: be said as everyone that reads him must come under his spell. Modern in background and setting, his stories have all the charm of a piece of ancient tapestry that records the romantic deeds of bygone days. In surrounding commonplace with an atmosphere of fantasy :-in weaving a web of romance out of everyday life and matter-of-fact people, and running a thread of far reaching thought through the tissue of it:-in showing the subtle inter-relationship of spirit and matter-of the seen and unseen-of Past, Present and Future in connection with the long arm of circumstance, Hawthorne is well-nigh unapproachable. His play of fancy is like a powerful lamp searching the murky depths and devious recesses of the human heart, and revealing the multifarious motives that lead to fateful deeds. In the New World of the hustling United States, he re-discovered for us, by his brilliant imagination, that older realm of Romance that lies within reach of our own minds, and is undisturbed by trusts and revolutions. Better known, perhaps, as a writer of perfervid prose, Maeterlinck began his career as the author of "Princess Maleine," and the "The Intruder." In some respects an imitator of Hawthorne in making abstractions more vivid than actual realities, he has not Hawthorne's Shakespearean tenderness of sympathy for humanity, that tones down the harsher aspects of life, as nature hides the scars of a battlefield. His dramatis persona are like spectres speaking to themselves in a city of the dead, and the reader must be very impervious to impression who does not, more or less, feel the glamour of Maeterlinck's gruesome art. Without any violent incidents, the drama of “The Intruder" might fitly be called a study in sensations. The scene of the one act is a dimly lighted room in an old country house. A glass door looks out on an avenue bordered by trees. A grandfather, father, uncle and three granddaughters are seated round a table anxiously waiting for a sister, the Superior of a convent, who is coming to visit the wife and mother, lying ill of childbirth in an inner room. The few-days old child, deaf and dumb, is in another chamber. The time is evening, and the house is perfectly still. The members of the family speak in low tones: discussing the mother's illness, and the long delay of the sister. After a long pause, the grandfather becomes uneasy and at his request, the eldest grandaughter opens the glass door, and looks down the moonlit avenue of cypress trees. Nightgales are heard singing in the distance. A little wind rises: the trees tremble. Suddenly the nightingales cease singing. The family think someone is coming, because the swans are scared, and the fish rise in the pond. Yet, very strangely, the watch dogs do not bark. The rose leaves are falling in the garden, and the grandfather complains that a cold wind is penetrating into the room. All the rest try to close the door, though something they cannot understand, prevents them from doing so. In the stillness of a long pause, the sound of a scythe being sharpened is heard near the house, and afterwards, the sound of mowing; but no one can see the mower. The lamp in the room begins to burn badly, and the grandfather goes to sleep. The others talk about the terribleness of old age and blindness. It has grown late when the grandfather awakens. A noise of someone walking into the house is heard someone with light footsteps-and they feel certain the sister is coming at last. But no one appears. Tired of waiting, the servant is rung for, and she is asked for whom was the door opened. She replies: it was opened for no one, but it was closed by her because she found it open, although no one had entered. Then the grandfather asks who came upstairs with the servant. When he is informed that she came alone, he declares that another person did accompany her, and is now sitting at table with them. In the distressing scene that follows, he asserts that he is being deceived: that either the doctor or the sister has come; that he is sure his sick daughter is worse; and that, because of his blindness, the truth is being kept from him. Another period of silence and suspense ensues, and the tension produces a state of unbearable nervousness. Suddenly, the clock strikes twelve; cries of terror are heard from the child's room: the door of the sick chamber opens: a nurse appears at the same moment, making the sign of the cross on her breast: and the scene ends. From the weird horror of this short play, it is not easy to escape; its grip is like a hand of ice, "freezing the genial current of the soul." It is a marvel of constructive skill and simplicity of treatment. The dialogue is severely simple and restrained, and frequently repetitive: but each word has its place: and every question and answer is carefully calculated to lead up to the effect of the final catastrophe. In no sense a problem play, it is simply a record of multiplied impressions suggested by the presence of the supernatural visitor acting on an abnormally apprehensive mind. For compression, clearness of statement, and imaginative power, this short play is not surpassed in contemporary drama-even by Ibsen. The highest art and the highest literature are suggestive as the world in which we live is only a suggestion of one infinitely vaster and more beautiful. IN a former Paper on this subject* we dealt with history rather than with inference or deduction-with facts rather than with the real or supposed influence those facts may have had on life. The instances brought forward therein were not selected at random, but with a definite purpose. There was a certain end in view in each case, from which we might form some opinion. That those opinions would always be conclusive, that everyone would come to the same opinion in every instance, we do not think probable. But that there would be a general uniformity, after looking at the facts all round and broadly considering their bearing, we do not doubt. This general uniformity, this wholeness of opinion, will possess many facets, each one presenting some feature peculiar to itself, and yet linking itself to the whole. Among the instances of Art work brought forward, we mentioned such widely separated ones as the Aztec picturewriting and Michel Angelo's "Last Judgment." Between these there is indeed "a great gulf fixed," which it may seem impossible to bridge. But fixed deep in man's being, the working of the same power, the same fundamental law, gave birth to each. * Papers of the Manchester Literary Club, 1906, page 472. The origin of Art has been found in man's love of play; in his desire to imitate the things he sees around him, to make something; in his longing for some tangible form representing the dread unseen beings whom he fears or worships; in his fondness for ornament and decoration. It is easy to find many instances in which each of these seems to have been the motive power, the stimulus which led to their production. From these we may ascend higher and higher until we come to the greatest achievements of the world's Art, in which the full power of man's intelligence, his most deeply felt emotions, and the highest faculties of his imagination, have combined to produce them. II. In considering the philosophy of Art in relation to life, we must endeavour to discover how far art itself has been good in its influence. How, and in what way, either directly or indirectly, or in both, it has improved and elevated morals and manners. Whether its influence has always caused advance; and whether it has sometimes not only been powerless but produced decadence. We are well aware that many will have it that Art has nothing to do with morals, and they become impatient if the two are brought together or spoken of as in any way connected. This view we do not agree with, and we shall endeavour to point out in what manner Art seems to us to be a very powerful factor in determining not only moral, but also immoral, tendencies. Art has always been spoken of as an important element in Civilization, and it has become the practice to estimate the degree of civilization attained by those races which existed prior to the dawn of history, by the character of the remains of their works of art-in building, in pottery, in articles of use and adornment. In later times also, the works of art of the different |