Mr. Herbert, go on buying blue china and enjoying the horse-show and the "season," and our little trips to Paris, and first editions in rare bindings, if we are not sure that these tastes will be gratified in another world? In his mind, the reply to this question resolves itself into the necessity for a final authority,—an authority which he himself discovers in the voice of the Church of Rome.

He is an indefatigable worker. As a novelist he belongs to the sentimental school, in which a craving for sympathy and a marked tendency to reject conventional standards characterizes all his men and many of his women. Because he has written them, his stories are never dull; they abound in epigram, sketches of character, and wise reflections: but the plots are slightly woven and hang at loose ends, while a dénouement is as deliberately ignored as if the author were a pupil of Zola. His novels or romances are 'A Romance of the Nineteenth Century,' 'The Old Order Changeth,' 'A Human Document,' and 'The Heart of Life.'

As an essayist he is widely read. He was one of the famous five who took part in the Christianity vs. Agnosticism controversy, in which Bishop Wace and Mr. Huxley were the champions. He has written two volumes of poems, translated Lucretius; and his varied magazine articles, collected in book form, have been published under the titles of Social Equality' (London, 1882), 'Property, Progress, and Poverty (1884), and 'Classes and Masses; or, Wealth and Wages in the United Kingdom' (1896).

In the last-named volumes, all on social topics, Mr. Mallock presents himself as a sedate Conservative, committed to hereditary legislation, the sacredness of the game laws, the Doomsday Book, and the rest of mediævalism. Against democratic theories concerning social equality, labor, and property, he sets up the counter proposition that labor is not the cause of wealth, and of itself would be powerless to produce it. As for social equality, he sees that diversity of station is a part of the framework that holds society together.

These books are written in a serious manner. But it is interesting to mark the characteristics of the author's individual and original genius, as obvious in a blue-book as in a novel. It is an axiom that the successful advocate must give the impression that he himself has no doubt of his cause. This Mr. Mallock almost never does. The more positive his plea, the more visible between the lines is the mocking, unconvinced expression of the author's other self. Moreover, his fastidious discontent, and the subtlety of mind which is the greatest perhaps of his many charms, point him toward some unexplored quarter, where, as he has not investigated it, he fancies the truth may lie. The reader of Mallock goes to him for witty comment, satire, suggestion; and to get into a certain high-bred society

where the scholar is at home and the gospel of good-breeding is preached. But that reader will never know in what social system of the past-in slavery, feudalism, or absolutism Mallock's Utopia is to be sought.

N°

AN EVENING'S TABLE-TALK AT THE VILLA
From The New Republic'

PROPOSAL Could have been happier than Lady Grace's, of the garden banquet in the pavilion. It seemed to the guests, when they were all assembled there, that the lovely summer's day was going to close with a scene from fairy-land. The table itself, with its flowers and glowing fruit, and its manycolored Venetian glass, shone and gleamed and sparkled in the evening light, that was turning outside to a cool mellow amber; and above, from the roof, in which the dusk was already darkness, hung china lamps in the shape of green and purple grape clusters, looking like luminous fruit stolen from Aladdin's garden. The pavilion, open on all sides, was supported on marble pillars that were almost hidden in red and white roses. Behind, the eye rested on great tree trunks and glades of rich foliage; and before, it would pass over turf and flowers, till it reached the sea beyond, on which in another hour the faint silver of the moonlight would begin to tremble.

There was something in the whole scene that was at once calming and exhilarating; and nearly all present seemed to feel in some measure this double effect of it. Dr. Jenkinson had been quite restored by an afternoon's nap; and his face was now all a-twinkle with a fresh benignity,- that had, however, like an early spring morning, just a faint suspicion of frost in it. Mr. Storks even was less severe than usual; and as he raised his champagne to his lips, he would at times look very nearly conversational.

"My dear Laurence," exclaimed Mr. Herbert, "it really almost seems as if your visions of the afternoon had come true, and that we actually were in your New Republic already. I can only say that if it is at all like this, it will be an entirely charming place too charming, perhaps. But now remember this: you have but half got through the business to which you first addressed yourselves,- that of forming a picture of a perfect

aristocracy, an aristocracy in the true and genuine sense of the word. You are all to have culture, or taste. Very good: you have talked a great deal about that, and you have seen what you mean by it; and you have recognized, above all, that it includes a discrimination between right and wrong. But now you, with all this taste and culture,-you gifted men and women of the nineteenth century,- what sort of things does your taste teach you to reach out towards? In what actions and aims, in what affections and emotions, would you place your happiness? That is what I want to hear, the practical manifestations of this culture."

"Ah," said Mr. Rose, "I have at this moment a series of essays in the press, which would go far towards answering these questions of yours. They do indeed deal with just this: the effect of the choicer culture of this century on the soul of man; the ways in which it endows him with new perceptions; how it has made him, in fact, a being altogether more highly organized. All I regret is that these choicer souls, these Xapievres, are as yet like flowers that have not found a climate in which they can thrive properly. That mental climate will doubtless come with time. What we have been trying to do this afternoon is, I imagine, nothing more than to anticipate it in imagination."

