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peculiar language is the Santipee language, in which the meaning of every word was reversed, so that English lies become truth in Santipee.' The most common form of all is the addition of a syllable to words. The favorite suffix is 'gry.' This 'gry' form is scattered over this country, being in Maine, New Jersey, Missouri, California, and in many other states. In some places it has been changed to gery, gary, gree, gre. Other endings are vers, vus, ful, etc."

"Many of these languages were handed down from mother to child or from older members of the family to younger ones, but in the great majority of cases they were learned from schoolmates. Sometimes they were gained by giving close attention to conversation held in them. One boy who had used a rather difficult language and which was always used to the exclusion of English by himself and mates on their rambles and camping parties, removed to another town where his schoolmates used an entirely different language. He found that his language was of very great benefit to him in the learning of this new language, and thus he soon got this other in mind and was often amused at the conversations concerning himself which the boys held in his presence, as they supposed him to be totally ignorant of their language just as other newcomers. Although the great majority of these languages were learned from others, yet a good number are pure inventions.

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Mr. Chrisman is fully convinced that the energy displayed by children in the construction of these languages should be turned to account.

"It only remains for a genius to find some way to lead this wonderful faculty of child-nature into the learning of useful foreign languages. The believer in Volapük surely will hold that this period of the child is the very time for the introduction of a worldlanguage, if such is possible or necessary."

WHY NOT A THEATRE IN EVERY VILLAGE?
A Hint from Switzerland.

N Blackwood's Magazine for September, Canon year to Selzach to see the Passion Play, which is rendered by the villagers in imitation of the famous original at Oberammergau.

THE THEATRE AS A UNIVERSITY.

It is impossible to overestimate the effect produced upon the peasants of Oberammergau by the habit of acting plays--sacred and profane. If in any other English or American village of the same size, similar pains were taken to train the laborers and peasants and handicraftsmen and housewives in the representation of the sacred or classical drama, the effect would be incalculable. It has been said that the circumstances of Oberammergau are so exceptional we have no right to expect that anything of the kind could be done in other villages.

But here we have Canon Rawnsley telling us the story of the Selzach Passion Play, as if for the express purpose of proving that what was done at Oberammergau can be done elsewhere.

WHAT WAS DONE AT SELZACH.

The following is the story as told to him by a friend whom he met at Selzach :

"In 1890 the mayor of the village, who, as the owner of the large watch making factory, is the principal employer of labor hereabout, happened to visit Oberammergau. He, with a few Selzach companions, was so impressed that he determined if possible to create on a simple scale some representation of the kind here in his own home. He knew his people well, and believed they would enter into it in the earnest spirit which alone could either justify or give success to the attempt. There was a natural love of music in the village—perhaps the making of watches may induce a feeling for time, as it certainly encourages a feeling for exactness; and he knew also that there was a native ability to act. The village dramatic society had proved that. Herr Schäfli, the mayor, is an enthusiast, and his enthusiasm has struck right through the village. You would be surprised how the players themselves have consulted books, have visited galleries to see old pictures."

HOW IT WAS BEGUN.

The first indispensable thing was to secure some one who could train the people. Fortunately, a new teacher had just been engaged in the schools who possessed more than ordinary musical ability:

"This new teacher threw himself into the scheme heart and soul, and at once set about the training of a choir and orchestra capable one day of undertaking the task. They are not a large community to furnish orchestra, choir, and players to the number of 200, as you will see to day. I think the villageman, woman and child-only numbers 1,500 inhabitants; but the village is united, there are no cliques or sets, and perhaps the very trade that occupies their hands--the trade of watch making-has sharp ened their wits. After little more than a year's training the Selzach choir performed Witt's Jubilee Mass' and Romberg's 'Lay of the Bell,' supplying both orchestra and voice for the rendering of these. They next undertook to present at Christ mas of the following year, 1892, Heming's 'Christmas Oratorio,' with readings and eight tableaux vivants interspersed in the musical part of it.

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formances at Höritz in Bohemia, they were enabled to present the play in the summer of 1893 with such care and reverence, such real religious feeling and devotional earnestness, as to disarm whatever hostile criticism existed, and to astonish all who came to see."

THE ENTHUSIASM OF THE STAGE.

Canon Rawnsley bears testimony to the astonishing enthusiasm with which those watchmakers of Selzach threw themselves into the new study in which they were enlisted. Speaking of the Selzach villagers, Canon Rawnsley says:

"In this play acting he is a working part of the whole, and feels the joy of completeness of labor. This in itself is a real recreation. You would be astonished at the amount of work in common which has been bestowed upon this representation to-day. All through the winter months the chorus and orchestra and players practiced or rehearsed five times a week, coming together at eight o'clock each evening, and often working on till one o'clock in the morning. This, for men who had to go to the factory or to begin their day's work at early hours in the morning, is proof positive that their hearts were in it."

