catalogue before us, and our friend Sadik Bey at hand as interpreter. It was touching to see the genuine anxiety of the old librarian to find any book my husband wished to see, and he was ably seconded by his assistants. They first brought us some exquisite Persian MSS., beautifully illuminated and bound; and when we made them understand that my husband would like to see any books in the library from India, they eagerly produced all they had, but they proved to be chiefly modern works on music. After they had brought us some fine MSS. of the Koran, with glossaries and commentaries, they asked us to walk about and examine the general contents of the building. The bookcases were of the best construction, with movable shelves, and at one end we found a very good collection of English, French and German classics. The centre of the room was occupied by glass cases, filled with gorgeously bound, illustrated works, chiefly gifts to the Sultan."

ΜΕ

IN PRAISE OF BARON HIRSCH.

R. ARNOLD WHITE contributes to the English Illustrated a tribute to the character of the late Baron Hirsch. Mr. White has been pained by the allegations made against his deceased friend, and chivalrously hastens to contradict them. He says: "Baron Hirsch was not only very good to me, but there grew up a friendship between us which, at all events on my side, was founded on respect for his character."

Mr. White recounts the steps which led to his being asked by the Baron to go to Russia for him and report on the condition of the poor Jews: "Before accepting the commission I made every possible investigation about Baron Hirsch's previous business career, and as far as my inquiries went-and I state the result for what it is worththere is no evidence whatever of dishonorable conduct in reference to the Turkish contracts.

As an Austrian Brassey, Baron Hirsch made a great but not a vast fortune on railway contracts; but the bulk of his gains came from other sources, to which public attention has not been called."

A HARD WORKING PHILANTHROPIST.

It is a great mistake to think of the Baron as the mere votary of pleasure :

"From 6 A. M., in summer he would work unceasingly at his charities, and especially at the Russian scheme. I have beside me as I write three large portfolios of his letters, which give evidence of a virile and sustained sympathy with the suffering and oppressed, which would be wholly beyond the capacity of a mere pleasure seeker. He gave a great deal more than his money. He gave his time, attention and intellect to the minute study of the problems he attacked for the benefit of his co-religionists and others. If Baron Hirsch was no saint-and he was

a far more delightful companion than some saints one has met -he was certainly no mere man of fashion. If he was a little too fond of play

ing the young man, it was only in the hours of relaxation. That he had a sustained feeling

of compassion for the submerged nine-tenths of the Jews of Russia and Poland, a hundred conversations I have had with him on the subject can testify."

6

To obtain the ukase under which the Jewish Colonization Association operates in Russia, "not a rouble had been spent in concilitation,' and the coveted signature had been obtained by straightforward negotiations, in the promotion of which there can now be no indiscretion in saying that his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales gave invaluable aid. It is only fair to the memory of the late Sir Robert Morier, late Ambassador to the Czar, that to him should be ascribed all the credit for final success. His efforts on behalf of the Jews were indefatigable."

HIS WILD WAGER.

A gruesome story is told in illustration of the Baron's reckless courage:

66

'When he was quite a young man-he himself told me the incident was true-he was in a town in Turkey where the cholera was raging. Some Austrian officers were there, and a conversation sprang up about courage. A bet was proposed and accepted by Hirsch that he would not pass the night on a bed with the corpse of a man who had died of the cholera, one condition being that the layer of the odds was to stand in the doorway all night and see that the wager was fairly won. This was done. Hirsch passed the night with the body, and won the bet. Next morning, as he and his friend were leaving the house, they encountered a funeral at the corner of the street, at which there was a block. The hastily made coffin, which was borne on men's shoulders, by some mischance fell, and in falling the body, that of a beautiful girl, rolled out of the shell into the street. The girl was the sister of the Austrian officer, who did not even know she was ill. The shock was so great to the brother that he fell to the ground, was immediately seized with cholera, and himself was a corpse within fortyeight hours."

66

HIS RELIGION.

Of the Baron's religious belief Mr. White says: In his youth he had a theological tutor, who presented to the future millionaire so vivid a contrast between precept and practice that forever afterward the dogmas of creed ceased to exercise any effect on his mind. There had been an idea of Hirsch becoming a Catholic, but he preferred to remain among his own people. As a matter of fact, however, he told me that he had never entered a synagogue for worship."

The sketch concludes with the pathetic remark: "Those who judge Baron Hirsch by the aspect he bore in society must necessarily misjudge him, for

to understand the keynote to his life one must have lost, or be about to lose, an only son."

