through the far less epic arch of the Salamander. We have, moreover, the best of reasons for not pushing our symbolism too far. We forget that the synthesis of a century was attempted in 1889, when also the Exhibition called itself centennial. That of last summer was, in fact, but a repetition which could neither alter nor shed any new light upon the aspect of the nonogenarian so earnestly pondered eleven years ago. We endeavored, at that time, not merely to define the characteristic features of the nineteenth century but to formulate its philosophy. In view of a display which has not suggested the slightest modification of our previous judgment, we can but repeat ourselves. Nothing has occurred to modify the opinion then expressed concerning the achievements and the errors of the old century.

We may admit, if you insist upon it, that the photographic proof struck off in 1900 accentuates, at certain points, the features with which we are all familiar. Symmetry—that word which was formerly so common, and which is passing out of use with the idea that it once expressed, in days when a work of art, or a book, or a festival, or an assemblage of buildings was valued according to the success with which all the different parts were subordinated to one central thought-symmetry, I say, is absent more and more. vidual attempts are multiplied-interesting and intelligent attempts, beautiful sometimes, often very useful-but they are totally unconnected with one another, and the whole is incoherent and anarchic.

Indi

Honestly now, is not this the impression which you received from our Exposition? Here is another strongly marked feature. Folk from the uttermost ends of the earth flocked to our Babel, and mingled in the Rue des Nations, where, nevertheless, every pavilion aimed at preserving intact the

ethnic peculiarities of race and country. Is not this very contradiction between a cosmopolitanism which accepts everything, and a nationalism becoming every day more jealous and uncompromising, more determined to maintain or to restore complete integrity of breed, language, laws and traditions-one of the biggest of the unknown quantities in the problem which our age is bequeathing to its successor? How, and after what conflicts, will the two antagonistic instincts be reconciled? He would be a bold man who should venture to predict.

Let us return to the lesson afforded by the Japanese. We said just now that theirs was a really integral exhibit. Our own, despite appearances, can never be more than partial if localized in Paris. Our monster show has brought out very clearly some of the conditions of our national vitality, but it had nothing to tell us concerning the most essential. We are like candidates who have stood our examination in some topics of minor importance, and the examiner suspends his judgment; but there might be a bitter awakening in store for the poor child were he to fancy that he had finally passed!

Interested flatterers-our masters themselves to begin with-have loaded us with compliments, which threaten to beguile and deceive the strong common-sense of our people. It is intimated that, by the very fact of having had an Exposition, we rank as the foremost people upon earth, and, on all sides, we hear of naught save the glory, the greatness, the strength, of which this miraculous display is the sure sign and sufficient guarantee. Such talk is dangerous, both in what it says and what it does not say. One of our statesmen was rather cruelly criticized, not long since, for saying in the course of a plea for the builder of the great Tower, that he had "given us the alms of a little glory." The hyperbole

all others in the extent and precision of their working power. In the production of artistic objects, of things requiring taste and a feeling for beauty, we have no need to regard our neighbors as formidable rivals. But in the experiments and utilizations of applied science, in extensive industries and manufactures, and in short, in every branch of trade, we find them occupying a foremost place. Here German activity has already found its reward in wealth, and it is a methodical and thoroughly disciplined activity, everywhere subordinated to a general plan and a higher direction. The ruling will has made itself felt, even in the unexpected rush to our great fair of guests who will at least carry away the memory of a courteous welcome. The late international reunion might almost be described as a German Exhibition. In the Champ de Mars, and along the banks of the Seine, there were none but Germans to be seen, there was no language to be heard but theirs. A rumor circulated that they had made a bid for supplying the Exposition with the power and the light still requisite for its belated arrangements. There are symbolistes even in business; and if the contract had actually been drawn up, they would surely have recoiled from the formidable symbolism of the simple announcement-Paris gets its light and power from Germany.

We have also signalized the accession of a new nation to the rank of a great, nay, of a very great Power. Unlike the Germans, the Japanese first attracted us by their artistic superiority. We fancied that we knew all about it; but they have now revealed to us its high antiquity, and the splendid development it had attained in the hands of old masters who simply confound us by the freedom and the verity of their art. The heirs of these men have nobly preserved their traditions. As weavers they are beyond comparison;

for they can inform a web with all the poetry of nature. And these little artists have also shown themselves the most practical and enterprising of men in those more prosaic crafts whose object is to seize and utilize the riches of nature. As farmers, traders, machinists and marines they were to be met with in every section of the Fair, and they excelled in all. They have had the chance to exhibit themselves completely;-I mean, to display their milltary and political manliness as well as their commercial and artistic aptitudes. At the very moment when they were charming all Europe at Paris, the Jap anese were saving Europe in China from a great danger and a great dis grace. Their troops won the admiration of ours by their rare qualities of discipline, valor and intelligence.

