are different from mine. You are a Realist. Therefore I blot you out. Sir WALTER (anxiously).-I suppose I am a Romancist?

REALIST.—Yes, and therefore I cannot acknowledge you. Your work has to

go.

AMERICAN.-It has gone. I never read it. Indeed, I can't stand any of you. In short, I am an American Analyst. DICKENS (dreamily).-One of the most remarkable men in that country.

AMERICAN. Yes, sir, I am one of its leading writers of fiction without a story -along with Silas K. Weekes, Thomas John Hillocks, William P. Crinkle, and many others whose fame must have reached the Grove of Bay-trees. We write even more essays about ourselves than they do in this old country.

ELSMERIAN. Nevertheless, Romanticism, Realism, and Analysis are mere words, as empty as a drum. Religious doubt is the only subject for the novelist nowadays; and if he is such a poor creature as to have no religious doubts, he should leave fiction alone.

STYLIST.-Style is everything. I can scarcely sleep at nights for thinking of my style.

FIELDING.-This, of course, is very interesting to us who know so little, yet, except that it enables you to label yourselves, it does not seem to tell you much. After all, does it make a man a better novelist to know that other novelists pursue the wrong methods? You seem to despise each other cordially, while Smollett and 1, for instance, can enjoy Sir Walter. We are content to judge him by results, and to consider him a great novelist because he wrote great novels.

ELSMERIAN. You will never be able to reach our standpoint if you cannot put the mere novels themselves out of the question. The novelist should be considered quite apart from his stories.

REALIST.It is nothing to me that I am a novelist, but I am proud of being a Realist. That is the great thing.

ROMANCIST. Consider, Mr. Smollett, if you had thought and written about yourself as much as I have done about myself you might never have produced one of the works by which you are now known. That would be something to be proud of. You might have written romances, like mine and Sir Walter's.

ELSMERIAN. Or have had religious doubts.

STYLIST. Or have become a Stylist, and written nothing at all.

REALIST.-And you, Sir Walter, might have become one of us.

THACKERAY. But why should we not have written simply in the manner that suited us best? If the result is good, who cares for the label?

ROMANCIST (eyeing Sir Walter severely). -No one has any right to be a Romancist unconsciously. Romance should be written with an effort as I write it. I question, sir, if you ever defined romance ?

Sir WALTER (weakly).—I had a general idea of it, and I thought that perhaps my books might be allowed to speak for me.

ROMANCIST. We have got beyond that stage. Romance (that is to say, fiction) has been defined by one of its followers as "not nature, it is not character, it is not imagined history; it is fallacy, poetic fallacy; a lie, if you like, a beautiful lie, a lie that is at once false and true-false to fact, true to faith."

(The Ghosts look at each other apprehensively.)

Sir WALTER.-Would you mind repeating that? (Romancist repeats it.) And are my novels all that? To think of their being that, and I never knew! I give you my word, sir, that when I wrote "Ivanhoe," for example, I merely wanted. to-to tell a story.

REALIST. Still, in your treatment of the Templar, you boldly cast off the chains of Romanticism and rise to Realism.

ELSMERIAN. To do you justice, the Templar seems to have religious doubts.

66

STYLIST.-I once wrote a little paper on your probable reasons for using the word wand" in circumstances that would perhaps have justified the use of reed." I have not published it.

66

Sir WALTER.-This would be more gratifying to me if I thought that I deserved it.

AMERICAN. I remember reading "Ivanhoe" before I knew any better; but even then I thought it poor stuff. There is no analysis in it worthy of the name. Why did Rowena drop her handkerchief Instead of telling us that, you prance off after a band of archers. you really believe that intellectual men and women are interested in tournaments ?

Do

Sir WALTER.-You have grown so old since my day. Besides, I have admitted that the Waverley novels were written simply to entertain the public. ELSMERIAN.-No one, I hope, reads my stories for entertainment. We have become serious now.

AMERICAN. I have thought at times that I could have made something of "Ivanhoe." Yes, sir, if the theme had been left to me I would have worked it out in a manner quite different from yours. In my mind's eye I can see my self developing the character of the hero. I would have made him more like ourselves. The Rebecca, too, I would have reduced in size. Of course the plot would have had to go overboard, with Robin Hood and Richard, and we would have had no fighting. Yes, it might be done. I would call it, let me see, I would call "Wilfrid a Study.' THACKERAY (timidly). found out what I am?

it,

Have you

AMERICAN. You are intolerably prosy. STYLIST. Some people called Philistines maintain that you are a Stylist; but evidently you forgot yourself too frequently for that.