IN

THE LATE BARON DE HIRSCH.

N the May number of the Menorah Monthly there is a brief characterization of Baron Moritz de Hirsch, whose recent death removed one of the truest and most tireless friends of his persecuted coreligionists.

The Menorah affirms that Baron de Hirsch, though a Jew, "passed by the forms and ceremonies of ritual life without heeding them, and probably on that account did the rabbis of Galicia mistrust his efforts in behalf of the education of the Jewish youth in Galicia and warned their followers against sending their boys to the school erected by his munificence and directed by men in whose integrity and disinterestedness he had confidence. He comes from a stock of faithful and observant Jews. His father was known as such and his uncle, Baron Joel von Hirsch, of Würzburg, was one of the pillars of orthodox Judaism. But his ideas seem to have been latitudinarian, and not until anti-Semitism became violently demonstrative and until the persecution of the Jews in Russia became a calamity which affected every member of the Jewish race did he become the active supporter of his people. He had a parallel in Adolph Cremieux. That great defender of his race and faith was probably ignorant what it meant and purported to be a Jew until the threatened massacre in Damascus, induced by a subject of France, made his heart quiver with emotion and hurled him into the arena of publicity as the defender of innocence and the vindicator of justice. These two men, high as their positions were, felt the ignominy to which the Jews were exposed to a greater degree than the immediate victims.

"The shaft sank deeper into their vitals than into that of the humbler members of their race. They were made to feel that their admission into the highest ranks of society partook more of the character of gracious toleration than of full equality. They were made to appreciate the fact that not until unconditional equality was accorded to the Jews the world over could the individual hope to occupy that position, though he may not always be made to feel it. And they therefore looked to education, enlightenment, culture, intellectual superiority, as the only redeemer, the only saviour from the degradation of centuries."

The Menorah quotes Baron de Hirsch as saying in explanation of his efforts on behalf of his own people:

"It is my desire, above all things, to prove to mankind that persecution alone has made the Jew what he is to day, by keeping him hemmed in and confined to certain pursuits.

"But, given freedom of action and an open field, he will be a successful agriculturist and make, in the next generation, an excellent husbandman.”

After recounting the series of discoveries and inventions which have claimed for Lord Kelvin a place second, in the judgment of some, to Newton only, the writer tells of one remarkable peculiarity:

"While the higher mathematics and all the mysteries of logarithms and the calculus are as easy to him as the alphabet, he often appears puzzled when a sum is presented to him in ordinary numerals. A question of simple addition placed this way on the board will sometimes lead to the query being put to the class or to an assistant, with a certain funny look of helplessness: How much is that?'""

NO MAN LESS SELF-CONSCIOUS.

Dr. Macleod bears willing witness to the beautiful character of this great childlike sage. He says:

"I never knew a man less self-conscious. He is absolutely without affectation or any thought of self-importance. He will converse with a nobody in a manner so respectful and attentive as to make that nobody imagine himself that he has been delightfully interesting and even informing to Lord Kelvin. This arises from the simplicity and sweetness of a great nature. There are, however, some things which do arouse that equable spirit into a white heat. In politics, for example, all the intensity of his native Irish blood became kindled during the Home Rule controversy against a measure which he deemed dangerous to the welfare of his country. Another subject never fails to rouse him. Let any one talk as believing in spiritualistic manifestations, and at once the calm man flashes out in indignant and contemptuous anger. He will have none of it!"

HIS ATTITUDE TO RELIGION.

"But no one is more reverent as regards all re ligious questions. He is neither agnostic nor materialist. His studies have led him into the widest fields of speculative research as to cosmogony and the destiny of the material universe. He has weighed everything, from atoms and molecules to sun, moon and stars; he has calculated the rate of loss of energy in the sun's heat; he has entered with zest on speculations as to the origin of life on this planet, and has seen in the dust of meteors suggestions as to the conceivable source of those seeds from which evolution has proceeded; he has dealt with Geologic time and Plutonic forces; but none of these fascinating and awful problems have ever shaken his faith in God. Like Newton and Fara

day, he can rise with reverent heart into the thought of the spritiual as well as material glory which has been revealed, and has continued a humble Christian worshipper. With deep interest I have listened to him and his friend, the Duke of Argyll, conversing on these subjects and speaking of the contradictions whereby some scientists deny design while they cannot write a page without employing terms which expressively involve it. A purer and nobler nature than that of Lord Kelvin I have never known."

