to the Plaza Catalonia and is divided into sections bearing names which suggest the business most characteristic of that part of the street. Thus Rambla de Flores, where flowers are sold, Rambla de Estudios, where the bird-sellers show their caged singers, and so on. A generous supply of free benches gives opportunity for rest and observation of the colorful stream of people that flows endlessly through this great city artery. Lovely parks have been developed on the heights back of the city and the view from the terrace on Tibidabo on a starry or moonlight summer night is memorable.

Along a fine highway the automobile drive to Montserrat is beautiful from start to finish. The monastery and chapel are the focal interest for pilgrims, but to those of other faiths the natural beauty of this curious geological formation is more inspiring. Of strange spectacular shapes, the great pinnacles thrust themselves to the sky or disappear in the tangled tresses of fog that twine in and out among them. Trees and plants of unusual interest to the botanist are here and one is startled to find vines and shrubs of home gardens growing wild on these heights. One must, however, consider the fervor and devotion which sought to find divine favor in the hermit cells and penitential roads and shrines which sanctify this spot. We, who interpret the needs of the spirit in terms of today, marvel at the labor and ingenuity of men who built their altars and homes on these inaccessible crags. I wonder if they were really nearer to God. But surely we can all find hilltops for retreat though maybe sometimes only within our own souls.

In Rossetti's "Blessed Damosel" the music of names is engagingly revealed. Even so, as we crossed the border the melody of lovely names rang in our memory: Burgos, Segovia, Avila, Madrid, Toledo, Cordova, Seville, Ronda, Granada, Murcia, Alicante, Valencia, Tarragona, Barcelona -a lilting song of adieu.

DUST OF THE GROUND

MIRA MACLAY

This common dust! Flouted and brushed aside;
Spurned, even by the foot that treads it down;
Yet unprotesting, caring not at all—

What matters it though dust be cursed and spat
Upon, or trampled back to mire, or parched
By desert winds, or quickened, once again
To know the sun and rain; to bloom, a rose
At morn, at evening-dust again. Or thrust
Upon it consciousness; it flames with old
Desires and shakes with ancient fears; with new
Eyes it beholds the long forgotten spring,
And thrills to songs that it has sung before.
It re-appraises self and farthest suns,

And flinches not to find that flower and star
And man-the heart that loves, the lips that cry,
The brain that dares to think-at last shall be
One with this placid, unresisting dust.

Such unoffending dust! What had it done
That primal day that the Lord God should take
This clay and fashion man of it? Should force
Upon it fear and lust; hunger and thirst-
To crave for meat that costs another's life;
For wine, a menace to its own; for love,
Denied, and righteousness beyond attain;
To yearn for beauty it cannot create,
Yet feel but one more stab of the old pain
When April's moon, a bride, laughs as she throws
Her white flowers to the waiting lake; to be
The dupe of truth, sought with a lover's zeal;
In chains to boast of freedom, and to prate
Of justice while defrauding fellow dust.
What had it done, that even the Lord God
Should dare to punish thus?

Was it the beat

Of some great heart, or did I hear a voice

That pricked the stillness of the flower-soft dusk?

"Mother of all I lay, nor dreamed nor stirred,
Through æons countless as the sands of all
The seas; before the measured flight of time
Had yet begun; while still the earth, cloud-wrapped
And warm, was hushed through the long Azoic night
By winds that sang of stars and the coming morn.
Torrential rains washed me, storm upon storm.
Kissed me a younger and more ardent sun.

At last an hour-perchance all undesigned,

Perchance planned from the first-was come. I movedSlowly, unconscious as the quickening child,

But I had found, once more it seems to me,

The old, old way to life. Gladly I gave

An oft-recurring price, and paid with the pangs

Of a thousand deaths for the joys of a thousand lives.
Gladly again I rest, untroubled dust!

