Harper's New Monthly Magazine

"Through Asia." By

R. SVEN HEDIN, though still a young man, has placed his name in the first line of explorers of the largest continent by the results of three and a half years' work that led him from Russian Turkestan to Peking. He now describes his explorations in his book, Through Asia, the most conspicuous geographical work of the year. It was to be expected that a geographer who, from his boyhood, had been in scientific training for the researches he hoped to make in Asia, would do work of value and help to fill some of the wide gaps between regions in high Asia, whose geographic problems had been partly solved. This is what Dr. Hedin has done; and the great honors bestowed upon SVEN HEDIN. him by many leading geographical societies show the high estimation in which his work is held. Dr. Hedin's linguistic attainments have enabled him, in the past year, to deliver long lectures to audiences in several countries in their own vernacular. The fact that this young Swedish explorer, in the midst of his arduous work in the study and the field, should have found time to master our own language and make "Through Asia" so admirable in literary form, as well as in contents, is itself an achievement of no mean importance. The book will rank among the best that have been written on the high plateau and mountain regions of Asia. It deals with colossal phases of topography; with the effects of such environment upon human development; with experiences in the loftiest altitudes of the world and among burning sands where half his expedition perished; with the discovery of half-buried cities nearly hidden under sand-drifts, relics of Buddhist civilization before the Mohammedan invasion, and with many other results of the work of a keen and well-equipped geographer, whose book promises to be one of the geographic classics of Asia.

He completely traversed Asia, and on the way explored some of the intermediate regions which are least known. This plan led him first to pause near the "roof of the world," the Pamirs, among which he made three extended excursions, exploring the eastern, or Chinese, Pamirs in many directions. He was the first explorer to cross the Takla-Makan, the great western extension of the Gobi desert; and it was in this frightful waste that he nearly lost his life and made his important archæological discoveries. During his first crossing of the desert he was ten days without food, while no water passed his lips for nine days. His little party could push onward towards the river only in the cool of the night; and often by day they buried their bodies in the sand out of the sun's reach, sheltering their heads in the shade of their clothing hung on sticks. It was during these days of acute suffering that Hedin showed the stuff of which he is made. If death

had been his fate, it would have seized him with note-book and pencil in his hand. As his strength and buoyancy decreased he carefully recorded the lessening pulse-beats and symptoms of failing vigor. The scientific impulse was master even after he had crawled on hands and knees to the brink of a clear, cold stream. He wished to ascertain the effect upon his pulse of the reviving water; and so before he drank he paused to count his pulse-beats, then drank his fill, and counted his pulse again. It is enthusiastic devotion to the cause of discovery such as this that makes the heroes of science.

The work is copiously illustrated by Dr. Hedin's photographs. It is the most interesting record of exploration since Nansen's famous voyage and sledge journey, and it may be long before anything so excellent is again written on Asia.

MR. FREDERICK G. JACKSON has written a very spirited and interesting account of his three years' sojourn in Franz-Josef Land, from which be returned in September last year. His book, A Thousand Days in the Arctic, is the only one relating to this large and scattered mass of islands since the Austrians discovered them twenty-five years ago; and Mr. Jackson has revolutionized our ideas of this distant corner of the world, which is far nearer the pole than any other lands we know about, except those near North Greenland.

The archipelago of Franz-Josef Land has had a great fascination for arctic geographers ever since it was discovered. Mr. Jackson's book tells why this is so, and how it came about that he dispelled the cherished illusions concerning the group, and blasted the hopes that had been centred in it as a most convenient and desirable station on the way to the north pole. Jackson did a great deal more than upset the theories of the experts as to the prime importance of Franz-Josef Land as a base for future arctic work, for he made some highly important discoveries. "A Thousand African explorers are wont to say that it is the unexpected that always happens in Africa. This peculiarity of the Dark Continent was transferred to the arctic regions for Jackson's benefit, for it was the unexpected that confronted him at every turn he made in Franz-Josef Land. The information he gives in his volume was a great surprise to geographers, and they have had to surrender most of their preconceptions.

Days in the Arctic." By FREDERICK G. JACKSON.

