1801-1901. A certain ill-fated manuscript of Ejlert Lövborg treated of the civilizing forces of the future, and his friend Tesman was moved to utter for once something more brilliant than his customary "Fancy that!" "But, good gracious," exclaimed Tesman, "we don't know anything about the future!" "No," replied the gratified author, "but there are several things, though, that can be said about it all the same." To say several things about that of which we know nothing may be the task of several literary critics at the present moment, but there is a danger that the future may play the part of the capricious Hedda, who, with unusual discretion, consigned her friend Lövborg's manuscript to the stove. Perhaps it is wiser to look around us or to gaze backward than to prophesy. Every age is likely to think itself poorer in literary possessions than is actually the case, for while we can form some estimate of our losses in the recent dead, we have not yet learnt to appraise the literary worth of our babies, nor even of our schoolboys and schoolgirls. In 1795 the author of "Night Thoughts," who had died as a poet many years earlier, was "decently buried," and Johnson's biographer followed his illustrious friend to the grave; next year departed Burns; Macpherson and Burke and Cowper were of the past before the century closed. But the general public of 1795 may not have been greatly impressed by the facts that the assistant of a keeper of livery stables in London-one Keatshad a son born to him, whom he named John, and that in the house of a Scottish mason named Carlyle an infant was then making his first indignant protests and spurnings against human society. In 1800 Cowper, the literary in terpreter of the Evangelical revival, passed from earth, but in the same year Pusey entered the world, to be followed in 1801 by one of the first men of the century, John Henry Newmantheology, the science of sciences leading the way-and yet no long shudder passed through the frame of Evangelical piety. When the new century opened Master Shelley and Master Keble-for, as if an ironical Zeitgeist would demonstrate the truth of Taine's doctrine of the race, the milieu, and the moment, the author of "Queen Mab❞ and the author of "The Christian Year" were of the same moment-probably occupied themselves in chasing the rolling circle's speed or urging the flying ball. We cannot in 1900, any more than could our forefathers in 1800, calculate our unrealized assets. But a comparison of the literary output of the present year with that of the last year of the eighteenth century would certainly not be to our disadvantage. Perhaps it is safe to say that no volume noteworthy in the history of science or the history of thought was produced in the year 1800. The most remarkable novel was "Castle Rackrent;" the most remarkable non-dramatic poem, "The Farmer's Boy;" the drama of the year if it was not Joanna Baillie's "De Montfort," was Godwin's "Antonio;" the former ran for eleven nights; the latter underwent sudden and final damnation, a violent cough, as Lamb explains, becoming epidemical in the house. Whereas, in 1900-but I leave the contrast to any reader who is familiar with the hundred best books of the present year. Without, however, entering on a comparison of the personnel of literature in the opening and at the close of the present century, it is possible to com pare the impersonal forces-the leading ideas or tendencies-which were then and which are now operative as impulses or as a control. By the year 1800 one stage of the romantic movement had reached its term; the scenic effects of Mrs. Radcliffe's novels, the coarse apparatus used to produce wonder or terror by Matthew Gregory Lewis, admitted of no development. If romance was not to perish through its own excesses, it must refine its methods and rationalize itself at least by the presence of psychological truth, as in Coleridge's poem of the forlorn mariner, or it must seek for sanity and strength by connecting itself with the matter and the sentiment of history, as in the poems and novels of Scott. At the same time naturalism or realism, which had been represented by Fielding in prose, and by Crabbe in verse, needed to be spiritualized, infused with deeper meanings, and illuminated by "the light that never was, on sea or land.” Perhaps not many persons at the close of the century were aware that in the little volume of "Lyrical Ballads," published in 1798, something had already been done to justify romance and to interpret reality in its nobler significance. No persons of intelligence a hundred years ago could be sensible to the electrical state of the atmosphere caused by the thunder clouds of Revolution on the continent of Europe. The antiJacobin poets and parodists might ridicule the English contingent to the Revolutionary movement, but such ridicule is a storm-signal, and before long Byron and Shelley came as exponents of the forces of change. Thus the chief foreign influence reached our literature indirectly through political and social passions aroused in France. But there was to a certain extent a direct literary influence from Germany, which coalesced with the political influence; the earlier Schiller-Schiller of "The Robbers"-the earlier Goethe-Goethe of "The Sorrows of Werther"—and, perhaps more than either of these, Kotzebue served as auxiliaries both to the cause of Revolution and the cause of romance. Shall we say that in our own day the spirit of revolution has been replaced by a spirit which seems so alien to that of the Revolution—the spirit of imperialism? The Napoleonic wars at the opening of the century quickened the national self-consciousness of England, and enhanced the national pride and sense of power. But the England of which Wordsworth thought, in his patriotic sonnets, was an island, ringed by the sea, and sublime in its isolation: -from this day forward we shall know That in ourselves our safety must be sought. England was not for Wordsworth's imagination the mother of nations, having children armed to speak with her enemies in the gate. It should be remembered, however, that the democratic sentiment, fostered by the revolutionary movement of a century since, has entered largely into the passions of imperialism. Among our chief makers of empire was the champion of the Reform Bill of 1867, who, in his "Coningsby" and "Sybil," had prophesied of a Tory democracy. The "equality" and "fraternity" of the Revolution have been captured by imperialism, not in the form of metaphysical abstractions, but as genuine emotions, if no more, reaching out not to universal humanity, but to all men of the blood at all the bounds of empire, and tending more and more to incarnate themselves in action. The emotion is admirable, and where a fellow-feeling exists, it becomes less difficult to attain to a mutual understanding; but at best such an understanding is difficult, and