'I owe an immense debt to the poets,' he says, 'not only because I have found in them the greatest and best of moral teachers, who revealed to me the purest truths on which it is possible to live, but also because they have illumined many a dark hour, and have added sunlight to many a bright one, by noble lessons set to natural music in noble words. They have helped me to hang the picture gallery of imagination with lovely and delightful scenes, and to take refuge from any storm which might beat upon me from without, in that flood of unquenchable sunshine which they had kindled for me within.'

Other books, however, had some influence upon him, and men who wrote prose as well as those who wrote verse:

“In his early manhood no preacher influenced him more than Frederick Denison Maurice, to whose pure, noble life Dean Farrar has paid many eloquent tributes. But one sermon preached by his friend and teacher stands out prominently from others. It was on the text, 'Now the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal,' and the Dean is fond of descibing it as 'the noblest sermon of ancient or modern times."

Mrs. Tooley adds an item of personal detail, which may interest many. Dean Farrar always begins to compose his Sunday sermon on Monday. It is always written in full, and read from the pulpit:

"For, in spite of his natural gift of oratory, he adheres to this method, believing it to have been commended by the greatest preachers; and while he deplores the lack of elocutionary training at the universities, he says that if he began life over again he should write and read his sermons."

Ο

THEODOR MADSEN.

To the July-Angust number of Samtiden Herr

H. C. Hansen contributes a critical and very interesting article, dated from Oxford, on the works of the Norwegian author, Theodor Madsen. In the writings of none other of the younger Norse littérateurs will we find, says Herr Hansen, so strong a personal and logically worked out view of life as shines out in those of Theodor Madsen. The reflective mind, desirous of seeing the thoughts of the times on broad lines, will find a study of this author will repay them. Apart from this, however, Theodor Madsen's work has, of course, its literary value also, acknowledged not only by noted critics, but by a wide and grateful circle of readers. It may seem strange at first that Madsen should have won grateful readers, for, as a pessimist, there is little enough of the encouraging and cheering in the pictures he unrolls before us. But the fact of the matter is, writes Herr Hansen, that to reflecting and pondering folk-and there are plenty such in our day-the chief thing is that here, in Madsen's books, their reflections and broodings find proper expression, and truth comes to light. That the truth is gruesome and bitter is another matter

altogether; it is a comfort, nevertheless, that the truth is told, be the truth never so comfortless. When one has brooded himself into despair over the world's illimitable pain and sin and meaninglessness, and has at the same time stared himself into a fury at the dull crowd moving along in slow nerved self conceit, happy in the midst of all the misery, it does his heart good to see the misery un masked and this clownish contentment put into pillory. Must we choose between truth and happiness; it is truth that will win, for happiness that is not true cannot be happiness, while truth, though it lead to direct misery, will always be truth. Therefore the soul that has tortured itself with its broodings rejoices when it finds in literature some powerful and striking expression for the misery it feels as deeply but cannot voice. To many readers, too, the pessimism of Theodor Madsen brings hope of a betterment of life's conditions. A true and faithful picture of the reality teaches us to understand human nature with all its weaknesses and infirmities, its temptations and its sorrows; and out of this understanding will grow a higher love, or at least a greater sympathy with the passions of our fellow humans, and out of a greater sympathy will be born a better life.

Since 1884 Theodor Madsen has written several novelettes, but it was in 1890 that the first of his larger works was published-a novel entitled "Adrift." In this he shows himself most closely as a realist, though in no wise a slavish imitator of Zola. The realistic movement, as we know, is the result of the reaction against romance :

"The flight of romance from reality into the land of dreams could not for long satisfy humanity; reality would not be driven away by the witchcraft of dreams; reality would force itself through in spite of all, and will at last be master. The strange part about this reaction, however, is that reality alone was taken for nature; one forgot the soul, or thought of it only as a sort of inferior form of nature. Human passions, love and hate, were, as Taine has it, products like vitriol and sugar.' And so the reaction against romance has not become a higher, richer, more concrete conception of life; it has become, instead, a lower, poorer, more abstract Had the reaction been a real step forward, it would have led to objective realism; but it has only led to naturalism.

one.

