ality; only for his individuality. For example: even before the war we were told that Prussian military officers were insufferable; no doubt this was and is true of some of them. But the only Prussian lieutenants whom I knew intimately abroad, Schiemann and Remmets, were as modest, kindly, and considerate as any of my American friends.

I had an amusing time with Lieutenant Remmets. We were in Paris together in 1903. At that time he could not talk English, I could not talk German, and we were both learning to talk French. We used to go to the theatre together, and on the street-cars that carried us thither, we conversed in such horrible French that all our fellow passengers gave us the closest attention, punctuated with roars of laughter. I suppose they wondered why on earth we did not talk our own language; but we couldn't. We drew groups of excited listeners wherever we went-his French with a German accent, and mine with an American, was a speech not to be tolerated by gods or men. Yet I always understood his French better than that spoken by Parisians, and he had the same experience with mine.

Here are some good books for summer reading, and by summer reading I mean exactly what I mean by winter, autumn, or spring reading. "Reminiscences," by the Reverend Professor A. H. Sayce, shows that the life of an archæologist may be as adventurous, variegated, and dangerous as that of a soldier. In the year 1889 I had a talk with Professor Mahaffy, of Dublin, who by the way is frequently mentioned in this book, and after expressing his affection for Sayce, he said: "But the poor fellow is dying; his lungs are gone." Had the jovial and robust Mahaffy been told that Sayce would outlive him, he would not have believed it; but Mahaffy departed some years ago, and Sayce is yet alive. His book of reminiscences is to me a joy and delight, for he has spent his eighty years doing just two things; recovering from fatal illnesses (including snake bite) and making new discoveries. His eyes gave out entirely in his early youth, so he has been reading cuneiform inscriptions and Greek manuscripts all his days and nights. Mortally

and chronically ill with tuberculosis, he has eaten, drunk, and slept on land and sea, where the normal athlete would have died of exposure or indigestion or heart failure. I have no doubt that his intellectual curiosity has kept his frail body alive, for he has not yet had time to die. Life is too interesting.

Another book of reminiscences, extremely animated, is "A Soldier's Memories," by Major-General Sir George Younghusband; this is a revised version of a work that appeared originally about ten years ago. Here is the typical British soldier, fearless, delighting in battle, never questioning either the justice of God or that of the British Empire, fully persuaded that it is better for brown men to be slain by British bullets than to survive without British supervision, doing the day's work in exactly the manner prescribed as perfect by Rudyard Kipling. He loves fighting, food, and conversation; has no nerves and no doubts. A man of action.

An even more diverting book of memories is "Adventures in Peru," by C. H. Prodgers. Prodgers must have been one of the best fellows in the world, and I hope to meet him in heaven, where he will be easily recognizable by his size on earth he weighed two hundred and eighty pounds. His vast bulk was driven by so powerful a motor of curiosity and vitality, that, in the language of the Irishman, he was always visiting places where the hand of man had never set foot. Perhaps you will buy his book when I tell you that he was a combination of Hotspur and Falstaff. He had a passionate love of danger, and his enormous frame was shaken every day by Gargantuan mirth. Furthermore, if you have any hopeless disease, read this book, and then visit the bath in South America which he recommends; you will be cured in two weeks. Good old Prodgers!

Among the new novels, "The Constant Nymph," by Margaret Kennedy, is especially notable. The jaded reader will get a new sensation. What an extraordinary menagerie was Sanger's circus! Great musical composers are so abnormal that compared with ordinary citizens they are downright mad. Sanger and his

pupil, like some other musicians, cared only for music; they cared nothing whatever for the effect of music on civilization, society, humanity, or individuals, but only for music. This is why, I suppose, neither England nor America has ever produced a composer of the first rank. Alas, we have too much common

sense.

Yet it is pleasant to record (see Time) the success of an American opera in Europe. "For the first time in the history of music a full-length opera composed by an American, on a libretto written by an American, was produced in Europe. Fay-Yen-Fah was the work, Monte Carlo the scene, composer Joseph Redding, poet Templeton Crocker (both of California) the Americans. They listened to a score which is modern without eccentricity, melodious without stickiness, followed the poetic story of a Chinese beauty damned for loving too well." It was received with enthusiasm, and in the audience sat the greatest tenor of modern times, Jean de Reszké.

