tinued." Before the curtain rings down or the last chapter ends, the villain must be got rid of, or allowed to repent and escape easily, and everything is put right in a very brief space. Amendment is, in real life, a more uphill task, and consequences of evil deeds more lasting and inexorable. "Where would Stratford be," asked a native, "if it were not for the immortal Shakespeare?" and Shakespeare himself, sure-footed guide as he is, fails to hold the mirror up to nature and to morality when all is well and ends well for the worthless Bertram. Not only do the Unities often compel a moral to be scamped, but unskilful writers, cutting their knots by the hand of death, instruct mismated partners and heartsick lovers to look for their happiness through such a solution. The modern story, then, with its pretence of realism, has usually a bad moral, though it be not (as sometimes it is not) immoral. What is now asking attention, however, is a conscious and intentional crusade against received Christian canons and the sacredness of the Family as the basis of Society. The crusade ranges from the mild latitudinarianism of the lady novelists to the French chiffonnier school of cloaca realism, the animus throughout being directed against the theological morality, while the more thoroughgoing naturalists regard morality itself as priestcraft. Sympathy is enlisted for wives who break an oppressive wedlock, suicide is excused, filial disobedience is justified, the natural virtues triumph over any lack of theological ones. Sal of Whitechapel wins pardon for her failings by her generous self-sacrifice for the man who has degraded her, and the drunken miner or digger, parcus deorum cultor et infrequens, atones for a profane lifetime

sanctions of

*Theology of Modern Literature. By Dr. Law Wilson. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark. 1899. 7s. 6d.

by an heroic death. Such a theme is touching enough, but Bret Harte and many others have worked it threadbare.

The continued incessant use of

it as a literary motif arises from a wisb to pin-prick Christianity, and from that inverted pharisaism which is forever asking attention to its own superiority to creed and form. Then there is the slum novel, in which the faith once delivered to the saints is girded at, the controversial novel, in which it is overthrown by antiquated and belated German criticism; the society novel, in which Christianity is ignored; the historical novel, in which its past is besmirched; the Corelli novel, in which the World's Tragedy is vulgarized; the kailyard novel, whose author is eager to show that he is not, like his poor forefathers, a Scotch Calvinist, the hill-top novel, whose depressing fog and iconoclastic atheism are in contrast with the breezy optimism and shallow universalism of the ordinary fictionist. The prevailing teaching of our day is a thin theism, divested of every mystery, stripped of all doctrinal revelation, emancipated from every institution and rite, unhistoric, without organic structure or philosophic coherence, more vague than the peasant's misty belief in One Above, or the savage's dim notion of the "Big Man up There," as indifferentist as Pope's "Jehovah, Jove and Lord," almost as pantheistic as Emerson's Oversoul or Carlyle's Primæval Unspeakable, but yet worshipping in this Universal Father the attributes of Justice. Goodness and Truth. It is a Justice, however, which does not mete retribution to the wicked, a Goodness which is not jealous for any unchanging law of holiness, and a Truth which makes believe and looks the other way. In this conception of an all-indulgent, good-natured, blind and complaisant Paternity, Sin becomes a merely relative term, a mistake, a misfortune, an ailment, a trespass not

against God, but against one's fellowmen, needing no atoning sacrifice, no high-priestly mediation, no Bethlehem or Calvary save for moral impression. Penitence, Mr. Gissing remarks, is now an anachronism. "Man," says Emerson, cheerily, "though in brothels and gaols and on gibbets, is on his way to all that is good and true." It is notable that the rationalism of this century has been based not on reason, but on superficial sentiment. The sapping of the foundations of responsibility, whether through the dogma of a God who is mere pity, or through easy dinner-table divinity, and superficial talk about heredity and circumstance (as though our ship were launched on life with a "lashed rudder"), is more permanently detrimental to national character than undisguised lubricity or any gospel of animalism and freelove. Nor is satire against religion or invitation to explore the "sunless gulfs of doubt" The Saturday Review.

