tion of virtue. So far from its being inherent in civilization and refinement, one is never safe to assume its existence. Even among Christian nations the literature which depicts the lives of the higher classes, and which certainly furnishes the reading of those classes, is loaded with suggestions of impurity. A distinguished French lecturer in New York last winter urged his hearers not to judge of the France of to-day by the novels which are produced by its chief writers, asserting that the great body of the French people, the people of common life, and outside the cities, are as pure and as simple as in any land; while at the same time he was compelled to acknowledge the gross impurity of French literature and the correctness of its picture of the most aristocratic French society. Whether we turn to Russian, or German, or Scandinavian, or even English society, the same is true, and our American aristocratic life as we see it in New York, bears its own shameful testimony. A recent visit to the older part of Pennsylvania, settled by the sturdiest and most religious of German emigrants two generations ago, brings to light a condition of impurity existing to-day among their young people that is difficult to put into words. The point to be observed is that the conception of feminine chastity as a supreme virtue, which is so easily assumed as characteristic of a particular race or group, is only a late acquisition, the result of prolonged and painful development, and is maintained only with effort, Everywhere in society, at home or abroad, there is abundant evidence of the feeling expressed by the famous French tragedienne Madame Bernhard, who, when asked by an American friend for her opinion on the Decalogue, replied simply, "Il y en a trop." The truth is, as George Eliot said, that "Man is by nature an unmitigated savage; let him alone, and he lapses into barbarism." The social virtues and refinements

in which we glory and by which we so readily distinguish our superiority above our neighbors, particularly those of another speech or another skin, are often the thinnest veneer; and are at best the result of circumstances in our history or condition the most accidental. Nothing but the grace of God and the most strenuous obedience to the Christian code of ethics will preserve for us what little of permanent moral character we may at any time have acquired. Relax even a little in our watchfulness, and we seem quickly to lose all that we have gained. When, therefore, we find ourselves tempted, as people of Anglo-Saxon birth are very apt to be tempted, in discussing our relations to what we call inferior races, lightly to throw aside moral obligations or justify ourselves in departing from the strictest rule of fight, on the ground that the higher code is only for ourselves, we are sure not only to deal unjustly with others but to undermine the very foundations of our boasted superiority. It is simply suicide to imply that for any immediate gain, however desirable, we are justified in setting aside the strictest observance of the moral law. There can be but one true code of morals. It has been hard to learn it, harder to maintain it in practice. But as human society advances, it gains in significance as well as in power. And there never was a time, and perhaps never a community, in which its assertion and its absolute inviolability were more to be insisted upon. We are entering upon a new stage of history. The opportunity of the Anglo-Saxon is coming in new forms of national development and in new relations to other races. The history of such virtues as we possess, and the consciousness of the unsteadiness and weakness of our practice even of those virtues which we claim as peculiarly our own, are so marked that we may well feel ourselves called to walk humbly. We may indeed be proud

of our distinction and our opportunities, but it is well not to forget the path by which we have come into them and the instability of our present tenure. Then we will be not only more just in judging others and more pitiful to those less favorably circumstanced, but also more modest and more honest in judging ourselves. Woman never held a loftier position than the one she occupies in America to-day. No one can impair it but herself. And as for the men, we will do well to try to understand the spirit of that noble-minded London physician and philosopher, the late Dr. James Hinton, who, with all his distinguished doings to choose from and his intimate knowledge of the needs of modern society, said on his death-bed: "If I am to be remembered at all, this is what I would be remembered by: I am the man who said, 'Man is so made that he can rise above the sexual passion and subordinate it to use.' There! even if that be false and all else I have said was true, I would rather be remembered as having said that one falschood than by all the truths."

There is permanent validity in Lady Mary Wortley Montague's remark that there are but two kinds of people, men and women. This is the one unfading distinction. Upon their holding their true place and moving forward together, each without degrading the other, depends the progress of the race, and the ultimate attainment of the true goal of existence. The worth of the goal may be measured by the difficulty of the contest.

ARTICLE V.

THE READER'S CONTRIBUTION TO THE POWER OF LITERATURE.

BY OSCAR N. FIRKINS.

It must have fallen at some time to the lot of almost every student of literature who is at once sensitive and observant of his own sensations to notice a disparity between his perceptions and his feelings. Every cultivated man knows that certain attributes in a book ought to awaken pain or pleasure; he knows that pains and pleasures of a certain kind have actually attended the perusal of the book; he has, in other words, two sources or reservoirs of critical knowledge. It seems an easy task-it is certainly a diverting exercise--to associate and compare this double evidence; but the hopes of the inquirer are often dashed by results that are questionable and perplexing. It is easy enough to name merits in writings that please us and faults in writings that we do not like; but the instant we endeavor to establish an equation or a ratio, the instant we endeavor to associate the degrees of our pain or pleasure with corresponding intensities in the beauties or transgressions that excite them, that instant we are baffled and discomfited; we begin to despair of the usefulness of criticism.

The discipline of reflections and experiences such as these conducts us to interesting conclusions. We see that degrees of merit are not deducible from the inspection and comparison of literary traits. We see that any scheme of criticism that rests upon the designation of requirements, and calculations

of the measure in which these requirements have been individually and collectively fulfilled, is a scheme which is certain to be profitless. To adopt the method of the school-examiner, to compute and combine percentages of attainment, is felt to be ridiculous and hopeless. The equations will not balance; the totals will not correspond. Books that have charmed or shaken us in the perusal reward analysis with a shorter list and poorer quality of merits than books which have only pleased; and the work which disgusts or vexes us is found on experiment to be no more assailable than the work which we tolerate or admire. There are novels which we reprobate for slighter infringements of the laws of plot than those we have condoned in Thackeray; there are poems which we chastise for fainter solecisms than those we have allowed in Browning. Works survive in defiance of standards, and perish in conformity with them. We are often nettled, in the reading of criticism, by contact with some long and strenuous indictment, -an indictment the more irritating that its counts are incapable of disproof,-which castigates and mutilates some favorite writer whose worth so far outweighs the proofs of it that truth itself is felt to be a calumny. We are often vexed, in the writing of criticism, to find merit evaporate in the effort to account for it; we are staggered by the paucity of demonstrable beauties and the profusion of indisputable faults. It is sometimes easy to praise what we want to censure, and easy to censure what we want to praise. The feelings and the intellect are both on the jury, and the jury refuses to agree. The method of Addison in criticising "Paradise Lost" exemplifies the difficulty we have been trying to explain. first lays down four fields or categories of merit,-the fable, the characters, the sentiments, and the language; he appraises Milton's excellence in each, and leaves the reader to deduce

He