"More ancient than the stars am I. Older

Than life. Before death was, I AM. When stars
And life and death shall cease, still shall I be
Undaunted, laughing, ready. Then what to me
The paltry shock of world and crashing world?
Or fury of unfathomed hells whose gulfs

Are lit with flames that feed on suns? I have
Escaped destruction in catastrophes
That wrecked old universes, blotted out
Before the suns of Vega blazed. I am
The rich and fecund heir of alien realms,

Of unimagined worlds and suns that moved

To music whose vast rhythms and strange chords
Still throb in me. Slime or granite, brute

Or man, or god-what are they to me?

Bubbles of an ample sea. I have

No aim, or care, or end.

To me the grave
And bridal bed are one. Yet, questing life,
Whose is your sorrow if not mine? Or whose
Your ecstasy? Your farthest dream-and what
Is it? My peace and immortality!"

Humble and low it lies, dust of the ground;
Spurned even by the foot that treads it down.
Yet, unprotesting, caring not—what need
Has it to fret or care, this timeless dust!

ON THE SCOPE AND LIMITATIONS OF THE ARTS

ARAM TOROSSIAN

The Arts themselves, as well as their subordinate forms, are
closely related to each other, and have a certain tendency to
unite and even lose themselves in each other; but herein lies
the duty, the merit, the dignity of the true artist, that he knows
how to separate that department in which he labors from the
others, and so far as may be, isolates it.1

I

-GOETHE

It is strange that such a great aesthetician as Benedetto Croce ignores the concrete nature of art. As I understand him, he makes slight distinction between an aesthetic experience, the internal state of the appreciator, and the objective work of art which causes or gives rise to the experience. In his concise definition of art as "the expression of impressions," what he means by expression is not the objective form which the artist gives to his impressions, but the aesthetic experience itself, the internal expression; the concrete work of art is wholly secondary for him. But this is certainly contrary to the real facts. As every creator knows, the complete crystallization of his impressions can only be realized in the external expression (curiously enough Croce himself realizes this, too) to which he aspires, and he is never satisfied until he attains it. Moreover, if he wishes to communicate his emotional experiences to others—and the social origin of the art-impulse is a strong evidence that every artist consciously or unconsciously desires to do so— no other way is open to him but to embody them in concrete forms. If the aesthetic experience was adequate to give him.

1 Goethe's Literary Essays (Spingarn), "Introduction to the Propylaea."

complete satisfaction and he had no desire to communicate it to others, then we would have no works of art, for no artist would labor strenuously to embody them in concrete forms. This being so, the nature of the objective form of the work of art becomes as important for study as the nature of the aesthetic experience itself.

Because he considers the external expression secondary, Croce ignores completely a discussion of the scope and limitations of the arts. As every impression is bound to be different, he says, its expression is bound to be different also; therefore, how can we classify the arts and distinguish one group from another? "There are as many arts as there are artists," says Spingarn (who follows in the footsteps of Croce), speaking particularly of the art of poetry, "the number is not seven, but countless as the stars. We group them in constellations for our convenience, not theirs."

Without wholly denying these assertions there still remains a possibility of subdividing the arts into certain groups. Their study will lead us, I believe, to the discovery of certain fundamental differences between the arts, which artists would do well to respect, if their purpose is not to create temporary sensations but permanent works of art. This possibility is based on the following assumptions. The positive aesthetic value of a work of art is the satisfaction felt by the appreciator when he finds in it expression of human values which he approves, and also when he discovers in it realization of any expectations to which the work of art gives rise. As these desires of the appreciator follow an adequate perception of the sensory object, the nature of the object must conform to the laws of perception which are based on the nature of attention, memory, and other psychological factors. With due allowance made for the difference in the perceptive power of different appreciators, the fact still remains that these fundamental factors which affect the nature of perception are much the same in most normal appreciators. If this is so, then we can investigate the nature of perception, and consequently that of the aesthetic

A Modern Book of Criticism (Lewisohn), "The Seven Arts and the Seven Confusions."