The fact is the Austrian discoverers gave the world quite an incorrect idea of the archipelago, and their map of it was very misleading. While we follow Jackson, as he flounders through the snow on his long sledge journeys, it is interesting to observe his perplexity at first, when he tried to reconcile the facts before

a great soul in so far as that great soul could be undiplomatic enough to lay itself bare, it has an interest which reaches beyond the mere question of his influence on history-important as that may be-into a psychological realm, giving to those who read it carefully, not alone for its matter, but for its manner as well, some notion of the kind of man this was who so outstripped all his contemporaries. The narrative has all that lack of frankness which one might have expected from so reticent a personage, and is therefore characteristic. It was not the habit of the man to take the world into his confidence, and one may easily imagine the old Chancellor saying to himself, as he dictated the contents of these two volumes to the two gentlemen who aided him in the preparation of his Thoughts and Recollections, "What is proper for the world to know let the world read. As for me, I am, after all, an integral portion of the German Empire, and it is just as well. that, concerning certain matters of state, I should hold my own secrets, living or dead."

MR. SIDNEY WHITMAN, in the November issue of Harper's Magazine, writing of Bismarck's oratory, said: "Much has been written about Bismarck as a public speaker-for his published speeches fill twelve bulky Bismarck's volumes and a deal of arguStyle. ment has been sent to prove that he was indeed no orator. In a certain seuse this is and must be true. For if there was one thing he loathed, it was the art of the rhetorician the born mob - hypnotizer. He was no actor; he could be none, since he disliked the very rudiment of the art-self-conscious pose. But this does not mean that Bismarck could not speak effectively. This does not mean that he has not spoken with more lasting effect to a whole nation than have a full generation of gifted orators intoxicated with their own phraseology, whose efforts fade from human memory ere scarce the echo of their voice has died away. Bismarck was a child of Goethe herein-that he believed with Goethe,

For there just where ideas are lacking A word comes handy in the nick of time. That is to say, volubility of speech, too fluent readiness with empty phrases, was repugnant to him; it excited his suspicion. To hear him speak in public was to receive the impression that he was continuously engaged in a grim wrestle with his inner self to force out what a rugged nature refused to yield up without a struggle, the clear crystals of his pellucid mind."

Had Mr. Whitman, who had the good fortune to be one of Bismarck's intimates, written these words of the Prince's account of his own life, if so the volumes may be termed, they could not have been more happily chosen. There is nothing of the pose; there is no vol

ubility of speech; there is no too fluent readiness with empty phrases. There is through all the direct, incisive, overwhelmingly forceful manner of him who has been for longer than the memory of most of us the most vital of the living forces of European statecraftor, as a clear-visioned writer has elsewhere expressed it, "of an armor-clad knight of the Middle Ages come to life."

There are many thousands of readers to-day who rejoice in reading of the prowess of the men of old who went about crushing all before them, clad in knightly garb. In these volumes they have the story of one of these knights reincarnate, and whatever Bismarck's “Thoughts and Recollections" may lack in imaginative quality they more than make up in their wonderful reality.

Note from the London Academy.

IN connection with the publication of Prince Bismarck's Autobiography and comments of certain persons thereon, the following note from the London Academy of October 29, 1898, is not without interest: "The booksellers' windows in Berlin and elsewhere, which were recently hung with black-edged notices of special necrologues and memorials, are aflame to-day with yellow placards of the forthcoming Thoughts and Recollectious' of Prince Bismarck. It may be remembered that Dr. Busch's account of these memoirs described them as practically of very little value. He related that the ex-Chancellor's memory was failing when he dictated the work to Lothar Bucher, and, further, that his rage and resentment at his dismissal, and at all the circumstances attending it, had warped his judgment and his sense of truth. So far as these statements have been made known in Germany, they are taken as an attempt on Dr. Busch's part to assist the sale of his own

Secret Pages' by spoiling the market for the authentic work. But the name of Professor Horst Kohl-the editor of the Bismarck Annual, and the original nominee for the once projected chair of Bismarck in Leipsic University-who is preparing the Thoughts and Recollections' for the Cotta Press in Stuttgart, is accepted as a sufficient guarantee for the historical worth of the publication."

