Josef Land, calling en route at Archan- | specific. The use of alcohol and to

bacco, which has recently been entirely discarded in Arctic work, is one of the peculiar and probably not unpopular features of the present attempt on the the Pole.

gel. Many of the equipments of the expedition were exhibited to a select party at an at home" given by Mr. and Mrs. Harms worth at the Grafton Galleries on Friday evening, and on Monday last a number of visitors were The arrangements for travelling inshown over the ship in the Shadwell clude boats for crossing open water. Basin, when the special arrangements One of aluminium, measuring eighteen for the expedition were more fully ex- feet by five feet, weighs only one hunplained. The staff which has been dred and fifty pounds, and can carry finally selected by Mr. Jackson to ac- twenty people; it is made in three seccompany him on his projected land tions for convenience of transport on journey in the far North includes the sledges, and each section will float by following: Mr. Albert Armitage, sec-itself. A similar copper boat, weighond in command, a young officer of the ing about two hundred pounds, is also P. and O. Company's service, who is a carried, and three light wooden Norpractical navigator and trained in as-wegian boats. A fast steam-launch, tronomical and magnetic observations; appropriately named the Markham, is Dr. Kettlits, medical officer; Captain Schlosshauer, a merchant skipper; Mr. Fisher, curator of the Nottingham Museum, as scientific collector; Mr. Burgess, who has had some previous Arctic experience, and will act as cook; Mr. Childs, who undertakes mineralogical work and photography; and Mr. Dunsford, who, like Mr. Jackson and Mr. Armitage, has a knowledge of surveying. Some friends of the explorers sail with the party, intending to return from Archangel. Several previous expeditions have acquired some knowledge of the natural conditions of Franz Josef Land, and it is confidently expected that game, in the shape of bears, seals, and birds, will be abundant. Accordingly a complete outfit of sporting guns, rifles, harpoons, etc. is being taken. The expedition is, however, fully provisioned for four years with the most highly condensed and thoroughly preserved foods obtainable. Much reliance is placed on the fresh bear and seal meat, expected to be shot, for the prevention of scurvy, but Mr. Jackson also proposes to use port wine as amated at £25,000.

;

expected to be of service if it is found possible to proceed from the base for some distance by sea, or up Austria Sound. Eighteen sledges of exceptionally light and strong construction, each calculated to carry one thousand pounds weight if necessary, are taken these are to be drawn by Siberian dogs or ponies. There are three collapsible tents, and suits of Samoyed clothing for use in winter, the cumbrous-looking garb of these Siberian nomads being considered better adapted for rough work in bad weather than the tighterfitting costume of the Eskimo pattern. The scientific instruments carried are perhaps the finest that have ever been taken into the far North, the extensive use of aluminium ensuring a lightness and strength never before attained in Arctic exploration.

After landing the exploring party in Franz Josef Land about the end of August the Windward will return to England, if possible, and sail again next year with fresh supplies. whole cost of the expedition is esti

The

THREE Norwegian whalers have attempted seal fishery in the Antarctic waters south of the Falkland islands during the southern summer now ending. One of these vessels was as far south as

69° or 70° without finding enough ice to make sealing profitable, and it is reported that a considerable extent of new land has been discovered and charted.

Nature.

For EIGHT DOLLARS remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage.

Remittances should be inade by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks, and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & Co.

Single copies of the LIVING AGE, 18 cents.

CHATTAFIN.

My orchard blooms with high September light,

Opal and topaz star the burning grass ; The hedgerow-fluted meadows climb the height,

And into gulfs of silver'd azure pass; The glittering hawk-weed turns to golden glass

The dew'd enamel of the rough pale field; With laden boughs, a lichen-hoary mass,

Rolls the arch'd canopy of autumn's yield,

And hides a liquid gloom beneath its leafy

shield.

Come to me now, while all the winds are dumb,

And, floating in this earthly hyaline, Bring me no whisper of the harsh world's hum,

But, with an indolence attuned to mine,

Pass to my soul the thoughts that wave in thine;

And therefore blest and wise

O be less beautiful, or be less brief,

Thou tragic splendor, strange and full of fear!