The theatre in which the play is presented has been erected by the villagers themselves at a cost of $10,000, which is not bad considering the whole population of the village is 1,500. Probably those who declared that Oberammergau stood alone will now argue that Selzach is equally an exception; but until the experiment has been fairly tried by some enthusiast like Herr Schäfli in the United Kingdom or the United States, some people will continue to believe in the possibility of using the dramatic instinct latent in our people for purposes of religious and literary culture.

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"The usual function of institutions is to serve the individual in his development. The progress of society comes through the development of the individual. The state furnishes the freedom which results from protection against interference by others, and freedom must be had in order to make the realization of the individual, personal ideal possible. The college assists in gaining intellectual strength. It serves other ends, but serves this chiefly. The home plays a large part in the fulfillment of the individual ideal by giving opportunity for the perpetuation of life in children, and for gaining the completeness of the individual.

"The proper function of the church is like to that of the state, the college and the home. The church has all along been of service, though indirectly and by somewhat crude methods, in the struggle for self realization. The church, to perform its function, needs to render direct and skillful assistance. The ideal self is gained by personal growth, and if the church is to help in the gaining of this ideal self, it must be an institution for the production of development. But the production of development is education, and the church is, therefore, in the last analysis, an educational institution.

"A common use of the word 'educational' makes it mean the disciplinary processes connected with intellectual strength gathering. The process of strengthening physical life is called 'training.' But educational processes are not always directed toward the development of intellectual life. The gymnasium teacher is an educator. It is educational discipline by which he produces physical strength and perfect control of strength. The church, producing as it does a development of life, is in the full sense of the word an educational institution, and is to be classed with institutions of this kind.

"The special work of the church is the education of the ethical and religious life. The discipline of the college will contribute to this, and that of the church will contribute to intellectual development, but the centres of the activities of the two institutions are distinct. It is the business of the church to educate humanity into highly developed ethical and religious life.

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If the above analysis of the relation of the church to society is correct, it becomes clear that society has a right to ask each church organization to furnish each human being entrusted to its care a discipline calculated to produce growth into developed ethical and religious life. Each church is to be judged according to its fruits. The young, crude life of its children is to be skillfully assisted in its efforts to gain fully developed ethical and religious manhood and womanhood. That church which produces men and women who live intelligently and in perfect devotion to the fulfillment of their highest ideals, is the church that is greatest, because it serves society's needs."

A PRACTICAL SYSTEM.

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Starting with these high ideals, Mr. Fairchild has worked out a somewhat elaborate scheme of instruction which he terms a course of discipline." the controlling principles of which he states as follows:

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experience are to be impressed with the sociologic sanctions for conduct, to be stimulated by lectures in applied ethics and by the presentation of the beauty of ethical ideals. The crude methods of the churches of the ordinary type are to give place to more skillful."

The proposed course embraces ten grades, ranging from the kindergarten department of the children's school of ethics and religion, intended for children from six to eight years of age, up to the classes in religious philosophy, comparative religious and social problems for adults. The plan involves three leading departments, the Senior Church, with its religious and ethical services, the Junior Church, and the Children's School of Ethics and Religion. There will also be various clubs and classes supplementary to these. As Mr. Fairchild himself remarks, most well conducted churches are already working on these or similar lines. The advantage of such an outline as the one proposed by Mr. Fairchild seems to lie in its systematic arrangement of work and in the increased thoroughness likely to result therefrom. It is said that a large part of the plan has already been tried with success in Mr. Fairchild's Troy church. The necessities of the situation which confronts the ordinary church of to-day are well summarized in Mr. Fairchild's closing paragraph.

"In order to become an Educational Church, the ordinary church has but to give itself heart and soul to the perfecting of the ethical and religious life of its members, to look upon the children as worthy of skillful help, and to test itself by its ability to send forth into society men and women free from ethical crudeness, devoted to the fulfillment of their highest ideals, and aglow with the deep and wide sympathy which is religion."

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THE RELIGION OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. N the September Bookman appears an essay by W. J. Dawson on the religious element in the character of Robert Louis Stevenson as revealed in his work. As this side of Stevenson has received comparatively little attention from the critics, we commend to our readers Mr. Dawson's presentation of the subject, which is certainly suggestive.