"The realist must be also a determinist; he has no concrete conception of liberty; to him liberty is but the negative abstract and meaningless. For the necessary laws of nature he has an open eye; but any other than the laws of nature he cannot see. Such forces as disinterested friendship, selfdenying love, morality and religion he drags down among the blind forces of nature, where they are wholly out of place-relegates them to the blind laws of necessity, and, if they were permitted to keep their names, they are robbed, nevertheless of their spirit."

His

Such a realist and determinist is Madsen. characters, the higher no less than the lower sort, must always yield to the hard law of necessity. "Adrift concerns itself with a group of unhappy humans, whose sexual life has been thrown out of balance, and who, with no will, no moral, nothing to grip hold of, lose their footing and get adrift like the spars that out at sea toss round at mercy of wind and weather. A lyrical tone runs through the book "like a silent, but powerful under current,' giving it its deeper value by the background of higher thoughts and aims it gives to the blind passions. Of the head character, Edward Orlow, a composite and very interesting personality, a critic has said, "In the whole of our literature this is a unique creation." Gifted with an uncommonly sharp and clear intelligence, Orlow has at the same time an imagination so strong that it readily becomes a disease. He suffers alternately from two tortures, his strong sexual desires and a fearful remorse. Pessimistically colored throughout, a happy ending to "Adrift" is out of the question. The love story of the two most sympathetic characters in the book-the young girl Karoline and her true hearted sailor lover -is in itself a tragedy, and toward the conclusion we see the unhappy Orlow sinking helplessly into "insanity's night."

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God's Finger," Madsen's second novel, was published in 1893. This book is less realistic, in the ordinary sense of the term. It takes less heed of dead nature and the surroundings of its characters; it is rather of the psychological class, confining itself to the portrayal of soul-life and inner development. But the view of life which forms a philosophical background to the book may itself be termed realistic. On no side does any free soul force break through and make itself master ; on the contrary, we find everywhere the hard law of necessity conquering. Morals are represented solely by the casualty of things;" and they are hard morals indeed. "It is true enough in a sense, for we humans are not free souls; we are things of nature, akin to animals and plants; ay, brave Ovid was right when he told us that we, in a sense, are descended from the stones. 'Inde genus durum sumus experiensque laborum-et documenta damus, qua simus origine nati.'" And such human documents Theodor Madsen has given us in both his novels.

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"God's Finger" is the story of an unhappy marriage between a young man and an elderly woman, his inferior in character and culture. The marriage may be said to have come to pass by accident; Thorvald Münther is wholly inexperienced and ig norant in love affairs; he has no deeper love for Lully, but he thinks he ought to marry her in order to repair a false step; she is much more experi enced-a woman, in fact, with a history-but she has many good and pleasing traits and is altogether a fair sample of the average ; one of her chief character istics being her great respect for "people" and for

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"what people will say." Thorvald has many psychic features in common with the Orlow of Adrift," being in the highest degree nervous and shy. He is, however, of a less sensual nature and of artistic and literary tastes and gifts, which he cultivates in secret and hides from other eyes, letting a "friend" publish his talented writings in his own name and put a goodly portion of the honorarium into his own pocket. Naturally his conjugal life with Lully becomes more and more wretched, full of discontent and bickerings and mutual reproach; she does not become younger or more beautiful as time goes on, and he falls in love with another. Finally, when Lully's sudden death from an unknown inward complaint sets him free, he is suspected of murder, and his imagination begins a headlong gallop. An old wife lets him see that he is suspected and he goes in daily fear of being openly accused. There is plenty of circumstantial evidence; the suddenness of the death, their well known unhappiness, his relations with another woman; and then he cannot deny to himself that he has wished his wife dead. The anguish that seizes him is protrayed in a masterly fashion. The end of it is he throws himself in distraction on the railway line to be mangled to death. And, as his body is carried into his room, the old wife and some of her sister gossips put their heads together and see in the tragedy a punishment from God. It is “God's Finger." The author himself has, of course, repudiating the more Jewish than Christian idea of a revengeful God, chosen the title in cold sarcasm.

