dull and lusterless by the heavy pomposity of a Haydon. He stirred up the dust of giants long since departed; he summoned from the spacious, heroic past stalwart, antique figures, but they merely mocked him and went back to the abyss of eternity. Not the least of Wiertz's shortcomings is that he was a perpetual borrower. His particular divinities he constantly laid under contribution and, not satisfied with them, he often looked elsewhere. Upon "Happy Times" has settled the Vergilian quietude of Poussin. Back of "Two Young Women or the Beautiful Rosine" looms the eloquent and occasionally voluptuous fantasy of Delacroix. The single original note Wiertz sounded lies in a series of social studies which includes "Orphans," "Premature Burial," "Hunger, Madness and Crime," "The Last Cannon and "Thoughts and Visions of a Severed Head." Each is a sermon with scant attempt at disguising the text-one pleads for charity, one for cremation, one against war, and another against capital

punishment. It is obvious that more restraint and less crapulous horror, less of the stench of the charnal house, would have heightened the efficacy of these appeals.

Wiertz fancied himself a soldier of advanced thought, a "chasseur d' idées." In distorted measure he possessed the brain of a philosopher, the imagination of a poet and the fervour of a patriot. Endowed with acute organic susceptibility, he seemed destined from the first for martyrdom. He was tragically out of sympathy with his age and time. He lived the life of a lost Titan, always alone, always harassed. His invincible devotion to his career, his austere vows of poverty and of celibacy-vows which were never forsworn-did not, in the end, constitute Wiertz one of the gods or redeemers of art. Through reasons beyond the control of his troubled spirit he descended from Olympus into the recesses of dark Avernus.

Christian Brinton.

OMMODORE Dewey on the Asiatic station, had his squadron well in hand. The vessels which composed it were not reckoned among the most powerful ships of the new navy, but they were in a state of high efficiency, and in their class they were as good as any in the world. Lying at Hong Kong was the flag-ship Olympia, a protected cruiser of 5800 tons and carrying a fine armament of modern guns. With her were the Baltimore, a protected cruiser of 4600 tons, and the Raleigh, a protected cruiser of 3217 tons. At Mirs Bay, on the Chinese coast, thirty miles distant from Hong Kong, were the protected cruiser Boston, of 3000 tons, the gunboats Concord and Petrel, and the armed revenue-cutter McCulloch, together with a collier and a supply-ship*. Every one of these vessels had received the last touch necessary to the perfection of preparedness. The complicated machinery had been overhauled under the keen eyes of the Commodore himself; the ammunition-hoists had been tested. All the bunkers were filled with coal, and the magazines were stored to their full capacity. Finally, the crews were superbly disciplined, devoted to their officers, and eager for any duty, however hazardous, that might be theirs to undertake. As the vessels lay at anchorage, with steam up, they resembled a group of perfectly trained athletes, impatient for the summons to glorious action. They had been stripped of every inch of superfluous woodwork, and their

*The collier was the Nanshan; the supplyship was the Zafiro.

hulls, no longer snowy white, were painted a sullen slate-colour, which transformed their graceful jauntiness into a suggestion of something grim and terrible.

Commodore Dewey had assumed command on January 3d, and during the months that followed he had not merely shown himself to be a naval chief of rare ability, but he had indirectly served his country in other and less obvious ways. Here were illustrated once more the force and value of personality in the conduct of great affairs. Dewey was by birth a Vermonter, of the very best New England stock, and had superimposed upon the sturdy qualities of his ancestry all the tactfulness, the courtesy of bearing, and the clear sanity of judgment which mark the man who has had long experience of the great world. He was now sixty years of age, alert and vigorous, and combining the energy of youth with the sagacity of age. fessionally his career had well fitted him for great responsibility. In the Civil War he had served under Farragut in some of the hottest fights of that fierce struggle. Later he had been chief of the Naval Bureau of Equipment and a member of the Board of Inspection and Survey. Altogether he was at one and the same time a cultivated gentleman, a scientific expert in naval affairs, and a sailor who in battle would be inspired by the example of that great captain with whom he had once faced the flaming forts and batteries on the lower Mississippi.

Pro

Hong Kong is one of the most intensely British of all the British dependencies in the East. It is always strongly garrisoned and is an important naval

station. In 1898 the good-will of its people, and especially of its official society, was of immense importance to any combatant whose field of action lay in Asiatic waters. Spanish agents swarmed there, and in a thousand subtle ways endeavoured to win British sympathy for their cause and to create a feeling of antipathy toward the United States, by appealing to an underlying strain of dislike and jealousy which they imagined to exist in Englishmen. That they failed utterly and hopelessly must be ascribed, in part at least, to the impression which Commodore Dewey and his staff created during their stay at Hong Kong from January

ADMIRAL GEORGE DEWEY

until the end of April. The Anglo-Saxon type of sailor is the same in both of the great English-speaking nations; and from the acting Governor down to the youngest middy on shore-leave, every Briton recognised in the chiefs of the American squadron blood-brothers who fulfilled even the exacting standard which Englishmen apply to those who claim to be officers and gentlemen. What service was rendered to the Ameri

can cause by the character and personality of the American commander at Hong Kong will presently appear.

The despatch of April 24th from Washington reached Commodore Dewey in the nick of time. An hour or two before, Great Britain's proclamation of neutrality had been issued, and he must depart at once. The despatch therefore relieved him of all doubt and made his course of action plain. There was no delay. Signals fluttered from the flagship; and soon the Olympia, followed closely by the Raleigh and the Baltimore, steamed out to sea to the music of the national anthem. As the cruisers swung into the channel, thousands of British soldiers, sailors, and civilians swarmed down to the shore, cheering lustily for Dewey and wishing him godspeed. "Good luck to you! Smash the Dons!" was the shout that reached him as a final parting.

At Mirs Bay he picked up the other vessels of his squadron, and on April 27th headed for the island of Luzon. As soon as the open sea was reached the crew of each ship was mustered upon deck. Then was read to them a proclamation issued on the 23rd by the Spanish General, Basilio Augustin, Military Governor of the Philippines. This proclamation is a curiosity in the literature of war. It began:

"Spaniards! Between Spain and the United States of North America hostilities have broken out.

"The North American people, constituted of all the social excrescences, have exhausted our patience and provoked war by their perfidious machinations **** The struggle will be short and decisive. The God of victories will give us one as brilliant and complete as the righteousness and justice of our cause demand. Spain ***** will emerge triumphantly from this new test, humiliating and blasting the adventurers from those States which, without cohesion and without a history, offer to humanity only infamous traditions and the ungrateful spectacle of a Congress in which appear united insolence and defamation, cowardice and cynicism.

"A squadron manned by foreigners, possessing neither instruction nor dicipline, is preparing to come to this archipelago with the ruffianly intention of robbing us of all that means life, honour, and liberty."

The proclamation went on to say that the Americans were seeking to substitute

*Long. The New American Navy, i. p. 183 (New York, 1903).