which the actors of the story were in, that he may be as suddenly terrified as were Dornach's guests. Flaubert was wont to bring about the like sort of shock of surprise by mentioning the deaths of personages of his novels in an offhand fashion, or by having some character speak in such a way. This last kind of stroke, indeed, is nearly always effective. Marie Ebner herself has used it, and used it with success. But in this ambitious work she sees fit to resort to the old method of employing contrasts to obtain effect, so before a scene of disaster she paints a scene of dullest insouciance. She even ventures to be dull, introducing, in the face of Voltaire and all authoritative censure to the contrary, long pages of the genre ennuyant. For dullness, she seems to say to them, and to all critics who think it praise to declare "there is not a dull page in the book," dullness may have great value as a literary foil, in pieces otherwise du genre amusant throughout. The reader is as unprepared for a sedative in such works as is an habitual water-drinker for a dose of heavy grog. Hence he succumbs unconsciously to its influence by sinking into passivity, when he is in precisely the right mental condition to be greatly shocked by an untoward accident.

The closing scene of Unsühnbar is that of Maria's death. It wears a somewhat melodramatic air of exaggerated pathos. Perhaps this is because of the association which it suggests with similar scenes upon the stage. It could hardly be expected, of course, with the novelist's bent towards depicting and dramatizing, that she would relate the event in detail. Yet if it were narrated, the pages might gain in sincerity, things being as they are. The times of Dumas and Sarah Bernhardt are not easy times for the successful treatment of death scenes of frail women in epic. The competition of playwrights is not only very great in this particular, but the boards have all the prestige that goes with past successes.

Nevertheless, it is to be remarked of this scene, otherwise unsatisfactory, that the touch is given therein which lifts the dolorous story out of the depressing swamp of pessimistic literature and above the production of the modern stage. Maria, in dying, lays the education of Erich in the hands of William Dornach; and in so doing she relieves the minds of the readers of her story by the justifiable hope that the imbruted villagers of Wolfsberg will receive a new kind of master some day in the person of this boy. The heroines of the French drama die without offspring, and hence one great and efficient cause why, with all their naturalness, they still are quite unlike life in affecting the mind with hopelessness instead of joy. Life which knows no "finis" appears ever like the dream of Alnaschar to mankind: it goes on and on, and by going on creates a compensation somewhere for every fault. So stories are not pessimistic because their atmosphere is brutal or sad and the writing unflinching, but because they come to an end. Unsühnbar closes, but does not end.

Margarete, the central character of the story next on our list, is a most opulent figure: Juno-like in stature; endowed with artistic tastes; superbly passionate; a sister, in literature, of a brilliant heterogeneous group of robust and sumptuous heroines. Shakespeare, simple-minded monarchist that he was, saw her prototype, very naturally, in an Oriental queen ; the romanticists Grillparzer and Hawthorne conceived her as a rich poetess; while the Republican Gottfried Keller, for his part, detected her unmistakably in the person of a rural pastor's sister. In our day of socialistic propaganda, Marie Ebner has found her at last in an attic of the proletariat. Judith, Sappho, Zenobia, Cleopatra, Margarete the seamstress, -one sees, by the mere mention of the names of these heroines in their chronological order, in what way a poetical ideal becomes varied and changed through suc

cessive epochs of history. The change consists more in outward circumstances than in the inner natures of the characters; grand passions being brought by poets, as was fire by Prometheus, from a high sphere ever and again to a lower human level. All these women of story love exuberantly, all despair, and all, save Judith, end their lives by an act of violence. What is new in Margarete is the widening of the space of history portrayed so as to include the bit of her existence that precedes her fatal love affair. We see her for a moment virtuous, her large heart filled by her boy. The central scene, then, has to do with her love affair, and the short final scene is that of her passionate death.

As for the volumes that follow, Drei Novellen, Parabeln, Märchen und Gedichte, and Glaubenslos, they are all much lighter undertakings than the two novels that have been dwelt on. The fables, in the collection of poems and fables, concern themselves with art, genius, and war. Some of the allegories are even political in tendency. Only a single poem is dedicated to a flower, and very few verses are exalted flights to the regions of cloudland, or recordings of what the stars rehearse. As a whole, the poetry of Marie von Ebner wears the stamp of intellectuality rather than of sentiment, and has divination for its source oftener than inspiration. The folk of allegory whom she employs to be the bearers of the torches of metaphor that illumine the sharp points of her morals are all chosen, very characteristically, from the statuesque deities of classic song. Never does she admit the

chameleon-like kobolds and unshapely gnomes of German romantic literature into her creations.

A few short pieces are delightfully culminative in effect, as in the triplets entitled

EIN KLEINES LIED.

Ein kleines Lied, wie geht's nur an Dass man so lieb es haben kann, Was liegt darin, erzähle ?

Es liegt darin ein wenig Klang,
Ein wenig Wohllaut und Gesang,
Und eine ganze Seele.

