ice-pack, lands three men to make a sledge journey overland for the purpose of reassuring the waiting ones. Trying again to pierce the pack, the vessel is crushed. The crew make their way to an island, build a hut, and sleep away an uncomfortable winter, living mainly on penguin soup. The three forerunners fail to reach the headquarters, and they, too, build a hut, and pass the winter in cheerful misery-mercifully spared the knowledge that the ship is lost. Bear in mind that the region is many hundreds of miles from the usual haunts of ships, and that, although there is little danger of absolute starvation, in the midst of thousands of penguin and of seal-still, penguin and seal are not succulent-and you have the elements of a tale of woe. But what comes to pass? The three parties communicate in the spring, and just in time to forestall all anxiety for the future, lo, there pops up a deus ex machina in the manifestation of an utterly unexpected Argentine manof-war, to take every one home. It reads "almost too good to be true," especially as the stories of Dr. Nordenskjöld and those who have collaborated with him— particularly Mr. Skottsberg's description of the loss of the Antarctic, and Dr. Andersson's account of the life of the three men in their tiny hut-are dramatically told.

It is mainly as a narrative that the book must be judged, for it contains little of scientific interest. The expedition was not in a way to achieve such dramatic results as a Southern record, or the location of the magnetic pole, because its headquarters was too far north-two degrees above the Antarctic Circle-and across the world from the magnetic pole. Of the three expeditions which set forth in 1902 to investigate the Antarctic regions, this of the Swedes was concerned with the land south of South America, the most northerly and best known Antarctic territory; whereas the British went to Victoria land, whence it could proceed to the farthest south, and the Germans discovered new land below Kerguelen Island. There was not much for the Swedes to do except to take routine observations, and this they seem to have done conscientiously, so that when their

As

results are collated with those of the two other expeditions, we may expect to have some really sound information as to the magnetism, meteorology, etc., of the Antarctic world. The most striking discovery made by the Swedes was of fossils of the tertiary period; and on the strength of them Dr. Nordenskjöld reopens the old question: "Did vegetable life begin in the polar regions, and proceed thence to South America?"-though he says nothing about the manner of transit across the deep strait sounded by the Belgica expedition between Cape Horn and the South Shetland Islands, and, in fact, treats the subject in a suggestive rather than an argumentative way. He is argumentative, however, upon the great Antarctic question of names. every one interested in the Antarctic regions knows, nothing is more unstable than an Antarctic name, except, perhaps, an Antarctic island. If one of the explorers in the early part of the nineteenth century saw land in the South, he named it-regardless of predecessors. And whether or no he saw islands, at any rate, ordinarily he reported them, and set successors to scudding the seas in search of them-search that was often vain. There is a large body of controversial literature anent the existence of Antarctic and subAntarctic land, and the charts have reflected almost every phase of the disputes. The Swedes have added their controversial word. They discovered that Gerlache Strait is but a continuation of Orleans Channel, and they take to task the Belgian expedition for having charted the region imperfectly-though, so far as one can make out, they have used Gerlache's charts unchanged upon their own map. They are not content to let poor Captain Palmer's name lie upon the archipelago where the Belgians found what seemed at last to be a safe resting place for it, but suggest transferring the poor, uneasy thing to the mainland-to which there is only the objection that Palmer probably didn't see the mainland. The same objection applies to Dr. Nordenskjöld's suggestion for the substitution of Smith's name for Graham's as a general title for the alleged mainlandSmith never saw it, and, moreover, he is commemorated sufficiently with an island

in the group that he did see. A better suggestion is that which apparently inspired Mr. Balch and Dr. Nordenskjöld simultaneously; to call the whole Antarctic land Antarctica and to give to Graham Land the name West Antarctica.

Albert White Vorse.

IV.

