the winds winnow them over a continent. [Applause.] If at any time we consider the spontaneous sympa thies of men, we shall find that they gravitate to that which is noblest and best. Men may be found who make a great clatter with ferocious sentiments and inhuman doctrines, but they cannot assimilate them to the vital substance of their nature, any more than they can eat lignum-vitæ. Thank God! the human heart can never be bought! The lips, the acts, the soul, may be bought, not the heart; and the heart beats with thunderstrokes that cannot be repressed against the base, the cruel, the despotic thing. [Applause.] And so, whenever genuine chivalry flashes out, it is always recognized, and responsive sympathy proves it to be the deepest movement of the day and time. This sympathy for that which is right and good runs through every age. King Henry's "Follow my white plume!" Sidney's draught to the soldier, Nelson's battle-signal at Trafalgar, Lawrence's "Don't give up the ship!"—all such things as these jar upon chords that will vibrate while the world lasts. The world's heart throbs with the memory of Humboldt, while hardly a living pulse quickens at the name of Metternich. [Applause.]

But there are deeds which make the time chivalric, as well as the sentiment that is called by that name. Out of this commonplace drapery of the Nineteenth century, out of the thick folds of our sordidness and materialism, there break every day flashes of splendor and power, gleams of the grand romantic fire, like that which burned on many a field of the olden time. Think of men lighting their cigars in the trenches of the Redan, of the sergeant at the battle of the Alma, mortally wounded, and urged to give up the standard, still carrying it to the end of the action! Think of the helmsman on Lake Erie, who stood at the rudder of the burning vessel, while his hand cracked with the heat, held to his position by a sublime. sense of duty! Think of the boy on the sinking steamer, touching off the sentinel gun! Think of the soldiers standing by their guns as the ship went down, and firing a feu de joie as the waves closed over them! Take the toils and exposures and sacrifices which characterize even the scientific enterprises of the day, that devotion to sim

ple truth which dreads no climate and suffers every deprivation; that toils through the heart of Africa, and climbs to the Peak of Teneriffe, where Southern constellations burn. [Applause.] All these display the spirit of the olden valor.

I find the chivalry of the time not in the nature of the arena, or the drapery of the performer; but wherever there has been called out that which is most generous, most heroic in man-whether it walks the wards of Scutari or treads the ice-fields of the Northern Pole. Think at how many solitary posts of duty, under the attritions of hard fortune, the chill of neglect, and the harshness of scorn, the patient hand does its work, the sweet nature distils its love, the brave soul clings to its sublime loyalty to principle! The age that has such men and women has the elements of chivalry, though they make no proclamation of trumpet nor charge in the clanging lists. [Applause.]

Instances like those to which I have alluded are enough to refute the opinion that what was best in old ages has died out of our own. We may think them slight indications; still they show the electricity that is in our atmosphere, and that needs but occasion to become a burning light. But that which was noblest in the sentiment of old ages is the profoundest and mightiest spirit of our time: that was the sentiment of humanity--the idea of achievement for the weak, the dependent, the oppressed. It was this spirit, which was nothing else than the influence of Christianity flowing into the mold of the time, which converted the rude Teutonic soldier into a courteous knight, this which rendered him a barrier against wrong, a foe of tyranny and injustice. This was the glory of the chivalric age, better than its processions, its poets, or its animal courage. This is the element that justifies it in history, and this is the element that lives and works now, and more than anything else redeems our time from the charge of utter meanness. The sympathies of our time are all in this direction. Never before has there been such a profound conviction of the essential unity of the human race. Your ethnologies may break up mankind into a dozen tribes, each with distinct progenitors, and though the earth be striped all over with diversities of

color, shape, capacity, condition-the conviction only deepens, till it becomes the tritest of doctrines, that this wide banyan-tree of ranks and races has one deep root, one central stream of life, one human heart. In this fact we feel more and more the claim of every man—in the fact that he possesses this capable and mysterious heart. We ask for no other sign. We care not what limitation of intellect, what degradation of morals may be found, what analogies may be detected between something lower than man and him. Here is the only question we ask: Does he love and fear and hope and pray with the common ground-swell of humanity? Show us the poor Indian woman who lays down her child in the woods, and folds the little palms together, kisses the dumb lips that will never prattle more; show us the slave mother, hounded, fang-torn, with revolvers cracking behind her, and the rolling flood before, holding in her lacerated hands her babe close to her breast, with a grasp that only Death can loosen,—and in this spectacle there is that which climbs over all castes and bulwarks, enters radiant and perfumed homes, transmutes all distinctions, and strikes straight into humanity, with that "one touch which makes the whole world kin." [Loud applause.]

This, then, is the deepest sentiment of the age, and I thank God it is a commonplace sentiment, for, as such, it inspires and precipitates the noblest work of the age, and is the spring of the grandest events that move in the theatre of our time. No doubt its fruits are often mistaken, fanatical, absurd; but depend upon it, here open richest opportunities for human action, here is an unexhausted field, where man can most readily test the heroism, and faith, and love that is in him. The work of humanity that is the work of modern chivalry. Not a work such as called the old chivalry to battle for the Holy Sepulchre, but yet a work for the help and uplifting of those for whom He who triumphed over the sepulchre died; not taking the shape of that sentiment which "groined cathedral aisles," but yet a work for that which is more truly God's temple, and which His spirit fills.

Let all of us labor in this work, each in his sphere, and according to the measure of his ability. To him who, in this country, stands for God's truth and man's hope, a

long array of kindred spirits-kindred with the chivalry of all the past-rise up and salute: “Good knight! stout lance! Go forth and conquer! Go forth as one of the glorious succession of those who are here achieving a better future for this old earth, ripening as it rolls!" [Prolonged applause.]

JULES ARSENE CLARETIE

SHAKESPEARE AND MOLIÈRE

66

[Lecture by Jules Arsene Arnaud Claretie, academician, director of the Theatre Francais, since 1885 (born in Limoges, December 3, 1840; -), delivered at the Lyceum Theatre, London, on July 13, 1899. This lecture, which the London "Times characterized as 'full of grace, acuteness, and charm," was delivered by M. Claretie at the invitation of Sir Henry Irving and Sir Comyns Carr. Sir Charles Dilke returned thanks to M. Claretie; Mr. Forbes Robertson moved a vote of thanks to Sir Henry Irving; and M. Claretie in a few concluding words made a graceful reference to Mr. Robertson's "Hamlet."]

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:-Morning after morning, whenever I betake myself from my dwelling to the theatre of the Comédie Française, I pass by a statue which stands erect at a corner of my boulevard, and by another seated in front of the fountain that adorns the Rue de Richelieu. The first is the statue of Shakespeare on foot and, actorlike, grasping a scroll upon which, it may be assumed, one of his favorite parts has been inscribed; the second is that of Molière, thoughtful and contemplative in aspect and bearing. It seems to me that these two statues have set me the task which I undertook to fulfil when, at the instance of the organizers of this matinée, I consented to address you on the subject of the Great Tragedian and the Great Comedian.

I deem myself honored, ladies and gentlemen, highly honored, by the request preferred to me; but the honor thus conferred upon me is one fraught with strenuous danger, and I should almost regret its acceptance, were I not assured of your proverbial courtesy and your absolute good-will. Unquestionably it may appear somewhat audacious that a French man of letters should discourse