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chapter I bounded down-stairs to read it to her, and so short were the chapters, so ready was the pen, that I was back with a new manuscript before another clout had been added to the rug." At twelve or thereabout he put the literary calling to bed for a time, and took up cricket and football instead, but from the day on which he first tasted blood in the garret his mind was made up. "There could be no hum-dreadful-drum profession for me; literature was my game. I remember being asked by two maiden ladies about the time I left the university what I was to be, and when I replied, brazenly, ‘An author,' they flung up their hands, and one exclaimed, reproachfully, 'And you an M.A.!'" His mother's views at first were not dissimilar, and her ambition for her boy was that he should be a minister, with a lurking hope at the bottom of her heart that he might rise to a professor's chair. Mr. Barrie relates an incident of those years which has a prophetic significance. "I had one person only on my side; he was an old tailor, one of the fullest men I have known, and quite the best talker. . . This man had heard of my sets of photographs of the poets, and asked for a sight of them, which led to our first meeting. . . . I remember how he spread them out on his board, and, after looking long at them, turned his gaze on me and said solemnly,

'What can I do to be forever known, And make the age to come my own?' These lines of Cowley were new to me, but the sentiment was not new, and 1 marvelled how the old tailor could see through me so well. I hurried home, but neighbors had dropped in, and this was for her ears only, so I drew her to the stair and said imperiously,

'What can I do to be forever known, And make the age to come my own?' It was an odd request for which to draw her from a tea-table, and she must have been surprised, but I think she did not laugh, and in after years she would repeat the lines fondly with a flush on her soft face. "That is the kind you would like to be yourself!' we would

say in jest to her, and she would reply, almost passionately, 'No, but I would be windy (proud) of being his mother.' . . . She who stood with me on the stair that day was a very simple woman, accustomed all her life to making the most of small things, and I weaved sufficiently well to please her, which has been my only steadfast ambition since I was a little boy."

I have said that this is a book to put side by side with "A Window in Thrums," and there is a deeper reason for this when we remember that on the recent deaths of Mr. Barrie's mother and her daughter, within a few hours of each other, it was then disclosed that they were the originals of Jess and Leeby. The lovely story of their lives had a beautiful and not wnolly mournful end; it was mournful as mortal things are, but the beauty was more than the sorrow, and Mr. Barrie's book will make this clearer. In the almost intolerably pathetic chapter, "Dead This Twenty Years," Mr. Barrie, in writing about the tragedy in another woman's life, drew his inspiration from a similar tragedy in his mother's life. "It was the only thing," he says, "I have written that she never spoke about, not even to that daughter she loved the best. No one ever spoke of it to her or asked her if she had read it; one doesn't ask a mother if she knows that there is a little coffin in the house. She read many times the book in which it was printed, but when she came to that chapter she would put her hands to her heart or even over her ears."

From "Three Scots Worthies in America." By James MacArthur.

From The Forum.

CHURCH ENTERTAINMENTS.

I need not, I fancy, further transcribe from my record. The extremes to which venders of sensational religion, and managers of sensational church performances, are forced, will sufficiently appear from the instances already given. Referring to the Sunday performances, I would be under

and

stood. I am launching no anathemas at any well-meant effort to make religion attractive. Dignity is not the chief consideration in a divine service, and it is conceivable that it is sometimes expedient to sacrifice good taste to a more important thing-the benefit of souls. But I deplore, and I feel that serious men must everywhere deplore, the conditions which make the sensational Sunday show frequent familiar. As a means of drawing a big house, I concede its convenience, under our present unhappy divisions; but I traverse the opinion, if it is anywhere held, that a Sunday show would be necessary under a sane and Christian-that is, a united, a Catholic -administration of religion. Where now rival sects find it necessary to "go to the masses" with Prize Texts, Bicycle Runs for Christ, Cyclone Evangelists, and Lantern Services, a united Church, soberly engaged in its proper work, would find the masses eager to come to it. I greatly misjudge the people if they would not be more strongly attracted by an institution with a distinctive and easily discerned character, than they are by a multitude of nondescript concerns which are indifferently meeting-houses, cycle depots, or barber shops.

But it is not a desire to gather the people, in order to preach the gospel, to them, that actuates congregations which engage in the miscellaneous entertainments, some of which I have described. Thereat suck they out no small advantage. The raison d'étre of these things is in the fact that a hundred and forty sects have fastened themselves upon a people who cannot support them. The show is the only means by which thousands of our innumerable and unnecessary religious societies can pay their bills. The inevitable tendency toward greater and greater sensationalism has been repeatedly pointed out in this series of papers. The present article may perhaps suggest the conclusion that this tendency is now not far from the limit which a decent civilization will impose. The end of the path is being reached.

