mountain sheep are protected for nearly nine months in the year; and a fifty-dollar licence, imposed on all non-residents, limits the bag of the holder in each season to ten deer, five each of caribou, mountain goat, and mountain sheep, two bull wapiti and two bull moose. This has, it will be seen, the very desirable effect of making it no longer worth the gunner's while to visit British Columbia for commercial purposes, and thus restricts the destruction of the game to the smaller class of bona fide sportsmen, though Mr. Baillie-Grohman regards the game-laws of British Columbia as inadequately enforced and framed to hamper the tourist rather than to protect the game. In New Brunswick, moose and caribou entail on residents a licence of only two dollars, but non-residents have to pay twenty. It is in Newfoundland that this taxing of the visitor reaches the highest point, for he is compelled to take out a licence costing no less than a hundred dollars. Such high licences are most desirable everywhere, but, if they are to attain the end of preservation which we have in view, they should be imposed on visitors and residents alike.

Enough has perhaps been said to show that the world is waking, even late in the day, to the need for reform. Even in India there has of late years been, from the direction of Kashmir, some movement in favour of protecting the big game, particularly in the direction of closing certain areas and absolutely protecting a few of the more immediately threatened species for several years. The most important theatre, however, of animal extermination, and the one to which these remarks have in consequence been in the main devoted, is South Africa.

The protection of our remaining big game is an international interest, for science is of no nationality. It is the cheap amusement of a certain class to belittle the study of field natural history, and even of the more scientific investigation of animals, on the ground that it has no bearing on the practical issues of life. Yet malaria is thought to be ending its career of evil on earth, and its banishment, if accomplished in the manner at present hoped for, will be due to the study of a group of insects hitherto regarded only in the light of tormentors. Can it for a moment be reasonably doubted that all the beasts and birds have their messages for us, when further study shall have prepared our understanding? The dodo, moa, and great auk, all extinct within modern times, perished while still, to all practical purposes, unknown to science. Some may be willing to insist that these species held no secret that may not with equal facility be learnt from their

surviving relatives. We prefer the more contrite spirit that feels shame that man should have exterminated animals without even taking the trouble to understand them. Science protests with all its might against this foolish and barbarous destruction of earth's creatures without care for the species. Humanity cries aloud against the spoilers on grounds both of economy and of sentiment. Every argument that establishes the final utility of these animals when the rifle has laid them low only strengthens the case of those who plead for moderation and for measures that, by at least protecting the females and the young, shall ensure their continuance to future generations.

The greed for trophies is a part of the modern curse of recordbreaking, in which the healthfulness of moderate rivalry is vulgarised by playing to the gallery. The crowd cannot, it is true, applaud the sportsman as it does the cricketer, but it can gape in admiration over the trophies which he brings back and which perhaps his followers shot. The slaughter proceeds apace and is difficult indeed to stay. We have taken account of some of the measures currently in force, as also of the difficulties in the way of reform. The new century might most happily be inaugurated by an international movement of mercy to the beasts. M. Foà, a hunter of distinction, suggests a parliament of the nations, a kind of Zoological Peace Conference, to enact the necessary measures. Once, when the earth was younger, the mountains and prairies were a paradise of game. would be foolish to hope for the restoration of such abundance; but let us not recklessly throw away the wealth of wild nature which still remains. The mischief has gone far, and much of it is irreparable; but there is still time to see that no more is done.

It

ART. III. THE PLAYS OF GERHART HAUPTMANN.

1. Vor Sonnenaufgang: Sociales Drama. Ste Auflage, 1898. -Die Versunkene Glocke: Ein deutsches Märchendrama. 30te Auflage, 1897.-Fuhrmann Henschel: Schauspiel in fünf Acten, 1899. By Gerhart Hauptmann. Berlin:

S. Fischer.

2. The Plays of Gerhart Hauptmann. [Lonely Lives; Hannele ; The Weavers.] Translated by William Archer and Mary Morison. Three vols. London: William Heinemann, 1894-99.

3. The Sunken Bell. By Gerhart Hauptmann. Translated by C. H. Meltzer. New York: Russell, 1899.

4. Gerhart Hauptmann: sein Lebensgang und seine Dichtung. By Paul Schlenther. Berlin: S. Fischer, 1898.

5. Gerhart Hauptmann. By Adolf Adolf Bartels. Weimar : E. Felber, 1897.

6. Das deutsche Drama in den litterarischen Bewegungen der Gegenwart. 4te Auflage. By Professor Berthold Litzmann. Hamburg and Leipzig: L. Voss, 1897.

ΟΝ

N New Year's Day, 1863, there was a christening party at the sign of The Prussian Crown' in Upper Salzbrunn, in Silesia. The father was mine host, Robert Hauptmann. His wife was the daughter of an Inspector of Springs in the local principality of Pless; and the son whom they brought to the font, and who had been born on the previous 15th of November, received the name of Gerhart.