Nowhere among the poems is there a masterpiece, perhaps, but in recompense we find a little biography, a few confidential disclosures from Marie Ebner the woman. Such are the verses called, humorously, The Blue Stocking and St. Peter, and the earnest lines entitled That's the Whole Case. These afford the reviewer the opportunity of pointing to the final distinction of the author, which is her uncommon personality. She is a realist in style and method of working, but by nature she, like most authors worthy the name, belongs to the idealists. A clarified wisdom and tenderness distinguish all she writes, a sincerity which has not been common in fiction since the death of George Eliot. The latter swept over broader and more varied fields of life in her mental surveys. Marie Ebner, on the other hand, gives us more wit and Attic grace in the conversations which she transcribes. Between the lines of both, however, different as they are in content and aspect, there breathes one and the same rare spirit of moral earnestness.

LATE in the life of the elder Dumas, his son found him poring over the Three Guardsmen. He had promised himself, it seems, that when old he would test the real worth of his earlier vintage. "Eh bien, où en est-tu?" asked the son. "À la fin." "Qu'y-est-ce que tu en penses?" "C'est bien." Some days after this simple expression of approval, he was again noticed reading with extraordinary diligence, this time the Count of Monte Cristo. A similar conversation took place. "Qu'en penses-tu? "Peuh! Ça ne vaut pas les Mousquetaires." The anecdote, so characteristic of Dumas, expresses not only the master's final judgment as to the relative merit of his two typical works, but that of posterity. Absorbing as the Count of Monte Cristo is in intricacy of plot, superb as it is in its assertion of the enormous power, for good or evil, of the centred human will, its overwrought motive and its prevailing sombreness of tone restrict its appeal to humanity, and eventually condemn it to a lower grade of fiction than that of the Three Guardsmen. Indeed, for the people at large the last court of resort in criticism it is not literature of the Monte Cristo type that holds its own longest, not fiction that portrays the everlasting triumph over the world of one man or one idea, or even that which attempts, like Dante's great tale, to mould the world according to God's ideal judgment of it, but the human comedy, where man jostles with man, where tears and laughter mingle, where life shows as it is, not crushed into set and philosophic shapes, however plausible.

It is but carrying the same thought a step further to notice the great power and popularity of fiction based not merely on seemingly natural forms and conditions of life, but on such events, whether real or legendary, of history itself as have

become, or may become, typical of the fortunes of humanity. If we would not forego the opportunity which the novel offers of extending our sympathetic interest in human nature beyond the borders of the actual present, we must not, then, despise, as it is sometimes the fashion to do, the historical novel as a form of literature. The present is good, the real is good; imagination working on the past is unreal, in that it necessarily swerves away from the actual fact of the past. But it is not to be doubted that the historical romance-the comédie historique as distinguished from the comédie humaine or divine- has in almost all

ages held man's interest and roused his imagination. The Iliad and the Eneid, the Chanson de Roland and Shakespeare's historical plays, owe much of their greatness and success to the skill of their authors in allowing the results of their own individual experience or fancy to be supplemented by the rich and accumulated associations that cluster in the popular imagination around great historic epochs.

Each of our great English masters of historical romance, Shakespeare and Scott, had a strong influence on Dumas, who was quick to follow Victor Hugo in a course for which the popular taste was ripe, and for which his inexhaustible vitality and his double race inheritance of sensations rendered him peculiarly fitted. Since Dumas's time, two new species of literature have gained, to a greater or less degree, the favor of the multitude,

the naturalistic or realistic novel, and the novel with a purpose, the novel of religion or of demonstration. We may fairly question, however, and rely for corroboration on publishers' records, whether the historical romance has been, or is, in any danger of dying completely out. Long life to the race, says the present

writer, at least; for, good history or bad, true archæology or false, philology to the pro or the con, the type which Les Trois Mousquetaires and La Reine Margot represent, the historical novel of adventure, is second only to sleep for the unraveling of care and the rejuvenation of the tired human spirit. Unlucky he whose bedside is ever unblessed by one of that great family, or who measures dreary journeys save in terms of their crisp chapters or their fat volumes. The bare present may appall us, the romance of the present or the future seem falla cious or absurd; in the romance of the past we may lose ourselves without fear.

Luckily, the wheel of fortune brings us now and then, as if to save us, in pity, from the death of boredom at the hands of the realistic or the religious novel, an author who, like Scott or Dumas, satisfies the popular and natural craving for historical romance. The Dumas of the hour is Mr. Stanley J. Weyman, an Englishman, whose first fiction fell in with the school of Trollope, but who has now given us five novels1 smacking of Dumas in plot, in place, and in time, and with not a little of the master's force and vitality in them. It may be worth while, then, to compare Mr. Weyman's work, in a general way, with that of Dumas, bringing out the modifications of his method, which the somewhat altered tastes and ambitions of our day have resulted in.

