trop, puis un tas qui manquent, et un caractère qui ne peut pas durer.'

Whether she had actual beauty may be questioned. She herself frequently debates it, and commonly, not uniformly, decides in the affirmative. She certainly had energy, fascination, and command. Womanish she was in many of woman's weaknesses; and she did not possess the finer graces which we signify by the epithet feminine. Of this she was sufficiently conscious. 'Oh si j'étais seulement un homme!' But death would be better still (ii. 112). More roundly she declares, 'Je n'ai de la femme que l'enveloppe ' (ii. 26). Her emotions were portentous in strength and activity: her affections but moderately strong. On the death of the family physician, whom she loved, she asks, Was it the first time I ever shed tears but from selflove or anger?' (ii. 43). Her family were her slaves; but, they being wholly beneath and behind her, she was not in sympathy with them; and even with the invalid grandfather she carried on habitually the war of words. She has not been brutal with him, she has only treated him as an equal (ii. 35). Her greatest defect seems to have been her want of the sentiment of reverence. Her endowments were splendid and universal. As a child she is the wonder of the

dance (Preface, p. 9); and she dances only to be seen (ii. 168). Her voice is reported by others as well as by herself to have been magnificent. She acquired languages with such facility that she seems to pass through no stage of difficulty or stumbling. She is surprised at finding herself speak Italian so well. The ancient tongues are learned, apparently without a teacher; and she reads. her Homer seriously, for no modern composition, sensational or other, impresses her like the catastrophe of Troy (i. 392). Her passion for reading was insatiable, her power of work immense. All subjects were food for her: for politics she could lose her sleep (ii. 24). After the development which she undergoes when about sixteen, the Journal everywhere bears testimony to her powers alike of observation and reflection.

Art was her master-passion: and she clung to it, and bent the course of her life to it, with a desperate fidelity to the very end. She had a true conception of her work, as that which attains by striving after the unattainable. Il ne faut jamais être content de soi' (ii. 37). At the outset she astonished her teachers, who even questioned her as to the authenticity of her works, since they could not conceive a novice to be capable of such performances. Yet here, as in the case of all other accomplishments which could be made subjects of observation, she loved them with an ulterior motive. All these things were conceived of in a manner peculiar to herself. She sought in them excellence indeed, and sought it intensely, but excellence for the sake of renown, and not renown simply to be enjoyed at some uncertain date, but renown made palpable and brought home in

celebrity, in homage visible and sensible, in the glances of the crowd there and then: she sought, with an incessant hunger,

Digito monstrari, et dicier Hæc est.

She dealt in the market of fame, but dealt only for cash.

And so not unnaturally there were peculiarities and perhaps inconsistencies in her ideal. She has intense unquestioning admiration for Watteau and for Greuze (ii. 226), but she criticises and renounces Raphael (ii. 203, 309), though she adores his country (ii. 246 et alibi). Her enthusiasm for progress in art was unbounded: but her object was reality, not beauty. Of her ultra-realism as an artist there is a small but significant indication in one of the two works by her which are preserved in the Luxembourg. A group of gamins are in confabulation together, near a building, on the blank wall of which has been scratched the figure of a gallows. Presumably this seemed to her the fittest subject for an urchin's initial effort. If there was an idea which lay at the root of all her aspirations, that idea was power. This intense realism penetrated also into her literary tastes, and may probably explain her pronounced and violent admiration for Zola (ii. 352, 546), although she appears to have known some of the most exceptional works of this author, who pushes realism into sheer brutality. With this passion for art only her love of visible worship could maintain at least a qualified rivalry. An evening at the theatre (ii. 34) has been an evening lost, though she laughed incessantly, for she has neither studied, nor been seen. And again, at a great party (ii. 57), 'I did not produce all the effect I intended.'

Love, as might be expected, flits across the scene in its various forms. At the outset, in a childish and transient but passionate affection; sometimes as coquetry; sometimes, as in the case of Bastien Le Page, the painter and like herself a realist, a form of admiration which looks as if it might almost be love. When, however, there is an idea of marriage, her view suddenly becomes matter of fact, or even mercantile. She would like to be an ambassadress. On the whole, wedlock would have been a troublesome incident, and she holds it at arm's-length.

Where the sources of susceptibility were so redundant, it could not but be that religion should attract a share of the emotions. And so it was; in the earlier periods more, however, than in the latest. As late as in 1878, when her sad fate is apparently in her view, she says, in all earnestness (i. 397), 'que la volonté de Dieu soit faite ;' and, when about to enter upon the course of study in the atelier, she makes (p. 401) a solemn dedication of herself and her work to 'the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost.'

The idea of the Deity after this seems to have deteriorated. Happy had it been for her had parents or teachers ever led her to

learn what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God,' and to find in that search the regulative principle of character, and the secret of peace. She is apt to treat the Almighty as she treated her grandfather, en égal. It was to be a relation of do ut des; or perhaps of da ut dem. If things are not disposed as she wishes, she threatens as a penalty that she will have done with believing. Sometimes Dieu est méchant. And jusqu'à présent je me suis toujours adressée à Dieu, mais comme il ne m'entend pas du tout, je n'y crois . . . presque plus.' But she then adds her sense of the absolute necessity of belief in God, unless for the very fortunate, as the sole stay of the human spirit, and adds, with her proper and portentous naïveté, 'Cela n'engage à rien' (ii. 107). Everywhere, however, in this book, and especially here, we must bear in mind that the Journal is a work of self-accusation as much as of self-worship, and that she clothes in words, which are of course vivid words, what passes through the minds of others but lies there only in embryo and unformed suggestion.