Mine host in those days was a man of presence and esteem. He ruled The Prussian Crown' as the second monarch in direct line, and his pleasant inn and posting-house enjoyed the regular patronage of an annual company of visitors. Physicians praised the medicinal springs of Salzbrunn; the fine air of the hills blew its own praises in the traveller's face; and Robert Hauptmann kept a decent cellar and courteous entertainment for his guests. These trooped to Salzbrunn from all quarters of Germany. From Breslau and Poland in the east, from Dresden and Saxony in the west, across the Bohemian border, and even from far-away Berlin, men came to drink the waters, and put up at the sign of the 'Crown.' The princely proprietor of the Baths made Robert Hauptmann his tenant, and in young Gerhart's early years his father was honourably and justly a person of importance in his native place.

The children of the inn were not at the call of the visitors.

Their father's library, with its collection of miniature Cotta Classics,' was more familiar to them than his taproom, and their share in the business of the house was confined to being occasionally present at the exchange of views and news between mine host and his friends. The boys were sent to Breslau to be educated at the Modern School, with the ultimate chance of entering Breslau University, and Gerhart would have followed his elder brothers in this course had not his fifteenth year been marked by a change in his prospects. In 1877 The Prussian Crown' passed to Robert Hauptmann's creditors. Mine host was sincerely to be commiserated on the shipwreck of his fortune. It was due to no fault of his own, but to causes beyond his control. A stone falling in the water makes not one circle, but many; and the proprietor of The Prussian Crown' was included in an outermost ring of the disturbance caused by his country's victory over France. Rich men grew richer after the war. Their wants increased with their resources, and they travelled further than Salzbrunn in search of holiday and health. The guests at the Crown' declined in quality, though its hospitality was not reduced; and a few years' experience of this gradual decay brought Robert Hauptmann to bankruptcy. He was assisted to the tenancy of the new station-bar at Lower Salzbrunn, and his fifteen-year-old son, with his copybooks smeared with verses, was summoned to the prose of life. His leaving-certificate, signed by the Director in April 1878, and countersigned by the fourth-form master, showed that his conduct was good, his industry fair, but his powers of concentration bad. His best subject was drawing; German, natural history, and the rest of the boy's pursuits were merely passed as moderate.

Ten years later we meet Gerhart Hauptmann in Berlin. The youngest son of the man who kept the railway restaurant at Lower Salzbrunn had found his own way to the capital, and the boy who left school at fifteen in an eastern province of Germany with but indifferent reports had reached the heart of the Empire, and was soon to conquer it by storm. We may skip the story of the interval. It contains nothing which the world might not know; but in Hauptmann's case, as in others, it adds little to the sum of human knowledge.

Literary Berlin in 1888 was living on its promissory notes. Thirty years were passing in one. A generation was spent in the waxing and waning of three moons. It is only to-day that thoughtful men in Germany are beginning to realise how large a part of the nation was buried at Potsdam in the grave of Frederic III. William I had died in March; William II was

seated on his throne in June. Between the two dates stretched the brief reign, the long-drawn agony, of ninety-nine days, which contained the summer and winter, the song-time and silence, of the contemporaries of the patient Crown Prince. We have no taste for the unprofitable task of exalting the political mighthave-been, nor is it altogether a happy omen that all the malcontents of the Empire should hold candles to the memory of Frederic. German Liberals regret in him the friend of English ideas; German Socialists deplore the champion of conciliation and progress; German Jews reverence him as the open foe of anti-Semitism. Death embalms hope, and the finger of death interposed between the hopes of these parties and their opportunity. But if we hesitate to ask how far their aspirations might have been satisfied, how far the experience of the Emperor would have corrected the idealism of the Prince, we cannot ignore the obvious effects on the development of the nation which flowed from the disinheritance of the sons in favour of the grandsons of Empire. Such influence might be marked in every department of public life. The new monarch flaunted it in the eyes of Europe; the new art flaunted it in the eyes of Berlin. And each example had its fascinating features. Grave statesmen watched with an indulgent smile the energy of the 'travelling Kaiser,' and trusted it would wear out by middle age. When his Majesty trailed the purple in the homes and workshops of the miners, the novelty and picturesqueness of the scene atoned for its palpable indiscretion. When the same youthful ardour found its conventional expression in an attempt to reform the world by congress, the world went to Berlin, as it went to the Hague last year, in a half cynical, half shamefaced mood. The charm and the wonder of youth were alive in Germany that year. Bismarck was brushed aside; Schiller and Goethe were dethroned. There were to be no more old men in Germany. The students instructed their professors; the sons warmed their hands at their fathers' hearths. What wonder if the joy to which they awakened should have turned to bitterness and gall for want of those herbs of correction-humility, prudence, patience-which withered on Frederic's tomb? It is not wholesome that responsibility should coincide in point of time with disillusion. If the history of Germany in the last twelve years be studied with close attention, this will be found to have been the root of her troubles. The safety-valve was utilised as the main channel of life. Wild oats were sown on the classic plains of Olympia. The noble dreams of youth formed the stuff and fabric of real politics. It was a