A review of the entertainments of the past year affords evidence that, with dangerous rapidity, church entertaiuments are taking the nature of improper exhibitions. Ordinary buffoonery no longer draws. The more temp!ing attractions of the forbidden, the more spicy morsels of the variety theatre, are demanded, and are being supplied.

Here again I would not be misunderstood. Healthy amusement, honest fun, is for human enjoyment. God has filled the world with good things, aud we ought to use them. Good-natured nonsense is refreshing. Beautiful faces and graceful dances are joys in which we are wise to take pleasure. That there is a frank, though restrained, life of the senses possible as an attendant upon the highest spirituality, I believe to be the teaching of the Sacraments ordained by Christ. Over-squeamishness is not a necessary characteristic of earnest morality. Le: us be human; let us be hearty; let us be, as we were made, men and women; but, in Heaven's name! let us insist that when people appear in, or for the benefit of, churches, they shall keep on their proper clothes. The theatre and the music-hall, properly conducted, are not establishments upon which the Church has any war to wage. But the Church is not a system of theatres and music-halls. It is a divine institution with a definite, particular, and sacred office, distinct from that of all human agencies whatsoever. It is to teach the sacredness of life, by standing for the essentially sacred side of life. Its songs are not merry glees, but litanies of human hopes and sorrows, and chants of human hearts in winged aspirations seeking God. If there is in life anything pure, and virginal, and sweet,-God knows it is hard enough to keep the faith that there is!-where is there to be kept any place and expression for it, if what are called the houses of God are given over to immodesty? We expect certain things from Mr. Hardy and the Zolaists, but we are hurt and grieved when the Galahad of

our story-tellers descends to "Summer in meretricious arts. Far otherwise.

in Arcady." It may be too much to look for cleanliness on the professional stage; but surely it is beyond pardon that anybody bearing the name of a Church of Jesus, the undefiled Nazarene, should, by a doubtful exhibition, sully the mind of any pure lad or tender maiden committed to its care.

If there is anywhere any witness for innocence, any illustration of the seriousness, nobility, and dignity of life; if there is anywhere any institution to preserve faith in the world, to administer the Sacraments-that one which has taught former generations as nothing else ever could have taught, or ever can teach, the essential brotherhood of men, and that other which preaches the real presence of. God in his world; any power to maintain, against the attacks of the foes of order, the sanctity of marriage; if there is anywhere any organ of God to set right the judgments of society, to absolve whom he has absolved, but to whom men refuse pardon; anywhere any authority also to declare the eternal righteousness, to thunder the demands of justice, and make plain the practical duties of honesty, chastity, and mercy; anywhere, in this time of social travail, any witness to the reality of the Kingdom of Heaven, bold to demand that it be set up in very truth upon this soil of earth; any corporate love to search out the poor, and minister to the sick, to pour upon the wounds of the victims of our social injustice the compassionate healings of its sympathy, it is not easy to recognize it in an agglomeration of enfeebled sects which eke out miserable existence by pitifully entertaining a world which the Church is intended to minister to, to lead, to teach, and to

save.

Christianity is not stronger to do its work because, in the churches of its professors, there is being substituted for the incense of prayer, the aroma of the bean supper and the oyster stew. It is not more beautiful and winning because the congregations of its competing sects are growing adept

The divided Church is in humiliation and disgrace. Its impotence is perceived; it is despised. This is because it is trying to live in violation of its constitution. The Church is constituted in Unity, not in division; in Holiness, not in desecration, immodesty, vulgarity, and sensationalism; in Catholicity, not in the spirit of sectarianism. The Church will again wield its ancient sway over the hearts of men when, returning from its apostasy, absolved and regenerate, it again appears-One, Holy, and Catholic. From "Another Year of Church Entertainments.” By William Bayard Hale.

From The Bookman.

THE PRESENT STATE OF LITERATURE. I observe that with us even more than with you all other forms of literature are gradually being ousted by fiction and journalism. Not so very many years ago-let us say in the times of Fielding-no forms of literature were more despised than these; and now they have acquired an almost exclusive and a singularly intolerant predominance. I should be the last man to say anything against the noble art of fiction, and especially to say it in the presence of so many recognized masters of the craft. But I cannot help thinking that it is much to be regretted that poetry, for example, has so largely lost its hold. Poetry is even a more noble and enduring form of literature than fiction; and great as has been the influence of many of the prose writers in the last generation, I do not think that their power can be compared with that of the poets Tennyson and Longfellow and Bryant. It is also much to be deplored that criticism has suffered so serious a decline. The descent from Hazlitt and Coleridge to Matthew Arnold seems to me great, and the descent from Arnold to our present critics is, I am afraid, greater still. Then we seem to miss now the enduring and monumental works of history.

I

We do not find instances of such consecration as that of your own illustrious Francis Parkman or of Prescott or of Motley. Many clever and scholarly little books of history are being written, but they are mostly designed for use in schools and colleges. might persevere in this line, but it is not necessary; enough has been said to illustrate my point. The pecuniary rewards of the other forms of literature cannot compare with those of fiction, and I contend that we should do what we can to equalize the other recognitions.