MR. FLOWER'S "SLAVES OF SUCCESS."*

L'Estrange has said, "Wickedness may prosper for awhile, but at the long run he that sets all knaves at work will pay them." Apparently the politician is a case in point. Mr. Flower's whole book is written around the idea that, as politicians grow in power, their independence becomes less. In fact, we are left to conclude, that only by sudden death or voluntary early retirement can they save themselves from an enslavement more nearly complete than any example of physical bondage offered by history. Jack Wade, the one man in this book with really big possibilities in him, says, "I am a boss. The newspapers say so and the people say so. I rule, but there is no man among those I rule who has not more independence than I. The one little principle that I had nurtured for my own gratification is taken from me by a common thug. I bow supinely to him; he is my master." Wade himself is undone and driven from the field by an old farmer whom he had thought to be his staunch friend, and over whose introduction into politics he had presided. Ben Carroll, of coarser mould, but more unscrupulous and perhaps more knavish than Wade, is overcome by the rebellion of scarcely more than a beginner in politics. And the trail of graft is the scent by which every one of them, sooner or later, is tracked down to his death.

Maybe this last is an encouraging sign. It is as you look at it. If we must have dishonesty in politics and in everything the politician touches, then there is a certain comfort in remembering that "murder will out," and that "the way of the transgressor is hard." But pending

*Slaves of Success. By Elliott Flower. Illustrated. Boston: L. C. Page and Company.

his discovery and punishment, the politician waxes fat on his spoils, and as "his enslavement" increases he is driven to "make good" by bolder and heavier raids upon the public and private purse and upon the honesty of other men.

Every chapter of Mr. Flower's book strikes this note. No one is safe from the machinations of those who "run" politics. It is the writer's effort to show how devious, varied and often insignificant in themselves are the means adopted to carry out conspiracies. Azro Craig, the guileless, hard-headed old fellow, just elected to the Legislature, is completely fooled and won over by Wade, the ambitious, rising boss, and by nothing more than a hearty welcome to Wade's city home and by a dinner at which he is the guest of honour, and at which Wade discards his swallow-tail coat in order to make Craig feel comfortable at his own lack of that garment. Leroy N. Marshall, of "L. N. Marshall & Company," who goes into a campaign with righteous purpose and vigour, and who threatens the machine with disaster by the readiness and energy with which he adapts the method of the "organisation" to his own purposes, is suppressed, after standing out against every other difficulty and persuasion, by a quiet intimation that the county funds will be withdrawn from the bank in which he is interested, and that a big contract which he had expected to secure will be awarded to a rival concern. David Clow, an unselfish, fearless young member of the Legislature, is caught in the toils by the temptation, adroitly dangled before him at the hour when he is in financial distress, to speculate in a stock which must be enormously increased in value by an affirmative vote on a legislative measure. Senator Denton, the hitherto uncompromising foe of graft, is ruined by the skilful manœuvre of a "Professor" who, shortly before a land-grabbing bill is introduced into the Legislature, crosses his path, solicits his advice, and, by his innocent faith in him, secures the Senator's co-operation in the purchase of a tract of unimproved country in a far-away corner of the State.

Mr. Flower makes out a bad case against the politician. Perhaps, it is not a blacker case than has been presented

by some of his fellow-novelists. Yet we miss those. lighter touches which we might reasonably have expected from Mr. Flower and which it would not have been untrue to life to have introduced here. If it was not for his indirect admission that there is such a thing as personal honesty among the people of whom he writes, we would be disposed to think that he had before him when he gathered his material an exceptionally bad lot of people-a little "gang" into which had been gathered the deepest-dyed villains of all the villainous political crew. But it is quite certain that Mr. Flower intended to convey no such idea, and on the whole, Wade, Carroll, Higbee, and the rest of them are in many things fairly close to life. Mr. Flower could have brought them closer by giving a little more attention to the men themselves, to their habits, to their amusements, to their homes, to what did not immediately concern their

political enterprises. And this could have been done without lessening the very positive impression of reality conveyed by his recital of what these men were working for and how they worked to get it.

As it is, the eight chapters of Slaves of Success are rather as many narratives than stories; and "Wade" might almost as well be "Smith," or "Carroll," or "Jones," for all the distinction of personality that either of these men possesses. The figure which comes nearest to being a real person, perhaps, is Mrs. Burnham, one of the two women of the book. She as the reformer with a place on the Board of Trustees of the State University as her opportunity and her resolution and quick wit as weapons, stands out from the page. Mr. Flower should have written more about her. She shows him at his best so far as this book is concerned. Churchill Williams.

