revenue by $113,000,000. This was the amount by which he wished to increase it, and he said, therefore, that this was the amount by which he should increase it. The pessimists told him this was a mistake, and instead of an increase, he has a deficit of over $40,000,000 in the first half year. But you may be sure he hates the pessimists. Again, some New York tailors told him that by annoying European travellers returning in the fall, overhauling their baggage and levying duty on their wearing-apparel purchased abroad, he would secure $10,000,000. He believed this story, because this was the amount he wished to get from this source. Well, in the month of September, when most travellers return, he got $96,000. In the other months he probably did not get half as much, and if he has got $400,000 in all in the six months, it is the very outside. For this he has exasperated thousands of his countrymen, and made his government the laughing-stock of foreigners. But we may be sure he damns the pessimists.

Another illustration is the career of Platt. Platt has been coming for fifteen years that is, slowly building up a machine like that which the Democrats constructed under Fernando Wood, Tweed, and Hill. He has done it all in the light of day, in the presence of all the people of the State. Every year has seen a little addition made to his power; has seen the influence of enlightened and educated opinion on the State Government gradually diminishing; has seen the habit of open discussion declining; has seen the passage of the Legislature and of the high officials more and more under the control of this one corrupt and ignorant man-has seen, in short, the gradual disappearance of the old State of New York, the State of Marcy, and Silas Wright, and Seward, as a political organization. All this time the pessimists have been pointing out how, according to all human experience, this would end; but it was not till Platt owned the Legislature, like cattle, had made himself Senator, like Tiberius, had committed every kind of fraud in support of his power, and had combined with Tammany to hand the city over to the hordes of corruption, that the optimists could be induced to say a word or lift a finger against him. They are busy now warning, and denouncing, and lamenting, but they remind us of bank clerks who, after having allowed strangers to rove about the building and visit the vaults for days, should begin to descant on their rascality when they found the securities gone. Any one may read in Friday's Tribune what is really the wail of the optimists over Platt's gross abuse of the confidence of his unsuspecting countrymen.

One of the worst features of political optimism is its crass reliance on material prosperity. In this field it has,

of course, an easy victory over the pessimists. Nothing can hinder America from being the greatest money-making country in the world for centuries to come, except loss of security for property, which is not in the least likely to occur. No matter what changes of government may take place, whether we live under a free constitution, or a Cæsar, or a boss, we may be sure population will grow, the revenue swell, the hotels become more gorgeous, the teas and luncheons and the private cars become more numerous. No pessimist who is not a blockhead will deny this. But what about the old American government, "consecrated by the prayers of Puritans and the blood of patriots," as Wendell Phillips said-the government of free men, "knowing, uttering, and arguing freely, according to conscience"? Where will this be? Is optimism saving it? Has optimism as yet provided means for its rescue from foreign malice or domestic treason? The very worst feature about political optimism is the utter indifference to tendencies which it teaches; and yet tendencies to the good citizen are what rocks are, or ought to be, to the careful seaman. Nothing in the great ocean of modern democracy needs closer watching. Optimism teaches us to pay no attention to them, but, when we see something unpleasant occurring, to dismiss it from our minds and "whoop her up with the boys." So our city to-day is in the hands of a band of ignorant foreigners, acting in concert with a band of knavish natives, and we are furious with any one who reminds us that nearly all great evils have small beginnings.

"STRAIGHT LINES."

There never has been any telling what new phase the Hawaiian question would next take on. New reasons for annexing it crop up nearly every day. The Government was overthrown by missionaries' sons on account of the heathenism and unchastity of their own converts. It

protect the island; that to make an island a "key," it has to have fleets to anchor around it, and that we had no fleet ready, and were not likely to have one for some years. This seemed to bring the discussion into an impasse. A great silence came on the Hawaiians as soon as they found they were of no good as a "key." So they waited to see what would happen next. The key theory had been their main reliance, and its breakdown seemed to paralyze them.