The Man in Black is a trivial, inconsequential tale, but the others deserve at least a slight analysis. The Gentleman of France was a Huguenot of Brittany, who had seen service under the great Condé, but who, poor courtier and poverty-stricken gentleman, was at the

last gasp of his fortune when he was entrusted with a perilous mission by Henry of Navarre. The thankless task was none

1 The Story of Francis Cludde. The Cassell Publishing Company. The House of the Wolf. New York: Longmans, Green & Co. 1890. A Gentleman of France. Being the Me

other than to seem to kidnap a kinswoman of the great Vicomte de Turenne, a girl well disposed toward the king, and with a secret of state in her possession. It was the time when the League had, for the moment, the upper hand, and on Mademoiselle de la Vire's meeting Henry of Valois and convincing him of Turenne's duplicity hung, or seemed to hang, Henry of Navarre's fate. But acknowledge the plot the royal schemer could not without turning Turenne's secret ambition into open enmity. The scapegoat, Gaston, out at the elbows as he was, by his very grim straightforwardness managed to make off in safety with the gay court demoiselle, rather against her will; and after many vicissitudes of fortune, still flouted by her, and still bravely defending her against perils of sword and plague, to bring her into the presence of Valois and back again to security. By this time the proud lady was deep in love with her sombre but trusty guardian, who, however, as an unacknowledged political agent and the author of violent deeds, was under the ban of both parties. In the nick of time, nevertheless, recognition came, as the assassin's knife made Henry of Navarre Henry IV., and the shamefaced Sieur de Marsac became the governor of Armagnac, and the husband of the damsel who had once despised his poverty and his awkwardness.

The House of the Wolf deals with the massacre of St. Bartholomew. The Wolf is a certain grim, gigantic, and ruthless Raoul de Mar, Vidame de Bezers. He wooes the young Catherine de Caylus, and, learning that she has a Huguenot lover, rides off to Paris with a cruel threat against him. Her three country cousins, mere boys, spur hotly after him to warn her betrothed, but, falling into the Wolf's hands, accomplish little besides moirs of Gaston de Bonne, Sieur de Marsac. Longmans, Green & Co. 1894. Under the Red Robe. Longmans, Green & Co. 1894. The Man in Black. The Cassell Publishing Company.

being tossed to and fro in the tumult of the massacre, and being dragged back, with the captured fiancé, in the midst of the Wolf's guard. But the beast relents, Catherine gets her lover again, and the boys come trotting home in useless triumph.

In Under the Red Robe and Francis Cludde the plot is scarcely less superficial. In the first, Gil de Berault, gambler, duelist, and bully, has forfeited his life to the law. Richelieu spares him on condition that he do for him a dirty piece of work in Béarn, the spying out and capturing in his own house of M. de Cocheforêt, a Gascon rebel. Disguised as a Huguenot and a friend, Berault finds and seizes his man, but only by winning and betraying the confidence. of Cocheforêt's sister, whom he had meantime learned to love and reverence as a more pure and noble woman than any his dissolute life had ever led him to imagine. At the last the rascal redeems himself by giving the prisoner his freedom, and returning alone to Paris as a man of honor, to pay the price of his life to the cardinal. Thither, of course, the heroine comes also to beg for his pardon. The time is propitious, the Red Robe is generous, and the tale ends with rejoicings over the repentant sinner and the sound of wedding bells. In the second, perhaps the most pleasing of all Mr. Weyman's novels, Francis Cludde, a sturdy young Englishman of old stock, and a Protestant, uncomfortable at home in Queen Mary's time, sets out to build up name and fame for himself; succeeding by good luck and brave deeds, as a young adventurer should.

Such are plots, by no means intricate, with which Mr. Weyman delights his readers. Each novel can be read at a sitting. The action is rapid, the outcome rarely long in doubt. The English is pure and unaffected, only by exception artificially literary, and, as a rule, delightfully free from labored archaisms. With means so simple the author pro

duces effects which arrest the attention by their picturesqueness and force. The English boy, slow to speak and prompt to act, growing cooler as his excitement increases, and fairly blundering his way into honor and fortune; the French stripling, proud of his house, and risking his foolish neck for a noble whim; the sombre and desperate Huguenot, wresting victory from defeat by his grim courage; the hard-hearted adventurer, shedding his leopard's spots under a good woman's gaze, characters such as these are to our Anglo-Saxon liking, and do not easily leave the memory. Rare, too, as striking words and phrases are in Mr. Weyman's work, which impresses one rather as a whole than by details, we find here and there scenes that strike the imagination freshly and picturesquely. The landscape of Béarn as described in Under the Red Robe, for instance, is charming, and it is not easy to forget the stirring passage, in A Gentleman of France, where Marsac defends at Blois, one against many, the stairway before the battered door of his scornful lady's prison-chamber :

"Bonne Foi! France et Bonne Foi!' It seemed to me that I had not spoken, that I had plied steel in grimmest silence; and yet the cry still rang and echoed in the roof as I lowered my point and stood looking down on them, 'France et Bonne Foi!'

"Bonne Foi and good sword!' cried a voice behind me. And looking swiftly round, I saw mademoiselle's face thrust through the hole in the door. Her eyes sparkled with a fierce light, her lips were red beyond the ordinary, and her hair, loosened and thrown into disordered tresses by her exertions, fell in thick masses about her white cheeks, and gave her the aspect of a war-witch, such as they tell of in my country of Brittany. 'Good sword!' she cried again, and clapped her hands."

Rich in promise as this group of novels is, there are, on the other hand, marked