JONSIDERED in certain aspects, the drama is seen to be the most complex of the arts, perhaps because it is ever calling upon the other arts for assistance. When the Muse of Comedy or the Muse of Tragedy needs the help of any one of her seven sisters, she can confidently count upon it. Music and dancing, painting, sculpture, and architecture, all of these in turn, and sometimes all of them together, the drama is wont to summon to its aid. Indeed, the drama seems bereft and bare whenever it is compelled to relinquish the advantages which accrue to it from its alliances with the other arts.

It is this which makes the proper study of the drama so much more difficult than the study of any other department of

literature. Because the drama lives partly within the limits of literature and partly without these limits, the effort to appreciate it in all its relations is far more arduous than the attempt to understand the lyric, for instance, or the epic, which lie wholly within the limits of literature. Although to-day we read the masterpieces of the drama in the library, we must never forget that they were not written with this object in view; we must remember always that they were composed by their authors to be seen on the stage. The great dramatic poets prepared their plays to be performed by actors, in a theatre, and before an audience; and they had, therefore, to take into account the method of the actor, the size and circumstances of the theatre, and the feelings and prejudices of the audience. And we cannot rightly estimate

the dramas of Sophocles, of Shakespeare and of Molière, unless we inform ourselves fully as to all the conditions they accepted freely, and in accordance with which they wrought out their masterpieces.

In so far as the drama is within the limits of literature, it can be studied in a library; but in so far as it is outside the limits of literature, it needs for its proper understanding a gallery and a museum, containing the graphic material which will help the student to reconstruct for himself the conditions under which the masterpieces of the great dramatists were originally performed, the conditions in conformity with which they were composed. To enable the student to realise and to visualise the many differences between the open-air amphitheatre of the Greeks, the half-roofed playhouse of the Elizabethans, and the artificially lighted hall for which Corneille and Racine devised their stately tragedies, the museum. ought to contain not merely architectural plans of these several theatres, not merely views of their external appearance, it ought to contain also actual models, carefully constructed from the plans and views. Some of these models could best be built up in pasteboard and papier-maché, while others should be more solidly made in plaster; but they should all of them agree in scale, so as to make visible at first glance the enormous size of the theatre of Dionysus and the petty proportions of the Globe The

atre.

A museum for the proper study of the history of the drama does not now exist anywhere. And yet a beginning was made in 1878, when a special collection of models and of sets of scenery was prepared as a part of the French governmental exhibit displayed at the exposition held in Paris in that year. This special collection was prepared under the direction of a committee of experts, which included Charles Garnier, the architect of the Opéra, Halanzier, the manager, and Nuitter, the archivist of that institution, and Perrin, the manager of the ComédieFrançaise. Various other experts, scenepainters, architects and antiquaries were called in consultation. A catalogue of the entire collection was published by the Ministry of Education and the Fine Arts,

and a brief description of the exhibition (prepared by the writer of the present paper) was printed in the Nation at the time. After the close of the exhibition, the collection was transferred to the library of the Opéra, where it has been viewed by many American students.

Several of the models prepared by the French Government deserve special attention. One was a reconstruction of the Roman theatre, which still exists at Orange, and which is in a state of preservation, permitting performances to take place there occasionally. The French chose a Latin, in preference to a Greek theatre, partly because so noble an example as that at Orange still survived within the boundaries of France itself, and partly because a French architect, Caristie, had devoted himself to a profound study of this theatre and had ventured to propose its restoration. Perhaps the committee may also have been influenced by the fact that no one of the Greek theatres of the period of the great dramatic poets survives; and that the Greek theatres that do survive are at once late in date and pitifully dilapidated, Valuable as the model of the theatre at Orange is as an example of the Roman playhouse at the time of its most splendid architectural development, it is not to be accepted as a substitute for a reproduction of the Greek theatre; and there is need of another model,-on the same scale, of course,-reproducing the sloping flanks of the Acropolis, with the remains of the Theatre of Dionysus as it is preserved to-day. Indeed, the proper study of the Greek drama would be made easier if we had for comparison models of several of the other theatres uncovered of late years in Greece itself and in its several colonies.