"A Jew dealer commissioned him to paint a picture, naming £100 as the price. Millais was delighted, and after six months' hard work' Ferdinand and Ariel' was completed. He was living at that time with his father and mother in Gower street, and the family circumstances were somewhat straitened. The £100 had been appropriated in advance to pay butcher and baker and candlestickmaker.' When the picture was finished, Millais asked the dealer to inspect it. He came, peered at it, sniffed round it, and turning to Millais, said, 'It is not the sort of thing I want; in fact, 1 don't like it at all. You can let some one else have it, and per haps some other time you will let me have the offer of something else,' and so he took his departure. This was a knock-down blow. Millals knew that his father and mother were waiting anxiously in the

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adjoining room to hear the result of the dealer's visit; but it was some time before he could summon courage to tell them. First my mother began to cry, then my father, and I am afraid that I was at it too!' 'Well it has just come to what I anticipated, and we must let one of our rooms,' was my father's rejoinder; and he straightway proceeded to write an announcement to that effect on a half sheet of notepaper, which he affixed by wafers to the windowpane. Just at that moment a ring came to the door and the doctor who used to attend the family was announced. He was accompanied by an elderly gentleman.'

66 When his visitors had left Millais sat down in despair to consider his situation. After a time his eye fell on the book, and on lifting it a piece of paper fluttered out. On picking it up he found a check for £150, and a line saying, I am glad to be the possessor of "Ferdinand and Ariel.” ' He rushed into the next room to tell his father and mother, and the first thing he saw was the ticket, 'Apartments to let,' on the window-pane. In an instant he had torn it down, crumpled it up and threw it in the fire. He used to say that he still recollected the feeling of the half-dry wafers coming away from the window-pane. In another moment, by way of explanation, the check was thrust into his inother's hand.”

THE BUSY AMERICAN.

Here is a characteristic story of a rich visitor from the United States:

"Sir,' he said, 'I wish to take a present back to my wife. She says she would like to have my portrait painted by the very best artist in the country. I have been told that you are the man. When can I have a sitting?' 'I am at present very busy,' said Millais. So am I,' was the reply. But I am a very expensive artist.' 'How much do you charge?' A large price was named. 'Shall I give you a check now?' Not at all,' said Millais, 'I merely mentioned it to prevent misunderstandings.' 'How many sittings will you require?' 'Five or six at the least.' 'If you can do it in fewer so much the better, for I am a very busy man and my time is valuable.' Millais enjoyed the manner in which his own plea of being busy had been met, and agreed to paint him."

Of the closing scene Dr. Macleod remarks:

"He was in absolute peace of soul. All his work had been finished. Not one canvas required a touch from that cunning hand. He looked at the future with more than calmness, resting himself wholly on God"

SIR

EDUCATION IN ENGLAND.

IR JOHN E. GORST, writing in the North American Review, asserts that the chief obstacles to the progress of education in England are party spirit and religious intolerance. Proposals for educational reform, he says, are discussed and decided, not in a philosophical spirit, but with all the acrimony of partisans.

"Yet it is admitted that the case is a very urgent one; that England is engaged in a struggle with her foreign competitors not only for the supremacy, but even for the very existence of her industries; that her workers are worse instructed than their rivals, and are on that account going to the wall; and that better education, both elementary and technical, is vital to the continuance of her prosperity. It is the fact that in both town and country elementary instruction is so backward that, even if adequate technical schools were provided, the mass of the people are unfitted to take full advantage of them. Yet, notwithstanding all this, English statesmen will postpone reform indefinitely if they can see their way to secure a party advantage thereby. The only hope is that public opinion may appreciate, before it is too late, the position of education, both elementary and technical; may become agreed as to the direction in which development ought to take place, and may force Parliament and the government to grapple with the difficulties which have to be overcome."

The reader is reminded that the origin of all education in England was voluntary, that there were no elementary schools established by public authority before 1870, no technical schools so established before 1890, and that there are now no public colleges for the training of teachers. The principle of the Education act of 1870 was the division of England into school districts consisting of the metropolis, the boroughs, and the parishes outside of boroughs. These districts could be compelled to form school boards, which were obligated to equip the necessary schools and which had the power to levy taxes to pay for such schools. In the metropolis and in the large county boroughs having their own school boards, where two-fifths of the children are to be found, it is conceded that the act of 1870 has worked well. The effect of the school board system in bor. oughs has been to raise the level of elementary education, and at the same time to increase its cost, but with the assent of the tax payers.

