as he had been of a slaver, saw the futility of such pin-pricks:

"The fashionable world," so he wrote to Miss More, "by their numbers form a phalanx not easily impressible, and their habits of life are as armour of proof which renders them not easily vulnerable. Neither the rude club of a boisterous Reformer nor the pointed, delicate weapons of the authoress before me can overthrow or rout them."

But Miss More never forgot to lecture the rich or to patronise the poor.

Calebs in Search of a Wife is an impossible book, and I do not believe Miss Harland has read it; but as for the famous Shepherd, we are never allowed to forget how Mr. Wilberforce declared a few years before his death, to the admiration of the religious world, that he would rather present himself in heaven with The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain in his hand than with-what think you?Peveril of the Peak! The bare notion of such a proceeding on anybody's part is enough to strike one dumb with what would be horror, did not amazement swallow up every other feeling. What rank Arminianism! I am sure the last notion that ever would have entered the head of Sir Walter was to take Peveril to heaven.

But whatever may be thought of the respective merits of Miss More's nineteen volumes and Sir Walter's ninety-eight, there is no doubt that Barley Wood was as much infested with visitors as ever was Abbotsford. Eighty a week!

"From twelve o'clock until three each day a constant stream of carriages and of carriages and pedestrians

filled the ever-green bordered avenue leading from the Wrington village road."

Among them came Lady Gladstone and W. E. G., aged six, the latter carrying away with him the Sacred Dramas, to be preserved during a long life.

Miss More was a vivacious and agreeable talker, who certainly failed to do herself justice with her pen. Her health was never good, yet, as she survived thirty-five of her prescribing physicians, her vitality must have been great. Her face in Opie's portrait is very pleasant. If I was rude to her ten years ago, I apologise and withdraw; but as for her books, I shall leave them where they are-buried in a cliff facing due north, with nothing between them and the Pole but leagues upon leagues of a wind-swept ocean.

NOTE, 1922.-What rash words are these! In 1914, and during my absence, the War Office (without notice) entered upon my garden, and dug a deep hole for the reception of hand-grenades ready for use to repel an invader. The spot selected for this operation was the very one where Miss More's nineteen volumes lay buried. What became of the mouldering remains I cannot say, but I fear they are no longer there.

MARIE BASHKIRTSEFF

1904

ISS MATHILDE BLIND, in the introduction to her animated and admirable translation of the now notorious Journal of Marie Bashkirtseff, asks an exceedingly relevant question-namely, "Is it well or is it ill done to make the world our father confessor?" Miss Blind does not answer her own question, but passes on her way content with the observation that, be it well or ill done, it is supremely interesting. Translators have, indeed, no occasion to worry about such inquiries. It is hard enough for them to make their author speak another language than his own, without stopping to ask whether he ought to have spoken at all. Their business is to make their author known. As for the author himself, he, of course, has a responsibility; but, as a rule, he is only thinking of himself, and only anxious to excite interest in that subject. If he succeeds in doing this, he is indifferent to everything else. And in this he

is encouraged by the world.

Burns, in his exuberant generosity, was sure that it could afford small pleasure

but whatever may be the devil's taste, there is nothing the reading public like better than to hear

the squeal of some self-torturing atom of humanity. And, as the atoms have found this out, a good deal of squealing may be confidently anticipated.

The eclipse of faith has not proved fatal by any means to the instinct of confession. There is a noticeable desire to make humanity or the reading public our residuary legatee, to endow it with our experiences, to enrich it with our egotisms, to strip ourselves bare in the market-place-if not for the edification, at all events for the amusement, of man. All this is accomplished by autobiography. We then become interesting, probably for the first time, as, to employ Mlle. Bashkirtseff's language, "documents of human nature.'

The metaphor carries us far. To falsify documents by addition, or to garble them by omission, is an offence of grave character, though of frequent occurrence. Is there, then, to be no reticence in autobiography? Are the documents of human nature to be printed at length?

These are questions which each autobiographer must settle for himself. If what is published is interesting for any reason whatsoever, be it the work of pious sincerity or diseased self-consciousness, the world will read it, and either applaud the piety or ridicule the absurdity of the author. If it is not interesting it will not be read.

Therefore, to consider the ethics of autobiography is to condemn yourself to the academy. Rousseau's Confessions ought never to have been written; but written they were, and read they will ever be. But as a pastime moralising has a rare charm. We cannot always be reading immoral masterpieces. A time comes when inaction is

pleasant, and when it is soothing to hear mild accents murmuring "Thou shalt not." For

a

moment, then, let the point remain under

consideration.

The ethics of autobiography are, in my judg ment, admirably summed up by George Eliot, in a passage in Theophrastus Such, a book which, we were once assured, well-nigh destroyed the reputation of its author, but which would certainly have established that of most living writers upon a surer foundation than they at present occupy. George Eliot says:

In all autobiography there is, nay, ought to be, an incompleteness which may have the effect of falsity. We are each of us bound to reticence by the piety we owe to those who have been nearest to us, and have had a mingled influence over our lives-by the fellow-feeling which should restrain us from turning our volunteered and picked confessions into an act of accusation against others who have no chance of vindicating themselves, and, most of all, by that reverence for the higher efforts of our common nature which commands us to bury its lowest faculties, its invincible remnants of the brute, its most agonising struggle with temptation, in unbroken silence.

All this is surely sound morality and good manners, but it is not the morality or the manners of Mlle. Marie Bashkirtseff, who was always ready to barter everything for something she called Fame. "If I don't win fame," says she over and over again, "I will kill myself."

Miss Blind is, no doubt, correct in her assertion that, as a painter, Mlle. Bashkirtseff's strong point was expression. Certainly, she had a great gift that way with her pen. Amidst a mass of greedy utterances, esurient longings, commonplace ejaculations, and unlovely revelations, passages occur in this journal which bid us hold. For all her