firmament did the same. You can he had trained himself to like. The bias only occasionally indulged in, the warm Oriental side of him, Faguet calls romanticism. Here again we make bold to dissent. The Romantic is concerned not with material, but with method. It involves a treatment proceeding neither by register nor rule, but by associative sensations -the way in which the scent recalls the flower, the tune the scene, the sound in a shell the sea; such was not Flaubert's medium. He handled themes the most remote and romantic (though with far intenser colors) as he handled the average daily life around him as a vent for the evasion or suppression of the importunate, impenitent self which tortured him. Always minute in his calculated strokes, he here elaborated without freedom that which artistically demands intuitive largeness and unfettered fantasy. Thus, for all their sombre splendor and ruminative research, these excursions of his became a colossal bore, as a bizarre naturalism almost always must. No doubt he had a romantic vein, but it was submerged in the realism against which it protested. What enlists sympathy in his historical fantasies is the style, both when he describes and when he psychologizes. Here once more he strove to escape from himself, for he was not - . . and I naturally a stylist a stylist as his correspondence shows- any more than Sterne when he wrote his sloppy Journal to Eliza. Through supreme effort Flaubert became a supreme stylist, nor must it be forgotten by English readers that, where Flaubert is least interesting, the perfection of the style interests a Frenchman most. Flaubert attained this height of expression - this just ness of word and gesture by reading - by reading his compositions aloud to himself and making the rhythm beat time to his thoughts and feelings. Perhaps Sterne the opposite pole in the literary VOL. 13-NO, 660 added: "Others will do without my lights, and all that I ask in return is that they should not asphyxiate me with their candles." After this we can understand that it was only in scientific calm that he could treat with human nature, also that the explosive element which flared up so soon as he was brought into living contact took refuge in the glowing whirl of Carthage, beset by the Barbarians and the mysticism of Salammbo's girdle, or the sands of the Thebaid with an isolated St. Anthony for the central figure. After all, it is through Madame Bovary, with its petty, provincial setting, that Flaubert is immortal, for there he found at once the finest outlet for his genius and the safest shelter from his passions. Salammbô — in one aspect an archæological museum, in another, a gorgeous overcrowded antiquarian ballet was the result of that visit to the East which realized Flaubert's temperament but contradicted his art. The Temptation of St. Anthony - a more spiritual ballet is on the austerer side of the same mood. But Madame Bovary, as in a less degree The Sentimental Education, shows him in tense seclusion with the microscope applied to his province. Of The Three Stories, two The Legend of the Knight of St. John and Herodias - are akin, though in, as it were, the miniature of a stained-glass window, to St. Anthony and Salammbô; while The Story of the Simple Heart, that of an old maid and her parrot, fails to convince us. But Madame Bovary is a masterpiece far transcending Richardson's Clarissa Harlowe in its pitiless yet pathetic precision. It is neither immoral nor moral. It neither mocks nor preaches. It is no mere artistic record, still less the photography of Zola. It outdoes Balzac on his own ground, because its ten characters are never confused and never types. And just as Don Quixote makes us sympathize with the sentimentality which it assails, so Madame Bovary herself, the victim of Sand's sentimentalism, makes us sympathize with the very element which proves her downfall. Who does not know the tragedy of Emma's gradual descent, the catastrophe of her climax? Contrasted with the simpering Lady of the Camelias, the book stands as Hogarth does to Greuze. Faguet goes so far as to say that the heroine is the most complete woman's portrait in the whole of literature, including Shake The Saturday Review speare and Balzac. Surely he is right, for, as Faguet again puts it, we get the itinerary, not the inventory, of a soul. Homais, too, is unsurpassable of his kind, and all the persons of that tragedy make an appeal so intimate even when they belong to the "sadgrotesque' - that they become part of our abiding consciousness. Perhaps the most wonderful of all its passages is that about Emma's dreams, when the dull, undisillusioned husband returns to find her sleeping: 'Emma, was not asleep; she pretended to be; and while he fell asleep at her side, she awoke to other dreams. She was being carried away by four galloping horses towards a new country, whence they [she and her lover] would never return. They went, their arms locked, without speaking. Often from the summit of a mountain, they suddenly perceived some splendid city with domes, bridges, forests, ships, forests of lemon trees, and white marble cathedrals with storks' nests in their pointed steeples. The horses went slowly because of the slippery marble pavement, and on the ground lay bunches of flowers, which were offered by women dressed in red corselets. corselets. . . . However, in the immensity of this future which she evoked nothing particularly emerged; the days, all of them magnificent, were like waves, and the whole swung gently on the horizon, infinite, harmonious. We have no space for Flaubert's last effort Bouvard and Pécuchet, the tale of a doubled individuality in differing environment — the last cynicism of this 'Unfrocked Romantic,' as Heine once called himself. At any rate, with all drawbacks, Flaubert is perhaps the most distinguished instance of applying Moliére's test to the portrayal of life: Je veux que l'on soit homme et que dans toute rencontre Le fond de notre coeur dans nos discours se montre. THE OPIUM HOUND PHILIP is a solicitor whose solicitations are confined to Hongkong and the Far East generally. Just now he is also a special constable, for the duration. He is other things as well, but the above should serve as a general introduction. In his capacity as special constable he keeps an eagle eye upon the departing river steamers and the passengers purposing to travel in them, his idea being to detect them in the act of attempting to export opium without a permit, one of the deadly sins. A little while ago Philip came into the possession of a dog of doubtful ancestry and antecedents, but reputed to be intelligent. It was called 'Little Willie' because of its marked tendency to the predatory habit. His other leading characteristic was an inordinate craving for Punter's 'Freak' biscuits. One day Philip had a brain-wave. 