apothecary gentlemen all. In many places in England the local school-teacher is not a gen tleman.

Used in this sense, the word means nothing but a certain social distinction, which is far removed from indicating with any certainty the possession of quali

ties specially adapted for the discharge of political trusts. On the contrary, it indicates almost nothing with regard to character. In the course of a year every one meets dozens of gentlemen who have hardly a moral quality or peculiarity in common. They may be brave or cowardly, truth-tellers or liars, faithful or unfaithful. A man may be a ruffian among his wife and daughters, treacherous, a miser, corrupt, and still pass in society for a gentleman, if he has never done anything for which this society itself looks askance at him. In fact, a gentleman remains a gentleman, no matter

what he does, until something or other happens which makes it necessary for society, as a matter of self-preservation, to eject him. Formerly, no doubt, birth was essential; but, even in those remote days, a gentleman by birth was not ipso facto a Colonel Newcome in character. George IV., Sheridan, Byron, and Talleyrand himself were all gentlemen. The mad King of Bavaria who bankrupted his kingdom for the sake of art, was a gentleman, though very fond of the society of those who were not. In New York, conviction of crime will rule a man out in most cases.

If what we have said is true, there can hardly be a presumption that a man recognized among his fellows as a gentleman for social purposes will therefore probably make a good legislator, cabinet minister, governor. So far as he has the qualities with which we endow our manly ideal in song and story, he is indubitably qualified. As a test of fitness, the fact that a man is a gentleman will not do, in politics, any more than it will in railroads, engineering, surgery, law, architecture, or art. The standard has the defect of having little or no intrinsic value, except for the purpose for which it is used-which is purely social.

TWO NEW GERMAN TRAGEDIES.

CAMBRIDGE, May 25, 1896. ERNST VON WILDENBRUCH and Gerhart

Hauptmann are, in a way, representatives of two extremes in contemporary German literature: Wildenbruch fiery, passionate, rhetorical. Hauptmann dreamy, brooding, visionary; Wildenbruch, an ardent monarchist, a zealous supporter of the present régime, seeing the salvation of Germany in a continued supremacy of Bismarckian principles; Hauptmann, a Democrat if not a Socialist, in deepest sympathy with the sufferings of the "disinherited," hoping for the millennium of universal

brotherhood. Wildenbruch, an idealist of the

straightforward, unreflective type, sunny, seeffects; Hauptmann, a strange mixture of a pessimistic realism and of a mystic faith in the glory of the unseen, disdaining all that is not absolutely genuine and true. Wildenbruch the greater playwright; Hauptmann the greater poet. This contrast of artistic temper, while it marks the whole literary career of the two men, has never been brought out more conspicuously than in the two great historical dramas which have been the event of the

rene, somewhat inclined toward melodramatic

year on the Berlin stage: Hauptmann's "Florian Geyer" and Wildenbruch's "Heinrich und Heinrichs Geschlecht."

That Wildenbruch's "Heinrich "should have easily carried off the crown of popular success, is not surprising. As a stage show it is simply overwhelming. Here we have all the brilliancy of diction, the intensity of action, the irresistible surging up to a grand climax which give eternal youth to Schiller's dramas; and, added thereto, we have the lifelikeness, the palpability, the breadth of detail, in which modern realism revels. Here we see, indeed, the

gigantic figure of History herself striding over the stage, but we also see our own feelings, longings, and aspirations embodied in human forms, and recognize them as the real movers

and makers of national destinies. The subject of the drama is a struggle which, as Bismarck has said, dates back to the days when Agamemnon quarrelled with Calchas, the struggle between king and priest. The principal combatants in this struggle are Henry IV. and Gregory VII.; the prize for which it is fought out is Germany. With true dramatic instinct Wildenbruch throughout the play-which is intended for two successive evenings-maintains himself on the very height of his subject; he leaps, as it were, from catastrophe to catas. trophe, leaving it to the imagination of his hearers to make its way after him through the dark glens and ravines that lead up to these shining mountain peaks.

In the beginning we see Henry as a boy, an impetuous, imperious youth, smarting under the discipline of a fanatically religious mother, burning with the desire to equal the fame of his heroic father, at last thrust into the prison

walls of monastic asceticism under the tutor ship of Anno, Archbishop of Cologne. Next he appears as King, in the acme of his power. He has subdued the rebellious Saxons; he enters triumphantly bis faithful Worms; he is received by the citizens as the protector of civil freedom against princely tyranny and clerical arrogance; all Germany seems to rise in a grand ovation to her beloved leader. Intoxicated by his success, he resents all the more deeply the paternal admonitions of Pope Gregory about the looseness of his private life which are just then conveyed to him; he insists on being crowned Emperor at once; and, when this request is not complied with, he allows himself to be carried away by his indomitable wrath, he forces his bishops into that insulting letter by which Gregory is declared a usurper, a felon, a blasphemer, to be driven out from the sanctuary of the Church which he pollutes by his presence.