"It would be easy to arrange in opposing categories the novelists who have a religious sense, and those who are destitute of it. The first usually spoil their art by making it the abject vehicle of something that they want to teach; the second usually fail of the most difficult success, because when they come to the greatest episodes of life they lack the spirituality which can alone interpret them aright. Stevenson belongs to neither of these classes. He does not profess that he has anything to teach, and has no temptation to the didactic. He aims at one thing only, to tell his story in what seems to him the completest and most perfect man

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His ethical views are to be found in his essays, and of these we are not speaking now. But nevertheless Stevenson is a moralist or nothing. The Scot can rarely escape the pressure of those profound and serious thoughts which constitute religion; and Stevenson carried religion in his very bones and marrow. That which gives his great scenes their most impressive element is not merely their force of imagination or truth; it is this subtle element of religion which colors them. The awful, the distant, the eternal, mix themselves in all his thoughts. The difference between a great scene of Scott and a great scene of Stevenson is that the first impresses us, but the second awes us. Words, phrases, sudden flashes of insight, linger in the mind and solemnize it. We feel that there is something we have not quite fathomed in the passage, and we return to it again to find it still unfathomable. Light of heart and brilliant as he can be, yet not Carlyle himself moved more indubitably in the presence of the immensities and eternities. Wonder and astonishment sit throned among his thoughts, the wonder of the awestruck child at divine mysteries, the enduring astonishment of the man who moves about in worlds not recognized. It is this intense religious sense of Stevenson which sets him in a place apart among his contemporaries; it is, to use his own phrase, a force that grasps him ' ineluctable as gravity.''

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"He knew what it meant, as he has put it, to go up the great bare staircase of his duty, uncheered and undepressed.' In the trials of a life unusually difficult, and pierced by the spear's points of the sharpest limitations, he preserved a splendid and unbroken fortitude. No man ever met life with a higher courage; it is safe to say that a man less courageous would not have lived nearly so long. There are few things more wonderful and admirable than the persistence of his energy; ill and compelled to silence, he still dictates his story in the dumb alphabet, and at his lowest ebb of health makes no complaint. And through all there runs a piety as invincible as his fortitude; a certain gaiety of soul that never deserts him; a faith in the ultimate rightness of destiny which holds him serene amid a sea of troubles. Neither his work nor his life have yet been justly apprehended, nor has the time yet come when a thoroughly accurate and balanced judgment is possible. But it will be a painful surprise to me if coming generations do not recognize his work as one of the chief treasures of our literature and the man himself as one of the most original, rare and entirely lovable men of genius of this or of any time."

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Under the curious, well-chosen title, "Ultima," M. Alphonse Daudet, in whose country house at Chamrosay M. de Goncourt spent the last week of his life, gives a touching and vivid record of the conversations and little events which preceded his dear friend and adopted father's last illness, and this closing chapter, dedicated to the friends of Edmond de Goncourt, is worthy to take place with that passage in the famous "Journal des Goncourt," where Edmond noted down day by day, hour by hour, during the June of 1870, the progress of his young brother's last illness and death.

Incidentally M. Daudet reiterates his determination not to become a member of the French Academy. Indeed, the die is now cast, for he is, by the terms of M. de Goncourt's will, the virtual head of the much discussed Acad mie de Goncourt, an institution which will have for its object that of providing eight or more young literary men with the wherewithal to live while producing masterpieces. During his long life Edmond de Goncourt often had occasion to see how lack of means hindered the production of good work, and what bitter struggles some of his own friends, notably Daudet and Zola, went through in their youth. Thanks to his and to his brother's generous thought, the mute inglorious Molière or Montaigne of the future will be given a chance of proving his worth.

THE ACADÉMIE DE GONCOURT.

On M. Daudet and the surviving members of this original Round Table will fall the delicate task of filling up each vacancy and selecting one from the many candidates who are sure to present themselves for election. Each member of the Académie de Goncourt will be entitled to an annuity of $1,400 a year, but on becoming one of the Forty-in other words, when he has joined the Académie Française -all his privileges in connection with the institution founded by the author of "Germinie Lacerteux" will cease entirely.

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Of this they speak very highly. They say:

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'It is strange that, up to the present, only the original drawings by the Old Master have been collected; though, during this century, and especially the latter half of it, original drawings in black and white have been made which are equal to those by Dürer. The work of Dürer, which we now rave over, and, in an ignorant fashion, try to imitate, was made for the people, even as were the drawings which Millais did for Once a Week, Good Words, and the Cornhill, or Moxon's edition of Tennyson.

WHERE HIS WORK IS TO BE FOUND. "In 1859 he commenced work for Once a Week, and his name appears on the cover of the new maga zine as one of the regular artist contributors. He continued during 1860 to work for it, and in the following year, with the starting of the Cornhill, he was given Framley Parsonage' to illustrate. this story he really finds himself. The last drawing in the volume, 'Is it not a Lie?' is as good, as distinguished, as anything he ever did in his life.”