THE

MR. JAMES BRYCE ON CECIL RHODES. 'HE July Century contains the third and concluding paper of Mr. James Bryce's "Impressions of South Africa." His explanatory account of the recent troubles does not bring out any new features. He prophesies a struggle for suffrage between Boer and Uitlander soon to come, and feels the importance of some movement to prevent a recurrence of the troubles of last December and January. "It is impossible," he says, in our times, for a minority to continue to rule over a large and increasing unenfranchised majority of people superior in intelligence and wealth, however strong the original position of the minority may have been, and whatever sympathy their attachment to their own simple and primitive life may evoke." Bryce does not look forward to a very phenomenal increase in the white population of South Africa. It is now about 750,000 and he thinks that it may still not exceed two millions twenty or thirty years hence, as the laboring population is colored, and will remain colored.

HIS TRIBUTE TO CECIL RHODES.

Mr.

'No man in South Africa has been more warmly attached to the British connection, or has done half so much to secure for Britain those vast territories to the west and to the north of the Transvaal, which were coveted by both the Transvaal Republic and by the German Empire. But in his political career in Cape Colony, of which he was prime minister from July, 1890, till January, 1896, Mr. Rhodes suc ceeded in obtaining the support of the Dutch party, and labored assiduously to bring about a unity of sentiment and aim between the Dutch and the British elements in the population. The energy and firmness of his character, and the grasp of political and economic questions which he has evinced, make him the most striking figure among the colonial statesmen of Britain in this generation. He has been deemed by some a less adroit parliamentarian than was the late Sir John Macdonald in Canada, but he is possessed of a far wider outlook and far more conspicuous executive capacity. The ascendancy which these gifts gave him enabled him, while extending British influence up to and beyond the Zambesi, at the same time to retain the confidence of that Dutch, or Afrikander, population which had least national sympathy with what is called an imperial British policy.'

KIPLING AS AN INDIAN JOURNALIST.

THE July McClure's opens with a capitai article

66

on Rudyard Kipling by E. K. Robinson, who was a colleague of Kipling's on the Civil and Military Gazette of Lahore, India. The creator of 'Mulvaney" has always been more or less of a mystery to Americans, even after he has come to reside in our midst, and Mr. Robinson's anecdotes of these old Indian days does more to bring us close to the man Kipling than any accounts we have seen before. Mr. Robinson confesses that he was at first disappointed with Kipling himself when he first met him ten years ago. "His face had not acquired

character and manhood and contrasted somewhat unpleasantly with his stoop acquired from much bending over an office table, his heavy eyebrows, his spectacles, and his sallow Anglo-Indian complexion; while his jerky speech and abrupt movements added to the unfavorable impression. But his conversation was brilliant, and his sterling character gleamed through the humorous light which shone behind his spectacles, and in ten minutes he fell into his natural place as the most striking member of a remarkably clever and charming family."

AN UNAPPRECIATED GENIUS.

64

Mr. Kipling's employer on the Civil and Military Gazette had very little opinion of his sub-editor's budding genius, and made no efforts to encourage it, and only now and then would the young man's bright humor find opportunity to flash in the introductory lines to summaries of government reports, political notes and borrowed paragraphs. In fact, Mr. Robinson was invited to join the staff of the Civil and Military Gazette for the purpose of putting, as the proprietor expressed it, some sparkle into the paper," a phrase which leads Mr. Robinson to remark: "When the staff of a journal consists of two men only, one of whom is Kipling, such an exhortation addressed to the other doubtless seems curious. But Kipling had the buoyancy of a cork, and, after his long office work, had still found spare energy to write those charming sketches and poems which in Soldiers Three' and the 'Departmental Ditties' gave him such fame as can be won in the narrow world of Anglo India."

A THOROUGHBRED AT WORK.

Mr. Robinson says of Kipling's attack on the daily drudgery in a newspaper office:

'My experience of him as a newspaper hack suggests, however, that if you want to find a man who will cheerfully do the office work of three men, you should catch a young genius. Like a blood horse between the shafts of a coal wagon, he may go near to bursting his heart in the effort, but he'll drag that wagon along as it ought to go. The amount of 'stuff' that Kipling got through in the day was indeed wonderful; and though I had more or less satisfactory assistants after he left, and the staff grew with the paper's prosperity, I am sure that

more solid work was done in that office when Kipling and I worked together than ever before or after."

KIPLING AND THE INK POT.