when the outcries of brotherhood become less loud and the first embraces are over, among the tasks of literature not the least will be to carry messages of true intelligence to and fro between the old sea-wife of Mr. Kipling's poem and her sons "in the new and naked lands." It is a remarkable phenomenon that in recent years three tendencies, which at first sight seem in conflict each with the others, have played conspicuous parts in literature-cosmopolitanism, imperialism, provincialism. The worldliterature of which Goethe dreamed has not been attained, but the relations of each people with neighboring-and even with distant-peoples have grown more intimate and more complex. In each earlier period a single foreign influence arrived on our shores, and for a time sent its voice through the land -in the early Renaissance the Italian influence, at a later date the influence of Spain, in the Restoration and subsequent days the French influence. But now wave follows wave as the winds blow from this quarter or from that. Our novel and drama have been affected for good or for evil by the French novel and drama, and in a scientific age the manifestoes of literary realism or naturalism could not but be accepted as containing all the credenda, until the experiment of le roman expérimental was found not to be completely successful. The Russian novel with its new intellectual and social problems, its feeling for simple and profound emotions, its infinite human pity, both widened and deepened our imaginative sense of life. Scandinavia told us tales of old heroic action, and irritated the gray matter of our brains with modern riddles, not always meant to be solved. Winds from the West have reached us, bearing now a whisper of tea-table subtleties and now a "barbaric yaup." Nor has the East been silent; deeper messages from the mind of India have come to us across the Anglo-Indian gossip and the Anglo-Indian words of command. Yet out of this cosmopolitan babel has issued at the century's close not cosmopolitanism but the imperial spirit. In attempting to understand the world, we have suddenly discovered that a great piece of the world is occupied by the new nations of Englishmen, and motives both of interest and affection have made England resolve at length to understand her full-grown sons and to make herself understood by them. In like manner a wise provincialism need not contain within it any element of separatism. The Scottish kail-yard sells its kail in Covent Garden, and potatoes grown hard by an Irish bog may be transported to the London market. The humor of Thrums is possibly a grave affair in Thrums, but it flashes into laughter and tenderness when it touches a different intelligence. "Wessex" has its rights, and will be understood by Lancashire, and underneath all superficial diversities-dear to the artist, lover of the definite and the concrete-a common humanity binds the North and the South together. Nor, indeed, in what seems local or provincial is it difficult to discern the play of cosmopolitan forces. Irish writers protest against the brutal materialism of England, seemingly unaware that they are caught into a stream of reaction against the alleged tyranny of the scientific and industrial movements, that is common to England, to France and to all of cultivated Europe-which reaction so far as it leads to the recognition of truths ignored by science and industry is wholly warrantable, and so far as it would replace truths by shimmering falsehood must needs come to nought. If science, together with the great good which it has wrought for our country, has wrought some evil, by excluding from view another order of truths, these wrongs will assuredly not be repaired by pseudo-science. And if the pursuit of material prosperity has blinded men for a time to the true ro Pale, patient, with her throbbing heart at rest, What change is on the fields?-the old known land II THE SKY. How far, how far, with unavailing eye If all the laboring world in one vast sigh Or one least echo sorrow in reply? Oh Hand, which through a shuddering chaos hurled, Star upon endless star and world on world, Will thy dread sowing spring to harvest soon? Now pregnant with the thoughts of æons past, The Argosy. Margaret Sackville. FEBRUARY 2, 1901. READINGS FROM NEW BOOKS. JAMES AND HARRIET MARTINEAU.* We come now to a passage in his life of which we would willingly be silent, did it not seem cowardly to be so; I mean the estrangement between him and his sister Harriet; or, perhaps I might better say, her estrangement from him; for through all the dismal years of banishment from her sympathy, he preserved for her the fraternal heart. Besides, simple right seems to require that the story be told again. All the world has heard it, but, in the main, they have heard but one version of it; and here, as ever, One man's word is no man's word, Justice asks that both be heard. The name of Harriet Martineau is one to be spoken with admiration. She was a woman of large powers and generous sympathies, and through toilsome and suffering years she consecrated both to the service of humanity. Her intellect had not the penetration of her brother's, but it was more versatile; and though we would rather meet him on the judgment seat where ethical justice must be given voice, in her was the more cosmopolitan sympathy. While he would wage unrelenting battle with the wrong that smites, she would meet the sufferer with the readier smile. James Martineau: A Biography and Study. By A. W. Jackson, A.M. Copyright, 1900. Little, Brown & Co. Price $3. She was a great and noble woman, but to all their limitations. Her devotion to truth was unquestionable; the patience that searches for the simple verity of things was not so marked in her. She was of the stuff of which martyrs, not philosophers, are made. Her judgment, whatever it was, she would stand by at any cost, but she was not sure to come to it by the way of careful discrimination. Hence her opinions, whether of men or of doctrines, wear often a per saltum and even a capricious look. She had a two-fold physical affliction, ill-health and deafness. In spite of these she achieved her brave and brilliant career; but none the less it is difficult not to believe that they gave a color to her spirit by which things and people were sometimes discolored to her apprehension. Such extenuation it is easy to exaggerate, and she would be the last to ask it; and few who have suffered so much have needed it so little. But few spirits are so stoical or so Christian as to be lifted above a rasping pain or a tormenting malady. Emerson with Carlyle's dyspepsia very likely had not scolded like Carlyle, but we fear he had been a different Emerson. She had a will whose servant she was, and others who would prosper with her needs must be; her conscientiousness was absolute, but needed now and then to be toned with "sweet reasonable |