Up

to that time, it had been an unsolved problem, whether the hasty imposition of our civilization would bear durable fruit among the Japanese. The year 1900 answered the question-at least provisionally. In the arts alike of war and of peace, as well as in every department of the great competition for livelihood, the Empire of the Rising Sun has shown itself in position to challenge, and in a fair way soon to equal, the greatest and the strongest nations of the West. The young champion begins the new century well!

From the example thus afforded, we pass to our conclusions. They would be as tedious in the drawing as a day without a meal, if we were merely playing the petty game of endeavoring to find the entire estate of the century that is gone in the bequest of the Exposition. It would be a dangerous attempt and might result badly for the deceased. Some malicious old gentleman or other would be sure to observe that the century had come in under à triumphal arch to the tune of exultant pæans, and that it was going out

through the far less epic arch of the Salamander. We have, moreover, the best of reasons for not pushing our symbolism too far. We forget that the synthesis of a century was attempted in 1889, when also the Exhibition called itself centennial. That of last summer was, in fact, but a repetition which could neither alter nor shed any new light upon the aspect of the nonogenarian so earnestly pondered eleven years ago. We endeavored, at that time, not merely to define the characteristic features of the nineteenth century but to formulate its philosophy. In view of a display which has not suggested the slightest modification of our previous judgment, we can but repeat ourselves. Nothing has occurred to modify the opinion then expressed concerning the achievements and the errors of the old century.

We may admit, if you insist upon it, that the photographic proof struck off in 1900 accentuates, at certain points, the features with which we are all familiar. Symmetry-that word which was formerly so common, and which is passing out of use with the idea that it once expressed, in days when a work of art, or a book, or a festival, or an assemblage of buildings was valued according to the success with which all the different parts were subordinated to one central thought-symmetry, I say, is absent more and more. vidual attempts are multiplied-interesting and intelligent attempts, beautiful sometimes, often very useful-but they are totally unconnected with one another, and the whole is incoherent and anarchic.

Indi

Honestly now, is not this the impression which you received from our Exposition? Here is another strongly marked feature. Folk from the uttermost ends of the earth flocked to our Babel, and mingled in the Rue des Nations, where, nevertheless, every pavilion aimed at preserving intact the

ethnic peculiarities of race and country. Is not this very contradiction between a cosmopolitanism which accepts everything, and a nationalism becoming every day more jealous and uncompromising, more determined to maintain or to restore complete integrity of breed, language, laws and traditions-one of the biggest of the unknown quantities in the problem which our age is bequeathing to its successor? How, and after what conflicts, will the two antagonistic instincts be reconciled? He would be a bold man who should venture to predict.

Let us return to the lesson afforded by the Japanese. We said just now that theirs was a really integral exhibit. Our own, despite appearances, can never be more than partial if localized in Paris. Our monster show has brought out very clearly some of the conditions of our national vitality, but it had nothing to tell us concerning the most essential. We are like candidates who have stood our examination in some topics of minor importance, and the examiner suspends his judgment; but there might be a bitter awakening in store for the poor child were he to fancy that he had finally passed!

Interested flatterers-our masters themselves to begin with-have loaded us with compliments, which threaten to beguile and deceive the strong common-sense of our people. It is intimated that, by the very fact of having had an Exposition, we rank as the foremost people upon earth, and, on all sides, we hear of naught save the glory, the greatness, the strength, of which this miraculous display is the sure sign and sufficient guarantee. Such talk is dangerous, both in what it says and what it does not say. One of our statesmen was rather cruelly criticized, not long since, for saying in the course of a plea for the builder of the great Tower, that he had "given us the alms of a little glory." The hyperbole

was perhaps excusable in the mouth of an advocate at the Palais, but it would be very much out of place in an official report. Yet what else has been said for the last six months in the dithyrambs perpetually repeated and accompanied by higher and higher bids? The least disadvantage of these exaggerations is that they cause the foreigner to smile. They may well talk of our insupportable vanity; the least ill-disposed of them would rejoice to see us hypnotized by so fatal a delusion. We can assure the outsider that it is one which all Frenchmen do not share. We are most happy to have shown our visitors that there is good work in France, no less than good taste, and good grace and courtesy at their service. But we understand perfectly that more than this is required of us other efforts, other deeds, further proofs of energyif we are to recover the old precedence which is now disputed. And of this we are bound to convince our fellowcitizens.