THE cold sifters of diaries and correspondences referred to a moment since would find it difficult to destroy the wonderful charm of the series of letters, now for the first time published, that passed between Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett in 1845 and 1846. While there is no similarity in the two volumes, one's mind in reading these delightfully intimate letters reverts to the title of Miss Auna Fuller's pretty little story published some years ago, "A Literary Courtship," for this is precisely what these letters amount to. Indeed,

The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett. 1845-6.

to so strong a degree does the sympathetic reader feel that these are genuine love-letters, unconfessed yet obviously so, that he finds himself somewhat oppressed by a sense of intrusion upon something not intended for his eyes. Courtship is a game for two, and the prying third party has no place in it; and to just the extent that he realizes the intimate nature of this correspondence the reader of a sensitive organization will at first feel somewhat guilty. There will come later, however, a mitigation in a grateful sense of a confidential relation established between authors and reader. The idea of intrusion will pass away, and the letters will be read with unmixed delight for the sheer beauty of them, not alone in sentiment, but in literary quality.

There has not been for many years anything in belles-lettres quite so satisfying as these almost daily missives of two poets who have left a deep impression upon the literature of their time, and in a day when so much that is ephemeral in its nature is being put forth by cruelly overworked presses it is a relief to find something that carries with it an assurance of permanence. The subtle and seductive humor, the incisive comments upon other men and other women, as well as upon each other, the wonderful intellectual comradeship of the correspondents, their unvaried frankness, and throughout a most appealing and pervasive atmosphere of sheer enjoyment in the interchange of ideas-these are a few of the qualities of the volumes which assure them of a welcome among the real treasures of all libraries which are inspired by a love of what is pure and good in literature.

No man who has touched so strongly upon the deeper chords of life as Thomas Hardy has done can be said not to be a poet. There is more real poetry in "Tess of the D'Urbervilles" alone than in "Wessex Poems." hundreds of other more preBy THOMAS HARDY. tentionsly poetical volumes. In the poetical handling of his prose Mr. Hardy has made a deep impression upon the literature of his time, and it is therefore somewhat to be regretted that in his metrical efforts he seems to be very far from his best. However greatly endowed he may be in other directions, Mr. Hardy has not the gift of song; the lyric quality is conspicuous by its absence from his poems, and as a result his poetry is difficult, even to one who can read Meredith at sight, and to whom the intricacies of Browning have taken on what a writer of olden time once referred to as "crystalline pelIncidity." It has been said of the vigorous verse of Mr. Kipling that it rises above the mere restraint of rhythm, but it should be added that it does not rise so far above that level that it loses itself in the hopelessly obscure. Mr. Kipling's poetry can be read aloud by one who has rehearsed it sufficiently with marvellous effect,

and none can deny that it has swing. Furthermore, Mr. Kipling deals in realities and not in abstractions, and when he is most formally formless one feels that his subject matter is perhaps resentful of the restraints of metre. Unfortunately, for Mr. Hardy no such extenuation can be urged, and unless his little collection of Wessex Poems was designed for the very fittest and fewest - for those who occasionally, in the need of purely intellectual recreation, seek out a mental gynasium where they may put their minds through a drastic course of training-one must feel that the usual success has not attended his efforts. The nearest approach to music in this collection is in The Sergeant's Song," and unhappily there comes with the reading of this a sense of wonderment that anything so essentially worthy of the comic muse of to-day should find a place in a volume otherwise given over to a consideration of the more significant facts of life.

Whatever interest there may prove to be in "Wessex Poems" will come from the fact that they were written by Mr. Hardy, and there is little room to doubt that those who read the poems will rejoice when their author comes into his own again in prose; for there is equally little room to doubt that in later years no man has shown himself more forceful in the delineation of life and character, and, despite detractors, more sure of a bigh place among the writers of English prose fiction, than the author of "Far from the Madding Crowd."

"Social Life

in the

British Army."