likely to influence minds like the reiterated assertion that Conduct is independent of Creed, when illustrated by generous sentiments and attractive and pathetic examples. If, as a foil, the power of the Cross and the beauty of historic Christianity are delineated, the Church of Rome is usually fetched in. This is a kind of compliment to Anglicanism as the only religious force in England influential enough to be really disliked. Yet where the literary man's theological liberalism is not a reaction from Puritan gyves, it is only what might be expected from the colorless religious teaching of public schools and colleges, which turns out cultivated men wholly ignorant of the doctrinal system of their Church, and content to echo the stale and crude formulas of heterodoxy, which please sharp girls from Girton and suburban admirers of Edna Lyall.

The director of the Quarterly Review has done me the honor to request an explanation of the fact that, during the war which England is at present waging in South Africa, the French nation has ranged itself unanimously on the side of the Boers. Now, if I were a wise and wary person, I should, undoubtedly, reply that, in the first place, he is mistaken about public opinion here; that it is by no means unanimous, and that there are numerous exceptions, like the excellent M. Yves Guyot, and the venerable M. Tallichet, who however, do not count for very much. Both in France and in Switzerland the venerable M. Tallichet and the admirable M. Guyot are recognized as specialists in contradiction. As we say of some people that they do not quite know what they want, though they want it very much, so it may be observed of the admirable Guyot and the revered Tallichet that they do not always know what they say, but are content if it be the reverse of what is commonly said in their presence. They are forever admitting other considerations, and taking the opposite view. We may also mention the name of the paradoxical M. Edmond Desmoulins, the author of a book entitled "In What does the Superiority of the Anglo-Saxon

Translated for The Living Age.

Consist?" But I prefer, upon the whole, at once to admit the fact that in France, as well as in Switzerland and Belgium (to mention none but the French-speaking countries), prevalent opinion is hostile to England. And since I have been frankly asked to explain why this is so, I will endeavor to answer with equal frankness.

The chief reason of all-I say all, because I propose to indicate several-is doubtless this: that just now, in the last days of the century, England appears to be by way of annihilating a nationality. Every other consideration is secondary to this. What are the exact grievances of the Boers, and what those of the English, and whether it rested with Mr. Chamberlain or President Krüger to spare the world a horror?all these questions, naturally most exciting to the English themselves, interest French opinion very slightly. French opinion sees, and is resolved to see, only one thing. At the close of an age which will be known in history as the age of the revival and resurrection of nationalities, when, by consequence, the greatest of political and international crimes is to destroy a nationality, this is precisely what England has not hesitated to attempt. To blot the Transvaal off the map of the worldsuch is the end for which England has

mustered all her forces; although for a hundred years now the new sense of popular rights, and the conscience of Europe have alike vetoed any such proceeding. It would be suffered only in the extreme and completely proven case of the Transvaal's having menaced not the vital interests, but the life itself, the very national existence, of England. And who pretends that a handful of Boers can have done anything of the sort with England's millions?

I do not say that there has been no debasing mixture of reasons less noble than the main reason here stated for the attitude of France. It would argue a very slight knowledge of human nature. There are other reasons, and some of them are sufficiently ugly. If I am told that the uninterrupted prosperity of England during the last hundred years, her progress in every direction, the vast augmentation of her wealth and extension of her empire have excited jealousy in many quarters, I shall at once admit the fact. Men are not angels, and they are only too much disposed to believe that what others have and they have not-those others have stolen from them.

I am even ready to admit, if you will, that the "Superiority of the AngloSaxons" has been too much dinned into our ears of late, and that that sort of thing becomes, in the end, most offensive to one's national vanity. Do we not know that success in this world is by no means always proportioned to merit? And where should we bring up, into what barbarism should we not plunge, were we resignedly to accept the notion that good fortune is a proof of superiority? There are millionaires who are simply imbecile; and it is well, and gratifies the moral sense that it should be so.