'I will teach Little Willie,' he said, 'to smell out opium concealed in passengers' luggage, and I shall acquire merit and the Superintendent of Imports and Exports will acquire opium.' So he borrowed some opium from that official and concealed it about the house and in his office, and by-and-by what was required of him seemed to dawn on Little Willie, and every time he found a cache of the drug he was rewarded with a Punter's 'Freak' biscuit. perfunctory way, without any real interest in the proceedings. Indeed, his attention wandered to the doings of certain disreputable friends of his who had come down to the wharf in a spirit of curiosity, and Philip had to recall him to the matter in hand. On a sudden a wonderful change came over the Opium Hound. A highly respectable old lady of the amah or domestic servant class came confidently along, carrying the customary round, lacquered wooden box, a neat bundle, and a huge umbrella. She was followed by a ragged coolie bearing a plethoric basket, lashed with a stout rope, but bulging in all directions. Little Willie sniffed once at the basket and stiffened. 'Good dog,' said Philip; 'is that opium you have found?' The hound's tail wagged furiously, and he scratched at the basket in a paroxysm of excitement. The coolie dropped it and ran away. The amah waxed voluble and attacked Little Willie with the family umbrella. The hound grew more and more enthusiastic for the quest. Philip issued the fiat, 'Open that basket, it contains opium,' and struck an attitude. The basket was solemnly unlashed amid the amah's shrill expostulations, and the contents soon flowed out upon the floor of the examination hut. There was the usual conglomeration: Two pairs working trousers (blue cotton), two ditto jackets to match, one suit silk brocade for high days and holidays, two white aprons, three pairs Chinese shoes, three and a half pairs of Mississy's silk stockings, several mysterious under-garments (from the same source); one cigarette tin containing sewing materials, buttons of all sorts and sizes, nine empty cotton-reels, three spools from a sewing machine, one pair nail scissors (broken); one cigar box containing several yards of tape (varying widths), cuttings of many different materials, one buttonhook, one tin-opener and corkscrew combined, one silver thimble, one ditto (horn), one Chinese pipe; one packet of tea, one ditto sugar, one tin condensed milk (unopened), half a loaf of bread (very stale), two empty medicine bottles- but no opium! by this time, and tried to get into the basket, which was now all but empty. The search continued, and two rolls of material were lifted out: five and a quarter yards of white calico and three yards of pink silk. This exposed the bottom of the basket, where lay a tin! Ah, the opium at last. Philip stepped forward and prized off the lid triumphantly. The contents consisted solely of Punter's 'Freak' biscuits. Little Willie has been dismissed from Little Willie was nearly delirious his position as Opium Sleuth-hound. Punch NIGHTFALL BY SYLVIA LYND THE church bells make their tumbling song, And swiftly now the shadows grow The quiet field among. Five little poplars in a row Stripe with long shadows half the weald, Like streams till all the vale is filled And there the first bat wheeled. Behind the beechwood the red sun Yet touched with gold are roof and spire, And higher, ever higher. The small clouds hold the light, until Against the west seems sleeping there: Peace, like the closing of a flower. Land and Water ECONOMICS, TRADE, AND FINANCE IS GERMANY BANKRUPT? This sum of 310,000,000,000 Marks, which may possibly fall to 300,000,000,000 Marks or increase to 325,000,000,000 Marks, represents the burden of debt bequeathed to Germany by the war. It will demand an annual payment of interest amounting to 15,000,000,000 Marks, which represents between two fifths and one half of Germany's entire revenue before the war, and the capitalization of this interest is not very far below the sum of 400,000,000,000 Marks, the entire national wealth of the country before the war. It will be necessary, therefore, either to increase Germany's annual revenue by 15,000,000,000 Marks or to decrease her expenditure by a like amount. There is yet a third possithird possibility, namely, that of decreasing the capitalized debt by prudent measures to such an extent that the burden of interest may be sensibly diminished and the country's finances may be capable of paying the interest remaining, with revenue and expenditure maintained at their old level. To attain this last possibility one of two methods may be resorted to. The first, which is crude, and, so to speak, immoral, is that of a so-called State bankruptcy, which means that the State would either cease paying interest and cancel the loans or would reduce the rate of interest to a mere fraction of that originally promised. By this means Germany would at a stroke be freed of one half of her liabilities. But such a step would be a monstrous injustice to those citizens who have helped to finance the war by their subscriptions to the loans, and would run counter to all the promises and assurances given to subscribers not only by the old but also by the new Socialist Government. The second method is that of introducing drastic taxation of war profits, property, inheritance, and income. In Freiheit, the organ of the Independent Social Democrats, it has been reckoned that such taxation, pressed to the verge of confiscation of property, and embracing large incomes and properties on a progressive scale, would yield, not at once, but by degrees, 150,000,000,000 Marks. The imposition of such stringent taxation on private capital would not necessarily result in reducing perceptibly the efficiency of private enterprise and capitalistic production, for if the Government used the money thus obtained for the repayment of the war loans it would flow back into the purses of the public. It has frequently been suggested in Socialist quarters that the Government should not use the whole of the revenue from taxation for the redemption of war debts, but employ part of it in establishing paying businesses, in acquiring or obtaining a |