"Well," said Mr. Herbert, with a little the tone of an Inquisitor, "that is just what I have been asking. What will this climate be like, and what will these flowers be like in this climate? How would your culture alter and better the present, if its powers were equal to its wishes?»

Mr. Rose's soft lulling tone harmonized well with the scene and hour, and the whole party seemed willing to listen to him; or at any rate, no one felt any prompting to interrupt him.

"I can show you an example, Mr. Herbert," he said, "of culture demanding a finer climate, in-if you will excuse my seeming egoism—in myself. For instance (to take the widest matter I can fix upon, the general outward surroundings of our lives), often, when I walk about London, and see how hideous its whole external aspect is, and what a dissonant population throng it, a chill feeling of despair comes over me. Consider how the human eye delights in form and color, and the ear in tempered and harmonious sounds; and then think for a moment. of a London street! Think of the shapeless houses, the forest of ghastly chimney-pots, of the hell of distracting noises made by

the carts, the cabs, the carriages; think of the bustling, commonplace, careworn crowds that jostle you; think of an omnibus, think of a four-wheeler — »

"I often ride in an omnibus," said Lord Allen, with a slight smile, to Miss Merton.

"It is true," replied Mr. Rose, only overhearing the tone in which these words were said, "that one may ever and again catch some touch of sunlight that will for a moment make the meanest object beautiful with its furtive alchemy. But that is Nature's work, not man's; and we must never confound the accidental beauty that Nature will bestow on man's work, even at its worst, with the rational and designed beauty of man's work at its best. It is this rational human beauty that I say our modern city life is so completely wanting in; nay, the look of out-of-door London seems literally to stifle the very power of imagining such beauty possible. Indeed, as I wander along our streets, pushing my way among the throngs of faces, — faces puckered with misdirected thought or expressionless with none; barbarous faces set towards Parliament, or church, or scientific lecture-rooms, or government offices, or counting-houses,-I say, as I push my way amongst all the sights and sounds of the streets of our great city, only one thing ever catches my eye that breaks in upon my mood and warns me I need not despair."

"And what is that?" asked Allen with some curiosity.

"The shops," Mr. Rose answered, "of certain of our uphol sterers and dealers in works of art. Their windows, as I look into them, act like a sudden charm on me; like a splash of cold water dashed on my forehead when I am fainting. For I seem there to have got a glimpse of the real heart of things; and as my eyes rest on the perfect pattern (many of which are really quite delicious; indeed, when I go to ugly houses, I often take a scrap of some artistic crétonne with me in my pocket as a kind of æsthetic smelling-salts), —I say, when I look in at their windows, and my eyes rest on the perfect pattern of some new fabric for a chair or for a window curtain, or on some new design for a wall paper, or on some old china vase, I become at once sharply conscious, Mr. Herbert, that despite the ungenial mental climate of the present age, strange yearnings for and knowledge of true beauty are beginning to show themselves like flowers above the weedy soil; and I remember, amidst the roar

and clatter of our streets, and the mad noises of our own times, that there is amongst us a growing number who have deliberately turned their backs on all these things, and have thrown their whole souls and sympathies into the happier art ages of the past. They have gone back," said Mr. Rose, raising his voice a little, "to Athens and to Italy; to the Italy of Leo and to the Athens of Pericles. To such men the clamor, the interests, the struggles of our own times become as meaningless as they really are. To them the boyhood of Bathyllus is of more moment than the manhood of Napoleon. Borgia is a more familiar name than Bismarck. I know, indeed, —and I really do not blame them, several distinguished artists who, resolving to make their whole. lives consistently perfect, will on principle never admit a newspaper into their houses that is of later date than the times of Addison: and I have good trust that the number of such men is on the increase; men, I mean," said Mr. Rose, toying tenderly with an exquisite wine-glass of Salviati's, "who with a steady and set purpose follow art for the sake of art, beauty for the sake of beauty, love for the sake of love, life for the sake of life. »

Mr. Rose's slow gentle voice, which was apt at certain times to become peculiarly irritating, sounded now like the evening air grown articulate; and had secured him hitherto a tranquil hearing, as if by a kind of spell. This, however, seemed here in sudden danger of snapping.

"What, Mr. Rose!" exclaimed Lady Ambrose, "do you mean to say, then, that the number of people is on the increase who won't read the newspapers?"

"Why, the men must be absolute idiots!" said Lady Grace, shaking her gray curls, and putting on her spectacles to look at Mr. Rose.

Mr. Rose, however, was imperturbable.

"Of course," he said, "you may have newspapers if you will; I myself always have them: though in general they are too full of public events to be of much interest. I was merely speaking just now of the spirit of the movement. And of that we must all of us here have some knowledge. We must all of us have friends whose houses more or less embody it. And even if we had not, we could not help seeing signs of it-signs of how true and earnest it is, in the enormous sums that are now given for really good objects."