in the subject, and gives the writer the opportunity of enriching his parable with the results of much knowledge of human life, but these accidents do not affect the real nature of the argument.

Observe that the point is not raised as to Mr. Howells's powers of observation. It has been agreed that the material upon which he works is thoroughly modern, and this could have been obtained only by an acute observer. His genius presupposes alertness in this respect. But his method of analysis which appeals every problem of human activity to consciousness, the only method possible, perhaps, where human affairs are viewed so largely from the subjective side, must have upon the reader the effect of a certain phase of mediævalism. That it has a similar effect upon his own mind is indicated by the fondness he displays for verbal paradoxes that rival the subtle distinctions and definitions invented by the scholastic philosophers. One of a young girl's moods is thus described: "She took his hand and clung to it in descending, as if eager to escape to him from some fear of him." Here is another example, "He felt giddy, as if her fluctuations of mood and motive had turned his own brain." Ben Halleck's impression, of Marcia Hubbard is brought out in this way: "His pro. phetic feeling of this and of her inaccessibility to human help here and hereafter made him sometimes afraid of her; but all the more severely he exacted of his ideal of her that she should not fall beneath the tragic dignity of her fate through any levity of her own. Now, at her innocent

laugh, a subtle irreverence, which he was not able to exorcise, infused itself into his sense of her." Such fanciful deductions as these are simply impossible to observe. They are not the work of Mr. Howells solely as a literary artist, because they do not affect the form, color, or grouping of his characters; they are simply his psychological eccentricities. The same tendency is evinced in mere phrases, as when allusion is made to "a wide, joyless smile," "a cold ray of amusement," where the supposed mental habit or

state of the person described is called upon to interpret the play of his features instead of being interpreted by it. An even more extraordinary phrase is "the merciless iteration of a child," where the supposed mental state of one person is used to characterize the act of another. An indefinite number of such subtleties could be collected from Mr. Howells's writings, but these are sufficient for our purpose.

The ancient theory of the philosophers about the cosmos and the microcosmos is threadbare enough, but there is value in it. Supposing that the individual mind corresponds, in some sense, to the entire external world, it might repeat in miniature the tendencies of an age of human activity. If it were a necessary law of the mind that this repetition should occur, then the thesis undertaken to be proved in this criticism could not be demonstrated until it were shown that in some of his characters Mr. Howells develops anew from his imagination traits that were marked in the real life of the age to which he has been compared. The period of scholasticism was distinguished for monkish asceticism, and it stimulated in men the traits of self-denial, self-abnegation, and self-torment, while it perfected, to an inquisitorial degree, the habit of investigating one's own consciousness. Other features of medieval, religious, and philosophic life might be mentioned that would be questioned as matters of fact, but these are indisputable. return to Mr. Howells's novels and see what a procession of mild, but persistent, heautoustimoroumenoi-Terence coined a long word to describe self-tormentors-he has created. To be sure he is careful to call the self-denial of Elmore in "A Fearful Responsibility," a habit of Puritan civilization; and Dr. Breen's "irritation of perpetual selfquestion" is noted as a morbid tendency growing out of the New England girl's natural sense of duty; but, in another place, the relationship of such a character to the mediæval ideal is thus acknowledged: "A sudden impulse, unreasoned and unreasonable, in which there seemed hope. of some such atonement or expiation, as the same ascetic

Now

nature would once have found in fasting or the scourge, prevailed with her." And again: "In another age such a New England girl would have tortured herself with inquisition as to some neglected duty to God." It is not pertinent to inquire here whether these characterizations are true to New England life; such an inquiry would open the way to a very extensive digression. But it is evident that Mr. Howells was himself conscious of the likeness of the personages he has depicted to some phases of medieval life.

