almost the strong sense of personal interest, characteristic of a proprietor." JANET ROSS. From The Revue Bleue. TENDENCIES OF MODERN ART. and nobler artistic vision. But the tendency is not enough. It should find life in brains sufficiently inventive to express it in works. It is precisely this which impresses us the too manifest lack of proportion between the ambition of artists and their powers of expression. For the representation of certain subjects a rare spiritual culture IT appears to us that sincerity, the is necessary. An eye accustomed to supreme reason for the existence of regard paintings is soon able to discern art, is that which makes a man address whether a composition corresponds to others because he has something to say the intimate and spontaneous desires to them. True artists paint in order to of the artist who produced it, or express outwardly their spontaneous whether, on the contrary, it is only a emotions, to give pleasure to them- manifestation of an artificial state of selves. They are the representatives mind which conforms to the taste of of the doctrine, judiciously understood, the moment, to the fashion, to the of art for art's sake. And as we use appetite for success. From such tenthis expression, it seems well to us to dencies, from such disfigurements of pause and search for the reason of its the true artistic ideal, we turn with present disfavor. This is only an ex- envy to the time when the worship of cessive reaction, and will probably the beautiful was its own sufficient have but a short duration, but it is so reason and its justification. We are significant of our times that it merits perfectly willing to resign all pretenattention. The mania of lecturing, sion to be considered modern rather which has become a veritable plague, than accept the idea of art which is furnishes a striking example of the implied by the phrase. If it is necesmanner in which art is disfigured sary to choose between the two exthrough its submission to the idea. tremes, we shall accept the one which The mania of the sermon has been de- refuses to acknowledge that art has veloped side by side with the resurrec- any other mission than that of expresstion of the mystical and idealistic ing beauty. The day will come, we tendencies which, in painting, as in have an inward conviction, when the literature, are a consequence of the doctrine of art for art's sake, broadly extreme reaction from the too long understood, disengaged from exaggeromnipotence of the realistic move-ations, will regain its rights, when it ment. In itself the reaction is only will again be thought that the highest good and praiseworthy since it shows function of the artist will be to express a spiritual ambition of a higher order beautiful things. WHAT ENGLAND'S INDUSTRIAL WEALTH | country, and gave employment to large OWES TO FOREIGNERS.- Much has been numbers of the population. But before written about the benefits brought to England by the French refugees expelled from their native land at the time of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, in the later years of the reign of Louis XIV. The manufacture of silks, lace, velvet, cambric, and many textile fabrics, then introduced, not in London alone but throughout the kingdom, were new industries to this that period England had been largely in- The For EIGHT DOLLARS remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually for warded for a year, free of postage. Remittances should be made 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. THE SHEPHERD BEAUTIFUL. OFT as I muse on Rome-and at her name Out of the darkness, flushed with blood and gold, Sometimes they showed thee piping in the shade Music so sweet each mouth was raised from grass Smoulders and flashes on her seven- And ceased to hunger. In some dewy fold height The imperial, murderous, harlot Rome of old, glade Where the cool waters ran as clear as glass, Rome of the lions, Rome of the awful This one or that thou seem'dst to call to light Where "living torches" flame I thread in thought the Catacombs' blind maze, Marvelling how men could then draw happy breath, thee, "Thou'st made me glad, be happy thou in turn !" And sometimes thou would'st sit in weariness My Shepherd!" quærens me And cheer these sunless labyrinths of Sedisti lassus while thy dog would And spaced in verdurous vistas lit Such was their craving; none should be with streams? Ah, let me count the ways, Fair shepherd of the world, in which they drew Thee in that most divine of human dreams. They limned thee drawing near the wattled shed, The strayed sheep on thy shoulders, and the flock forbid ; All-all were Christ's! And then they drew once more The Shepherd Beautiful. But now he bore No lamb upon his shoulders - just a kid.2 WILLIAM Canton. Contemporary Review. 2" He saves the sheep, the goats he doth not save.' So spake the fierce Tertullian." Bleating blithe welcome. Seasons of (Matthew Arnold: "The Good Shepherd with the From The Contemporary Review. JAMES DARMESTETER. BY M. GASTON PARIS. A GREAT light has been quenched, a noble heart is stilled, and a large mind will no more illumine the past, influence the present, divine the things to come. At two in the afternoon of October 19, without suffering and without a struggle, unconscious of the separation that would have cost him so much to accept, his heart still full with the dreams of affection and happiness, his mind with plans for future work and action, James Darmesteter, seated at his writing-table, drooped the head, heavy with knowledge and thought, on his frail chest, and vanished from among us. Throughout the world, from Oxford to Bombay, and from St. Petersburg to Bostou, those who worked with him for the great international cause of modern learning and research were struck with grief when they heard of the disappearance of their distinguished comrade, and of the source of strength from which they had gained so much, and on which they counted for so much hereafter. The most illustrious of them all, Professor Max Müller, expressed their deep feeling and their regret in words that are final : ray of light and consolation in their darkness. Darmesteter wrote but rarely for the wider public of letters, but, among them too, the strength, the suppleness, and the grace of the pen now laid aside were appreciated at their true value. And those who founded the Revue de Paris with him know what mental activity, what energy and practical sense were combined with his delicate