And now we are introduced to the other great character of the drama, to the opposite of this fiery, unmanageable young ruler, to Gregory, the self possessed and self abasing priest, the man in whose soul there seems to be no room for any passion except the passion for the cause of the Church, for the triumph of the spirit over the flesh, and who nevertheless har. bors in his breast, unknown to himself, the most consuming ambition and the most colossal egotism. We see him sitting in cathedra in the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore. Sup pliants and criminals are brought before him. A Flemish count, who has committed murder, and who has in vain fled throughout the length and breadth of Europe in quest of delivery from the anguish of his tormented conscience, beseeches the Pope to put an end to his wretched life; Gregory, instead, holds out to him the hope of salvation through joining a crusade. A Roman noble, who in robber knight fashion has made an assault upon the Pope, and who by the clergy and the people has been condemned to death for this crime, is pardoned by Gregory "for he has sinned, not against the Church, the holy one, but against Gregory, a poor, feeble mortal." A lay brother of St. Peter's, who, disguised as priest, has taken money from foreign pilgrims for reading mass to them, and who by the clergy and the people has been sentenced to a fine and exile, is ordered by Gregory to be thrown into the Tiber"for he has sinned against the Church, he has cheated human souls of their salvation."

These scenes have just passed before our eyes when the messengers of King Henry, bearing the letter of libel and vilification, are admitted. Gregory is the only one who in the tumult that follows its reading remains abso

lutely calm; he protects the messenger him. self against the rage of the Romans; he forgives Henry, the man, for what he has said against Gregory, the man.

"For what he has said against the head of the Holy Church, for that let Henry be cursed! I forbid all Christians to serve thee as a King, I release them from the oath that they have sworn thee. Thou, darkness revolting against light, return to chaos! Thou, wave revolting against the ocean, return to naught! No bell shall be sounded in the city where Henry dwells, no church be opened, no sacrament be administered. Where Henry dwells, death shall dwell! Let my legates go forth and announce my message to the world!"

The climax of the whole drama is, as it should be, the Canossa catastrophe. It is here that Gregory, the victor in the political game, succumbs morally; that Henry, the vanquished, rises in his native greatness. It is here that Gregory, with all his soaring idealism, reveals himself as an inhuman monster; that Henry, with all his faults and frailties, arouses to the full the sympathy which we cannot help feeling for a bravely struggling man.

The excommunication of Henry has plunged Germany into civil war. A rival king, Rudolf of Swabia, has been proclaimed. He and the chiefs of his party bave come to Canossa to obtain the papal sanction for their revolt. Gregory clearly sees that Rudolf is nothing but a figure-head, a mere tool in the hands of fanatic conspirators, totally unfit to rule an empire. He clearly feels it his duty to discountenance this revolt, to restore peace to Germany by making his peace with Henry. But the demon of ambition lurking in his breast beguiles him with a vision of world dominion: be, the servant of the servants of God, shall be the arbiter of Europe; he, the plebeian, shall see the crowns of kings roll before bim in the dust. He does not discountenance Rudolf and his set; and when Henry appears before the castle, broken and humiliated, asking for absolution from the ban, Gregory remains unmoved. For three days and nights the King stands before the gate in ice and snow; for three days and nights the Pope sits in his chair, speechless, sleepless, refusing to eat or drink. At last, the intercession of Henry's mother, who, herself in the shadow of death, has come to pray for her son's salvation, softens Gregory's heart: he admits Henry to his presence. Henry appears, a king even in his misery. He bends his knee before the Pope, he confesses his guilt, he acknowledges the justice of his punishment. The reconciliation is brought about. Just then Henry's glance falls upon Rudolf and his followers standing in the background. He greets them as friends, thinking that they have come to renew their allegiance to him. But they rudely repulse him, and boast of the Pope's intention to acknowledge Rudolf as King. And Gregory does not contradict them. With fearful suddenness Henry sees what a shameful game has been played with him; and yet he masters himself, he makes one last appeal to whatever there is of true feeling in his opponent:

"God, help me against myself! Christ, Saviour, who wast thyself a king among the heavenly host and didst bow thy neck under the scourge, help me against myself! (He turns abruptly toward Gregory.) Once before I knelt before thee-I did it for myself. (He falls down on his knees.) Here, a second time, I lie before thee, for Germany lie I here! Break thy silence! Thy silence is the coffin in which the happiness of Germany is entombed! If thou didst know how unhappy this Germany is thou wouldst speak-speak! Thou, ordained by God to bring peace to the world, let me take peace with me on my way to Germany, not war, not howling civil war !"