IT matters very little whether times be warlike or peaceful, man, old and young, and of either sex, is interested in the doings of the soldier. The civilian may object to being taxed for his maintenance,but he would no more be without him than without his daily bread; indeed, a most vociferous objector has been known to imperil his digestion by bolting his daily bread in order to get a good stance on a gutter kerb for the delight of seeing the soldier march by in all the glory of his gorgeous uniform. In campaign-times much is written about the man and his manners, about his diversions and his duties, and by degrees the public comes to know something of the kind of creature it is who is off shedding his blood on its behalf, but in peaceful days the warrior cuts less of a figure in the public prints than the football-player, the golfer, or the seaserpent. He bobs up occasionally in fiction, and Mr. Kipling has made of Tommy Atkins a live being even to those who never saw him. But Mr. Kipling's soldier has been an idealized reality. He is always up to some bit of mischief or of heroism-more often than not, too, the point of difference between the heroism and the mischief is not discerniblebut he is rarely to be caught at rest, and socially he is frequently impossible. In gen

eral, then, the public knows very little of the soldier, save when he is in action of one kind or another. The Sirdar, for instance, who has recently covered himself with glory in the Soudan, came to thousands of well-informed persons in the nature of a surprise. Three months ago Kitchener was a mere word. To-day it is a name, and a great one. We know now all about his heroic side, but all the time he has had his other side, and how he and his brother officers live when out of action possesses an interest which the anonymous author of Social Life in the British Army must have foreseen when he wrote his attractive little book.

The author, himself an officer of high standing in the army of her Majesty the Queen, lets us into some of the secrets of his profession-gives us a peep into the expense account of the favored individual who looks so well on parade, tells us of the difficulties that beset him in the selection of his chargers and polo ponies, dilates somewhat upon his clubs and what these cost him-in short, in a very pleasant, gossipy fashion, takes outsiders behind the scenes and shows all that is proper for the outsider to see. The volume is slight indeed, but its contents seem to cover the ground which the author had in mind, and whether regarded merely as a side-light upon a certain phase of British society or as a guide-book for the young and inexperienced subaltern, it amply and attractively fulfils its mission.

"The Day's
Work."
By RUDYARD
KIPLING.

and one might almost wish that it might be printed as a leaflet and distributed among the amiable masses who are discontented on demand rather than through any conviction of injustice. The good hard common-sense-the horse-sense, one might say--of the group of pasturing steeds on the Vermont farm when confronted by the seductive cloquence of the walking delegate-too indolent to work, too rebellious to serve, too vindictive to be trusted, too gluttonous to do anything but eat between speeches, too garrulous to do anything but speak between meals, and too ignorant to be of any use to his fellows-cannot but appeal to any one who has a sense of humor and a real knowledge of present problems. If Mr. Kipling had never written another line, this story would entitle him to the gratitude and admiration of all whose good opinion is worth having.

It would be too much to say that the other stories in "The Day's Work " are equally good. They are distinctly not so. "The Ship that Found Herself" is, frankly, unworthy of the anthor. If it had been the work of a parodist it might have sufficed, but in connection with the other narratives in the book it is ont of place, and one fears, in reading it, that the author has been carried away by the public's appreciation of "McAndrew's Hymn." The point in "McAndrew's Hymn" that appealed was the love of the engineer for his engine. It was not the engine that took hold, and Mr. Kipling should be told that when he writes of machinery successfully he is mistaken if he believes that it is the virtue of the piston-rod, or the suavity of the oil-can, or the grace of the wheel, or the vigor of the cog, or the effervescence of the boiler that has appealed to the reader. This is distinctly a false notion. It is the infusion of a human emotion into the story that has carried it through. A reader may fall in love with a villanous heroine who is yet a living creature, but it is too much to ask that he shall lavish affection, or even sympathy, upon a locomotive. One may admire a locomotive, and if one lives out-of-town one may be grateful to a locomotive, but it is hardly possible that in the abstract even a locomotive can be taken into one's heart and cherished as a friend.