ROMANCIST. You were a cynic, which kills romanticism.

REALIST. And men allow their wives to read you, so you don't belong to us.

AMERICAN (testily).—No, sir, you need not turn to me. You and I have nothing

in common.

DICKENS.-I am a— ?

REALIST. It is true that you wrote about the poor; but how did you treat them? Are they all women of the street and brawling ruffians? Instead of dwelling forever on their sodden misery, and gloating over their immorality, you positively regard them from a genial standpoint. I regret to have to say it, but you are a Romancist.

ROMANCIST.-No, no, Mr. Dickens, do not cross to me. You wrote with a purpose, sir. Remember Dotheboys Hall.

ELSMERIAN. A novel without a purpose is as a helmless ship.

DICKENS (aghast).—Then I am an Elsmerian?

ELSMERIAN.-Alas! you had no other purpose than to add to the material comforts of the people. Not one of your characters was troubled with religious doubts. Where does Mr. Pickwick pause

to ask himself why he should not be an atheist? You cannot answer. In these days of earnest self-communion we find Mr. Pickwick painfully wanting. How can readers rise from his pages in distress of mind? You never give them a chance. THACKERAY.-No, there is nothing sickly about Pickwick.

ELSMERIAN. Absolutely nothing. He is of a different world (I am forced to say this) from that in which my heroes move. Not, indeed, that they do move much. Give me a chair and a man with doubts, and I will give you a novel. He has only to sit on that chairSTYLIST. As I sit on mine, thinking, thinking, thinking about my style. DICKENS.-Young people in love are out of fashion in novels nowadays, I suppose?

ELSMERIAN. Two souls in doubt may meet and pule as one.

THACKERAY.As a novelist I had no loftier belief than this-that high art is high morality, and that the better the literature the more ennobling it must be.

REALIST.-And this man claimed to be one of us!

DICKENS. I wrote for a wide public (Stylist sighs), whom I loved (Realist sighs). I loved my characters, too (American sighs), they seemed so real to me (Romancist sighs), and so I liked to leave them happy. I believe I wanted to see the whole world happy (Elsmerian sighs).

Sir WALTER.-I also had that ambition. THACKERAY.-Do you even find Mr. Pickwick's humor offensive nowadays?

ROMANCIST.-To treat a character with humor is to lift him from his pedestal to the earth.

ELSMERIAN. -We have no patience with humor. In these days of anxious thought humor seems a trivial thing. The world has grown sadder since your time, and we novelists of to-day begin where you left off. Were I to write a continuation of "The Pickwick Papers," I could not treat the subject as Mr. Dickens did; I really could not.

STYLIST.-Humor is vulgar.

AMERICAN.-Humor, sir, has been refined and chastened since the infancy of fiction, and I am certain that were my humorous characters to meet yours mine would be made quite uncomfortable. Mr. Pickwick could not possibly be received

in the drawing-room of Sara H. Finney, and Sam Weller would be turned out of her kitchen. I believe I am not overstating the case when I say that one can positively laugh at your humor.

DICKENS. They used to laugh.
AMERICAN.-Ah, they never laugh at

mine.

DICKENS. But if I am not a Realist, nor a Romancist, nor an Eismerian, nor a St

AMERICAN. Oh, we have placed you. In Boston we could not live without placing everybody, and you are ticketed a caricaturist.

DICKENS (sighing).—I liked the old way best, of being simply a novelist.

AMERICAN. That was too barbarous for Boston. We have analyzed your methods, and found them puerile. You have no subtle insight into character. You could not have written a novel about a lady's reasons for passing the cruet. Nay, more, we find that you never drew either a lady or a gentleman Your subsidiary characters alone would rule you out of court. To us it is hard work to put all we have to say about a lady and gentleman who agree not to become engaged into three volumes. But you never send your hero twelve miles in a coach without adding another half-dozen characters to your list. There is no such lack of artistic barrenness in our school.

THACKERAY. And resuming this conversation. None of you happens to be the gentleman who is rewriting Shakespeare and Homer, I suppose? It is of no consequence; I-I only thought that if he had been here I would have liked to look at him. That is all.