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The Pennells say his drawings in black and white are distinctly English :

"Far more important, they are thoroughly artistic. Some, especially his illustrations for Trollope's Framley Parsonage,' 'Orley Farm,' and the Small House at Allingham,' are perfect presentments of the life of his own time, and the volumes which contain these masterpieces can be pur chased at out-of-the-way, second-hand book shops for eighteen pence each."

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his illustrations to the 'Parables of Our Lord,' a series of Bible pictures which, it is safe to say, have In these there is the same never been equaled. conviction and realism that one finds in the work The Parable Series of Rembrandt and the old men. was reprinted in 1864, in book form, by Routledge, and of all the books of this period it is the rarest. The prey and the sport of the Sunday school and the nursery, it has vanished. Some day the intelligent collector and dealer will struggle for this shockingly bound, pastel board printed, gilt-edged volume, as already he struggles for the etchings of Rembrandt and Whistler.

"The black and white art of the sixties was a genuine and original movement in this country, and to Sir J. E. Millais belongs the credit for much of it. At the exhibition, which is sure to be held before long, a room should be devoted to his contributions to what justly may be called 'the Golden Age of English Illustration.' To leave such a record in paint and print is to have made life for him worth living."

II. As a Painter.

In the Magazine of Art for September, Mr. M. H. Spielmann, the editor, mourns the loss of "England's greatest painter of the century :"

"Millais was the most universally beloved man, who, through his genius, has ever made his way into the heart and the affections of a A life of glory, prematurely cut nation. short, has been snatched away, leaving English art deprived of its brightest, if not its greatest, ornament."

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AN UNCOMPROMISING ENGLISHMAN.

Millais came of an old Jersey family, and he claimed that his family and that of the French Millet could be traced to a common ancestor. But there was nothing French about him, for Mr. Spielmann continues :

"He was an uncompromising Englishman—a point on which I would insist in view of the con tention urged by foreign critics that his attitude toward art was essentially a Latin' one; by which is roughly meant that the painter's business is to paint, exclusive of all considerations of the subject and the morality of it."

THE PRE-RAPHAELITE BROTHERHOOD. Mr. Spielmann's estimate of the art of Millais is interesting. Referring to the Biblical pictures, he writes:

"There was always that impressiveness in these religious works which belongs to manly sincerity and devotion; but they lacked the note of gradeur when Millais was left to himself. The Widow's Mite was intellectually inadequate-for in spite of the happy arrangement and composition of the work, the figure of Christ was lacking in divine dignity—just as in his latest work, 'The Forerun

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ner,' the figure of St. John was, as a creation, in-
tellectually deficient.

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Millais' great pictures of the Pre-Raphaelite period-in many qualities really great-are the combination of others' powers besides his own. His is the wonderful execution, the fine composition, the brilliant drawing; but Dante Rossetti's imagination was on one side of him, and Holman Hunt's intellect was on the other.

"There were some who could appreciate the religious symbolism which was one of the principles of the Brotherhood; others, though fewer, forgave the artist for the sake of his sincere and careful elaboration of detail; fewest of all who could see eye to eye with the painter how the 'Carpenter Shop' should be made like a carpenter's shop, and how realism, with eloquent symbolism enforced, could make as pious and passionate a piece of painting as the grace, the picturing, and attitudinizing of any of the Old Masters you may choose to name." It was reIn 1859 came the "Vale of Rest." ceived with a tumult of criticism and protest. How came Millais, then, to attain his high position in the art world? Mr. Spielmann makes answer :

"It was the universality of his genius in every section of the pictorial arts which constituted his claim to the position which he conquered. He was a dramatist with the true artist's instinct of leaving his drama unfinished, though sometimes suggested; he had feeling for color unsurpassed in England; his drawing was irreproachable; his line and composition were almost inspired; his black and white has never been excelled. In portraiture, in landscape, in flower painting, as well as in simple drama, he has been supreme."

THE TRUE DUKE OF WELLINGTON.

MAJOR-GEN. MAURICE contributes to the

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Cornhill Magazine for Spetember an article, the effect if not the object of which is to give us a picture of the Iron Duke much less ideal than the somewhat glorified picture round which patriotism and gratitude have thrown a mythical halo. onel Maurice's Duke was a strong, hard man, by no Besides means a lovable or amiable personage. these disagreeable qualities in private life, he charges him with having done an injustice to the army. Colonel Maurice says:

"It always seems to me that the disorders of the retreat from Burgos, and the famous circular letter dated Frenada, November 28, 1812, in which he frankly scolded the whole army for them, made a complete change in his feelings toward the men who had fought under him, and in theirs to him. Even Maxwell, his devoted and enthusiastic biographer, is obliged to admit that, as addressed to the whole army, it was thoroughly unjust. It did the worst thing that reproof addressed to the correction of abuses can do.

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