A novel that has been fulsomely praised during the last year, I find dull-E. M. Forster's "A Passage to India." It must interest those who have been in India and those who are interested in the colonial policies of the British Empire; but its enormous sale in the United States rather surprises me. I made one brave attempt to read it, and got stuck in the underbrush. I like much better his imaginative and charming book, "The Celestial Omnibus"; but I like best of all "A Room with a View."

And it is clear that the success of John Galsworthy's "Old English" is owing chiefly to the acting. I found it unreadable.

A brilliant novel is Laurence Meynell's "Mockbeggar." During the opening chapters, I thought he was what Owen Wister's cowboy called Browning, a "smarty"; but I revised this hasty and false estimate. It is an exceedingly fine book, where the froth and foam on the surface of the style rise from depths of thought.

Two young men who deserve encouragement and applause are George Shively, whose first novel, "Initiation," is full of promise, and Robert McClure, author of "The Dominant Blood," a good story with living characters. Both books should be read as a counterweight to "The Plastic Age." Students know one another better than any member of the faculty can possibly know them.

Although to many of his readers the late John Morley seemed somewhat cold, I read with avidity everything by and about him. Therefore to those of similar mind, I vigorously recommend "John Viscount Morley," by John H. Morgan. The intimate biography of a pacifist by a soldier is in itself somewhat noteworthy; in this case it affords one more proof of the immense esteem and affection felt for Honest John by those who knew him well. And no one, in late years, knew him better than Mr. Morgan. It is a tantalizing as well as a fascinating book; for the author tells us of all sorts of material about Morley "which will never be printed."

I saw Morley from afar off, and how I wish I could have heard him speak! But on that July day of 1900 when I sat in the gallery of the House of Commons and heard a red-hot debate on the South African War, Morley, sitting on the front bench of the Opposition, contented himself by listening to Balfour and Chamberlain with an ironical smile.

Seventy-five years ago this month (March) the greatest speech ever heard in the United States Senate was delivered by Daniel Webster. So far as I know, it is the only famous address called after its date. Every single sentence in it is im

portant to-day, and every idea applicable to present emergencies. Abraham Lincoln, the political heir of Webster, must have known that speech by heart.

"Twice Thirty" is selling like sixty. And the reason is not to be found in the vast and well-deserved success of the former book, "The Americanization of Edward Bok." The author, a born raconteur, had his wits sharpened by journalism, and knows exactly how to tell a story. He purposely omitted some of the best from his earlier work, and here we may enjoy them. The conversations with Wilson and Roosevelt are thrilling; the story of Vladimir de Pachmann is the best anecdote of that bizarre genius that I have seen.

The resignation of Dean L. B. R. Briggs from Harvard is a matter of national importance, for his friends—and I never saw any one who knew him who was not his friend-are in every section of the United States. Professor Briggs is one of the greatest productive scholars in America-he has produced so much goodness and usefulness and honesty in the minds of thousands of young men. His acts of kindness are innumerable, of which I will mention one. After I had been a graduate student at Harvard for a few months, Professor Briggs asked me if I wanted a fellowship, to which question he received a natural answer. It was a bitter winter day, the sidewalks covered with snow and slush, and Professor Briggs in his chronically bad health; he spent the entire afternoon visiting various professors-there were no telephones -urging them to support me for a fellowship. After I came to know him better, I found that kindness and unselfishness had become with him his only besetting sins. As he looks back over fifty years of service, he ought to be both proud and happy; but while he may be happy, he

could not be proud, for he is quite unaware of his sainthood. Yet in the hearts of thousands he is already canonized.

The sensationally sudden death of Walter Camp was a terrible shock not only to his friends, but to the American public. No one has had a better influence on sport, because while he loved to have his teams win, he always put honor and health above victory. In his later years he became not merely an authority on sport, but a kind of household physician, with several million patients. He devoted his energies not to making athletes, but to keeping the middle-aged and the venerable in working health. There was another side to him, which the public was not altogether aware of; Walter Camp was exceedingly well-read in good literature, and his conversation was not only delightful but intellectually stimulating.

The eternal quarrel between the older and the younger generation is once more illustrated in a new book by W. B. Trites, called "Ask the Young." It deals with Gibraltar, marriage, and birth control, and is provocatively original in manner and style. About twenty-five years ago there appeared in Germany (I saw it) a play called Jugend von Heute "Young People of To-day"-in which the youths were ridiculed for their contempt of classics like Schiller, for their general irreverence, for their ignorance and conceit. The comedy had an enormous vogue. Some three hundred years ago, George Chapman wrote a play in which occurs the phrase, "Young men think old men are fools, but old men know young men are fools." Yesterday I received a contribution to this immortal theme from Thomas Sergeant Perry: "The old know a little about the past but nothing about the future; the young know nothing about the past, but everything about the future."

