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1730, from their precious grainfields, land to build this temple. One of those two stone tablets standing yonder on the terrace records the contribution of the Emperor Yung-chêng himself in lumps of silver for these buildings. The other is a list of village families who gave a few coppers each out of their meagre savings for the same noble purpose.'

Then the priest, who, like all Chinese, has a keen sense of humor, added with a twinkle in his eye, 'You foreigners must have heard of Prince Yi. He was the man who, when certain missionaries suspected of stirring up factions among the too-numerous Imperial Clansmen came to him to intercede for them with his brother the Emperor, replied: "What would you say if we were to transport ourselves to the Western world and act as you have done here? Would you permit it for a moment? In the course of time I shall master this business, but I declare to you that China will want for nothing when you cease to live in it, nor will your absence cause it any loss. Here nobody is retained by force; but nobody will be permitted to remain who breaks our laws or ignores our customs. We smile in reply as at a huge joke, and wonder if our servants have been bringing out newspapers from town and lending them to the priests. Only yesterday there were editorials echoing Prince Yi's remarks.

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Meanwhile the tablet house is ceremoniously closed up again, and we spend the rest of the day full of thought about the new China and the old under the trees. Some very wise gardener, worthy to collaborate with the architect who gave the splendid sweep to the roofs of the 'Great Awakening' and planned the elegant proportions of its courtyards, did the planting here. First he must have set out the magnificent white pines with their ghostly

trunks and branches that stand alone in two separate little gardens on either side of the tablet house. It takes the pines of North China fifty years to put on their white shrouds, and only after a century of growth do they attain their full splendor. The dark-skinned umbrella pines spread their green arms over the roof of Buddha's sanctuary in the course of a man's lifetime. Like green æolian harps they play in every breeze, answering with soft, low notes the tinkling wind-bells hanging from the eaves.

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The flowering crab apple that in spring sends a soft snowfall of white petals on to the terrace is older than our grandmothers. The trumpet vine whose scarlet blossoms glow against the wall has flowered a hundred times in honor of the 'Harmonious Prince.' For more than two centuries the splendid ginkgo in our living-courtyard - this strange tree species, oldest of its race and known to botanists as the last link with the fern family has shed its leaves in autumn, dropping them like golden coins on to the pavement. But it seems to me as if the gardener loved the catalpa best, for he planted it beside the pool; a precious tree, since the wood of its species was always chosen for Imperial coffins; a friendly tree too, lending its trunk and branches. to the climbing wisteria vines and sociably dropping its sweet-scented pink blossoms with the purple tassels of its guest into the water of the spring.

Perhaps it is because the trees in China have been so long and lovingly tended by the hand of man that they seem to become almost human, and sometimes half-divine. We have seen incense burned before a ginkgo in a neighboring temple and solemn worship paid to it. We are assured that certain trees have souls. Why not? In China so many things have souls tablets, crumbling images, the little

grave-mounds that dot the fields, and many a stream and spring. As for men and women, they each have not one but three souls a soul for temporal and temporary use, a soul to hover round the tomb, and a soul to rest in the tablet.

As we sit at the sunset hour in the courtyard under the big open pavilion with red lacquer pillars and beetling eaves, as we listen to the soft chiming of the wind-bells and watch the young acolyte going his evening rounds with lighted incense-sticks for Buddha, the Tablet, and the Dragon God, we hear a strange unearthly cry from the village, and on inquiry learn that someone is 'calling a soul.'

It seems there is a child who is very sick - unconscious, in fact. The priest explains that the little soul has left the body, and that the family must try to get it back or the boy will surely die. Hence the weird, unearthly cry, reserved for such occasions. The voice is a woman's voice, and a mother's. It is heart-rending. Suddenly there is silence, followed by a burst of weeping. What has happened now, we ask? The soul would not return, they tell us. The child is dead. Filled with pity, we inquire if there is anything we can do to help the stricken family. 'Your charitable intention does you credit, Elder Brothers,' says the priest with that unconscious air of pleasurable surprise that an educated Chinese assumes, quite unintentionally, whenever he finds that the rude Barbarian Foreigner shows a sense of real propriety. "The family is indeed very miserable. Undoubtedly a little contribution for the funeral would be welcome'.

Our minds fly to wreaths of white paper chrysanthemums or the satin scrolls with gilded ideographs that the Chinese send on such occasions, and we are puzzling how to get them out from town in time. Somehow the priest

divines our thoughts. "The dead person being of young age, the funeral will take place very soon. I shall be asked to consult my almanac and choose the first lucky day. There must be one within a week or two. Of course, in the case of an adult decency would require a longer interval, perhaps of several months. But a child, having no descendants, needs no elaborate ceremonies. Still, if the Elder Brothers graciously desire to help, a contribution of a silver dollar would be generous.' We decide to send two silver dollars that the poor little soul may have a fine funeral and the mother's heart be soothed. 'Your munificence will be remembered forever in the village,' comments the priest as he instructs us how to wrap our tiny gift in white paper and when to send it to make the most effect.

