is, however, also noted for a relic of the following morning, being bent on considerable interest. In one of its their mission, they met and narrated churches is a silver-gilt shrine which is their dreams to one another. They said to contain the body of St. Sim- then went to the cemetery, where they eon, the prophet who sang the Nunc found the monks already digging for Dimittis. It is not exactly known the corpse. The governors told their when the body of the saint was brought dreams, and easily persuaded the monks to Zara, but tradition says that it was to allow the body to be taken into the conveyed there by sea from Palestine town, where it was exhibited in one of by a knight on his return from the the churches, and many miracles being Crusades. According to tradition, the wrought by means of it, its fame soon devil raised a storm and attempted to spread throughout Dalmatia. In the sink the ship, but the Crusader, by year 1371, Queen Elizabeth, the wife of throwing all his property overboard, Louis I. of Hungary, visited Zara, and, managed to keep it afloat, and when wishing to possess some relic of the the gale ceased, the ship was drifted saint, she broke off the forefinger from in a dilapidated condition, into the port the left hand. No sooner had she of Zara, Whilst staying there for re- done so than she lost her sight, and pairs to be made to the vessel, the was unable to find her way out of the knight was taken ill, and was conveyed church. Prostrating herself before the to the hospital of the monks, situated altar, the queen openly confessed her on the outskirts of the town. He gave sin and replaced the finger, which imout that the corpse was that of his mediately united again to the hand, brother, and caused it to be buried in and the queen's sight was restored, but the cemetery belonging to the monas- her own hand, touching the body of tery. Gradually becoming worse, the the saint, became withered. For a secknight, when on the point of death, oud time the queen craved pardon divulged to the monks that the body from the saint, and offered as a penalty was that of St. Simeon, and all neces- for her sins, to present him with a sary proofs would be found amongst silver shrine to replace the wooden one his documents. The monks, pleased in which his body was then encased. at their good fortune in obtaining such Her prayer being heard, the queen a valuable relic, determined to keep the commissioned five noblemen of Zara to body of the saint; but the same night | have the shrine made; and they enon which the Crusader died a celestial trusted Francesco da Milano, son of a being appeared in a dream to the three governors of the town of Zara, and announced to each of them that the body of St. Simeon had been buried in the cemetery of the monks, and bade them go and search for it. On

Milanese silversmith, named Antonio, living at Zara, to execute it. Francesco completed the shrine in 1380, and received twenty-eight thousand ducats for his labor.

H. M. CUNDALL, F.S.A.

THE PHONOGRAPH IN THE CLASS-ROOM. | tinctly heard in every corner of the class-Professor McKendrick, of Glasgow Uni- room. Of late, suggests the Christian versity, carried out an interesting experi- Commonwealth, such "demonstrations" ment in his physiology class one day last on the part of noisy students have ocweek. The occasion was the formal clos-curred and recurred in certain of the ing of the summer session, and the pro- medical classes in the university that the fessor gave a practical demonstration of suggestion to substitute the phonograph the ability of the phonograph to deliver the for the personnel of the lecturer may not lecture which he had previously spoken seem altogether far-fetched. into the instrument. The words were dis

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LOVE, whose light thrills heaven and earth, More than we know whence or why

From The Fortnightly Review.
MR. ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

A CRITICAL STUDY.

work developed itself, it displayed an ideal of art which has never been popular in this country. The character

THE collected edition of Mr. Steven-istic English opinion makes art a son's writings, which is in process of matter of inspiration; and the public publication in several luxurious vol- rather resents it when Mr. Stevenson umes, makes what one may call the comes and tells them that an art must author's formal diploma of renown; so be learnt like any other trade, and far as contemporary opinion can affirm, even exposes his own procedure. In he becomes a classic. It is a verdict that very interesting essay, "A Colwhich I for one would never chal- lege Magazine," he has related how he lenge; Mr. Stevenson belongs to that learned to write by incessant practice, class of writers, who, with Horace at above all by sedulous mimicry of great their head, have possessed, over and models. "I lived with words,' above their other gifts, the peculiar says; and the result is that formal expower of enlisting our affections. cellence to which we have now grown Whenever a new volume of his has accustomed, but which dazzled our appeared the pathetic preface to "Prince Otto" has never failed to run in my head:

Well, we will not give in that we are beaten; I still mean to get my health again; I still purpose, this book or the next, to launch a masterpiece.

That his purpose has been accomplished few would deny; these volumes will contain not one masterpiece but several in different kinds. Yetand the cry is loudest where Mr. Stevenson's admirers are most devoted we thought he might have done something more.