"There was one peculiarity of Kipling's work which I really must mention; namely, the amount of ink he used to throw about. In the heat of summer white cotton trousers and a thin vest constituted his office attire, and by the day's end he was spotted all over like a Dalmatian dog. He had a habit of dipping his pen frequently and deep into the inkpot, and as all his movements were abrupt, almost jerky, the ink used to fly. When he darted into my room, as he used to do about one thing or another in connection with the contents of the paper about a dozen times in the morning, I had to shout to him to stand off; otherwise, as I knew by experience, the abrupt halt he would make, and the flourish with which he placed the proof in his hand before me, would send the penful of ink-he always had a full pen in his hand-flying over me. Driving or sometimes walking home to breakfast in his light attire, plentifully besprinkled with ink, his spectacled face peeping out under an enormous, mushroom-shaped pith hat, Kipling was a quaint-looking object."

HIS MUSICAL TURN.

Kipling's verses are always written not only to music but as music, and the rhythmical catch of the native bands' discourses would inevitably set him hankering for pen and ink with which to dash off a set of verses in the spirit of the tune.

"I have before me now one of Kipling's poems of the Departmental Ditty' order which was never published. One of India's 'little wars' was in progress, and our special correspondent had telegraphed that, on account of our newspaper's comments on the composition of the general's staff, he had been boycotted by the general's orders. 'Here,' said I, handing the telegram to Kipling, 'is a subject for a nice little set of verses.

"Kipling read the telegram, thought a moment, then said: 'I have it. How would this do-" Rum tiddy um ti tum ti tum, Tra la la ti tum ti tum ?" (or words to that effect) hummed in notes that suggested a solo on the bugle. I was quite accustomed to having verses in their inceptional stage submitted in this shape for editorial approval; so I said that the poem sounded excellent, and returned to my work. In twenty minutes Kipling came to me with the verses, which commenced:

'General Sir Arthur Victorious Jones,

Great is vermilion splashed with gold.' "They were pointed and scathing; but, as I have said, were never published, subsequent telegrams showing that our correspondent had been mistaken. Kipling always conceived his verses in that wayas a tune, often a remarkably musical and, to me, novel tune."

"THE CASE AGAINST GOETHE.”

PROFES

ROFESSOR DOWDEN did a valiant thing when he availed himself of his position as president of the English Goethe Society to challenge Goethe's claims to be entered in the roll of the world's chief leaders of thought; and the editor of Cosmopolis is fortunate in securing the full text of the address for his June number. The professor deliberately assumes the role of Devil's Advocate, and pleads vigorously against Goethe's secular canonization.

As he remarks at the outset : "Concerning Goethe the British public have always had their doubts and scruples. Cervantes they have taken to their heart. Dante they place upon an altitude which they do not always choose to climb. Around Goethe a cloud of distrust has gathered, and as soon as it is dispersed the cloud gathers again."

66

HIS WANT OF PURPOSE.

For this prejudice good reasons are now furnished : 'Save for short spaces of time in his earlier years, he neglected to concentrate himself on his highest work. He lay open to the accidents of life, and allowed himself to be turned aside by them, instead of cleaving his way through them to his proper ends. Hence the inordinate mass of inferior productions. His most important writings are fragmentary or ill organized. He altered the forms of several, like an amateur experimenting, not like an artist who knows what he wants, and does it once and finally. Faust was laid by for years, was taken up again, laid by, and taken up once more; so that it has no vertebral column, or perhaps has many, but none complete. And it would have been fortunate if he had ceased to write ten years before the end."

HIS ARTISTIC INCONSTANCY.

The professor is equally severe upon Goethe's conduct of his life: "Goethe's life, like his chief writings, lacks unity and organization. It is rather a series of different lives each incomplete, placed one upon the top of another, than a single life embodying one great idea, and accomplishing one supreme work. . . . The order which a man of genius receives from his divine Commander, or from the dæmon within him, is to execute his alloted work, not to spend himself in a miscellany of casual occupations.

"His career as an artist, like his life as a man, is neither single nor homogeneous; it is, indeed, a succession of excursions and retreats. Goethe had no great tradition to determine his course and impel him onward. He experimented endlessly toward the creation of a new German literature; but a literature grows from the soil, and is not the manufacture of tentative culture. To what school of architecture does his shrine of art belong? Shall we say that it is designed in the Franco-AngloPersico-Greco-Roman German style?"

HIS RELATIONS WITH WOMEN.

