Has she not, within the past few weeks, asserted this political power in Ireland in the most positive and high-handed manner? Can there be any question as to the meaning of the Vatican rescript, coming as it does in the midst of a fierce struggle of an oppressed people for political liberty? Does it not mean that the temporal interests of nationalities and governments, of races and peoples, must at all times be sacrificed to the policy of the Roman pontiff? The Irish bishops accept the pope's rescript without question, and declare that the Roman pontiff has an inalienable divine right to speak with authority on all such matters. Do Americans think that this republic is absolutely and forever invulnerable, and free from any possible danger from within or from without? Strong nations fear the Roman system. Two of the greatest statesmen of this age have spoken out in plain, grave speech upon the pretensions of the Roman Church. Mr. Gladstone says:

"The pope demands for himself the right to determine the province of his own rights, and has so defined it in formal documents as to warrant any and every invasion of the civil sphere. . . . Rome requires a convert who joins her to forfeit his moral and mental freedom, and to place his loyalty and civil duty at the mercy of another."

Prince Bismarck, in a speech delivered April 16, 1875, said:

"This pope, this foreigner, this Italian, is more powerful in this country than any one person, not excepting even the king. And now please to consider what this foreigner has aunounced as the programme by which he rules in Prussia as elsewhere. He begins by arrogating to himself the right to define how far his authority extends. And this pope, who would use fire and sword against us if he had the power to do so, who would confiscate our property and not spare our lives, expects us to allow him full, uncontrolled sway among us."

LEON BOULAND.

THE NEW BATTLE OF THE BOOKS.

FOR a long time a wordy war has raged in the magazines and the newspapers between so-called realists and romanticists. In "Harper's Monthly" Mr. Howells has for years been asserting the importance of novels that keep close to the facts of life; and the critics and criticasters have daily attacked his teaching and practice as materialistic and debasing, as disregarding "the depth, variety, and beauty of life." Mr. George Saintsbury has recently enunciated as "the first rule of literature, . what is presented shall be presented not merely as it is, but transformed, or, if I may say so, disrealized." "As a merely mimetic process," says Mr. J. A. Symonds, "art is so conspicuously a failure, that the artist must resign the attempt to do again what nature does, and all his realistic skill must finally

that

subserve the expression of the thought and emotion which himself contains." Even Mr. Andrew Lang and Mr. Edgar Fawcett have been drawn into the fray, and at length certain rules have been formulated by a deft and charming writer, Mr. R. L. Stevenson. The young author, he asserts, must first select a motive either of character or passion, and then make everything in the novel subservient to that motive; he should remember always that a novel is "not a transcript of life;" he must not suffer "his style to play below the level of the argument," and must "pitch the key of conversation, not with any thought of how men talk in parlors, but with a single eye to the degree of pas sion he may be called on to express; " finally, he is not even to

care particularly if he miss the pungent material of the day's manners, the reproduction of the atmosphere and the environment."

One critic violently denounces Rider Haggard's "She," and another, with equal vehemence, derides Howells's " April Hopes." The ground is strewn with dead and dying reputations. Is it

not time, perhaps, to call a parley, and to consider terms of peace? In all this confusion there must be some principles to guide us, some truths generally admitted that may serve as a basis for compromise. Let us for a moment try to discuss this matter calmly, with what impartiality and lucidity we may. The controversy has become mainly one of words, a question of right naming;" let us try to ascertain the facts that these words but half reveal.

No one, doubtless, ever tried to paint a picture or to tell a story untrue to fact in every particular; certainly, no one ever succeeded in such an attempt. Even an angel in a church window has some resemblance to a human being, and the action of even the most romantic hero is not inspired by the weakest motive. At the outset, then, one may say that every work of fiction ever written has been, to some extent at least, realistic. The question becomes at once a question of the degree of realism that is permissible. In a matter of such delicacy it would seem that every man must be a law to himself, for where can any authoritative rules be found? A novelist may copy the practice of previous novelists, but whence comes their authority? or he may copy nature, carefully retaining the color of his own spectacles and the effect of his own prejudices; but why should his personal defects of judgment or vision be of enduring interest? or he may copy nature with an endeavor to be as impartial and unprejudiced and clear-sighted as his character and education permit, and if he does so what Daniel is there who can say that he does wrong?