And Gregory remains silent! From here on to the end of the drama there is nothing but revenge, and revenge on revenge. And this work of destruction does not stop until both Gregory and Henry have breathed their last. Both men die in defeat and desolation; both die inwardly unbroken-Gregory trusting in the future triumph of the Church, Henry trusting in the indestructible vitality of the German people.

A few words may be added about Hauptmann's "Florian Geyer," although it is impos. sible to do justice to this work except by reading and analyzing it scene by scene. The defects of Hauptmann's dramatic style are here, perhaps, more clearly visible than in any previous production of his. The lack of unity, the absence of a true hero, which were seen in "Die Weber," characterize this drama also. And, in addition to this, there is a slowness and dif. fuseness of movement which must be fatal to its effect as a theatrical piece. And yet it is impossible to resist the impression that here we are face to face with the creation of a great artist. Hauptmann sees things not as they appear on the stage, but as they are in life. He seems to have no thought of how his figures may affect his hearers. He simply tells what he sees, and he tells it with that wonderful directness which is the privilege of children and poets. Not a phrase which could not thus have been spoken; not an event which could not thus have taken place; not a character which would not probably have taken just this turn; and, beneath all this realism, that strange belief in a hidden life which makes us feel that all these outward happenings are only feeble manifestations of some grand mysterious central force working under their surface. This is the manner in which Hauptmann in this drama makes us live through the great German peasant revolt of the sixteenth century, its glorious beginning and its miserable end; its hopes, triumphs, excesses, massacres, failures; its noble enthusiasm, its dark fanaticism, its savageness and greed, its egotism and pettiness. And it is not too much to say that in order to understand what is implied by the word "Revolution," one could do no better than to study the details of this strangely monotonous and strangely fascinating picture of popular wrath and popular delusion.

That German literature during the last decade has entered upon a new era of genuine productivity must have been clear for some time past to every intelligent observer. That this new movement should have acquired sufficient strength to produce, only a year or two after the triumphs achieved by "Heimat" and "Die Weber," two dramas of such beroic dimensions and such extraordinary power as Hauptmann's "Florian Geyer" and Wildenbruch's "Heinrich," is nevertheless a surprise, and seems to justify the hopes of those who see in the present revolt against conventions the dawn of another epoch of classic perfection of form. KUNO FRANCKE.

MADAME DE CHASTENAY.

PARIS, May 21, 1896.

THE period of transition between the Terror and the establishment of the Empire will always possess the greatest interest; we find in it the remaining representatives of the old régime mixing with the representatives of an entirely new social order. The émigrés are returning one by one from their exile; they are anxious to have their names struck off from the lists which marked their persons for the

guillotine and their estates for confiscation. They are no longer in fear of the guillotine, but they are still under the eye of the police; they have found a part of their estates sold as national estates, oftentimes to their ancient dependants; they try to save what still remains unsold. They are obliged to solicit the help of the men in power; they are seen in the anterooms of the Terrorists who made the ninth Thermidor; they present petitions to the Directors; they see a new Paris, new fortunes, new dresses, new manners-a new France. This contrast has seldom been shown in a better light than in the memoirs, recently published, of Madame de Chastenay, who belonged to a distinguished family of Burgundy. Born in Paris in 1771, she died at Châtillon-sur-Seine only on May 9, 1855 I have known a few persons who saw her in her old age, and who were habitués of her salon. She was always called Madame de Chastenay (though she had never been married), by virtue by her title of Canoness, given to her when she was only fourteen. This title was conferred only on ladies who could prove the nobility of their paternal and maternal families for a number of generations by written documents. It was in itself a mark of the highest gentility. Some of the abbeys which conferred the rank of Canoness were so strict (for instance, the Abbey of Remiremont in Lorraine) that it would have been impossible for the ladies of the highest rank, even for the Princess of Bourbon, to become canonesses in them on account of some misalliance or of some morganatic union.

We can therefore take it for granted, without losing ourselves in genealogies without interest, that Mlle. de Chastenay was of the purest aristocratic class or set. Her father was an officer of dragoons. At the age of fourteen she was named Canoness of Épinal (her aunt was Abbess of Épinal). The proofs had been made according to rule, a paternal filiation of eight nobles d'épée, and the same number on the maternal side:

"I remember that at vespers the whole chap ter [there were twenty ladies in all] came to take me from my aunt's house. I had a black gown. One of the knights of the chapter gave me his hand; the garrison band preceded us. When we arrived in the choir of the church, I kneeled; the abbess said to me, 'What do you ask, my daughter?' Answer: The bread and the wine of Saint Goëry [the patron of the chapter], to serve God and the holy Virgin.' I had to eat some biscuit, to wet my lips in a cup; they put on me a great blue cordon, with a hanging cross, a long mantle fringed with ermine, a black veil. A Te-Deum was sung. the procession returned in the same order, and a ball began at my aunt's. I amused myself much at this ball, as well as at those which suc ceeded during the five days of my stay at Épinal. I had wept during the ceremony, but the dance consoled me very rapidly."