In vain her pageant shall the Summer rear!

Like those twin brooks that stir our field at thy mute signal, leaf by golden leaf, Crumbles the gorgeous year.

below

Whose sparkles meet in music, they Ah, ghostly as remembered mirth, the

divine

No first nor second place, but all they know

Is that with doubled strength they seaward leap and flow.

tale

Of Summer's bloom, the legend of the
Spring!

And thou, too, flutterest an impatient
wing,

Come to me now; come from the mart Thou presence yet more fugitive and frail,

of men,

To this monastic court of apple-trees. See, the grey heron rises from the fen, And mark his slower mate by long degrees

Follows and flaps to stiller shades than these;

They wing their lonesome meditative way

To some hush'd elbow of the reedy

leas;

O let us lose ourselves in flight, as they Their hearts' sequestered law thus tenderly obey.

Thou most unbodied thing,
Whose very being is thy going hence,
And passage and departure all thy
theme;

Whose life doth still a splendid dying

Stilled is the virgin rapture that was
June,

And cold is August's panting heart of
fire;

And in the storm-dismantled forestchoir

Here all is gained we waste our lives de- For thine own elegy the winds attune

standing

Their wild and wizard lyre;

And poignant grows the charm of thy de

cay,

The pathos of thy beauty, and the sting,
Thou parable of greatness vanishing!

Falls on this place, and like a chrism For me, thy woods of gold and skies of

of dew,

Without a murmur, steeps us thro'

and thro';

grey With speech fantastic ring. WILLIAM Watson.

From The New Review.

THE NOVELIST IN SHAKESPEARE.1

there; it does not pass away; it dominates everything.

Is this too bold a figure to describe Two years ago I was sailing off the the position of Shakespeare in literanorth-east coast of Denmark. A thick ture? It is three centuries since he mist enveloped the ship, and the cap- first appeared, and where he stood tain slacked speed, saying he would go then he is still standing. Other figures no farther, for the land must be some- have arisen and disappeared. The where thereabout. Presently the help-great figures of his own time have less void began to break. A dim nearly all crumbled away. If they reshadow crept along our side to the main, it is only as ruins, haunted by west. The shadow took first the shape the literary antiquary. But he is where of a low mountain, then of broken he was, our beacon, our stronghold, cliffs, finally of ruined walls. "That's and our greatest literary monument. Elsinore,' ," said the captain, and in a moment we were standing out to sea.

Will you think me very weak that I wanted to go down on my knees on the deck? The vapory shadow of the walls of Elsinore was like the ghost of Hamlet, of Shakespeare, coming down through the mists of three hundred

years.

At my home in the Isle of Man, directly facing the window of the room in which I work, there is another castle, built by the Danes. They say it is precisely on the model of the Castle of Elsinore. It stands on an island rock, and looks back at the town and out on the sea. I have seen this old castle every day for about a year, and I have never been neighbor to any inanimate thing that has had a stronger effect on my mind. It would be hard to say what that effect has been. I think its steadfastness has produced the most abiding impression. What our little town was like when the castle was built, no one knows. How many houses and streets have risen and fallen to ruins since then we cannot tell. But the castle remains. There it stands, and has stood for ten centuries, with its round tower against the sky. The sun rises on the face of it, and then it is grey; the sun sets at the back of it, and then it is black. On misty days it is only a ghostly white shape behind clouds of vapor; when storms are raging it is only a rock for the big seas to break over. But it is always

The festival we are here to celebrate is not a new one. After inirty-seven anniversaries, and as many speeches from the chair, it is manifestly difficult to say anything that shall be at once original and worthy to be remembered. I am satisfied that if there is any new thought on Shakespeare, it lies some

where at the surface and needs no

digging for. Therefore, I content myself with the idea that is nearest the idea that is suggested by the daily occupations of my own life. I ask you to consider with me whether Shakespeare, who was the greatest of English dramatists, was not also the first of English novelists.