In the old romances of chivalry "all reference to real life or real geography," to quote the words of Ticknor, "was apparently thought inappropriate," and the heroes, who were invariably princes in disguise, always expressed themselves with that noble elegance supposed to be characteristic of the speech of princes. In "Palmerin of Great Britain" the Green Sword Knight had a lively contest with the dragon Endriago, and, "before its soul departed, the devil flew from its mouth and went through the air with a clap of thunder." The typical hero, as in the later romance of "Cassandra," whatever else he might be, was never commonplace; always

"his face was marvelously handsome; and through a beauty which had nothing effeminate one might observe something so martial, so sparkling, and so majestic, as might in all hearts make an impression of love, fear, and respect, at once. His stature exceeded that of the tallest man, but the proportion of it was wonderfully exact, and all the motions of his body had a grace and liberty that was nothing common."

In Greene's "Arcadia," even a poor gentlewoman living with shepherds could not change her dress without quoting Latin: "Aulica vita splendida miseria; . . . then, Lamedon, will I disguise myself, . . . for being poorly attired, I shall be meanly minded, and measure myself by my present estate, not by former fortunes." The Amadis romances were still more extravagant, and are to the modern reader still more unreadable. Did a generation more imaginative than ours delight in such romances simply because they were unreal, because the heroes talked like gods and loved like madmen? In those days the "Amadis" must have seemed far more lifelike than the only other fiction. to be had, stories from classical mythology and jest-books of anecdotes ancient as the Sanscrit. Knight-errantry, moreover, was more real and lasted longer than we can well believe. In the time of Ferdinand and Isabella several distinguished noblemen journeyed into foreign countries, "in order to try the fort une of arms with any cavalier that might be pleased to adventure it with them," and it was well on in the sixteenth century when Ulrich von Hütten, "the last of the knights-errant," sallied forth from his study to attack "three abbots on the highway in the Palatinate," and later fought, single-handed, five of the retinue of the French ambassador at Viterbo. It could not, indeed, have been the unreality of the romances that charmed their readers, since they are known to have been regarded as literally true.

Even in the romances most remote from actual life there are occasional natural touches. Many a valiant knight must have sympathized with Amadis at the tournament when, "his arms in pieces and without a sword, . . . he looked toward Oriana's window, and seeing her back toward him, knew why she had turned away," and got fresh courage; for Oriana could not bear to see his danger, and yet would comfort him with the sight of her long hair.

It may well, then, have been the truth rather than the untruth, the realism rather than the exaggeration, in the romances of chivalry that made them interesting to the dames and damsels left at home in the old castles of Castile; and it was certainly because of the unreality of the prolific brood of Amadis that they vanished forever at the first prick of Don Quixote's lance. Cervantes had, indeed, as he confessed, "no other desire than to render abhorred of men the false and absurd stories of the books of chivalry;" and ridicule he found, as it ever is, a rapid solvent of everything save truth.

The long survival of unreal characters and of literary traditions that have lost their meaning is often surprising, but still more significant is the inevitable certainty with which real life reappears, though in the most conventional of disguises, in every romance of more than a day's popularity. In the "Astrée" the masques of nymphs and shepherds but half concealed the faces of ladies and nobles that every one recognized. In "Cassandra" the author professed to avoid "all improbable actions and extravagant adventures," and to supplement rather than to contradict the historians. The romances de longue haleine that Mlle. de Scudéry adroitly constructed from the ruins of the pastorals and the books of chivalry merely transplanted contemporary life to the banks of the Tiber or the Euphrates in the days of Tarquin or Darius. The hero of "Le Grand Cyrus" is Condé, whose victories, and even military strategy, are described with minute exactitude; and in the fifteen volumes of "Clélie" the conversations between the ladies whose fates are ruled by the stars of Brutus and Amilcar obviously but repeat the long discussions that beguiled the afternoons at the Hôtel de Rambouillet and at Mlle. de Scudéry's own salon on her famous Samedis.

Richardson brought the romances down to earth from cloudland, and ridiculed their "high ideas of first impressions, of eternal constancy, of love raised to a pitch of idolatry." Sir Charles Grandison, with all his perfections, was more human than Amadis, and has survived him. Fielding, in his turn, ridiculed Richardson, and Fielding is not yet dethroned, though some of his most highly finished conversations were condemned by a young lady of the time for reasons since regarded as conclusive.