Mlle. de Chastenay was eighteen years old in 1789; she was very intelligent and quite capable of understanding all the questions which agitated the country before the Revolution. She was reading Montesquieu, Locke, Mably, and a thousand political productions of the time. "I loved liberty," she says with a rare candor. "I was, in the fullest sense of the term, a very 'exalted' person." When the election to the States-General took place, her father was elected by the nobility of the bailiwick of Châtillon in Burgundy. Mlle. de Chastenay analyzes very well the sentiments which animated the order of the nobility at the StatesGeneral. In the elections, the question at issue between the candidates was the vote per caput or the vote by order. The vote per caput implied the principle of popular representation, in which the three orders were to be merged;

the vote by order implied the political distinction of the ancient orders of the nobility, the clergy, and the Tiers-État. At Versailles the order of the nobility divided promptly. The majority was formed of the nobles who from this moment were called aristocrats-chiefly provincial nobles, who had not lived at court, and who lived on their estates. The minority was liberal; it comprised the most brilliant young men, whose families were accustomed to live at court, the leaders of fashion, the young officers who had fought in the American war. The Duke of Orleans, a prince of the blood, belonged to this minority. The members of the majority meant to maintain the privileges of their order, with the exception of the pecuniary privileges, which they were willing to sacrifice, and to preserve the prerogative of the Crown. The minority was prepared to make all needful sacrifices to work in harmony with the Tiers État.

Mlle. de Chastenay was, like her father, an ardent admirer of the reformers. "I was," she says, "dans le délire." She tells us the story of the first events of the Revolution in a graphic manner. Her délire received great shocks when she saw an "odious multitude" take Louis XVI. back from Versailles to Paris. "Some men had loaves of bread on their pikes or their bayonets; but, what people will find difficult of belief, the heads of the murdered Guards preceded, borne in triumph, and, by a horrible refinement, they had their bloody hair frisé at Sèvres. The National Guard marched

behind these horrible banners." Mlle. de Chastenay remained in Burgundy during the winter of 1789-1790; she returned to Paris in the spring, and found the tide of emigration in full force, and society having for its mot d'ordre, "The King is captive and all his acts are forced." She spent the worst times of the Terror in Rouen, and nothing can be more interesting than her narrative of the life which she led in the capital of Normandy during this terrible period. There is a realism in her declamation of many writers: account which transcends in its eloquence the

"The life which we led was of great sim. plicity and of profound obscurity. The art of the time was to isolate one's self.

We

had no illusions; we said to each other, my brother and myself, when walking in the eve. ning in the delicious vales round Rouen, that within six months we should all fall under the axe of the Revolution. Still, the flowers charmed us, we made drawings, we indulged in music, we read novels, we had our moments of pleasure; and after our violent and sudden emotions we experienced every day those movesucceeded each other. ments of joy which resemble hope. The days Mamma had heroic courage; and we had been forbidden to hear the horrible reading of papers. A complete famine, an absolute poverty, added to the misery of the times; the maximum made it complete. A deputy named Siblot appeared in Rouen, and, as meat was becoming scarce, he gave orders that not a pound of it should be sold. People had to form in queue at the baker's; a few pounds of rice would have been called a monopoly. .. A ring at the door-bell caused us horrible pains and a cold sweat."

A member of the Convention named Alquier was sent to Rouen on a mission. He knew the father of Mlle. de Chastenay, and was able to protect him.

"Regicide through fear, he yet voted for the appeal to the people, and hoped thus to save his own life and not to commit a crime. I know how this mixture of acts and sentiments will seem odious to persons fortunate enough never to have sinned, perhaps because they never had occasion to do so. We were under the greatest obligations to M. Alquier. We had also in the committee a very obliging protector, M. Godebin, a dyer, who was not a

bad man, but whose manners and tone, without being inspired by the great wrath of the Père Duchesne, were far from mild. My father, towards five o'clock in the morning, paid him short visits, and received from him rules of conduct; in no way to attract attention was the primary lesson. My father ordered, by his advice, a coat styled carmagnole, so as to appear on the street dressed like everybody else."

