a part to tear a cat in, to make all split." He would have writers to be always tearing cats. Such a critic, in reviewing a book of subtle and restrained emotions, will say: "I don't want this kind of thing at all; I want something larger and more generous, to set my blood a-tingle-something to fight and struggle with; never mind a tumble or two, so long as one gets a sense of life." He would have all men to be of the pushing, cock-sparrow species-cheerful, undignified, noisy, with a pleasant sense of courage, a desire to tread on other people's toes, and to shout "Bo" in the ears of geese. It is a type that presents certain attractions no doubt; but the essence of it is the desire to interfere with other people, to slap them on the back, quite indifferent as to whether it gives them pleasure to be slapped; if it does not, he says that it ought to. There is no sense of respecting other people's rights here; and this it is that makes it so dull and conventional a point of view; because half of the artistic pleasure of life comes from the sense of contrast, the unlikenesses of people, their dissimilar points of view; while the virile artist is not satisfied till all are like himself, jolly companions every

one.

The real truth is that, English literary art has lately, much to its detriment, been violently invaded by this spirit. The virile person, determined to have the best of everything, has realized that he has certain emotions, which it gives him pleasure to express, and which he conceives to be artistic. The result is that, seeing that there is a brotherhood of art, which has a certain influence on the world, he is resolved to be inside it, and communicate a pleasant stir to it. And so, as in the Symposium of Plato, a noisy and turbulent invasion has taken place. The revellers who rush in have a certain vigor, a free

humor, a definite picturesqueness. But. as in the case of the Kingdom of Heaven, the violent have taken the domain of art by force, to the annoyance and regret of more quiet-minded persons.

The only thing to do is for the initiated to preserve their resolution untroubled, and to wait till the noise is over. The meek. says the Beatitude, shall inherit the earth. The virile invasion will, no doubt, ultimately effect some good; it will increase and enlarge the point of view that tends, in self-observation and introspection, to become morbid and stuffy. It is a valuable counterbalancing force to the dangers of over-æstheticism, the wilful seclusion of art; but the mistake lies in the recognition of it as a permanent force by the true artists. It is a revolution that ends in a restoration; it safeguards liberty, and breaks down tyranny; but it is not in itself artistic, it is only a tonic, an alterative, which shall brace and clarify the real artistic forces.

Now an Academy, with a classical tradition and a fine standard of taste. could help us to make head against these extravagances. For the point is that there are true principles of criticism, and the danger alike of the antiethical and of the virile school is, that they tend to promote the belief that there are no such principles. The disciples of these schools would maintain that vividness, loudness, and decision are the permanent qualities in art; that there is no such thing as tradition and authority at all; that art is not a church, but a system of congregationalism.

The boisterous, joyful, good-humored, high-spirited temperament, which is fashionable now in art, has a right to be considered, no doubt; but the appropriate setting for such natures is real life; when they become self-conscious, and look at themselves in the

mirror, admire the evidences of health and activity, and set to work to talk about themselves, one feels that there is something amiss; they stretch out their legs, and pat their thighs in public, and the result is that they attract a good deal of attention. But the world would be a very uninteresting place if it were entirely peopled by such individualities. Meanwhile, the other type-the peaceful, contemplative, retired artists-hardly get a hearing. It is like the suspension of the talk of sensible persons which takes place when some healthy, complacent, and outspoken child is produced for inspection and admiration.

One would not wish that such a point of view should be suppressed or excluded; anything which can enlarge the horizon of art is desirable. But we would hold that the truer function of art is to disentangle the finer shades of emotion, to give expression to the remote, the subtle, rather than to the commonplace and the obvious. The work of art is to capture these fine essences, to hear dying echoes, to see and interpret the quieter beauties of earth on the one hand-the moonrise over still pastures, the murmur of hidden streams, the voices of birds in the thickets, the smouldering sunset; and then to express with due restraint the richer unspoken emotions of the heart, the mysteries that surround us, the tender relationships of human beings, the strangeness of the complex world.

All this is a very real region; it is there; it has always been there; but at the present time it seems as though the hearts of men were turned from these things to the noise of cities, the heated talk of club-rooms, the rattle of motors, the roar of railway trains, the spread of Imperialistic ideas, the spin and speed of wars. Yet this is in reality a relapse into barbarism; it is a revolt of primitive nature, of animal impulses, against civilization,

against refinement. Those who believe that the world is moving towards simplicity and peace, and that in tranquil joys, settled labor, the stillness of the countryside, lie the real and permanent joys of life, will oppose a quiet and serene resistance to these tumultuous and restless forces.