That

It is natural to look upon a method so vitally different from that of all previous novelists as the starting-point of a new school of literature. Brilliant as Mr. Howells's work is, does it promise much for those who are to be his successors? It was inevitable that his formalism should appear sooner or later in American fiction. There are hints of such a tendency even in the works of Poe and Hawthorne. But the fact that the result could not be avoided does not make it an occasion either for congratulation or regret. Here, also, we may learn a lesson from scholasticism. system, whatever may have been the hopes of its first teachers, proved, instead of an instrument for the discovery and ascertainment of truth, to be a machine constructed on a few definite principles which eliminated without fail from every scheme of thought submitted to it all propositions at variance with those principles. It was the invention of antique, senile conservatism which supposed that its experience covered the whole realm of knowledge. Is it not possible that a similar stage of existence has been almost reached by romantic literature, of which the novel is the most successful the most universal exponent? Experience has shown that no form of literature can exercise perpetual domination over the minds of men, and the labors of the past century have left few problems of human thought and human experience untouched by the romancer. No formula of science, theology, or philosophy, no vagary of the imagination, but has its place potentially or really in fiction. One may find in this body of English literature epic terse

ness and sublimity, tragical situations, comical entanglements, humorous discourses, concise and witty epigrams, historical analysis, acute criticism, deep philosophic insight, dialectic subtlety, scientific observation, satirical reflection; a genial and voluminous record of social customs, national peculiarities, individual eccentricities of antique folk lore and of new theories upon every phase of life. Experience attested the vast popularity of scholasticism in its time; experience has shown, too, that of all forms of letters the novel is the one generally adapted to the faculties of mankind. To have written some sort of a tale is, it might be said, an almost universal achievement with those who can write at all. It is tiresome even to think of the catalogue of writers who have gained more or less distinction as novelists; but when Mr. Howells confesses, practically, that the stories have all been told long since, and that the business of the novelist is now argument and analysis, his testimony does not support the opinion that the list will be indefinitely. enlarged. That the greatest masters in this sort of writing belong already to the past is patent, except to the partial defenders of this or that contemporary school. Those who desire to do so may press the logical conclusion of the above reasoning that the novel, in all its forms, is the mark of a decaying civilization, but they should remember that history does not proceed according to a syllogistic formula. They may go to antiquity for the analogue of the modern novel, and conceive that they have found it in that product of Roman social, moral, and literary decay, the Milesian tale. The comparison is an instructive one, at all events, for the voluminous and irregular Roman fiction was the lineal predecessor of the brief monkish tale, and was displaced by it as the elaborate fiction of the present day is gradually giving way to the crisp, brief, vivid story. Mr. Howells's short stories have been, so far, the best products of his pen. Future ages will probably say the same of all the great story writers.

BOOKS-REVIEWS AND NOTICES.

On the Desert, with a brief Review of Recent Events in Egypt. By HENRY M. FIELD, D. D.*

A CATALOGUE of all the books that have been written concerning the route of the children of Israel through the Desert of Sinai to the Promised Land would be an exceedingly volumincus work. Yet every volume of the reminiscences of travel in that region adds matter of interest to the mass of literature which has already accumulated around the subject. A sermon never seems more appropriate than from the top of Sinai, and the themes that bring out the devout traveler's best thoughts are thickly strewn over the boundless, fervid plain. In the main, it is the traveler himself who is new. He does not, as a rule, astonish us with fresh discoveries, but he shows us the influence of the antique history upon a new individuality. In the present case we have the experiences of a genial and benevolently sentimental man of learning who diverges rarely from the pleasant, but commonplace, report of his journey from Alexandria to Jerusalem. His observations at Alexandria and Cairo, and on the way through Egypt, lead him in view of later events to discuss the rebellion of Arabi and the occupation of the country by the English. He makes a strong plea in defense of England's policy with regard to Egypt, even excusing the bombardment of Alexandria. It is a strange thing to see how strong the crusading spirit is in a man of such kindly disposition, and how this spirit confuses his perceptions of right and wrong on the vexed question of Egyptian control. A national policy dictated by a mob of plutocrats whose money was in danger of being lost, whose avaricious disposition has been one of the notable things in this age, becomes to him the only method of saving Egypt. England is conjured not to abandon the country lest it become a prey to anarchy; it is safe to say that what she won so cheaply will not be hastily given up. If ever there was a war provoked by private greed, cruel and unjust from the beginning, it was the recent war in Egypt. The only relief to the picture is that the conflict re*New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. Cincinnati: Walden & Stowe. Price, $2.00.