An Exposition affords information concerning the capacity of a country for labor, concerning the quality of labor and the bent of the national genius. These are all very good things. The virtues thus attested are among the most honorable of all, and the most essential to the moral health of any people. But no Exposition can properly illustrate the highest scientific attainment of a nation or its purely intellectual creations. The lyric flight of a Victor Hugo cannot be shown, nor the intuition of a Pasteur in his laboratory, nor even the thought of a Taine before his desk. A very few initiated persons will read, in the cold figures of statistical reports, the miracles daily wrought by charity; but what can never be seen in "the grand assizes of Labor and Peace" are the aptitudes and virtues which constitute the protection of labor and insure the continuance of peace the heroism of the soldier, the

determination of the statesman, the vital and unremitting action of all those who subserve the interests of their country. We must not suffer our citizens to rest in the belief that their country is great enough if they have done a good day's work.

Tell them rather that a nation'sgreatness is made up of elements more numerous, more complex, and sometimes ruder. In the opinion of Europe, the true Exposition, the one that will count in history, is "on" just now in China. The strength of all the great: Powers is there being put forth, and their relative influence determined. No one doubts that our soldiers will sustain the test with honor; one would like to feel sure that those who direct our politics will acquit themselves. equally well. It will be all the greater credit to them if they do, because the Exposition was a heavy load to carry; it is always the most serious objection to these momentous functions that they hamper for a long time a country's freedom of action and divért men's. minds from her essential interests. Our enemies understand this perfectly, and so do our friends. At the very beginning of the Chinese troubles a Russian journal, and one of those most consist ently friendly to ourselves, began a regretful editorial as follows:

"France is passing through that strange period which may be called, in her case, the period of Expositional® trance. For more than a year now all' interests, all enterprises, all governmental life and political action have been subordinated to the single consid eration: 'Will such and such things affect the Exposition unfavorably?"

Let us hope that the state of torpor here described will not have prejudiced our foreign policy. Were it to do so, we should indeed have paid too dear for the incidental benefits of the Exposition. Infinitely too dear if the good sense of the public were to be

drugged by a false idea, and our people should lend a too willing ear to the beguiling voices of those who claim that it is the greatest of all honors to have entertained the universe in a bonded warehouse. Were that mean conception of national greatness once to find its way into our hearts, displacing more manly aspirations, we might hold decennial exhibitions to our heart's content; cram them with furniture and gems, restaurants and foreign exhibits;

Revue des Deux Mondes.

build palaces for the "staff" served by only too many seductive attendants, and give Babylonian banquets therein -the people who, if not rudely awakened by some salutary shock, should prefer no better claim than this to the primacy of the nations, would be in imminent danger of presenting to pleasure-seeking, foreign guests, at the Jubilee Exposition of the year 2000, only a colossal mirror reflecting its own decadence.

Eugène-Melchior de Vogue.

Seated on the ground, his back resting against the wall of the stockade, his crooked knees supporting his elbows, his palms lying flat, one against either cheek, he stared moodily at the sunset. His figure was thin and wasted; the color of his skin was sallow and opaque; premature lines had furrowed themselves upon a face which should have been that of a man in his first youth. Even now that the glory in the western sky furnished beauty enough to fill the sight of any man, his eyes were restless and shifty. Every minute or so he recalled his gaze from the distant horizon and threw anxious, uneasy glances about him, as though he dreaded the approach of some enemy, as though threatened by some everpresent danger. Perhaps it was the same feeling of insecurity which had caused him to seat himself with the only solid structure in sight protecting his back from possible assault.

The little block-house surrounded by its wooden palisade, above which the high-pitched palm-leaf roof rose skywards in a dust-colored pyramid, stood in the centre of a wide, flat valley. On every side for a distance of four or

five miles the ground stretched to the foothill in a series of low, sweeping undulations, the whole smothered completely by a waste of coarse, rank grass. The squalid Murut villageseach consisting of a single long barrack divided into narrow dwellings all opening out on to a common verandanestled in the hollows, and were seen so indistinctly between the grass tufts on the higher ground that they did nothing towards breaking the flatness of the plain or relieving its aching monotony. Fencing the valley in a seemingly endless chain without break or outlet, ranges of vast mountains rose abruptly from its edge, those on the north clustering about the feet of a giant peak some 11,000 feet in height, those to the south, east and west sloping upwards to lesser summits 3,000 or 4,000 feet above sea-level. Once long ago in the dim recesses of an unrecorded past, the valley had been a lake, hidden here from the eyes of men in the heart of many mountains; now the waters had subsided, giving place to a race of unclean men, who squatted like foul parasitic growths on the rich alluvial soil; but to the solitary white