Those who believe that art is a wide inheritance, and that it is given to adninister strength and comfort to the purer and quieter side of human nature, must be content, in the time of revolution, to be easily labelled morbid, timid, introspective, and indolent. These epithets are but the cries of the invaders who have found their way into the quiet squares of the city. Of course it may be all the other way, and the world may be growing and expanding in the direction of noise and exciteInent, under the guidance of God, rather than in the direction of serenity and soberness. But even So the prophets of peace will guard their own strongholds while they may, and they will diligently preach their simpler and quieter gospel to those that will hear.

What, then, ought the aim of the true lovers of art to be? They ought to hold all together and keep themselves close, like the ungodly in the psalm. They ought to forget their own jealousies and rivalries in the face of the far greater danger with which they are menaced; they ought not, as they tend to do, to use the rude weapons of their opponents to belabor each other; and, on the other hand, they must be disinterested; they must expect neither money nor fame, nor even appreciation. They must simply be true to the inner spirit of art, and make no concessions, no attempt to capture the popular mind. They must live sparingly, hopefully, and affectionately, like men in a beleaguered place, fearing nothing, expecting nothing, and hoping all things. Yet they must avoid

the spirit of the coterie, the spirit which, out of sympathy for the motif, applauds and cossets the faltering manner. There must be no mawkishness among themselves, but a just and wise appreciation, a loyal discrimination, a genial companionship. They must have the true classical spirit; that is to say, they must give due weight to what is traditional and authoritative; but they must not be hampered and restricted by this, but must eagerly watch for every true development of the artistic spirit; they must be able to note originality, and yet recognize with disapproval the moment that it passes into exaggeration and mere effect. They must be able to appreciate all that is manly and vigorous in the virile school, while they must never be seduced into any foolish parade of manliness and breeziness in order to win suffrages.

But, with all this, the attitude of these true lovers of art must be simple and natural, neither affected nor pontifical. It is the studied air of unreality, the pretence of possessing mysterious secrets, the development of a secluded caste, professing no interest in mundane affairs, but claiming to be illuminated by a secret glory-the characteristics of the later æsthetic schoolwhich have done so much to lower the artist in the opinion of sensible men. The artist should rather be open to every influence and interest; he should, like the true priest, keep the thought of the spiritual succession, which he has undoubtedly received, for his own comfort and help, not wave it abroad as a title to the obedience and respect of other men; the artist should be a man of the world, guarding his creative hours as the true gold of life, but yet losing no opportunity of mixing with his fellows on equal terms; let him reserve his unconventionality for

The National Review.

the things of the spirit, but in all external things let him eagerly adopt the conventions of the world, as the best armor that he can wear. He will live by preference the secluded life of the country, choosing the fallentis semita vitæ, not because he is weak, but because he is strong; yet not creating for himself a secluded paradise, but living the life of a neighbor and a citizen.

The above is no impossible ideal; but the possibility of its adoption depends upon the power of the artist to do without the excitement of recognition. That is the danger of the artistic temperament, that it learns to depend upon stimulus; and the best work cannot be done in what is after all but a dramdrinking mood.

If the number of artists content to lead such a life could be increased, the organization, the centralization of the movement, would come quietly of itself. The thing to make sure of is that the organization represents a strong and healthy life, and is a convenience and a development, not an ambition and an end.

And thus, though I think that an Academy of letters, if it could be quietly and naturally developed out of existing conditions, might be a real source of strength for literature, and especially at a time when the best literary artists are few. I would rather be sure that there are men ready to give themselves to the service of literary art in the spirit which I have described, than see any number of influential societies organized and instituted to represent it. Yet it is, I think, remarkable and even unfortunate, at a time when societies representing all kinds of cultivated and refined interests are so active and flourishing, that perhaps the only vocation that lacks this organization is the vocation of Literature.

Arthur Christopher Benson.

It is now some two years ago that a half-starved hunter of musk-ox and his guide, drifting forlornly down towards the North Saskatchewan, unexpectedly stumbled across surface gold on the upper shores of Lac La Biche. The hunter, being crafty, secreted his little nuggets and said nothing; but when the snows melted he returned to that mysterious lake, searched feverishly, and in the end, found his deposit to lie in a well defined area, not fifty paces in width yet a good half mile in length. It was far from either running water or auriferous quartz, ending at the very brink of the lake itself; and he marvelled at the strangeness of it all.

When many ounces of these nuggets had been weighed out in the little wooden town of Edmonton, the new gold-field could no longer be kept a secret, and there was a sudden wild stampede of prospectors from that urban outpost of civilization, a stampede feverish in movement, bewildering in its might, like unto the migrations of the early Klondike days. But that army, eager as it was, returned empty-handed, while mining-experts lost much sleep in quest of a key to the mystery of how free-milling ore came to such territory, and talked vaguely and wisely of the effect of glacial action and long-lost water-ways. Yet, had they only known, no river of ice scattered those yellow grains for the eye and hand of our musk-ox hunter. To solve the mystery of that gold we must go back yet another long year, and in an abandoned trader's shack, standing almost in the shadow of Fort Resolution far to the North, we must mark the beginning of all end to the adventures of Andrew MacLanaghan and Antoine Broulette, fellow

travellers, fellow miners and traders, and rascals in common.

