takes no account of childhood in the decoration of its construction; but in the stained-glass window that America gave to Shakespeare's memory in 1896 there is a representation of the Infant Christ in His Mother's arms.

There is a Holy Family in the stained glass put into one of the ancient churches in York in the fourteenth century; and in a window in West WickThe Sunday Magazine.

ham Church we may see the infant Jesus in the arms of his mother; and a diligent search will find occasional examples elsewhere. But the fact remains that it is only the "modern" who has really appreciated the beauty, grace and expressiveness of childhood; and up to the present time ornamental art has taken but scant notice of it. Sarah Wilson.

"The Debatable Land" of a maiden's fancy is the theme with which Arthur Colton closes Harper & Bros.' American Novel Series. The scene of the story is laid among the battlefields of the Civil War, where the rival claims of the two lovers are tested. The writer's cleverness is undeniable, but it is misdirected, and, instead of live characters and a credible plot, we have a wearisome amount of epigrammatic, artificial dialogue, and a narrative as unreal as the puppets who play their parts in it.

Numbers of friends both old and new will welcome in "Captain Bluitt" the return of Max Adeler (Charles Heber Clark), after an absence of twenty years, to the field of humor in which he was so successful a generation ago. Captain Bluitt and his neighbors in Old Turley discuss with delightful drollery, politics, women's clubs, class distinctions, the marriage question and other topics of unfailing freshness. The narrative interest is secondary. Henry T. Coates & Co.

Those who like a story in the RiderHaggard style will enjoy the "Romance of the Polar Pit," which Henry Holt & Co. publish, with its tremendous chasms and mountains of precious

stones, its land-and-sea monsters of species extinct in milder climes, its Runefolk, Thorlings and dwerger, its fur-robed blonde beauties, and its dragon-deity Orm, behind whose yawning obsidian jaws lies a secret passage-way that leads to freedom. "Thyra" is an unusually good specimen of its kind. Robert Ames Bennett is the writer.

Readers of the "Living Age" will remember pleasantly the clever poem by Mr. Owen Seaman, printed in this magazine for March 9, 1901, in which the departure of a shipload of schoolmasters on a holiday tour among the isles of Greece was celebrated, and it was predicted that, on their return:

"Twill be among their purest joys To work it off upon the boys. The leader of the party, the headmaster of Dover College, has promptly fulfilled Mr. Seaman's playful prophecy. His new edition of the 6th book of Thucydides contains the following, among other edifying notes:-"The position taken up by the Athenians may be fairly well made out on the spot. ." "One who visits Syracuse after reading his Grote, etc." . . . And then the crushing remark, "Professor Jowett never visited Syracuse and is no guide on points of topography."

("Lover's Lips."-Plato, I, 5.)

Kissing Phyllis, all my soul
To my lips once found its way,
And eager to attain the goal

Had very nearly passed away.
("Love the Runaway."-Meleager, I, 18.)
Stop the thief! Raise hue and cry!
Love, wild Love, has filed;
At the dawn I saw him fly

Laughing from my bed. The boy is tearful, swift and shrill, A chatterbox and sly,

Winged is he and has shafts to kill, There's boldness in his eye.

No father owns him; earth denies

The rascal, sea and air

Disclaim him each. Where'er he flies All hate him everywhere;

More snares for souls I fear he'll trace.
See!-ambushed there he lies;

The archer's made his lurking place
In Myrrha's laughing eyes.
G. Leveson Gower.

The Spectator.

THE LAKE AND THE STAR.

All night the blue Lake lay at rest.
One star shone from the sky afar,
And the blue Lake's untroubled breast
Mirrored that star.

When each gray Dawn the Sun arose, And stars before him veiled their light,

She longed all day for the repose
Of starlit night.

"Star, who hast left the realms of space,

With me to dwell, on me to shine, My heart shall be thy resting-place For thou art mine."

One night a storm of wind awoke

The surface of her placid breast, Till on the strand her ripples broke, In fierce unrest.