Light suddenly came from an unexpected quarter. As soon as the Consecrated Person sent Our Brother to China to seize the Bay of Kiao-Chau, the Hawaiians felt that their clock had struck twelve. Russia and Germany were going to seize bits of China; this showed at last-that we should seize a bit of China? that we should enter into an alliance with England and Japan in order to get a fair share of the booty from Russia and Germany? Heaven forbid. "Such a thing is not for a moment to be supposed." What it showed was that we should seize Hawaii. It proved the futility of all the leading arguments against the seizure-the sudden departure from our traditions; the absence from our system of any machinery for governing dependencies; the admission of alien, inferior, and mongrel races to our nationality; the opening of fresh fields to carpetbaggers, speculators, and corruptionists; the un-Americanism of governing a large body of people against their will, and by persons not responsible to them; the entrance on a policy of conquest and annexation while our own continent was still unreclaimed, our population unassimilated, and many of our most serious political problems still unsolved; and finally the danger of the endorsement of a gross fraud for the first time by a Christian nation. All these things the Consecrated Person disposed of at one stroke by seizing Kiao-Chau Bay.

The absence from this reasoning of an undistributed middle at first plunged us in perplexity. But it seems that there is no middle term in it of the ordinary kind, and we are not to look for one. The syllogism runs in this way: The Consecrated Person has seized KiaoChau Bay; if we draw a straight line from San Francisco to Hong Kong, or from Victoria to Sydney, or from Nicaragua to Shanghai, it will pass through Hawaii; therefore we should annex Hawaii. This conclusion seems overwhelming if the straight lines aforesaid really pass through Hawaii; we should be

was then proposed that we should annex it lest England should get it, though it had long been formally announced that it was under our protection, and that we should not allow any other Power to take it; so that we had then to believe not only that England would take it, but that she would go to war with us to get it. On England's failing to lay claim to it, we were to take it as "a key to the Pacific." We then all went to work to discover what "a key to the Pacific" was, and all we could the last to resist such ratiocination. learn was that "a key to the Pacific" was an island in the Pacific where we should invite foreigners to come and fight us. But here Capt. Mahan intervened in an unseemly and unpatriotic fashion by saying boldly that an island in the Pacific would be of no use as a place to fight in, unless we had a fleet to

But do they? All depends on this. In a little work published by the Hawaiian Government, which lies before us, there is a map which shows that a straight line from every important place on earth, if drawn carefully with a ruler, does pass through Hawaii. Straight lines on this map from Port Stanley, Valparaiso,

Lima, Panama, New Orleans, San Diego, Portland, San Francisco, Victoria, Sitka, Bering Strait, Kamtchatka, Katar, Yokohama, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Hue, Singapore, Borneo, New Guinea, New Hebrides, Sidney, Auckland, and Tahiti, all meet in Honolulu. It seems as if more "straight lines" meet there than in any other place in the world, and they undoubtedly suggest the conquest of all the places they start from, as part of the great work before us.

But, being of a cautious temperament, we looked at the official Pilot Chart of the North Pacific, issued by the Hydrographic Office in Washington, and we found, either that the Hydrographic Office had been "got at" by the British, or that "the straight lines" did not get to Hawaii in the manner described by the missionary government. The only lines which meet in Honolulu are one from San Francisco and one from Yokohama, and one from Hong Kong. But they are not straight. That from San Francisco deflects about 15 degrees south, and that from Yokohama about 10 degrees. Hong Kong is the only place that sends a line approaching to straightness, to Honolulu. It is only the Hong Kong steamer that comes in honestly, or can be fairly used by us to justify annexation. We can find no precedent for using as "a key" any island which could not be approached in a straight line, and we think every government should be careful to have lines drawn on its maps that will support its policy. Railroad companies are always mindful of this in making their maps. Their own line is always the shortest between any two given places, and the places it reaches are always the principal ones. If we are to annex by lines, we must see that the lines are straight, and that there are plenty of them. We must not allow our maps to be got out by ignorant astronomers or navigators. Lively "American" newspaper men are the people for that sort of work. A map constructed by them of any sea, inlet, island, or bay is sure to show that we ought to have it, that we always owned it, and that, if we do not take it, two Powers at least are waiting to grab it or buy it.

TROUBLES

OF THE FRENCH
PRESS.