FIELDING (looking at the sleeper).-He said he would take us back. (The novelists shake Mr. Stanley timidly, but he sleeps on.)

STYLIST (with a happy inspiration).Emin

Mr. STANLEY (starting to his feet).— You are ready? Fall in behind Quick mar

me.

Sir WALTER.-You won't mind carrying these books for us? (Gives Stanley samples of Realism, Elsmerism, etc.)

Mr. STANLEY.-Right. I shall give them to the first man we meet in Piccadilly to carry.

ROMANCIST (foolishly).-He may re

fuse.

Mr. STANLEY (grimly).—I think not. Now then

ELSMERIAN (good-naturedly).-A moment, sir. We have shown these gentlemen how the art of fiction has developed since their day, and now if they care to offer us a last word of advice

Sir WALTER.-We could not presume. THACKERAY.-As old-fashioned novelists of some repute at one time, we might say this: that perhaps if you thought and wrote less about your styles and methods and the aim of fiction, and, in short, forgot yourselves now and again in your stories, you might get on better with your work. Think it over.

Mr. STANLEY.—Quick march. (The novelists are left looking at each other self consciously.) -Contemporary Review.

Ir seems to me that above the dim portals of that vast and magic edifice already reared by Russian intellect to Russia's eternal glory, might be aptly inscribed Dante's fateful words, "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here." For verily

we are in a region of gloom, of sorrows so mysterious and profound, that our soul shrinks within us, and, overcome by anguish, we feel impelled to re-echo the despairing cry which recurs so frequently in Russian writings-What is to be done?

At least that is the impression made upon me by this sombre study, and I defy any one with sensitive nerves and a feeling heart to undertake with impunity a jour ney into this Inferno.

From the beginning of this century dates the sudden dawn and marvellous expansion of the singular literature which exerts over some minds so powerful a fascination. It requires very little insight to foresee that it is certain to exercise a still greater influence when all the significance of this manifestation of Russian thought is more generally felt and appreciated. To-day the Russians are our masters in a new school-we can sit at their feet and learn.

To many the name of Russia is associated only with crude ideas of Nihilism, of attempts to assassinate the Czar, of a people half-barbarous and plunged in utter ignorance, but of this Eastern giant slowly awakening to a consciousness of power, and destined perhaps to regenerate our old Europe by the divine gift of new ideas and a new religion, they know nothing. They may even peruse from curiosity some chance samples of this strange literature without seizing upon the sense of the mental and moral upheaval which either we ourselves or our children must witness. As yet, it is too early to prophesy events, we can only consider tendencies and study to some extent the men who, as depositaries of the sacred fire, have been preparing the way for mighty reforms. Among these I shall refer only to the great names which stand out as types, and resume in themselves the development of Russia during the last half-century. In them we shall find concentrated and sublimed the tears and aspirations and patient yearnings of a whole people. If their joys are bitterly ignored and remain unnoted, it is because in truth they cannot be said to exist.

Forced by circumstance, the Russians have raised the novel to the exalted position which it holds with us moderns as the faithful chronicle of the history of today. England can scarcely be called the initiator of this new departure, although to her is often attributed the honor. English novel is more limited in scope and mainly domestic, whereas the Russian novel is national, in the broadest sense of the word, and whosoever wishes to construct in the future the history of Russia

The

during this eventful century will have to turn to its novels for documents. And the reason is very simple. In Russia, owing to the rigid and brutal censorship exercised over the press, there was no other channel in which could run the floods of daring and inspired thoughts that all at once swept over the country-it was the only channel not open to suspicion. Autocracies are proverbially stupid, and this one was no exception. Thus veiled, it allowed to pass unchallenged those barbed words which were to sting the conscience of a great and oppressed race deprived for centuries of its birthright, and arouse it to attention, but not to immediate action. Therein at present lies the weakness of the Slav temperament; with an immense capacity for reflection, Russians have as yet manifested but a limited power for action.

The Russian novel contains, therefore, within itself examples of poetry, history, and psychological studies such as the world has never seen equalled for minuteness, accuracy, and power. Mystical reveries, of infinite beauty and delicacy, satires so deadly true in their aim, so bitter in their hidden wrath, that the publication of one sufficed to overthrow the hideous anachronism of serfdom, an under-current of despair so subtle and profound that it manages to penetrate even our materialistic envelope, a probing into the mystery of existence with a persistency and intensity which are simply appalling in audacious conception; finally, the restless searching for an explanation to the cruel problem of life, the cry of the soul for a religion, for guidance, for peace. Nothing is sacred to these investigators, to these untiring searchers of the human heart, or rather all is sacred, but not beyond discussion; and these original minds, true products of a "virgin soil," have invested with new meaning all the old problems of existence.