Dark clouds obscured the moon and stars.

The star she loved shone down no
more,

As a caged lark beats prison bars
She beat the shore.

VOLUME XIV. ·

Vol

names

If Napoleon's sally about Europe becoming Cossack could be applied to the literary field one might say he was right; for it would be difficult to deny that for fifty years past Russia has produced a remarkable series of writers or to question their predominance. The of Dostojewsky, Turgenieff, Tolstoy and Sienkiewicz are sufficient to support that assertion, bold as it may seem; and to those already illustrious names we must to-day add that of Maxime Gorky, whose works are read eagerly by all intellectual Russians, translated into many languages and discussed in serious literary reviews. This is due not only to the extraordinary career of the young writer, not only to the unusual subjects he chooses for his short stories, but to the great importance of his work.

Maxime Gorky is about thirty years old; he has been writing only for five or six years past, but the fresh spontaneity of his thoughts proves him a prodigy of exceptional powers, and gives to his work the assurance of more than an artistic success.

He does not himself know exactly when he was born in Nijni-Novgorod. He is the son of a small upholsterer, called Pieshkov, but Maxime has preferred to assume that of Gorky, which means in the Russian language bitter,

probably in memory of hi childhood. Gorky is not, purely plebeian origin; he the intermediate class of t whom he likes to evoke i ings. His grandfather was in the Russian army, unde who, however, deprived rank in order to punish him to the soldiers. When on what atrocities were toler Nicolas I's rule, one may pose that Lieutenant Pie simply a monster. It see was no kinder to his son soldiers, for Maxime Gorky' away from home when he young and became an upho died in 1873.

Maxime Gorky's childhoo hard. His mother, who was ter of a barge-owner on t man who became very rich intelligence and energy, ma and left to the grandparen of her little boy. The whose portrait we see in Go "Thomas Gordieef," lost his some speculation; Gorky's and the future writer was the school in which he ha five months, and put as a with a shoemaker. He did there long, for his instinct

ence drove Gorky, both as a child, a youth and a man, to change of place and occupation. He then went to an engraver, whom he left for a painter of holy images; and he became a cook's help on board a steamer, where he met his first instructor in the person of the cook, Michael Smoury, who insisted on making Gorky read. That cook had a box full of books such as "The Lives of the Saints," a "History of Russia," the works of Gogol, Glebe Ouspensky, Nekrassof, Dumas père, and many popular romances which Gorky read with great interest.

When he was fifteen years old he went to Kazan, where he wished to enter the University and study; but he was soon bitterly disappointed, for he learned that "it was not customary to give instruction for nothing to poor children," as he says in his short autobiography. Being without money, he went to work in a cotton mill at 6s. a month. In Kazan he came into contact with "ex-men," as he calls his vagabond heroes. He would constantly change his occupation; he chopped wood, then worked in a garden, and then in the street, in the meanwhile reading all kinds of books, which "good people lent him." How hard must have been his life we may judge from the fact that in 1888 he tried to kill himself; this time the ball proved to be reasonable and refused to kill a writer of great talent. "Having been in bed as long as was necessary," says Gorky, "I came to life again in order to become a hawker of apples." From Kazan he went to try his luck in Tcaricin, where he was watchman on a railway. From thence he was called to Nijni-Novgorod, to be examined for military service. He was not, however, accepted for the army; for, as he puts it himself, "those who have holes in them are not available," and he was obliged to sell kvass for his living. At length, by one of the capricious whims of fortune, he became

clerk to a lawyer named Lanin, and that circumstance played an important part in his career.

A. I. Lanin is one of the most sympathetic men in Nijni-Novgorod, where he is very much respected. He took more interest in Gorky than his own father would have done. "His influence on my education," says Gorky, "was enormous. To that highly educated and most noble man I owe more than to anybody else." Although Gorky was now quite comfortable, he was again attracted by the vagabond life, and he wandered through almost the whole of Russia.