Among the lessons which a perusal of this record must bring home is a feeling of thankfulness that we have not been constituted the judges of one another. Judgment indeed there must be, for without it we cannot learn; but it should always be conditioned, tentative, provisional, and never authoritative, never final. To be understood, the history here detailed leads us up to the words of Tennyson :

There's somewhat in this world amiss
Shall be unriddled by and by.

Marie Bashkirtseff reminds me powerfully of the ruins of Selinunti, which are unlike any other ruins I ever saw. The temple is so shattered that it may be said to be reduced to a mass of single stones: but every stone by itself is majestic. Here were great powers, amassed in an abundance like that of the materials for the rearing of Solomon's temple. They have been lost in a double disappointment -for there is surely a disappointment apart from the too early death. It is not a case for elaborate laments.

Let not high verse, mourning the memory
Of that which is no more, or painting's woe,
Or sculpture, speak in feeble imagery
Their own cold powers.2

The lesson is one to learn in silence, and the book one to close with a sorrowful but reverent sympathy for one who, in the striking language of M. Theuriet, was faite pour beaucoup souffrir, et pour beaucoup faire souffrir.'

W. E. GLADSTONE.

2 Shelley's Alastor.

A RÉSUMÉ OF

THE IRISH LAND PROBLEM.

MUCH has been written during the last twenty years of and concerning the Irish land question. But, notwithstanding all that has been said and written, there appears to be only one thing clear to the average British elector: viz. the fact that, somehow or other, and after all he has done, the land difficulty is still the real stone of stumbling and rock of offence in Ireland. Nor is this chaotic condition of mind altogether inexcusable. On the one hand we are told that the Irish tenant is the spoiled child of the Legislature—that he has secured advantages denied, not only to the British farmer, but unheard of in any other part of the civilised world. On the other, he is declared to be the veriest slave, with no legal rights, crushed down by unfair rack-rents, and by a load of unjust arrears. I propose, in view of a probable land scheme next session, (a) to summarise the actual position of the Irish tenant, (b) to show the chief drawbacks he labours under at present, and (c) to sketch what, in my opinion, ought finally to be done in order to terminate this embittered. struggle to which the whole energies of the Irish people have so long been devoted. I commence with

THE ACT OF 1870.

The history of the land question prior to 1870 makes two things -and two things only-abundantly clear. First, the ordinary tenant, outside the province of Ulster, was absolutely at the mercy of his landlord. The Act of 1860, commonly called Deasy's Act, and, no doubt, fairly representing the Liberalism of that day, reduced the whole question of land tenure in Ireland to a mere matter of contract. It ignored the actual facts of the situation. Consequently, and previous to 1870, the house the tenant lived in, and which he had built, the out-offices which he had erected, the fences and the drains he had paid for either in labour or in money, were, in law and in fact, the property of the landlord. For the great bulk of the tenants forced, in many cases, to pay a rent governed entirely by the prevailing land-hung er, there was practically no legal protection. This is the first fact that any student of the Irish land question comes across. The second is this: that, even under circumstances

such as I have described, and that were, I submit, sufficient to eat the very heart out of men, the Irish tenant then made no extravagant demand upon the Legislature. His claim, up to this date, was at once moderate and reasonable. He demanded protection for his improvements, and security against what was at that time called 'capricious' eviction. The whole struggle in which the 'League of North and South' fought together was practically waged on these two grounds. The O'Briens, the Healys, and the Dillons of to-day were not then born. The new gospel of the land for the people' had not been proclaimed, and eviction for non-payment of rent was rarely if ever questioned or challenged. The Act of 1870 was avowedly passed to meet and deal with this state of matters. The main aim of its authors was of a twofold character-to provide compensation for improvements, and to put penalties upon capricious eviction. The Act has, to some extent, proved defective. It never even received a fair chance. But what, in substance, it did was this. It said to the Irish landlord: 'You have a tenant. He has built his house, reclaimed, fenced, and drained his land-things which, in any other part of the United Kingdom, would have been done by you as the landlord. Up to the present, although you have not done these things, they are in law your property, and not his. This shall be so no longer. Your tenant shall henceforward pay the rent he contracts to pay. If he fails to do so, you can turn him out, and recover possession. In doing this you will, of course, require to take possession of house and offices, and everything upon the land. But, after you have done this, he may file a claim against you in the county court, and what the judge awards him you shall pay.' This was, in substance, what the Act of 1870 said tɔ the Irish landlord on the subject of tenants' improvements. On the other question agitating the mind of the tenant, viz. the question of capricious eviction, it simply enacted a scale of compensation for disturbance, and declared that in no case was the compensation for mere disturbance to exceed the amount of seven years' rent of the holding. Looking back on these days, and surveying all that has happened since, one cannot help wondering at the fatuous course pursued by many Irish landlords. It was pre-eminently their day of grace. Had they been wise, had they been gifted with anything like foresight, the gloomy winter of discontent and difficulty which has enveloped them ever since might never have overtaken them. At all events the storm would not have burst upon them with such fury. How they ever came to oppose a measure so palpably honest and reasonable passes all comprehension. How many of them came to devise means for destroying its usefulness, proves only this: that whom the Gods wish to destroy they first drive mad.' Certain it is, however, that a considerable section of the landlords united to drive a coach-and-four through the Act of Parliament. VOL. XXVI.-Nɔ. 152. SS