ican Bohemia, however, is not quite like that of the old world; at least, it is free from the kind of recklessness which one so often associates with such regions; and the writing of our Bohemians preserves something of that artistic conscience which always makes the form of careful American work finer than that of prevalent work in the old country. In the short stories of American magazines, then, so familiar throughout the United States, we have a second type of popular literature not at present developed into masterly form, but ready to afford both a vehicle and a public to any writer of masterly power who may arise. We have glanced at two of the forms which seem growing to literary ripeness in America, the newspaper and the popular magazine. There is only one other form whose present popularity is anything like so considerable; this is the stage. So far, to be sure, the American theatre has produced no work which can claim serious consideration. During the last halfcentury, on the other hand, the American stage has developed all over the country a popularity and an organisation which seem favourable to serious expression in the future. At the beginning of this century there were very few theatres in the United States; in many places, indeed, the popular prejudice against the stage was as blind as that of the Puritans who closed the English theatres in 1642. To-day travelling dramatic companies patrol the continent. Every town has its theatre, and every theatre its audience. Until now, Until now, to be sure, the plays theatre its audience. most popular in America have generally come straight from Europe, and the plays made here have been apt unintelligently to follow European models. Now and again, however, there have appeared signs that various types of American character could be represented on the stage with great popular effect; and the rapid growth of the American theatre has provided us with an increasing number of skilful actors. A large though thoughtless public of theatre-goers, a school of professional actors who can intelligently present a wide variety of character, and a tendency on the part of American theatrical men to produce, amid stupidly conventional surroundings, vivid studies from life, again represent conditions of promise. If a dramatist of commanding power should arise in this country, he might find ready more than a few of the conditions from which lasting dramatic literatures have flashed into existence. At this moment newspaper humour, the short stories of the magazines, and the popular stage seem the sources from which a characteristic American literature is most likely to spring. The America of the future can probably be expressed only in some broadly popular form; and these three forms are the only ones which at present seem to promise broad popularity. At present, however, none of these forms, any more than the traditional forms which flourished earlier, are copiously fruitful. In America, as in England, and indeed as in all Europe, the last years of the nineteenth century have seemed artistically less important, less significant, less lasting, than those which lately preceded. The world is passing through experience too confused, too troubled, too uncertain, for ripe expression; and America seems more and more growing to be just another part of the world. CONCLUSION THE literary history of America is the story, under new conditions, of those ideals which a common language has compelled America, almost unawares, to share with England. Elusive though they be, ideals are the souls of the nations which cherish them, the living spirits which waken nationality into being, and which often preserve its memory long after its life has ebbed away. Denied by the impatience which will not seek them where they smoulder beneath the cinders of cant, derided by the near-sighted wisdom which is content with the world-old commonplace of how practice must always swerve from precept, they mysteriously, resurgently persist. The ideals which for three hundred years America and England have cherished, alike yet apart, are ideals of morality and of government,—of right and of rights. Whoever has lived his conscious life in the terms of our language, so saturated with the temper and the phrases both of the English Bible and of English Law, has perforce learned that, however he may stray, he cannot escape the duty which bids us do right and maintain our rights. General as these phrases must seem, common at first glance to the serious moments of all men everywhere, they have, for us of English-speaking race, a meaning peculiarly our own. Though Englishmen have prated enough and to spare, and though Americans have declaimed about human rights more nebulously still, the rights for which Englishmen and Americans. alike have been eager to fight and to die are no prismatic fancies gleaming through clouds of conflicting logic and metaphor; they are that living body of customs and duties |