I say it with great diffidence, but I am persuaded that the machinery at present in work for the introduction of American authors to the English public is very seriously defective. It is my business to keep a close watch on American literary periodicals and new books, but since coming to this country I have been amazed to find how much excellent work has escaped my observation. This may be in part the fault of the critics. There are two kinds of criticism, each necessary and useful in its way. There is the criticism which guards the doors of fame, which applies catholic and permanent standards, which refuses to be carried away by the clamor of the hour. We need such criticism, and are prepared to honor it. One great English literary journal, in the course of its long and honorable career, has steadily pursued this policy of scrutiny It has discouraged many young authors who deserved to be discouraged and many who did not deserve to be discouraged; but so far as I know it has never, in all its history, brought prominently and generously before the public a new writer who could afterward look back and say that the paper had been the making of him. I do, indeed, recall one instance in which a new American writer received from it an almost extravagant generosity of praise-I refer

to Dr. W. S. Mayo. There is another kind of criticism which watches eagerly for signs and tokens of promise, and which is never afraid of falling into extravagance in hailing them. I shall be glad to see this kind of criticism much more practised. I do not believe in slating new authors. It appears that a fine of sixty pounds for the heinous crime of producing a bad book is a sufficient punishment, and as a rule it is mercilessly exacted. I abhor the insolence of those critics who ordered poor Keats "back to the gallipots." You may say that everything finds its level; that good work is sure sooner or later to be recognized, and that writers with genuine stuff in them will not be discouraged by attacks. I do know that genius is a very rare and delicate product. I happened to discover recently that one of the great world writers of fiction published anonymously a three-volume novel before his literary career, as it is known to the public, began. The novel, as will be seen, when I publish it, as I may, is fit to rank with his other works, but it received no recognition at the time. If this hint had been taken-and it very nearly was taken-the whole world would have been measurably the poorer; and I am convinced that many writers who have it in them to do great things are discouraged by the coldness with which their beginning is received and go no further. Besides, while a work of poetry may not receive recognition in the author's lifetime and yet be quickly received afterward-Shelley, I believe, never received sixpence for his literary work, and is now recognized as the greatest poet of the century-I know very few instances where a novel, neglected at first, has ultimately made its way. There are a few, but they may almost be counted on the fingers.

Address by W. Robertson Nicoll, LL.D., M.A., before the Aldine Club.

A GLIMPSE OF THE BRONTE SISTERS. When "Jane Eyre" was performed at a London Theatre-and it has been

more than once adapted for the stage, and performed many hundreds of times in England and America-Charlotte Brontë wrote to her friend, Mr. Williams, as follows:

To W. S. Williams.

"February 5, 1848.

"Dear Sir.-A representation of 'Jane Eyre' at a minor theatre would no doubt be a rather afflicting spectacle to the author of that work. I suppose all would be wofully exaggerated and painfully vulgarized by the actors and actresses on such a stage. What, I cannot help asking myself, would they make of Mr. Rochester? And the pic ture my fancy conjures up by way of reply is a somewhat humiliating one. What would they make of Jane Eyre? I see something very pert and very affected as an answer to that query. "Still, were it in my power, I should certainly make a point of being myself a witness of the exhibition. Could I go quietly and alone, I undoubtedly should go; I should endeavor to endure both rant and whine, strut and grimace, for the sake of the useful observations to be collected in such a scene.

"As to whether I wish you to go, that is another question. I am afraid I have hardly fortitude enough really to wish it. One can endure being disgusted with one's own work, but that a friend should share the repugnance is unpleasant. Still, I know it would interest me to hear both your account of the exhibition and any ideas which the effect of the various parts on the spectators might suggest to you. In short, I should like to know what you would think, and to hear what you would say on the subject.

But you

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"February 15, 1848. "Dear Sir.-Your letter, as you may fancy, has given me something to think about. It has presented to my mind a curious picture, for the description you give is so vivid, I seem to realize it all. I wanted information and I have got it. You have raised the veil from a corner of your great world-your London-and have shown me a glimpse of what I might call loathsome, but which I prefer calling strange. Such, then, is a sample of what amuses the metropolitan populace! Such is a view of one of their haunts!

"Did I not say that I would have gone to this theatre and witnessed this exhibition if it had been in my power? What absurdities people utter when they speak of they know not what!

"You must try now to forget entirely what you saw.

"As to my next book, I suppose it will grow to maturity in time, as grass grows or corn ripens; but I cannot force it. It makes slow progress thus far; it is not every day, nor even every week that I can write what is worth reading; but I shall (if not hindered by other matters) be industrious when the humor comes, and in due time I hope to see such a result as I shall not be ashamed to offer you, my publishers, and the public.

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