It will be necessary to clear the ground by some general definition of the novel and the drama. For this purpose I propose to take the wellknown passage from the fifth book of "Meister's Apprenticeship."

"One evening a dispute arose among our friends about the novel and the drama, and which of them deserved the preference. They conversed together long upon the matter; and in fine, the following was nearly the result of their discussion: In the novel as well as in the drama it is human nature and human action that we see.

But in the novel it is chiefly sentiments and events that are exhibited; in the drama it is characters and deeds. The novel must go slowly forward, and the sentiments of the hero, by some means or other, must restrain the tendency of the whole to unfold itself and to conclude. day Dinner, April 23rd, 1894, Anderton's Hotel, The drama, on the other hand, must hasten, and the character of the hero'

1 An address delivered at the Shakespeare BirthLondon.

must press forward to the end.
The novel-hero must be suffering, at
least he must not in a high degree be
active, in the dramatic one, we must
look for activity and deeds.”

I am not going to discuss this as a theory. I will ask you to accept it as a touchstone by which, to judge of Shakespeare's art, Goethe may be wrong; if so, the greater part of the world is wrong with him. Pretty accurately he expresses the general feeling.

Now if we were asked by a foreigner to give an account of the origin of the English novel, I suppose we should say that, after various trial trips with Sir Philip Sidney, Defoe, and others, it began with Richardson and Fielding. In these two writers it leapt to a great maturity. But it was still very simple in structure; it was still epic, and told | its tale precisely as you would tell a tale to a child, beginning "Once upon a time there lived a man."

Then came writers of various merit, and presently a great man, a mighty magician, a wonderful wizard —Walter Scott. Scott did more than write a group of the finest novels in the language; he enlarged the art of fiction. This he did by adding to the epic method the dramatic method. The tale did not begin, "Once upon a time there lived a man." It began, so to speak, "On a certain day, etc., etc., when the sun was dipping over the hill, etc., etc., etc., a solitary horseman might have been seen, etc., etc." You know the way of it. This dropped you down into a story, precisely as a drama does, when the curtain rises and you sit and watch for the plot.

Such is the state of the English novel at the present hour. We have got no further than Scott. A novel, then, at its best, is now a drama written out full length, with scenery and scene-shifting, and music, and the actors' dresses, and the actors' voices, all reproduced in words.

And, now, for a moment, I will ask you to hark back. Let us glance at the origin of the English drama. Its literal origin is lost somewhere in the

mists of the past. We dip into its history at a notable point. It is the period immediately preceding the Elizabethau dramatists. There were plays founded on Italian tales of love, on Spanish voyages, on the death of Julius Cæsar, on a Scottish thane who killed his king, on a Danish prince who pretended to be mad, and on a young girl who pretended to be dead. These plays were very rough affairs, and a harum-scarum lot of vagabonds had got tattered copies of them. They acted them in sheds, in the open yards of inns, and in the penny enclosures at country fairs. Of course the great folks did not go to see them, or if they did they were careful to wear masks. The intellectual world, according to its wont, regarded these children of the imagination with great disdain. Bacon knew nothing about such nonsense. But every London 'prentice knew them by heart, and could tell their stories backwards.

And then came along a group of young men of brilliant gifts, but not too much scholarship. One of them was a gravedigger, another had been a bricklayer, a third a butcher, and the ablest of the brotherhood was a country lad, son of a farmer, and nothing else in particular. These boys cast in their lot with the London 'prentice. They took the tattered copies of those old plays, one by oue, and transfigured them, put character, and atmosphere, and politics, and religion into them. They had only been boys' stories before, but now they became real dramas. The 'prentices liked them just as much as ever, perhaps rather better, and the great multitude of the people found that they liked them no less. Theatres were then built; the tatterdemalion ragamuffins became a recognized profession, and the English drama was afoot.

But what were the conditions of its existence? They were very primitive. A piece of dramatic writing to be anything had to be everything. It must not only tell a story, it must criticise it. It must not only present a character, it must tell you if the character was good