A law of April 16, 1794, directed against suspected persons and the nobles, forbade the latter to remain in Paris or in the maritime cities. Mlle. de Chastenay had to return with her father and mother to Châtillon. They had to pass round Paris by Saint Denis and Charenton; it was on the day when Mme. Elizabeth ascended the guillotine. The poor travellers met with constant and touching pity among the people in their difficult journey. "My brother having left the carriage while the postillion was mending something, they remained for a few minutes together, sad and silent; 'So you are a nobleman,' at last said the postillion. 'Yes,' answered my brother. 'Oh, God!' said the postillion with a great sigh, and remounted his horse." It was so

everywhere along the road; at Châtillon they found the Terror in full force. By an unfortunate mistake, the name of M. de Chastenay had been placed, in his absence, on the list of the émigrés, and he had to hide himself. Mlle. de Chastenay was imprisoned. We learn from her what a provincial prison was in 1794. She had to live in the same room as the concierge, his wife, several children and several prisoners. Her father was arrested, taken to Dijon, and from Dijon to Paris. The 9th Thermidor saved him; he had had the good fortune to be defended before the tribunal by Réal, who was to play an important part in Mlle. de Chastenay's life. Réal was a lawyer and gave himself up to the defence of the accused. "Witty, animated, with a shining talent; good, natural, full of sensibility, he espoused my father's cause with enthusiasm." The admiration thus expressed for the man who saved her father's life was the beginning of a liaison which lasted nearly all her life.

Mile. de Chastenay behaved very courageous. ly before the municipality of Châtillon; she was set free, but the times were still very troubled. The 9th Thermidor had not put an immediate end to the Terror. "The day which followed the acquittal of my father was," she says, "marked in Paris by the apotheosis of Marat -that is to say, by the transfer of his remains to the Pantheon." Mlle. de Chastenay spent the autumn of 1794 in Dijon; she was at Châtillon in 1795, and had occasion to see there an officer of artillery, Marmont (who became Marshal Marmont). "The young officer had just come from the army of Provence, then called the army of Italy; he was accompanied by General Bonaparte, a general of artillery, who was on his way to Nantes, where he was to take command of the army of the West. M. de Marmont was his friend, but not his aide de-camp. The General, who was then twenty-six years old, had been educated at the Military School with a cousin of M. de Marmont." General Bonaparte was accompanied by his brother Louis, who was then sixteen years old, and was himself getting his education. Mlle. de Chastenay made the acquaintance of Bonaparte; her face had struck him. She had with him a conversation which lasted four hours after dinner (people dined then at two o'clock).

"I am sorry not to have written down our conversation; there are only fragments of it in my mind. . . . I soon discovered that the General had no republican faith or maxims. I was surprised, but he was absolutely frank

on the subject. He spoke of the resistance which the Revolution had met; the resist ance was not over, and success was impossible. The General told me, what was true, that the mass of the army was wholly alien to the bloody events of which France had been the theatre; it ignored them completely, and he seemed to believe that the army, always in the hands of the de facto authority, would not interfere with parties, and would take on no special color. Bonaparte spoke of the poems of Ossian, whom he admired, of 'Paul and Virginia'; he spoke of happiness. He said that for a man it ought to consist in the highest development of his faculties.

"At the time when this conversation, memorable for me, took place, I had the intimate

conviction that whoever should offer a centre to opinion would seize the helm which was in nobody's hand, would dare to call himself, and would in effect become, chief and king, and would find no obstacle, because nothing was established, and no man fixed the confidence or even the attention of all. I think that I said so, and it would be singular that I should thus have been his prophetess. I know positively that, preoccupied with this idea, I spoke of it to everybody. My memory does not give me any assurance of having laid this idea before Bonaparte. However, he always remem bered our conversation, and I do not think that it was because I spoke to him of Virginia and of Ossian."

Correspondence.

WASHINGTON'S LIBRARY.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE NATION:

SIR: In Ford's 'Washington,' vol. xiv., p. 286, there is some account of the Bishop Wilson Bible which Washington gave in his will to Bryan, Lord Fairfax, with a few remarks about the circumstances of its acquisition by Washington. In a search among the Washington papers in the State Department for information about the gathering of Washington's library, I found a letter from Clement Cruttwell, which explains how Washington came by the Wilson Bible, and a copy of which I enclose. The Concordance mentioned in the letter is now in the Washington collection in the Boston Athenæum, a catalogue of which is now in the press. According to Mr. Ford, the Bible is now in the Library of Congress. Very truly yours,

APPLETON P. C. GRIFFIN. BOSTON ATHENÆUM, June 3, 1896.

WOKINGHAM BERKSHIRE May 1st 1794 SIR,-By the Will of the late Dr Wilson Prebendary of Westminster & Rector of S. Stephens Walbrook in London I was directed to transmit to your Excellency a Copy of his Fathers Works, the Venerable Bishop of Sodor & Man; and the English Bible in which are contained the Notes of the good Bishop.-I have yet delayed to fulfill the desire of my friend that I might at the same time have the honour of requesting a place in your Library for a work of my own A Concordance, by me intended as a Companion to the Bible. That you may long enjoy the Honours you have so well deserved in a country of peace & prosperity is the fervent wish and prayer of Your Excellency's most obedient Servant and admirer CLEMENT CRUTTWELL.