"Ye're a fool," MacLanaghan was crying, his lean body quivering, his pale eyes flaming; "ye're a damned fool. Where'd ye a-been to-day, y' white-livered half-breed, if I hadn't stuck by ye? Where'd ye be rottin' this night, if I hadn't sweat the fever out o' your blackguard carcass? An' what good would all your dust be doin' ye, if I hadn't pulled y' out o' Porpoise Crick? Tell me that, ye fool!" The long winter had worn the soul of the gaunt Scot to the wire edge, and he raved and stormed at his one-time friend and comrade like a madman.

But Antoine Broulette, the runner, merely laughed softly. Pursing his lips, he leisurely struck a match, and as leisurely proceeded to fill the walls of the square-timbered little shack with the fumes of that heavy and illsmelling tobacco which is to be found only north of the fifty-third parallel. He could afford to be patient.

"And I say to ye again," went on MacLanaghan, pausing in his strides up and down the shack, "no woman comes into this camp while I'm here, -no woman, white or red!"

The lean, hairy fist of the ScotchCanadian smote the hemlock table as he spoke. His pale eyes glared at the unperturbed runner, who looked with gently raised eyebrows at the bowl of of his pipe and then up at the blackened roof-beams of the little shack. "Den you,-you t'ink you do go?" he hinted, suavely.

"Go?" roared the other. "Go? Not till I go in a coffin!"

Once more the Frenchman whistled softly, and raised a ponderous, indolent shoulder. "Bapteme! Den I t'ink,

Scottie, I will mebbe do w'at I lak wit' dose t'ings w'at you have no mout' in!"

In earlier and more lucid days MacLanaghan might have seen that the runner was egging him on; he might have foretold that his enemy's purpose was only to madden him beyond all endurance; but the long, desolate miles of the Yukon Overland Trail, and the months of hardship in the open snows, and the weeks of starvation in camp had tried the Scot's nerves to their utmost. He was no longer the man of grit and might that he had been; he was being slowly frayed and worn away; Broulette could see that, and he waited softly for the beginning of the end. All the way from Circle City to Fort McPherson MacLanaghan had tried to fight back that impending end. Alone in that land, he knew, he was helpless. Up the dreary, endless reaches of the MacKenzie he had elbowed aside insult and taunt, knowing too well how far his destiny still lay in the palm of Broulette's capricious hand. For the five dull weeks that they had been held up at Fort Resolution, awaiting Grey Wolf and his dogs, the Scot had still kept silence. When once Grey Wolf came, and when once they had dogs and sleds,-when once they had struck down through that white, oppressive, overwhelming waste of the Barren Lands-he felt that then he could assert himself. But Grey Wolf, the fleetest of the Dog-Rib runners, was slow in coming, though old Bending Back, the young buck's father-in-law-to-be, swore day by day that the morrow would bring him, and told them still again of Grey Wolf's many dogs, and looked askance at the two white men's little buckskin bags, and shook his head many times.

Kindred spirits though, these two white men were, bunkies more diverse seldom swung over the same trail. The one, a pale-eyed and hard-fisted Scotch

Canadian, lean, wolfish, unrelenting to the uttermost, was possessed of a nature as cold and dour and dogged as it was cannily unscrupulous. In times past, perhaps, he had been honest enough, for some thirteen years threading the trails and clerking in the posts of the Great Company. But certain silver-fox pelts had gone astray,-how and where MacLanaghan never confessed-and the over-ambitious clerk began life once more, with a new name and for his own hand. Then the Klondike fever took hold of him. It was when pushing doggedly up towards Dawson City that he first stumbled across Broulette on the Overland Route, a wiry and swarthy-faced French-Canadian from the pine-lands of Northern Ontario. Broulette was then a driver for one of the dog-brigades on the Mackenzie River Mail Packet,-hasty, wordy, blasphemous, a braggart and a dare-devil, a singer of chansons, a teller of tales, and a lover of women; when he had money, it went for drink and carousing; when his beaded purse was empty he turned once more to his dog-brigade and his travel, light of heart, merry of eye, singing his snatches of strange Provençal song, brought all the way from the lumber-camps of the upper Ottawa.

Broulette needed no second bidding to join MacLanaghan. Together they went through the mail-packets, with despatch and infinite care, extracting what was of value, flinging into their camp-fire what seemed useless. The government sled and dogs were as incontinently taken over, and while the official reports of the North-West Mounted Police duly recorded Broulette as another old and trusted servant of the Crown gone to his heroic death on the trail, that much misunderstood worthy and his new friend were heading for the Land of Gold, working their way grimly over the mountains at the head-waters of Half