King Alexander's life with revolting savagery, the criminals have set to work to traduce his memory. They remind me of the regicide Harrison, who said of King Charles I., "Let us blacken him." Mashin and his fellow murderers have expended infamous ingenuity in blackening their royal victim. King Alexander died fighting for his Queen; they represent him cowering in a cupboard. He was a Prince of singular wisdom and prudence; they suborn physicians to declare that his brain betokened incipient lunacy. They have gone on to discover all manner of compromising documents, which they had evidently forged and themselves placed in the Palace. Journalists and historians are often too ready to accept the first story that comes to their hands. In judging of calumnies against the unfortunate victims of the Servian tragedy, they will do well to hesitate before they receive the tainted evidence of crafty criminals, who possess neither consciences nor scruples.

The nation has been put back at least a century. Whether it must be relegated to the dark ages or blotted out altogether will depend on the events of the next few years. Karageorgevich comes to Belgrade as a stranger with a shady record, and his private life holds out few hopes for a successful career. The difficulties which confront him are enormous. If he tries to punish the murderers as they deserve, their cunning will assure him a short shrift; if he applauds their deeds and loads them with favours, he will have the civilised world to reckon with. To exile them and allow them to return will satisfy no one. If he maintains the constitution of 1888, he will soon find himself face to face with anarchy; if he attempts to rule Servia in the only way consistent with permanent law and order, he is foredoomed to disaster. His dilemmas are innumerable. His capacity remains to be proved. Only a statesman like Prince Ferdinand or an administrator like Herr von Kállay would possess the ghost of a chance. Such men appear once or twice in a generation, and are by no means easy to find. If I were a bookmaker, I would gladly lay very long odds against the reign of Prince Peter outlasting the year. If I were a prophet, I should prognosticate a corrupt and panic-stricken republic under the presidency of the very clever scoundrel (whoever he may be) who organised the late atrocities and their sequel. If I were Foreign Minister, I would counsel an occupation of Servia by the Powers, perhaps even a partition. As it is, I am a mere mourner over the graves of a King whom I esteemed above all other reigning monarchs; of a Queen whose character I admired; of a Prime Minister for whom I had a deep regard; of a country which I loved next to my own. Requiescat in pace.

HERBERT VIVIAN.

M. MAETERLINCK'S "JOYZELLE.”

THE bee which goes sipping the sweets of flower after flower, giving the impression of caprice and general infidelity, is nevertheless at bottom faithful to itself and the flower, and sometimes returns to one of its first and simplest loves, as if to taste the peacefulness of more soothing delights, more gentle caresses than the fierce joys which have been its experience elsewhere. Maurice Maeterlinck is like the bee, and indeed it is not long since to mention the insect was to bring to mind the poet-dramatist. A year ago he gave us in Monna Vanna the piercing but at the same time triumphant cry of human passion amid surroundings very closely akin to reality and the facts of history. This effort, by a process of restoring the springs of inspiration and enlarging the outlook, may be said to have revived a form of popular art then on the point of dissolution. To-day, in his latest work, Maeterlinck tricks out again the dreams and the illusions of that Stageland which was the cradle of his poetry and his philosophy. He brings, however, the fruits of his excursion into the specific department of life, and thus displays keener comprehension, that is to say, greater power of definition of the known element, idea or feeling, which lies within the precincts of the unknown realm of the soul. In the search for this known element and its expression, Maeterlinck has hitherto found the most fruitful if not the single inspiration for the very different manifestations of his philosophic, poetic and dramatic genius.

Thus, from one point of view, this is a step backward, from another it marks a stage of progress, a point of advance. Hence to a mind whose instincts are liberal and teach that the worth of the artist's individuality cannot fail to grow with the number of his sympathisers, if he can raise them to his own level instead of sinking himself to their original depths, to a mind whose desire is equally for the free and full expansion of this same individuality to the utmost capacity of its nature, the perplexing question arises whether to congratulate or not the author of Joyzelle on the last phase of his evolution, or devolution, to be more exact. Objective criticism, even stripped of prejudice and emancipated from dogma, which would see nothing further than a drama intended for representation on the stage, or, in more general terms, a work complete in itself, which ought to be judged intrinsically as such, would without hesitation declare its indignant dissatisfaction. Objective criticism, indeed, in this case there can be none, for Joyzelle, by its construction, character, atmosphere, and even dialogue, stands aside from all scenic movement, however wide

the boundaries, far more decisively than the 'marionettes' by which it was preceded. The play seems to me impossible-merely for the stage, that is at least in the present condition of the stage.

I said above that Joyzelle stands aside from all scenic movement. I should have said beyond, for we cannot forecast the conceptions of the next generation. In 1834, when French romanticism was at its height, and its histrionic interpretation had culminated, Alfred de Vigny, the poet, wrote, in the preface to his epochmaking drama, Chatterton, in a somewhat optimistic vein :"Especially do I believe in the future of the serious, and in the universal need of it; and, in my view, now that the infantile surprises which are produced to cause amusement, raise a general smile in the midst of all their great adventures, now is the time for the drama of thought." He proceeded, in his tribute to the memory of the wonderful boy,' himself to make the first endeavour towards the new æsthetics. The success was immense, but nothing followed on the national stage until the appearance of Monna Vanna. The morrow dawned at length, but sixty-eight years passed before the second application of the same principles, for the action in Monna Vanna, though only accessory, is still as considerable as in Chatterton. During these sixty-eight years, in order to win the attention and the sympathy of the playgoing public in the most refined capital of art for any abstract analysis, however slight, it was invariably necessary to disguise this analysis, often to its injury, in the fashionable and therefore transient setting of some problem of the world or the half-world, of politics, science, or sociology. In Chatterton the discussion of the topics of the hour, of suicide and of the workman's wages, for instance, forms an important feature, and the psychological interest of Monna Vanna is kept alive in an atmosphere of historical truth, which is attractive in the novelty of its intellectual penetration and its picturesque scenery. From the standpoint of the development of the French stage, each play is but a return to the methods of the classical theatre, simplicity of construction and of characterisation. Their mutual gravitation towards 'that restless universal mystery' of all enveloping Destiny, binds them equally to the traditions of the Attic stage. In both dramas there is the practical minimum of intrigue. The characters, few at the outset, are abstractions, types which, like Racine's, explain themselves, but with this difference, that they do so unconsciously, and have therefore no need of the traditional confidant to whom to reveal their intimate thoughts, but communicate personally one with another. In this respect they are more perfect and more ideal types, and as they are farther removed from material and artificial life