In 1892 he was in Tiflis, where he worked in the shops of the Caucasian railway. A certain Aleksandre Mefodievich Kaluznyi induced him to begin writing. The first thing he printed was a story entitled "Makar Chudra," published in 1893, in the paper called "Kavkaz." In 1894 he went back to Nijni-Novgorod, where he probably would have started his literary wanderings, had he not met with B. G. Korolenko, the author of that exquisite story called "The Blind Musician," thanks to whom Gorky was able to get his stories accepted by the serious reviews. As he quaintly puts it himself, "he fell into a big literature;" for Korolenko is the editor of a monthly called "Russkoe Bogatsvo." Having noticed Gorky's great literary aptitude, he took care of him, taught him a great many things, and at length published in his review Gorky's short story called "Tchelkash." In less than three years the former vagabond, the former Jack-of-all-trades, became one of the most illustrious of Russian litterateurs. He is considered as such not only by the critics; his success is not merely a succès d'éstime, for his books sell enormously; the Russians haye forgotten Korolenko, Tchekhov, Tolstoy, Turgenieff and Dostojewsky for Gorky, who is not a university graduate, but

one whose first teacher was a cook, and who was induced to write by a vagabond like himself. To explain Gorky's great qualities as a writer, and thus to justify the enthusiasm of the public and the critics for his work, is the purpose of this paper.

It is impossible to describe fully the characteristics of a writer who is only about thirty years old. No one can foresee what proportions his literary power will take. However, what Gorky has already done is so important and original that he deserves to be very attentively studied. For many people Gorky's success is a surprise, for there is no other instance of the kind, especially in Russia, where it took more than thirty years to appreciate Dostojewsky, Tolstoy and Turgenieff. Gorky's success came suddenly, and quickly grew to an enormous height. It is like a flower that opens in the night and surprises all by its splendor. In the meanwhile one cannot help feeling that this success is not accidental and unconscious, but that Gorky has made chords resound in the souls of his readers such as have not been touched with equal power by any writer for a long time past. Every success has a serious social importance, for it tells us what the people are looking for. To point out the causes of a success is the duty of criticism, perhaps one of its most important duties, no matter what kind of success it is, whether real or apparent, whether that of Shakespeare's dramas or of a Chinese juggler. The essential thing is that the success is there, as a social phenomenon, as an accepted influence; for if, speaking generally, the people who are jealously and carefully on the watch admit the influence over them of a work, it means that it satisfies some of the necessities of their souls. For this reason one may apply to lite

rary success the popular saying that there is no smoke without fire.

"Alors c'est une émeute?" asked Louis XVIth.

"Non, sire, c'est une revolution," was the answer.

Yes, Gorky effected a revolution in Russian literature. It is not long since the time of the "Kulturkampf," a period of triumphant and enormous faith in the force of knowledge and its power to destroy every vital evil. The triumphant faith disappeared, and instead of talking about "Matter and Force," the seeking people began to read the "Herodiad" and "St. Anthony's Temptation." All the force of sentiment, all care for a pure and honest life, was directed by Tolstoy towards the end of serving one's moral perfection.

That period passed also. One may look on it as a thing gone by, and wonder why it caused such a fright. That fright stopped people from studying, and made them to tremble for their sins, almost to sleep in coffins and carry the chains of all kinds of small duties. It was a slavery of thought, a terror of what cannot even be defined. At that point Gorky cried out: "You are cowards," and introduced the vagabonds. We look at this vagabond, we like him, we listen to him, we wonder at him. There is something unusual in him. He seems to have come from some distant land, from the desert and the wilderness, and told us how there the sun shines, how there the birds sing, how there the people do not tremble. Of course we must be very careful not to show too much sympathy for this vagabond, no matter how fascinating he may be, and it would be dangerous even to be suspected of wishing to become vagabonds ourselves; but there is hardly an intellectual person to be found, who, after having carefully read Gorky's stories, and meditated seriously, would not say to himself