T

HE annual art season in Paris or London is a strenuous business, and, of course, there are in both places, at the Salon and at the Royal Academy, prodigious quantities of paintings to be seen. We have no such extensive "picture fairs" in our period of exhibitions, say from October to May. On the other hand, I have never known in either of the cities mentioned a more portentous flood of works of art than that which pours into the galleries of New York, nor is the average of interesting things any higher abroad than it is here. I realize this very vividly as I make a retrospective survey of the season of 1924-25. The exigencies of magazine publication render it impossible to take note in this place of the exhibitions as they occur. But it is worth while to look back over them, they have been so good. They have covered all phases of the subject-painting, sculpture, prints, and, even as I write, architecture, and they have been drawn from every imaginable source. We have seen some of the greatest of the old masters. The work of modern foreigners has been abundantly illustrated. And the American school has been constantly and effectively to the fore. Indeed, this last-mentioned circumstance is perhaps the most significant which I have to record.

THE

"HE key for a demonstration of the qualities of native art was auspiciously set by the Metropolitan Museum when its American Wing was opened last fall. One conviction beyond all others emerges from study of that remarkable assemblage of the things fashioned by our forefathers-interiors, furniture, and decorations. It is that we were launched upon a practice of good craftsmanship, and that we went on cultivating it under the influence of good taste. We have steadily adhered to that path ever since. It is the outstanding lesson of the exhibitions organized by the National Academy of Design, one in the winter and one in the

spring. It is the fashion in some quarters and especially among the artists of the younger generation, who are inordinately proud of their "liberalism," to disparage those exhibitions. In fact, they are often dismissed out of hand as merely negligible. This is unjust, and I think the injustice proceeds from a disposition to look at the matter in a false perspective. It is assumed that if the exhibitions are not brilliant it is the fault of the Academy and of the academic idea. The truth is, of course, that the academic idea has never hurt a genuine talent and that the Academy has been persistently hospitable to men of gifts. It has an opportunity to prove this next fall, when it will open at the Corcoran Gallery, in Washington, an exhibition later to be seen in New York, in commemoration of its hundredth anniversary. It ought to prove its case then by the simple process of showing the works of most of the best men who have made American art for a century. They have been allied with the Academy, some of them very closely, and I believe biographical data would show that many of them were encouraged to enter academic exhibitions very early in their careers. No, the Academy has not been inimical to youth, to budding genius, and it is merely stupid to say it has been so because, in maintenance of a decent standard, it has turned the cold shoulder to freakishness and incompetence masquerading as originality and independence. The trouble with its exhibitions is easily to be diagnosed on other grounds. They are, to begin with, enormously weakened by the competition of the one-man show. is prevalent to an extent that may be inferred from the fact that I have sometimes had to reckon with fifteen or twenty exhibitions of this kind in a single week. I remember a long talk that I once had with the late Kenyon Cox on this subject. We had been strolling together through an Academy show, and I couldn't conceal my disappointment with it from that Academician. He asked me what I con

That

agreed with me that the successful Academician owed something in his prime to the institution that had backed him when he was young, giving him, perhaps, medals and money prizes and letting him tack "N. A." onto his name. I have had that thought hundreds of times since. But I had in my turn to agree with Cox.

We talked of the conditions, some of them economic, that in the nature of things could not but exert a paramount influence. They count as heavily now as they counted then. An artist must do the best that he can for himself, and when he reaches a certain point in his life there can be no question of the value to him of the one-man show. It does much to make and to sustain his market. The dealer who exposes his work does everyVOL. LXXVII.—48

able explanation one on which it is possible to argue. This is the crushing circumstance-well to put bluntly, like all crushing things-that the body of really resplendent painters is always slim, anywhere and at any time, in our modern world. After all, can the malcontent say, hand on heart, that the Royal Academy or the Salon ever immeasurably enriches his artistic experience? There are never enough great men to go around. Our National Academy, at any rate, fulfils a valuable function in keeping alive the tradition of good taste and honest craftsmanship. I felt this at the winter and spring exhibitions in the season just closed, and was regretful but not exactly scandalized because once more I found nothing brilliant about them. Moreover, on both