"" he

judgment at the outset. Again, upon the vexed question of the artist's persouality and its right to appear, Mr. Stevenson sides with the French rather than the English authorities. If you want to display grief, Mr. Irving would say, you must feel inclined to weep. An actor who should so far forget himself as really to grieve, M. Coquelin has said, would be apt to weep unbecomingly and produce the wrong effect; in short, an artist must keep himself constantly in hand rather than let himself. be carried away. This self-suppression Mr. Stevenson has rigidly practised ; the moralizing vein, inherent in his Partly this is the unjust but natural Scotch blood, has found an outlet only recoil from an over-estimate, caused in his essays; but in all probability the by unfamiliar excellence. "Treasure public would have loved him better if Island," if one considers it fairly, was he had interspersed his narrative with the high-water mark of technical per-passages from Virginibus Puerisfection among romances of this cen- que." The public is unreasonable ; tury. Scott never cared, as he frankly still, if I were hard pushed with a admits, to take much pains either with comparison between the "Master of his style or his story, writing very Ballantrae" and good Waverley rapidly and inventing as he went novel, I should have to admit that Mr. along. Thackeray, Mr. Stevenson's one Stevenson's work looks like a racer in superior in finish and felicity of man-hard training. Every proportion is ner, never troubled much about con- exact, every redundancy removed, and struction. Accordingly, when it was the result is admirable, but, if you wish remembered that the author of this dra- to be malignaut, a trifle artificial. matically simple narrative had shown, Perhaps Mr. Stevenson has lived a in essays and minor stories, consum- little too much with words. If you set mate mastery of a singularly ornate him by the unchallenged great ones, style, it seemed that a man who thus Scott, Dickens, and Thackeray, he is from the very outset united all the light and thin, he lacks their weight of excellences, might attain to any imagi-human experience. His work does not nable height. But, as Mr. Stevenson's seem, like theirs, to spring from the

66

writer's very existence. The novel peculiar to no age or country. If I

must ultimately rest upon experience, wished to summarize his defects in a and the nature of the experience will word, I should say―unhomeliness. determine the nature of the work. He Yet there is one reservation, and an has not the intensity of the Brontës, important one, to be made. The later from whose strangled lives passion books, the "Ebb Tide," the "Balshot up like water from a fountain- lads," the "Island Night's Entertainpipe; he has not the serious reflective ment," and (to some degree) the wisdom of George Eliot, nor her sense Wrecker," do associate themselves of the tragic issues that fill common with a certain place and mode of life. life. He lacks the wide human expe- What Mr. Kipling has done for British rience, the personal contact with life, India, Mr. Stevenson is doing for the which informs the work of other great Southern Seas. He is peopling a definovelists. Fielding learnt more in his nite field in our imaginations; there at police court than he ever did from least his work takes root in life; and if books, good scholar though he was. I mistake not, to future generations his Scott, like Mr. Stevenson, depends name and personality will suggest these much upon the experience of the im- islands of the Pacific, as Smollett makes agination, his antiquarian lore; yet us think of a ship, Fielding of the Fleet Scott himself declared that his official or an inn, Thackeray of London, Scott duties were a help, not a hindrance; of the Border, George Eliot of the they made a corrective to bookishness Midland Counties. Yet the life he and kept him in touch with life. fore Dickens began writing he learnt the world by the struggle to exist; and he, like Thackeray, was till his death occupied with the business side of literature, editing magazines and papers. But Mr. Stevenson probably has not ⚫even to sell his own writings; his whole and sole business in life is to Now there are many people so oddly write; in short, he lives completely, as constituted (as I must think) that they few literary men have done, the artist's prefer to read of experiences which are existence. Tennyson did the same; not only conceivable, but positively but then Tennyson did not write nov- familiar, to themselves. One of the els. Mr. Stevenson has gone about critical essays in "Memories and Porlike the artist in search of picturesque traits" lays great stress upon the direct grouping; interested in his fellow appeal to interests which we inherit men, but standing a little way off to from a remote forefather, "probably see them better; gregarious enough, arboreal in his habits." But in a very but only with his congeners; a gipsy, a large section of mankindvagrant, a Bohemian, and not a citizen, for which the author of "Treasure except in so far as the tax-collector has Island" has scant respect this recompelled him. Doubtless ill-health mote ancestor is not merely disaphas kept him away from the active proved of, but obliterated. They think business of life; in Samoa he has Mr. Stevenson tiresome with his pirates, shown himself willing to stir against his beachcombers, and his catamaoppression. Whatever the cause, from rans; they want to hear what happens choice or chance, the fact remains that in the drawing-room or behind the after all the years he has lived among counter. It is a perfectly genuine disus, he writes as a sojourner, an Egyp-taste, and, like all unaffected criticism, tian, having no fixed foot, no strong has something in it. The truth is that ties, to any place or employment save Mr. Stevenson's range of characters his art. He is elusively cosmopolitan, and sympathies is not nearly so wide the aspects of life that interest him areas it seems. One cannot say he under

Be- describes there is the life of a fleeting, shifting, longshore population, a life strange to us, scenes that not one in ten thousand can hope to behold, a dialect mixed of half-a-dozen lingoes; a life, a scene, a dialect that is, far more than anything in Mr. Kipling's India, uuhomely to us.

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