"There are two obstacles which hinder the full measure of success being attained. The first is the short time which the children remain in the element

ary schools. Till recently the age for exemption from full time attendance at school was ten. It is now eleven, and in some boroughs has been raised by by-laws to as much as thirteen. The value of the child's labor is too great a temptation to parents and employers, and the general interest the community have in keeping children longer at school is not sufficiently realized to counteract this strong

motive. But if we choose to sacrifice our children at so early an age to the necessities of their parents or to the industries of the country, we must not expect to find them so apt to receive technical instruction as the German or Swiss child who has been kept at school to the age of fourteen. Until the school age is raised English children cannot be turned out by the borough board schools as well equipped for further instruction as the Continental children who are to be their future rivals.

"The second obstacle to complete success is the fact that the school board system in boroughs does not cover the ground. Of seven children educated in boroughs, three are educated in voluntary schools, as against four in board schools, and these voluntary schools do not in general possess the means of giving so efficient an education in secular learning as the board schools."

Sir John Gorst declares, however, that the voluntary schools are not likely to be abolished, for two reasons-first, the saving in expense under the voluntary system, and second, the religious sentiment of many of the people.

In the rural schools, on the other hand, the act of 1870 seems to have been less successful. Schools under the charge of school boards are said to be generally inferior to the voluntary schools. "Yet there is no part of the country in which education is more necessary to the preservation of English industry. Manufacturing districts are still struggling against their foreign competitors, and are in many cases holding their own; but the agricultural interest is already beaten. The greater part of the food of the English people must of necessity be supplied by foreign competitors. But not only are bread and meat, the great staples of agricultural production, imported from abroad, but such articles as eggs, poultry, butter and vegetables, which might be produced in unlimited quantities at home, are supplied to a great extent from Normandy, Belgium, Holland and Denmark.

"If any one contrasts the elementary and technical instruction imparted to the children of the peasantry in these countries and in England, as well as the amounts spent by the respective governments thereon, there is no reason for surprise at the defeat of English agriculture; and it is impossible to refrain from asking whether better education of the people would not tend more to the relief of agricultural depression than remedies like bimetallism or protection. The understandings of all those who are connected with the cultivation of the soil appear to be darkened. The land owners exhibit that dislike to intellectual development which is characteristic of a territorial aristocracy; the farmers regard the imitation of the methods of their forefathers as the highest agricultural art and scoff at the teachings of science; and the laborer's children are turned out of school to scare crows when eleven years old, and often by the connivance of the school attendance officers, who are under the thumb of the farmers, at

a much earlier age. After leaving school the children get no further instruction; they have no means of keeping up the little knowledge they have obtained; and in a few years they forget everything they have learned, and are often incapable even of reading and writing. How can such a population compete with the French agriculturists, carefully trained in schools and colleges in the art they are to practice? The mere distribution of a capitation grant from governinent among the country schools would not raise rural education. Unless ear-marked and appropriated to specific purposes it would all go in relief of subscriptions and rates. As between board and voluntary schools, the case of the towns is reversed; in the country the latter are better off than the former; there is no competition and no necessity for leveling up as in the towns; the voluntary schools can hold their own without further pecuniary support."

This article, as a whole, presents a rather gloomy view of the British education situation. It is significant, however, as showing a tendency among British statesmen to seek other remedies than " bimetallism or protection" for agrarian ills.

PRES

THE SOCIAL MISSION OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOL. RESIDENT HYDE of Bowdoin College writes in the Educational Review on proposed improvements in our public school system, with reference to the social ideal of education. As desirable reforms he names the introduction of physical culture, manual training, flexibility of programmes, with frequent "irregular " promotions, training of the powers of observation, and the familiarizing of the pupil with the best literature. He says:

"A school system where the promotion is frequent, and the programme is flexible, and instruction is personal and individual and examination is rational and natural, and where the great topics which call out youthful enthusiasm and minister to intellectual and social delight are introduced as early and rapidly as they can be appreciated and enjoyed; a school system like that is infinitely pref erable to a system where everybody must take the same course in the same time in the same way; and be worried once in so often over the same ar bitrary and formal examinations, and waste the same number of precious years in the same dreary and monotonous drudgery upon subjects which have long since lost all interest and charm. The wealthy and intelligent portion of the community are begining to understand that the public school of to-day is not the ideal school; and that fact constitutes the crisis of the hour. Shall this demand of the intelligent and wealthy parents be met by private schools to which the children of the more favored classes shall be sent, and by leaving the public schools exclusively for the poorer children whose parents cannot afford to send them to a better

school? The moment that policy is permitted to prevail, the public school receives a more fatal blow than it was ever in the power of politician or ecclesiastic to inflict. The public school will conquer every inferior rival. Its rivals, hitherto, both private and parochial, have been hopelessly inferior to the public school; and in spite of all opposition, the public school has thus far come out of every con flict magnificently triumphant. Unless the public school system itself responds at once to the new ideal it will, ere long, find itself confronted for the first time by a rival whose superiority to itself will render it really formidable.