The same adverse fate which, brooding over this unfortunate country, condemned it after a long and painful travail to give forth only the echoes of the anguish which tortures it, has, in like manner, inexorably maimed and shortened the lives of its most brilliant children. In no country could such a list of fatalities be enumerated, as overtaking contemporary talent almost as soon as their names began to be known, and to be carried from mouth to

mouth. To mention only some of these. Rykeieff was hanged as a conspirator in 1825; Pouschkine, Russia's greatest poet, was killed, at thirty-eight years of age, in a duel; Griboiedoff was assassinated at Teheran; Lermontoff, a well-known and most promising writer, was killed in a duel in the Caucasus at the age of thirty; Vénévitinoff died broken-hearted at twenty-two, his end hastened by the insults and outrages to which he was subjected; Koltzoff, at twenty-three, died of grief, caused him by his family; Belinsky fell a victim, at the age of thirty-five, to misery and hunger; Dostoïevsky, after sentence of death, was sent, at the age of twenty-two, for a slight offence, to the mines of Siberia forever; and lastly Gogol, who committed suicide when only forty-three. If, as is said, there comes "Misfortune to those who stone their prophets," then we can understand in some measure why the misfortunes of Russia are darker and deeper than those of any other land.

L

Until the commencement of this century there was no such thing as a national literature in Russia-in fact, one could scarcely say that there was any national feeling. The mass of the nation was made up of voiceless slaves, whose unintelligible murmurs had never been interpreted; the upper or governing classes prided themselves on introducing customs and modes of thought borrowed from France and Germany, as little national as possible. Since even reflected light is preferable to the drear night of ignorance, the scanty education then offered at the universities to the youth of that epoch, evoked longings for something higher, and many left their country to steep themselves more fully in the metaphysics of Germany, or the humanitarian philosophy of the French Revolution. The germ was deposited; it had but to fructify and develop, not into a servile imitation of well-known models, but into that rare and powerful literary florescence which we are at present considering. At first, doubtless, even among those possessed of undeniable genius, the influence of Western thought was clearly manifest, and in the works of Pouschkine, the first poet of any eminence, the trace of Byron is unmistakable. At the same time, it must not be forgotten that, after the deceptions due to the unfulfilled hopes engendered

by the terrible years of 1789-91, a wave of reaction and despair swept over many souls of a similar bent, simultaneously, and with almost irresistible force. For instance, Goethe gave us Werther and Faust, than which there are no gloomier contributions to modern pessimism; Byron drew from his lyre morbid strains that were not wholly theatrical, but represented a state of mind common to many; in France. Chateaubriand took up the same theme, and these great men had many imitators. So late as the middle of this century, the reverberation of these painful chords still continued in the work of Alfred de Musset, and in some of the early work of Georges Sand; and for a long period we fail to find the joyful note which is the prelude of a brighter day. I will not here discuss the reasons of the disappointment which seemed suddenly to overwhelm mankind. We can destroy rapidly, but we can only build up by dint of infinite pains and patience, and it is a truth we too often forget in our haste to regenerate the world.

The Russians inaugurated the modern realistic or naturalistic form of novel, around which so many storms have raged, and it is they who, backward in all else, and indebted to the West for every intellectual stimulus, have produced and fashioned this marvellous instrument of culture and progress. Yet it must be noted, never have the Russians sullied their pages with the inartistic enormities which we owe to the pen of the French father of naturalism. Nothing in either French, German, or English literature can equal this particular product of the Russian soil. The novel with us Westerns has not had the same function to fulfil, and did not need to be at once an instrument of enlightenment, comfort, counsel, and reform. Simple amusement is not even taken into consideration. As a result, an immense country has been gradually revolutionized, educated, uplifted to such an extent, and in so short a space of time that it is impossible to forecast the splendid future of a race which can give birth to such sons and daughters under such conditions. In fact, in the enthusiastic opinion of some admirers, the intellectual, if not material, empire of the world will some day be divided between the AngloSaxon and the Sclavonic races, two peoples as diverse in their aims and natures