It is as difficult for us to-day to form a vivid impression of the performances of a passion play in the Middle Ages as it is for us to evoke the pageantry of a Sophoclean tragedy with the chorus circling into the orchestra, which had been levelled almost under the shadow of the Parthenon. Here help can be had from a second model shown in 1878, and also on exhibition in the library of the Paris Opéra. Each of the three existing MSS. of the mystery acted at Valenciennes in

1547 is adorned with a picture of the platform upon which the passion play was performed. One of these MSS. is in the National Library (Fr. 12,536); and the illuminated drawing in this MS. has been skilfully reproduced in colours in the second volume of Petit de Julleville's Histoire de la Langue et de la Littérature Français. But the model constructed by a skilful scene-painter (who profited by all three of the drawings) reveals the salient peculiarities of the French mediæval stage far more satisfactorily than can any facsimile. On the extreme left is Paradise and on the extreme right is Hell; and stretching from Paradise to Hell are simple structures intended to indicate—or, at least, to suggest-Nazareth, the Temple, Jerusalem, the Palace of Herod, the House of the High Priest, the Sea of Galilee, the Garden Gate, and the Limbo of the Fathers. By permission of the French authorities a copy of this model was made some ten years ago and brought to the United States as a present to Columbia University from its Professor of Dramatic Literature. It ought to be supplemented by models reproducing so far as existing information will warrant-the pageants of the English mysteries.

In Halliwell-Phillips's Outlines of the Life of Shakspere (8th ed., vol. i., pp. 304-308) we have accessible in print the contract between Allen and Henslowe on the one part, and Peter Street, carpenter, on the other, for the erection of the Fortune Theatre, entered into in January of the last year of the sixteenth century. The detailed specifications of this agreement supplement the information in regard to the Elizabethan playhouses derivable from various views of their interior and exterior; and a clever architect who understood the practices of the Tudor timber-workers could prepare plans and elevations to correspond, which would make the construction of a model a task of no great difficulty. Indeed, this contract served as a guide for the full-sized reconstruction of a Tudor theatre, which was undertaken at Harvard a year or two ago. But this reconstruction is visible only on special occasions; and no attempt has been made to prepare a permament model of the rude theatre

in which the Elizabethan masterpieces were performed. The negligent delay in attempting this most useful adjunct to our understanding of the conditions under which Shakespeare worked,-conditions which he accepted always and was ever turning to his profit-is due probably to the fact that most students persist in considering the greatest of English dramatists as a poet, as a philosopher, as a psychologist, as a moralist even, and not as a playwright, who made his living by supplying pieces fit to be performed by his fellow-actors.

If a copy of the sumptuous model of the theatre of Orange could be imported and be placed by the side of the richly coloured model of the Valenciennes mystery, and if models of the theatre of Dionysus and of the Fortune Theatre could be prepared to accompany those brought over from France, and if the latter were made on the same scale as the former-three centimetres to the meter-then the conjoint exhibition would reveal at once certain obvious differences between the plays of the Greeks and the plays of the Latins, between the circumstances of performance in antiquity and in the Middle Ages, and between the possibilities and the limitations of Sophocles and those of Shakespeare. A single glance at the contrasting models of the theatre for which the great Greek wrote and of that for which the great Englishman wrote would show at once the futility of those neo-classicist critics. who wished to impose on the Elizabethan playwright rigid restrictions imposed on the ancient playwright by the circumstances of performance and by the very structure of the theatre in which the performance took place.

It would be equally instructive for the student of the drama to be able to compare this theatre of Shakespeare, which was, in fact, nothing more than the courtyard of an inn (without the inn itself), with the theatre of Molière, which was a tennis-court, a quadrangle twice as long as it was broad, having galleries on three sides and a shallow stage at one end. And this narrow hall, roofed at last, and lighted by candles, and, therefore, far less mediæval than the half-roofed playhouse of the Elizabethans, would seem strangely