nature. But his loss can only be fully felt by those who were near to him, gladdened by the warmth and tenderness of his heart, and intimate witnesses of the movements of enthusiasm and affection of a man habitually reserved. It is because I was one of these that I have been asked to portray the friend so suddenly lost to us. If I have undertaken the task, it is not without much hesitancy, for my hand still trembles with the pain of the sudden separation, and I feel that I am incapable of rendering completely in words all the traits of a mind so rare and so complex in its originality. I trust that I may be pardoned if my touch is uncertain, my sketch incomplete; I hope, at least, that the impression it will leave may on the whole be just. Darmesteter was no mere scholar buried in his books, apart from the He was a scholar in the best sense of the questions, ever renewed and ever the word, such as France alone seems able to same, which are of passionate interest produce. Just now France is rich in bril- to the world. He took a personal and liant Oriental scholars, but Professor James a living part in the struggles going on Darmesteter was facile primus inter pares. around him. He sought to moderate, By the freedom with which he soared nay, to end, the conflicts between oppoabove his hard, plodding work, he re-nents for whom he had an equal symminded me of Eugène Burnouf. By his wonderful and almost poetic power of com position he was little inferior to Renan. And by the soundness and the sureness of his judgment he seemed to carry on the great traditions of such men as Lenormant senior and Quatremère.1 Such was the judgment of competent scholars on his philological work. But they are not alone in their regret. Thinkers who care for the future of mankind know that a pure and shining star has suffered eclipse in the uncertain sky to which men look for some 1 The Times, October 22, 1894. pathy and an equal pity, by speaking to them the words of peace that lay hidden in their own hearts. And so he has earned the right to be known beyond the narrow world of philologists and men of learning, among whom his name will live. These men also labor after their own fashion at the great and never-finished temple which humanity builds to the unknown god; but, well content if they succeed in laboriously fixing a single stone, or in driving out some usurping idol, it is only rarely and in the silence of their own hearts that they think of the general ordering of the edifice, and of the form that it must ultimately take; nor do they reveal their vision of the future to the unquiet crowds that wander beneath the unfinished arches and throng its outer courts. Darmesteter conceived a plan of the temple in his mind -an ancient plan renewed for the needs of a new time; and proclaimed it with the authority given to him by his patient work at its foundations, with the catching emotion of a throbbing heart, and a persuasive and stirring eloquence. It is because of this, and because of a fate at once brilliant and troubled, full of happiness and yet melancholy, that many men turn towards the pale figure so suddenly effaced with sympathetic questioning. I. JAMES DARMESTETER was a Jew. His name points to a German origin, and as a matter of fact his family, although it had been established in Lorraine for some generations, originally belonged to the Jewry in Darmstadt. It was because of this fact that when the Jews were obliged to take family names, James's great-grandfather chose that of Darmstälter, which the French registrar wrote down Darmesteter. The family of Brandeis, to which his mother belonged, was also established in Lorraine, but came originally from Prague: From it had sprung, in the course of generations, a number of learned doctors; one of them left a name which is still famous among the Jews of central Europe as that of the last doctor of the Cabbala. Genealogical legend, untroubled by a gap of some ten centuries, boldly goes back to Rabbi Akiba, the inventor of the method of the Talmud, and the instigator of the last Jewish revolt, that of Bar Cocheba, under Hadrian.1 We live in an anxious and a troubled age, and men's souls seek on all sides for help and guiding; we have returned, he wrote himself, to the times described by the prophet: "Behold, the days come, saith the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord And they shall wander from sea to sea and they shall run to and fro, and shall not find it. In that day shall the fair maidens and the young men faint for thirst." And for these thirsty ones that he saw around him he pointed to a place where he beheld cool springs, and pools filled with water from heaven. Was the oasis to which he wished to lead us in truth but Nor does this apply to all of them, a mirage? It may be that the way- for in the countries where they are farers shall fall exhausted in the des- many in number there remains a reert; or perchance leave it by some fractory mass of them, unpenetrated by other way than that which he believed the outer air and light. Until our own he had discovered or found again. century, or nearly, the Jews remained Yet none the less will they owe admi- Jews pure and simple, without imbibration and gratitude to him, as to all ing the genius or the feelings of the those who seek to open up the way of nations in whose midst they were ensalvation, and who for the love of them camped. I do not wish here to deal -with a courage and suffering known with the extremely difficult and comto the pioneers alone- - brave the arid plex question of the formation of the winds and burning sands s; even when their songs fail to show the way, they beguile the feverish advance and make the travellers for a moment forget the weariness of centuries, the hope iucessantly deferred. We must not be misled by this German origin, nor the German name of Darmesteter, for in James there was nothing Germau. It is only in our days, since the freeing of the Jews both from their self-created seclusion and their civil subjection, only since the doors of the Ghetto have been battered down both from within and without, that we can speak of French, English, German, or Italian Jews. 1 I quote these lines from the admirable memoir of his brother Arsène, which James wrote as a preface to his "Reliques Scientifiques" (Paris: Cerf. 1890. Two vols. 8vo). This memoir should be read by all those who desire to know something of the early days of these two men, both so distinguished and cut off so prematurely. |