The professor does not spare the poet's erotic irregularities: "Goethe's relations with women have been defended by that genial Scotchman, the late Professor Blackie, in a naïve argument. A poet, he says, naturally falls in love with beautiful objects, and of these objects a beautiful woman is the most attractive, being the finest piece of workmanship in the world of reasonable creatures. 'Let no man therefore take offense,' writes the professor, ✦ when I say roundly that Goethe was always falling in love, and that I consider this a great virtue in his character.' We should like to know Frederika Brion's or Frau von Stein's view of the masculine argument. Our censure of Goethe is not that he was passionate, but that he was deficient in passion."

With no depth of soil or strength of root his passions withered away.

HIS WANT OF INSIGHT.

The record of his travels, argues the professor, shows him singularly blind to the galleries of Florence and the genius of Giotto. Dante he failed to appreciate. "He described the 'Inferno as abominable, the Purgatorio' as dubious, the Paradiso ' as tiresome." Goethe was " a man of the eighteenth century, and his appreciation of classic art never rose above the level of his age."

Of his works no indulgent estimate is given. "Werther' is built upon the sands of simulated passion." "Wilhelm Meister" has as central idea a more definite sense of limitation, and thereby real expansion "—of which the professor remarks, "An excellent piece of morality for one who has begun ill." His optical writings "remain as a warning monument to those who would enter into science by a way other than the straight and narrow gate." Of" Elective Affinities," the immorality is deeper than that of an attack on marriage ;" it is an attack on the freedom of a rational will. While Europe was struggling for freedom "Goethe was on the side of the oppressors." His highest conception of political freedom was that enjoyed under a benevolent despotism. He had no patriotic lay for resurgent Germany.

66

The longer "Faust" is subject to criticism the "We cannot less does any unity appear in it. accept an ordinary love intrigue at the culmination of a stupendous mystery play." The second part is "an encyclopedia of Goethe's studies and thoughts, but not an organic poem."

HIS GREAT FAILURE,

Referring in the end to Goethe's boast about his works conferring an inward freedom, the professor agrees and retorts: "Unquestionably Goethe is right; his disciple acquires a certain inward freedom; he moves among ideas and among men, seeking to understand them all, and refusing to attach himself to any. He is free from the tyranny of

creeds, from the thraldom of enthusiasm, from devotion to a cause, from subjection to a passion. He is universally tolerant, and where no great claims are made he is even sympathetic. Goethe helps to emancipate him from all forms of bondage, except one-the bondage of self."

THE

A PESSIMISTIC RUSSIAN.

`HE July Lippincott's contains an article on "The Decadence of Russian Literature," signed "A Russian," which cannot say too much ill of the effects of the censorship of the press in the Czar's dominions. Aside from the direct influence which the Minister of the Interior exercises on the actual output of literature, the Russian authors have felt indirect impulses which are very destructive. "Being thwarted in every attempt to tell the truth, having every manuscript mutilated and sometimes entirely shorn of even common sense by the red ink of the censor, the authors began to change their style, to write metaphorically, to clothe their thoughts in all kinds of allegory in order to deceive the censor and let the public read between the lines." The consequence of this indirection, so "A Russian" thinks, is that the authors have gotten so accustomed to the roundabout phrases that they have ceased to understand themselves, and that many great talents have been ruined.

THE PERIODICALS OF MODERN RUSSIA. "The periodicals of the eighties and nineties are only feeble shadows of their brilliant predecessors of the late fifties, sixties, and part of the seventies. There are in Russia of to-day no independent newspapers of any kind; they are totally exterminated. Novoye Vremia, the only large daily of St. Petersburgh, is a shameless opportunist paper, without any defined principles, turning around with the wind and fighting to day for what it was fighting against yesterday. Among the monthlies the only survivor of the brilliant epoch of the sixties is the Viestnik Europi, which miraculously escaped the common fate by devoting itself principally to science and history. Although the number of periodicals is increased very materially, their intrinsic value is diminished in a still larger proportion."

Of the period of comparative freedom of the press from 1855 to 1865 and its galaxy of brilliant talents in literature, art and science, there is no survivor except Tolstoi, who is now over eighty years of age.

"To-day in the field of belles lettres there is not practically a single noted name except Korolenko, who began his literary career in the eighties, and who has already spent about ten years in prison and exile. Boborikin, a third-rate writer of the sixties and seventies, is the star. Nemirovitch Danchenko became a witty nothing. Potapenko is making up for quality by quantity; Chehov is dumb; Olga Shapir repeats herself in every new work. Twenty