MR. KIPLING continues his triumphant career with a reversion to the kind of work for which his genius is best suited. He is an undoubted master of the short story. As a writer of sustained fiction he has been disappointing. It is the episodical portions of his sustained work that give to it whatever degree of popularity and literary value it possesses; but as an observer and painter of detached phases of life it may be asserted with confidence that Mr. Kipling is without an equal among the literary personages of the day. In The Day's Work the qualities that have made him so vital a force in letters are gratifyingly insistent. The opening story, "The Bridge Builders," is particularly pleasing, for the reason that it is, in a sense, a composite of the author's earlier and stronger tales dealing with life in India--as in "Plain Tales from the Hills"-and those charming bits of fancy and allegory to be found in the incom parable "Jungle Books": a combination of virtues which makes the story doubly characteristic. One finds here, too, much satisfaction in renewing one's acquaintance with "The Walking Delegate," one of the most exquisitely humorous stories Mr. Kipling-or any one else, for that matter-ever wrote, and having beyond its humor a sociological significance of unusual import. As a tract the virtues of "The Walking Delegate" are transcendent, best.

To speak more seriously, Mr. Kipling has evinced latterly a tendency toward the technical, and in the collection now under consideration he is too technical even for the most appreciative of his readers. One does not care, in reading for pleasure, to spend one's time looking up text-books, in order to comprehend the subtleties of a short story, any more than one cares to read a Scotch dialect novel with a glossary at the back as a sine qua non of its comprehension. But, so far as the book "The Day's Work" is concerned, despite these technical objections, it contains much that is worthy of Mr. Kipling at his very

DR. a it se

R. SVEN HEDIN, though still a young had been his fate, it would have seized him

Through Asia." By SVEN HEDIN.

of explorers of the largest continent by the results of three and a half years' work that led him from Russian Turkestan to Peking. He now describes his explorations in his book, Through Asia, the most conspicuous geographical work of the year. It was to be expected that a geographer who, from his boyhood, had been in scientific training for the researches he hoped to make in Asia, would do work of value and help to fill some of the wide gaps between regions in high Asia, whose geographic problems had been partly solved. This is what Dr. Hedin has done; and the great honors bestowed upon him by many leading geographical societies show the high estimation in which his work is held. Dr. Hedin's linguistic attainments have enabled him, in the past year, to deliver long lectures to audiences in several countries in their own vernacular. The fact that this young Swedish explorer, in the midst of his arduous work in the study and the field, should have found time to master our own language and make "Through Asia" so admirable in literary form, as well as in contents, is itself an achievement of no mean importance. The book will rank among the best that have been written on the high plateau and mountain regions of Asia. It deals with colossal phases of topography; with the effects of such environment upon human development; with experiences in the loftiest altitudes of the world and among burning sands where half his expedition perished; with the discovery of half-buried cities nearly hidden under sand-drifts, relics of Buddhist civilization before the Mohammedan invasion, and with many other results of the work of a keen and well-equipped geographer, whose book promises to be one of the geographic classics of Asia.

As his

strength and buoyancy decreased he carefully recorded the lessening pulse-beats and symptoms of failing vigor. The scientific impulse was master even after he had crawled on hands and knees to the brink of a clear, cold stream. He wished to ascertain the effect upon his pulse of the reviving water; and so before he drank he paused to count his pulse-beats, then drank his fill, and counted his pulse again. It is enthusiastic devotion to the cause of discovery such as this that makes the heroes of science.

MR. FREDERICK G. JACKSON has written a very spirited and interesting account of his three years' sojourn in Franz-Josef Land, from which he returned in September last year. His book, A Thousand Days in the Arctic, is the only one relating to this large and scattered mass of islands since the Austrians discovered them twenty-five years ago; and Mr. Jackson has revolutionized our ideas of this distant corner of the world, which is far nearer the pole than any other lands we know about, except those near North Greenland.

The archipelago of Franz-Josef Land has had a great fascination for arctic geographers ever since it was discovered. Mr. Jackson's book tells why this is so, and how it came about that he dispelled the cherished illusions concerning the group, and blasted the hopes that had been centred in it as a most convenient and desirable station on the way to the north pole. Jackson did a great deal more than upset the theories of the experts as to the prime importance of Franz-Josef Land as a base for future arctic work, for he made some highly important discoveries. African explorers are wont to say that it is the unexpected that always happens in Africa. This peculiarity of the Dark Continent was transferred to the arctic regions for Jackson's benefit, for it was the unexpected that confronted him at every turn he made in Franz-Josef Land. The information he gives in his volume was a great surprise to geographers, and they have had to surrender most of their preconceptions.

"A Thousand Days in the Arctic." By FREDERICK G. JACKSON.

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