But in the case of public opinion in France there has been an additional reason, more obvious and not less natural, drawn from the attitude which

almost the entire English press has felt constrained to take upon the Dreyfus affair. Was the dense ignorance of the English about that most unhappy affair real, or was it only affected? Have they come, at last, to see that it was merely used as a pretext and a blind by the bitter enemies of "the French spirit," and that all which they themselves most prize as constituting the basis of civilized society was involved and imperilled in the Dreyfus affair?

Scandebat fatalis machina muros Foeta armis.

However it may be now, it is but too certain that for two whole years the English press refused to see anything of the kind. For two years the English papers, with the Times at their head, overwhelmed us with insult and invective for not believing in the innocence of Captain Dreyfus. I speak by the books, for I have before my eyes at this moment a copy of the National Review, in which we were treated to the amenities of a certain Mr. Conybeare. They were absolutely indifferent to me, who have lived for twentyfive years in the midst of the polemics of the press without coming to any serious grief. But all the world cannot boast of my coolness and philosophy! The English will permit me to say that they have not the faintest conception of the righteous wrath excited against them in France by the fierce, impassioned, injurious intermeddling of the British press in the Dreyfus affair. They complain of the tone of our journals. Let them remember what they persisted for years in saying about us. If they declined to consider the Dreyfus affair from the point of view of French nationalism, how can they expect us to regard the South African war from the point of English "imperialism"? And since they were resolved, as they said, to see in the Drey

fus affair a mere "question of justice," they must permit us, in our turn, absolutely to disregard the interests of Great Britain, and to see in the conflict which they are maintaining with the Boers, a mere "question of equity."

But let us lift our debate into that higher region where it properly belongs. Setting aside the national view, whether it be nationalist only or imperialist, and at the very moment when the English appear to be intrenching themselves in it, let us come to the real point. What England is reproached with in this matter of the South African war is not merely the employment of all her power for the destruction of a small nationality, but even more, the fact that she has none but English reasons to adduce for the prosecution of this enterprise, refusing to allow considerations of common justice and humanity to weigh for a moment against them.

Everybody, even in England, must often have heard cited the famous remark of Gambetta, that "anticlericalism is not an article of export." In like manner, it may be said that English liberalism is not an article of export; and our complaint against England is that she has certain principles for use at home, and other quite contrary ones for application abroad. The English are the most liberal of peoples; but their liberalism is for their own behoof alone, and of no manner of use elsewhere. It is good only within the frontier of the three kingdoms; that is to say, in Great Britain. The traditional foreign policy of England is quite out of date in the world of to-day. It is what constitutes her strength; but often, also, it renders that strength simply odious. English interests are looked upon by the English as a national religion, whose articles do not admit of discussion. And these articles are not thirty-nine, nor even a dozen, but one only, to wit:-that the

question in politics is never what is right or wrong, just or unjust, permitted or prohibited, but merely what will further the interests of England. "We must have outlets," remarked a member of the British Parliament, not long ago, to a French journalist; and from this axiom he deduced the conclusion that the rights of England are coextensive with her power, and that all means are legitimate which may open or secure fresh "outlets" for her. he doubt the morality of this position? Not in the least! He considered that English morality, like English liberalism, is binding on England alone; or, more probably, that what would be immoral in a German or a Frenchman is not so in an Englishman, but becomes moralized by the mere fact of becoming English.

Did

If only this policy still draped itself, as of old, in a magnificent robe of glory! Unhappily, it has become purely economic, which does not mean that it may not sometimes be, as at present, very costly, but that its one sole aim is the augmentation of England's wealth. One of our modern French writers, who knows England best, has loved her sincerely and praised her true greatness most eloquently, Emile Montégul, recently remarked:

"This reverence for riches is more than a fault; it is a crime; it is the greatest damage that the English have done the world, for they have infected all other nations with this utterly false and hitherto unknown idea. God knows what chastisement he has in reserve to punish this injury to humanity. What is absolutely certain is that the English will have somehow to expiate this criminal idolatry, as all other peoples have had to expiate the injuries which they have inflicted upon other nations through exciting their covetousness." These lines of M. Montégul are in reality but the translation or paraphrase of a passage in the "English