AN OBJECT-LESSON.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE NATION:

SIR: Recently I had occasion to make a remittance to a correspondent in the city of Guatemala, Central America. I sent a bank draft for $25, drawn by a Chicago bank on a New York bank. Under date of May 16 I am advised by my correspondent in Guatemala, "Your check of $25 realized in this money $53, which amount is placed to your credit."

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS will publish 'Sport in the Alps,' by W. A. Baillie-Grohman, with numerous illustrations from instantaneous photographs.

G. P. Putnam's Sons issue immediately 'Camping in the Canadian Rockies,' by Walter D. Wilcox, with many plate and text illustrations.

'A Cycle of Cathay,' by Dr. W. A. P. Martin; a Life of Robert Whitaker McAll, founder of the mission which bears his name; and a Life of Dr. A. J. Gordon, are in the press of Fleming H. Revell Co.

The Macmillan Co., as we must now denominate the newly incorporated firm, have in preparation a 'Kipling Birthday Book,' with decorative illustrations from the deft hand of

the elder Kipling; and Humphry Davy, Poet and Philosopher,' in the Series."

Century Science

Henry Holt & Co. will make a book of Horace Annesley Vachell's serial story, 'The Quicksands of Pactolus,' lately running in the Overland Monthly.

Lamson, Wolffe & Co., Boston, will bring out the lectures recently delivered in this city and elsewhere by Prince Volkonsky, under the title, 'Pictures of Russian History and Literature,' with an introduction by Prof. C. E. Norton.

'The Graduate Courses' for 1896-'97, offered by twenty-three of our leading colleges and universities, is just ready. Leach, Shewell & Sanborn are the publishers.

A coöperative volume, 'The Cambridge of Eighteen Hundred and Ninety-Six,' with the imprint of Houghton, Mifflin & Co., will be a permanent outcome of the current celebration of that Massachusetts city's fiftieth anniversary of corporate existence.

The Peter Paul Book Co., Buffalo, have nearly ready a 'Dictionary of Buffalo, Niagara Falls, Tonawanda, and Vicinity,' with maps and illustrations.

Way & Williams, Chicago, announce 'The Sonnet in England, and Other Essays,' by the late James Ashcroft Noble; a volume of essays by Mrs. Meynell, The Color of Life'; and 'From Cairo to the Sudan Frontier,' by H. D. Traill.

'In the Kingdom of the Shab,' by E. Treacher Collins, is a timely publication to be ex pected from T. Fisher Unwin.

Mr. T. Hamilton Crawford's illustrations in line and wash were not unworthy to be made the occasion of a fresh edition of Robert Louis Stevenson's "picturesque notes" of his 'Edinburgh' (Macmillan), a work having, in addition to the author's wonted charm of style, an historical value. Perhaps the style will not bear

comparison with George Borrow's in the stirring Edinburgh chapter of 'Lavengro,' where one may read of mob warfare between Old Town and New, of which even the memory has disappeared from Stevenson's annals. The volume is beautifully made. The same firm sends us two more volumes of its Dickens reprint, edited by the younger Dickens, containing (1) The Uncommercial Traveller' and 'A Child's History of England,' and (2) a number of pieces from Household Words and All the Year Round, chronologically arranged, excepting "The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices," written in collaboration with Wilkie Collins, which is reserved for the end, and furnishes nearly a fourth of the volume. Finally, we report further progress in Mr. Gollancz's dainty edition of Shakspere (Dent-Macmillan), by the appearance of "Julius Cæsar," "Romeo and Juliet," "Timon of Athens," and "Titus Andronicus."

The Harpers have given a handsome new dress to Mark Twain's anti-slavery tract, 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,' providing it with a frontispiece portrait of the author and with some rather slight illustrations by E. W. Kemble. Its power to interest and amuse has suffered nothing in the dozen years since it first saw the light.

Messrs. Putnam have published apart from Mr. M. D. Conway's edition of Thomas Paine's Writings the 'Age of Reason' in a thin volume uniform with 'The Rights of Man.' An introduction by Mr. Conway has much curious information to impart about the fortunes of the work at the hands of editors, printers, and translators.

A little volume styled 'McKinley's Masterpieces' has been put together by R. L. Paget and published, with a portrait, by the Joseph Knight Co. of Boston. The editor assures us that "No American of this age can afford not to read McKinley's speeches." There is a sense in which this may, unhappily, become a truth; but in the evil day of his candidacy it will be needful to go to the larger collection made by the aspirant himself with a view to the impending contingency, for a just appreciation of the dull, commonplace, untrained, incohe rent mind of the rigger of the St. Louis convention. Still, let us quote this "masterly" definition of the "good dollars" the now silent Ohioan wanted in 1890 (June 25), speaking in his place in the House: "As good in the hands of the poor as the rich; equal dol. lars, equal in inherent merit, equal in purchasing power, whether they be paper dollars, or gold dollars, or silver dollars, or Treasury notes each convertible into the other and each exchangeable for the other, because each is based upon equal value and has behind it equal security; good, not by flat of law alone, but good because the whole commercial world recognizes its inherent and inextinguishable value."