IS THE PUBLIC SCHOOL SOCIALISTIC ?

"The public school is the institution which says that the poor boy, though he may eat coarser food, and wear a shabbier coat, and dwell in a smaller house and work earlier and later and harder than his rich companion, still shall have his eyes trained to behold the same glory in the heavens and the same beauty in the earth; shall have his mind developed to appreciate the same sweetness in music and the same loveliness in art; shall have his heart opened to enjoy the same literary treasures and the same philosophic truths; shall have his soul stirred by the same social influences and the same spiritual ideals as the children of his wealthier neighbors.

“The socialism of wealth, the equalization of material conditions, is at present an idle dream, a contradictory conception; toward which society can take, no doubt, a few faltering steps, but which no mechanical invention or constitutional device can hope to realize in our day. The socialism of the intellect, the offering to all of the true riches of an enlightened mind and a heart that is trained to love the true, the beautiful, and the good; this is a possibility for the children of every workingman; and the public school is the channel through which this common fund of intellectual and spiritual wealth is freely distributed alike to rich and poor.

"Here native and foreign born should meet to learn the common language and to cherish the common history and traditions of our country; here the son of the rich man should learn to respect the dignity of manual labor, and the daughter of the poor man should learn how to adorn and beautify her future humble home. Here all classes and conditions of men should meet together and form those bonds of fellowship, ties of sympathy, and community of interest and identity of aim, which will render them superior to all the divisive forces of sectarian religion, or partisan politics, or industrial antagonisms; and make them all contented adherents, strong supporters, firm defenders of that social order which must rest upon the intelligence, the sympathy, the fellowship, the unity of its constituent members."

HUMAN EVOLUTION: NATURAL OR ARTIFICIAL? An Argument Against Natural Selection.

Μ'

R. H. G. WELLS, whose remarkable essays in fiction have compelled every one to recognize that in him we have a new, daring and original thinker, contributes to the Fortnightly Review for October an article entitled "Human Evolution an Artificial Process," which is thoroughly character. istic of the man. Mr. Wells begins by challenging the doctrine that the evolution of man is brought about by natural selection. Natural selection, he says, operates by means of death. Only by a process of killing out the unfit, generation after generation, does it operate in producing efficiency. Now, says Mr. Wells, the human family breeds too slowly for this ruthless machine to get a chance of improving him much by killing off the unfit. The human family breeds very slowly. He does not begin to multiply until he is at least sixteen years old, and when he does begin to breed, his offspring are very few compared with those of, let us say, the rabbit. Then, again, the human dies a natural death for the most part; most other animals are killed off before they attain their full length of years.

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Taking all these points together, and assuming four generations of men to the century-a generous allowance and ten thousand years as the period of time that has elapsed since man entered upon the age of polished stone, it can scarcely be an exaggeration to say that he has had time only to undergo as much specific modification as the rabbit could get through in a century. Indeed, I believe it an exaggeration to say that he can possibly have undergone as much modification as the rabbit (under rapidly changing circumstances) would experience in fifty years.

Therefore, it appears to Mr. Wells impossible to believe that man has undergone anything but an infinitesimal alteration in his intrinsic nature since the age of unpolished stone. Now the age of unpolished stone, says Mr. Wells, has lasted the 100,000 years during which mankind slowly fashioned the wonderful instruments of articulate speech. Mr. Wells maintains that it is incredible that a moral disposition could be developed by natural selection. as the moral restraint was directly prejudicial to the interests of the species into which it was developed. How then was civilized man evolved? Mr. Wells' solution of the problem is as follows:

"That in civilized man we have, 1, an inherited factor, the natural man, who is the product of natural selection, the culminating ape, and a type of animal more obstinately unchangeable than any other living creature; and, 2, an acquired factor, the artificial man, the highly plastic creature of tradition, suggestion and reasoned thought. In the artificial man we have all that makes the comforts and securities of civilization a possibility. That factor and civilization have developed, and will develop together. And in this view, what we call