boastings, her sincerity is not always obvious, but it speaks plainly through each one of the following words:

What is there in us, that, in spite of plausible arguments -in spite of the consciousness that all leads to nothing—we should still grumble? I know that, like everyone else, I am going on towards death and nothingness. I weigh the circumstances of life, and, whatever they may be, they appear to me miserably vain, and, for all that, I cannot resign myself. Then, it must be a force; it must be a something-not merely "a passage," a certain period of time, which matters little whether it is spent in a palace or in a cellar; there is, then, something stronger, truer, than our foolish phrases about it all. It is life, in short; not merely a passage an unprofitable misery-but life, all that we hold most dear, all that we call ours, in short.

People say it is nothing, because we do not possess eternity. Ah! the fools. Life is ourselves, it is ours, it is all that we possess; how, then, is it possible to say that it is nothing? If this is nothing, show me something.

Prosperous

To deride life is indeed foolish. people are apt to do so, whether their prosperity be of this world or anticipated in the next. The rich man bids the poor man lead an abstemious life in his youth, and scorn delights, in order that he may have the wherewithal to spend a dull old age; but the poor man replies: "Your arrangements have left me nothing but my youth. I will enjoy that, and you shall support me in a dull old age."

To deride life, I repeat, is foolish; but to pity yourself for having to die is to carry egotism rather too far. This is what Mlle. Bashkirtseff does.

I am touched myself when I think of my end. No, it seems impossible! Nice, fifteen years, the three Graces, Rome, the follies of Naples, painting, ambition, unheard-of hopes-to end in a coffin, without having had anything, not even love.

Impossible, indeed! There is not much use for that word in the human comedy.

Never, surely, before was there a lady so penetrated with her own personality as the writer of these journals. Her arms and legs, hips and shoulders, hopes and fears, pictures and future glory, are all alike scanned, admired, stroked, and pondered over. She reduces everything to one vast common denominator-herself. She gives

two francs to a starving family.

It was a sight to see the joy, the surprise of these poor creatures. I hid myself behind the trees. Heaven has never treated me so well; heaven has never had any of these beneficent fancies.

Heaven had, at all events, never heard the like of this before. Here is a human creature brought up in what is called the lap of luxury, wearing purple and fine linen, and fur cloaks worth 2000 francs, eating and drinking to repletion, and indulging herself in every fancy; she divides a handful of coppers amongst five starving persons, and then retires behind a tree, and calls God to witness that no such kindness had ever been extended to her.

When Mlle. Elsnitz, her long-suffering companion-" young, only nineteen, unfortunate, in a strange house without a friend "—at last, after suffering many things, leaves the service, it is recorded:

I could not speak for fear of crying, and I affected a careless look, but I hope she may have seen.

Seen what? Why, that the carelessness was unreal. A quite sufficient reparation for months of insolence, in the opinion of Miss Marie.

It is said that Mile. Bashkirtseff had a great faculty of enjoyment. If so, except in the case of

books, she hardly makes it felt. Reading she evidently intensely enjoyed; but, though there is a good deal of rapture about Nature in her journals, it is of an uneasy character.

The silence that is in the starry sky,

The sleep that is amongst the lonely hills,

do not pass into the souls of those whose ambition it is to be greeted with loud cheers by the whole wide world.

Whoever is deeply interested in himself always invents a God whom he can apostrophise on suitable occasions. The existence of this deity feeds his creator's vanity. When the world turns a deaf ear to his broken cries he besieges heaven. The Almighty, so he flatters himself, cannot escape him. When there is no one else to have recourse to, when all other means fail, there still remains -God. When your father, and your mother, and your aunt, and your companion, and your maid, are all wearied to death by your exhaustless vanity, you have still another string to your bow. Sometimes, indeed, the strings may get entangled.

Just now, I spoke harshly to my aunt, but I could not help it. She came in just when I was weeping with my hands over my face, and was summoning God to attend to me a little.

A book like this makes one wonder what power, human or divine, can exorcise such a demon of vanity as that which possessed the soul of this most unhappy girl. Carlyle strove with great energy in Sartor Resartus to compose a spell which should cleave this devil in three. For a time it worked well and did some mischief, but now the magician's wand seems broken. Religion, indeed,

can still show her conquests, and, when we are considering a question like this, seems a fresher thing than it does when we are reading Lux Mundi.

"Do you want," wrote General Gordon in his journal, "to be loved, respected, and trusted? Then ignore the likes and dislikes of man in regard to your actions; leave their love for God's, taking Him only. You will find that as you do so men will like you; they may despise some things in you, but they will lean on you, and trust you, and He will give you the spirit of comforting them. But try to please men and ignore God, and you will fail miserably and get nothing but disappointment."

All those who have not yet read these journals, and prefer doing so in English, should get Miss Blind's volumes. There they will find this "human document" most vigorously translated into their native tongue. It, perhaps, sounds better in French.

One remembers George Eliot's tale of the lady who tried to repeat in English the pathetic story of a French mendicant-" J'ai vu le sang de mon père"-but failed to excite sympathy, owing to the hopeless realism of Saxon speech. But though better in French, the journal is interesting in English. Whether, like the dreadful Dean, you regard man as an odious race of vermin, or agree with an erecter spirit that he is a being of infinite capacity, you will find food for your philosophy, and texts for your sermons in the Journal of Marie Bashkirtseff.

I

A CONNOISSEUR

1905

T must always be rash to speak positively about human nature, whose various types of character are singularly tough, and endure, if not for ever, for a very long time; yet some types do seem to show signs of wearing out. The connoisseur, for example, here in England is hardly what he was. He has specialised, and behind him there is now the bottomless purse of the multimillionaire, who buys as he is bidden, and has no sense of prices. If the multi-millionaire wants a thing, why should he not have it? The gaping mob, penniless but appreciative, looks on and cheers his pluck.

Mr. Frederick Locker, about whom I wish to write a few lines, was an old-world connoisseur, the shy recesses of whose soul Addison might have penetrated in the page of a Spectator-and a delicate operation it would have been.

My father-in-law was only once in the witnessbox. I had the felicity to see him there. It was a dispute about the price of a picture, and in the course of his very short evidence he hazarded the opinion that the grouping of the figures (they were portraits) was in bad taste. The Judge, the late Mr. Justice Cave, an excellent lawyer of the old school, snarled out, "Do you think you could