Mr. Temple Scott's 'Book Sales of 1895' (London: Henry Stevens' Son & Stiles) challenges comparison with Elliot Stock's 'Book-Prices Current' for the same year. The new-comer is more elegant, but not, we think, more exact, in its typography, is not alphabetically arranged under each sale as in the rival compilation, and only rarely names the purchaser. Its index has a certain superior convenience in that it often repeats the dates of the works catalogued. Finally, the volume, though standing as high on the shelf, is somewhat thicker and broader than 'Book-Prices Current.' The latter seems the more inclusive, but we have made no searching test of this, and are, for our own part, glad to have both

volumes at hand, while not persuaded that the book-buying public needs the double service.

If one were to judge merely from the numerous attempts and repeated failures, the task of writing an account of the government of the United States for the use of schools would have to be set down as one of extraordinary difficulty. We had supposed that the old method of commenting upon the clauses and phrases of the Constitution seriatim had been long since abandoned; but Prof. Allen E. Rogers returns to it in 'Our System of Government' (Orono, Me.: The Author), and with rather unsatisfactory results. The book is really an elementary text-book of "civil government," with frequent excursions into constitutional law; but, while there is too little law for the lawyers, we fear there is a great deal too much for the schools, at the same time that the detailed information regarding the practical workings of government in the Unit ed States is comparatively slight. There is a chapter on the Constitution and administrative organization of Maine which will have some local interest and importance.

Another volume in Methuen & Co.'s series of classical translations has reached us, Cicero's 'De Natura Deorum.' The translator, Mr. Francis Brooks of University College, Bristol, is not without skill in the art. His version is close, yet idiomatic; readable, without being disfigured by the modern colloquialisms with which many recent translators, while seeking after liveliness, succeed only in bringing the classics down to their own level of mediocrity. We should have welcomed fuller notes than those which Mr. Brooks has given us, and we may repeat that a translation, to be really useful, should have, at the top of every page, references to the book and section of the original.

M. Deloche, in his 'Le Port des Anneaux dans l'antiquité romaine et dans les premières siècles du moyen âge,' by no means exhausts a subject which in those periods was concerned with public and official as well as with private life. It is, in fact, much too extensive for treatment, like his, in the "Mémoires de l' Académie," and it deserves a large volume to it. self. His brochure, however, may serve to map out the ground and to show the divisions into which a fuller investigation may conveniently fall, for he has a good conception of its broader outlines and is capable of taking wide views of the field. It is in details that he breaks down, and indeed he seems better ac quainted with the medieval than with the classical part of his subject. It is suspicious when a writer refers to Plautus (M. G. 95), as evidence that rings were used in betrothals so early as the second century B. C., when in fact the ring there in question is supposed to be sent as a love-token by a married woman to her lover! It looks almost worse to find Terence cited as authority for Roman life without a hint of his Greek originals. And M. Deloche does not seem to understand the principle on which the ring was given in betrothals-as a symbol of arrha, earnest money to bind a bargain. For, to the old Roman, marriage was nothing if not a business contract. On the whole, we cannot recommend M. Deloche to any but collectors of material.

The fourth volume of Coppée's 'Mon Francparler' (Paris: Lemerre) contains many pages of excellent reading, notably those on Bourget, Les Parnassiens, and Alexandre Dumas, Dr. Henri Lion's thesis for the doctorate forms a solid volume on a solid subject, Les Tragédies et les théories dramatiques de Vol. taire' (Paris: Hachette). Naturally enough,

having read and reread the tragedies, having studied the correspondence and the criticisms, friendly or hostile, Dr. Lion ends by having a pretty high opinion of Voltaire as a dramatist, and a still higher one of him as a Force, with a capital. It is not possible to agree fully with this writer, but one is grateful to him for the conscientious piece of work he has produced, and which becomes at once indispensable to students of the drama or of Voltaire. The book is full of valuable information.

Boussod, Valadon & Co., 303 Fifth Avenue, send us the first parts of the annual "Figaro Salon," each of which is accompanied by a color print of double size. M. Philippe Gille supplies the discourse for the illustrations; his task has not been easy this year.