The gift of the foreigners must arrive when the neighbors are assembled in the house of mourning. Thus will great 'face' be given to the poor little weeping mother and her social position be vastly increased. May this consolation, so dear to the heart of woman, help to dry her tears. In the servants' quarters we overhear a discussion. 'Now why,' says our Number One Boy who acts as butler, 'should these foreigners care if a stranger peasant woman weeps?'

'I'll answer you that when you tell me why the Barbarians leave their comfortable houses in the city and come to this humble village to live among simple folk who dig and sow and live in mud huts among the hills,' answers the coolie chambermaid. "Their ways are inscrutable to us because they are mad,' says the priest. 'Nevertheless it is well that they give money to the distressed. Money at the right time helps to calm even a mother's grief. Besides,' he adds philosophically, ‘time will cure all things save perversity in asses.'

THE PROVINCE OF THE REVIEWER'

BY THE RIGHT HONORABLE AUGUSTINE BIRRELL

How easy is it to compose the titlepage of an authoritative treatise, like Locke's or John Austin's, and how hard to contribute a line toward the elucidation of the theme.

Many long years ago I read, in one of those Preliminary Dissertations that in the earlier part of the last century still often formed the impressive, if not inviting, portico to substantial and many-volumed works, that 'the origin of reviewing has been attributed to Photius.' This was quite enough in those days to induce me to stop my reading and go in search of this fertile Photius from whose entrails sprang the buzzing swarm of reviewers. At first I got started on a false scent, and found myself reading about a Photius who was the son by a former alliance of that very wicked woman, Theodora, -in whose career, needless to say, Gibbon took such an unholy interest,

and consequently was the stepson of the Emperor Justinian, whose Institutes have played no inconsiderable part in the education of many of us. This Photius was, as I soon discovered, not my man. The true Photius, the fons et origo mali, belonged to the ninth century, and his life, even in an epitome, presented most varied features, for he was not only an ambassador, a judge, and a soldier, but also an ecclesiastic, who in less than a week contrived to become monk, subdeacon, deacon, and presbyter, ending up on Christmas Day 858 as Patriarch 1 From the Observer (London Moderate Sunday

paper), March 14

VOL. 329

NO. 4269

of Constantinople! Would we could hold out to the young reviewers of the Observer any prospect of so rapid a preferment in either Church or State!

The claims of Photius to be the real father of our profession will not bear examination, for, though a great bookcollector, collector, which few reviewers are, -and a persistent reader and notetaker, his Myriobiblion or Bibliotheca is reported to me to contain nothing but selected passages from the books he had read - like another and an earlier Macaulay in India - during one embassy to Persia, and was never intended to be a critical survey. Still, the fact that Photius first read the manuscripts he noticed entitles him to a place of honor in our rais.

This Photian method of reviewing endured for many centuries, and probably gave satisfaction to the authors, who, as they had no copyright in their labors, could hardly complain of being abridged.

The true parent of the reviewer, as he exists among us to-day, is to be found, where we might expect to find him, in France, but no further back than the middle of the seventeenth century when Denis de Sallo, a man of position and mark, established in 1655 the Journal des Savants, or Sçavans, as the word was then printed. This was a weekly publication, and contained reviews of the most popular and distinguished publications in every department of literature.' The style of this periodical soon became so lively and sarcastic that de Sallo, wishing to

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shield himself from the blind fury of the Celtic author, published it in the name of his footman, one de Houdonville; thus forestalling by a century Thackeray's Mr. Jeames de la Pluche.

But though de Sallo and his footman got the start, England soon followed on, for there has never been a publication so unmistakably British as the Monthly Review, established in 1749 by Mr. Griffiths and his wife, whose hard bargain with Oliver Goldsmith, perhaps the greatest miscellaneous writer we have ever had, is the subject matter of some of the best-known anecodotes in the annals of Grub Street.

The Monthly Review continued, under different managements, until 1845, and fills two hundred and forty-nine volumes. It soon had a rival in Dr. Smollett's Critical Review, and on the respective merits of these two Dr. Johnson once expatiated as follows, employing language not wholly irrelevant to our own times:

"The Monthly Reviewers are not Deists, but they are Christians with as little Christianity as may be, and are for pulling down all establishments. The Critical Reviewers are for supporting the constitution, both in Church and State. The Critical Reviewers I believe often review without reading the books all through, but lay hold of a topick and write chiefly from their own minds. The Monthly Reviewers are duller fellows and are glad to read the books through.'