approach more closely to human personality, which is really simple in its primeval nakedness, in its essence, though it seems to us so multifarious in its accidental deviations. However, the abstractions personified by the pairs of lovers who are the chief characters in these two tragedies, where Happiness and Death await them at the climax, like two equal hosts, immovable, impenetrable, still possess some individuality; they move in a living picture, of which they are an integral part, and stand revealed especially in their accidentals, for the essence of human nature, though its power predominates, is not as yet so all-absorbing as to exclude the accidentals. It is precisely these accidentals on which the general public has seized for appreciation. But for their interposition the "general" would have drawn back before the loftiness of the main conception, whose innate charm has been grasped by the chosen few across the barriers of the fortuitous externals.

Alfred de Vigny, in his haughty shyness, does no more than point the road to a new art and lay the first, hardly shapen, stone. Maurice Maeterlinck has added a second of similar shape; but, bolder by nature, he has not stopped there. Perhaps, some day, future generations will credit him with the glory of having designed the whole edifice, and of having developed to its furthest extent the sublimest conception of the dramatic art yet conceived, though at the present time his efforts may be relatively fruitless. For, if we cannot say that he has thereby won general recognition such as greeted Monna Vanna-we can no longer venture to assert that he will never succeed in winning it. His is one of those strong natures which are not swayed by anxiety for popular approval, and are equally indifferent to Shakespeare's pessimistic axiom: "Despair and die." Besides, the success of Monna Vanna has supplied him with a moral factor to disarm criticism in support of Joyzelle and his future productions, which was wanting to the appearance of his first tragic idylls; for he has now taken up his freedom among the great contemporary dramatists, judged merely by the still narrow horizon of our own period. He cannot be again accused of being led by weakness into eccentricity, the charge which has crushed or deterred so many a potential genius.

Thus Joyzelle, which on one side is the progressive successor, the perfected echo of the primitive puppet show, is, viewed in another light, the natural corollary, the legitimate and inevitable conclusion of the style and philosophy of that particular Maeterlinck who conceived Monna Vanna. Accordingly, the admirer of Maeterlinck's genius, regarded in its entirety, though he may not unreservedly praise Joyzelle taken by itself and for itself, cannot regret that the master has revealed himself in this direction.

so long as there is room for hope that he has not yet said his last word. Disconcerting, indeed, at the outset, this play certainly is, and if this is the effect on the reader, what must be the result on the stage? Disconcerting it is in the highest degree, with its four characters, one of which, besides, is an invisible spirit, and only the subconscious self of another-with its five acts, its long speeches; long, in spite of that rhythmic prose which has no rival in French literature, that prose which is truly 'more beautiful than verse,' soft to the ear and with all the clearness of Latin, bearing no trace of the writer's northern origin and temperament, from which, indeed, the force of his artistic intuition has removed all rugged provincialism and made him a citizen of the world. To go further, the characters are not characters in the true sense of the word; they are neither individuals nor types, neither 'humans,' nor 'superhumans,' but we recognise in them the human type of Love, immanent and ideal; or, better still, of humanity, essentially loving, wrapped up and isolated in that Love, and by the force of this undefined and undefinable impulse, stripping itself of all its insignificant accidentals.

But this ascent of two beings towards the climax of their lives will culminate in an hour which may be ruthless as well as ecstatic, when they will by degrees approach the heights of bliss, or -the tomb. The question which is an insoluble riddle, the key to which lies in the jealous grasp of the Future.

This is explained in the first act, when Arielle, the internal and invisible force, the forgotten power which sleeps in every soul, and which every man, if he had the honest desire, could discover in himself, and awake at will, speaks to the aged Merlin, who is anxious to clasp again his son, long separated from him by reason of the condition laid down for his happiness, and who, without knowing it, lands on his father's island.

ARIELLE. Your son's fate lies within a circle of love: if he loves, if he is loved with a wondrous love, which should, by the way, be the birthright of all men, but has become so rare that they look on it as a dazzling illusion; if he loves and is loved with love that is innocent and therefore clear-sighted, a love that is simple and pure like the mountain stream and as strong, love that is heroic and sweeter than the flowers taking all and giving more than it takes, never hesitating, never self-deceiving, never disconcerted or rebuffed, understanding and seeing only a mysterious happiness unseen to all beside, which it perceives everywhere beyond all forms and all trials, and to claim which it is ready with a smile to perpetrate crime-if he gains this love which does exist and waits for it in a heart which I believe I have marked, his life will be longer, happier, and more beautiful than that of other men. But if he fails to find it before the end of the month, for the circle is closed, if the love of Joyzelle is not that which the future holds to him from high heaven, if the flame is short-lived, if doubts obscure or regrets cast a shadow, Death, not Love, has won him and your son is lost.