The Atlas of the Pacific Ocean lately issued by the Deutsche Seewarte at Hamburg follows similar works for the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, and will soon be supplemented by a sailing handbook of thorough German quality -a quality commonly regarded as too high for our run of seamen, but greatly appreciated by those of more scientific training. The charts of the winds for the opposite seasons are perhaps of the most general interest. Here we see the southeast trades persistent in the eastern south torrid ocean, but gradually curving to join the Australian northwest monsoon of the southern summer, or extending far beyond the equator as the southeast monsoon of Asia, even as far north as the Sea of Okhotsk in the northern summer. The prevailing westerly winds of far southern latitudes maintain their considerable strength with small change the year round, but those of the high northern latitudes vary from gales in winter to moderate winds in summer. The charts of ocean currents are also prepared for the opposite seasons; these exhibit with great clearness the variation of the counter current that flows eastward north of the equator, broad and fully developed in our summer, narrow and weak in our winter. Agreeably to the theory that as cribes the equatorial counter currents to the monsoon-like deflection of the trades as they cross the equator into the summer hemisphere, a counter current appears trending along the Solomon Islands, east of New Guinea, during the summer. In this same region, the Pa. cific has tropical cyclones in January and Feb. ruary; thus repeating in both these features the habit of the Indian rather than of the Atlantic Ocean.

The liberalizing spirit of to-day asserts itself in the latest recommendation of the Council of the Senate of Cambridge University in favor of the affiliation of St. Edmund's Col. lege, Old Hall, Ware. This Roman Catholic College claims to be the oldest seat of higher education in England belonging to the Romish Church, having in 1793 become the recognized successor to the original college of Douai, France, established in the sixteenth century for the education of English priests. The curriculum of St. Edmund's College, hitherto based on the requirements for the Arts degrees at London University, will in the future be arranged so as to harmonize with the courses at the University of Cambridge.

Certain reactionary influences of college life in a university town are no less strikingly shown by the results of a recent plébiscite tak en by the Cambridge Review, to test the feeling among resident members of this same English university, below the degree of M.A., in regard to the admission of women to Cambridge degrees. Out of 2,830 post-cards distributed for voting purposes, 2,138 were promptly returned, filled out; of this number 1,692, or

nearly 80 per cent., were against the granting of degrees to women, and only 437, or less than 21 per cent., in favor of it; four cautious spirits reported themselves as neutral on the subject.

The new Southern History Association will hold its first annual meeting at Columbian University, Washington, on June 12, at eight P. M. The programme includes an inaugural address by the President, Postmaster General Wilson, and seven papers, limited to twenty minutes in length, with five minutes for comment. Headquarters will be at the Ebbitt House.

A confusion favored by family affiliations occurred in our notice last week of Recent Poetry, when we attributed (p. 438, middle column) 'Songs from the Greek' to Jane Sedgwick Minot in place of Jane Minot Sedgwick, to whom we tender an apology.

-Some years ago Prof. Alois Brandl (then of Göttingen, now of Berlin) startled Chaucerians by a new thesis concerning "The Squire's Tale." He maintained that this poem, hitherto regarded as one of the most spontaneous and spirited of Chaucer's works, was nothing but an allegorical account of the matrimonial infelicities of John of Gaunt's daughter Elizabeth. Though supported with much acuteness and some learning, this hypothesis was palpably untenable, and it was accordingly withdrawn by its author after it had "walked the town awhile." Since then little has been done for "The Squire's Tale," and discussion of its sources has pretty well ceased. The latest number of the "Publications" of the American Modern Language Association, however, contains an article which is likely to cause some throwing about of brains. We refer to Prof. Manly's essay on "Marco Polo and the Squire's Tale." As our readers are aware, Prof. Skeat, about twenty years ago, maintained, in his school edition of "The Squire's Tale," that Chaucer was indebted to Marco Polo's 'Travels' for his description of the Tartar court, and this contention has met with general acquiescence, though here and there a scholar has expressed himself with reserve on the subject. In his Oxford edition of Chaucer, reviewed in these columns last year, Prof. Skeat contented himself with reprinting the substance of his previous investigation. Dissatisfied with the grounds of Prof. Skeat's opinions, Prof. Manly has examined the question afresh, and his results differ widely from those of his predecessors. If Marco Polo, he argues, was Chaucer's authority for Tartar manners and politics, the English poet has treated his voucher in an extraordinary fashion, omitting or altering all that is characteristic or peculiar, and retaining only those commonplaces which he could have found as well in a dozen other accessible sources. Prof. Manly's destructive criticism seems to us altogether convincing; unless unexpected evidence is forthcoming, Marco Polo is "out of the story" henceforth. Construction Prof. Manly does not attempt. He contents himself with remarking, at the end of his excellent paper, that, in his opinion, Chaucer found the names of his characters and his mise en scène, as well as the outline of his plot, in the as yet undiscovered source of the tale. With this conclusion we are inclined to agree, and we await with lively interest Prof. Manly's promised article on Chaucer's "relations to certain men who had travelled widely." Unless some record-searcher makes an uncommonly lucky discovery, we seem to be at the end of our immediate information about Chaucer all the more reason why scholars