This last distinction between two classes of reviewers is certainly not a distinction without a difference. It is a great difference, and one that will always be noticeable by both the author of the book and the reader of the review.

These two reviews deserve to be called critical journals, but their editors were not on good terms, and, being in

this respect unlike present-day editors, who seldom condescend to recognize the existence of a rival organ, spoke out about each other, and their respective staffs, with the pleasant freedom of their century. Thus Griffiths did not hesitate to say, and print, that 'the Monthly Review was not written by physicians without practice, authors without learning, men without decency, gentlemen without manners, and critics without judgment'; to which Dr. Smollett retorted with undeniable spirit: "The Critical Review is not written by a parcel of hirelings, under the restraint of a bookseller and his wife, who presume to revise, alter, and amend the articles. Our principal writers are unconnected with booksellers, unawed by old women, and independent of each other.' This may be an old-fashioned style of writing, but it has a smack of 'modernity' about it, and some of the caps still fit, though to put them on would be dangerous, writing as I do under my own

name.

It is with reluctance that I leave the eighteenth century, and the ashes of the dead, and force myself to ask the questions: How stands the business of reviewing to-day? How is the young reviewer to thread his way through the crowded thoroughfares of the printed matter that, like a huge tidal wave, daily breaks upon an editor's office?

One thing is plain- all the books, reprints, and new publications cannot be even so much as noticed save in the advertisement columns. But which, and how? In the Photian method, in the sarcastic style of the Journal des Savants, in the pleasant style of the Monthly and Critical reviews, or in the big-bowwow style of the Edinburgh and Quarterly? And if in the lastnamed style, how in the name of Relativity can room be found, in a weekly

or even monthly publication, for more than two reviews at a time?

Never was a day when these questions were so hard to answer. Short notices are just now in great favor with editors, and who can wonder? But neither justice nor injustice can be done to a really good book or a bad one in a thousand words. Believe me, Mr. Editor, the thing cannot be done! Half a dozen poets squeezed into one column! A dozen novels in a column and a half! The publishers may be satisfied, but not the author or the reader of the notice. There is no fun even in folly unless it is drawn at full length.

When Lord Jeffrey thought fit to make fun of Wordsworth he did so, being the honest man he was, at great length; with the result that his famous review remains to this day one of the best anthologies of Wordsworth yet published; the fact that the reviewer made his selection from some of the noblest and most heart-stirring lines in English poetry, on the ground of their supposed badness and childish absurdity, has been rendered innocuous by the mere lapse of time.

We have only to read the publishinglists to perceive with what an avalanche of print the present-day reviewer is confronted in all departments of literature and science why Sacra Theowhy Sacra Theologia herself, like a bird escaping from the net of the fowler, is fast repairing her ancient nests in the dim corners of the library.

How are these books to be selected and judged? Some young and lusty reviewers, so I have been told, are in the habit of descending upon the editorial parlors and carrying off with them to their suburban lairs the review copies, either that they may add them to their own libraries - though a reviewer's library is never a thing to look at with pleasure - or because for or because for

some reason they deem themselves to be the best qualified to handle the author's theme. This is a haphazard method of natural selection, and gives an unfair advantage to the able-bodied. The editor should prepare, and keep secret, a list of his reviewers, recording briefly the nature of their gifts, the extent, so far as he can give a guess, of their learning, and the subjects on which they should be forbidden to dis

course.

I will conclude with a caution. Why have reviewers so evil a reputation? Is it not because of their past failure in the realms of poetry and imagination? Jeffrey misjudged Wordsworth and failed to appreciate Keats and Coleridge, that trio of quintessential poets, from sheer incapacity, and for the same sort of reason that inspired Tom Moore, when writing to Lord John Russell, to express his disappointment that he had not had the chance of dusting the young Tennyson's jacket in the pages of the Edinburgh Review.

In other branches of literature, and when only established reputations were concerned, these old reviewers are not so bad, though when you think of the wicked wrong and injury inflicted upon science by that impudent sciolist Lord Brougham, in the Edinburgh Review, you feel how important it is that the editor of a critical journal should be man enough to keep even a Brougham in order.

Leaving Science, which now can take care of herself, on one side, how is a literary editor to avoid the blunders of the old Edinburgh and Quarterly reviewers when disporting themselves in the delicate realms of poetry and imagination? Can it be done by a judicious snubbing of the baldheads and bidding them 'stand down,' in order to make room for their juniors? This may be the method, but if so it

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