The report that a more stringent libel law is to be pushed in the Chamber must surprise those who know how stringent the French law of libel already is. Our leading editors would go to jail in a body if they were living under it. The most violently suspect politician, the all but proved rascal, is safe, under the French law, from having his name bandied about in the newspapers as with us. All must be done by way of insinuation. Thus, when the scandal of the sale of Legion of Honor decorations in Presi

dent Grévy's time came out, the XIXe Siicle, which fired the train, and which had all the facts and all the names in its possession, had to be very guarded. Instead of naming outright the trafficking General, it could only say that he was "un officier général porteur d'un nom historique." So the woman in the case, Madame Limouzin, could be alluded to only as a "certain lady living not far from the Arc de Triomphe."

The French newspapers have long had a bad name, and, we fear, with warrant, for venality. This may be due in part to the fact that they have not built up such valuable business properties as we know all our newspapers to be on their own confession. Without a large income from advertising, the newspaper proprietor, who "must live," has in France had peculiar temptations when an Arton has a Panama "campaign in the press" to make, and 2,000,000 francs to do it with. But it is not because their columns are more than ever purchasable, or are thought to be, that the new complaint against French newspapers has made itself heard, and is believed to inspire the attempt to increase the risks and penalties of libel by the press. The trouble lies in practices borrowed from the most offensive English and American newspapers. What the French call "reportage" has grown portentously among them in recent years. The lying interview (the introduction of the thing has compelled the poverty-stricken French language to invent the verb "interviewer"), the exploitation and glorification of crime, the frothy blowing up of the trivial and of empty gossip-all the peering and prying and impudence and insult which we know so well under the name of reporter's enterprise, has made its way into French journalism to the dismay of its victims.

In the recently published 'Mémoires' of M. Goron, ex-Chief of the Paris "Sûreté," he has a chapter devoted to the press in its relation to crime. It is curious to see our most advanced newspaper methods there reproduced. The French press, too, is coming to have its sleuth-hound reporters, keener of nose than any Javert that ever lived, able to see deeper into a millstone than Sherlock Holmes; and as for comparing them with any mere policeman or detective, why, the thing is absurd. In Paris as well as New York the reporters drive the police authorities frantic with their meddling, their rage for defeating justice by indiscreet publicity, their advising criminals of the steps taken to effect their capture. M. Goron intimates that more than one fleeing felon has owed his escape to a friendly hint conveyed to him by the Petit Journal. So high had the evil mounted that M. Goron's predecessor determined at one time to shut his door in the face of all reporters, to give them absolutely no news. But they at once turned upon him so savagely as

the greatest criminal going, and proceeded to make his life so miserable, that he was forced to rescind his obnoxious order. His only resource was to make his "renseignements" to the newspapers as mysterious and misleading as possible.

All things come at last to the novelist in France, and so we have the French reporter, new style, made the subject of a realistic roman contemporain." The book is by M. Paul Brulat, and he entitles it 'Le Reporter,' warning the reader that it is only "the first volume of a series on contemporary journalism." This of itself suggests that a new journalism has grown up in France to be studied-and why should it not be? asks M. Brulat

"Why should the press escape the investigation which we moderns apply to all worlds, to all professions? We have studied judges, priests, soldiers, workingmen, peasants, tradespeople, politicians-why not journalists? The press which denounces, attacks, scourges, assumes the right to expose all abuses and redress all wrongs, can scarcely expect to remain unassailable, to withdraw itself from criticism.

Why

should it dread the results of an impartial scrutiny of itself? It certainly can lose nothing by having the truth known, so great is the zeal of journalists in discrediting each other."

Under M. Brulat's realistic pen a sad picture comes out of what Gaston Deschamps calls, in the Temps, the "stupefying progress and the monstrous methods of reportage." One would think, he says, to judge from the growth and popularity of this kind of journalism, that the French nation was made up solely of hysterical concierges. Thus we see how our Servant's Own newspapers are extending their conquests. Nor does M. Deschamps omit to ask what is the complicity of the public in the monstrosities of journalism. It is for each one, he writes, to make an examination of his conscience on this subject. Do peaceable citizens like a daily douche of filth and crime and scandal? If not, why do they appear to like it by patronizing those who put it on sale? We wearily recall asking such questions ourselves more than once, and if M. Deschamps gets a rational answer to them, he will be luckier than we have been.

if unable to suppress or discourage an irresponsible, a crime-loving and crimebreeding press, how can we arm ourselves against it? How can we help the public mind to free itself from its terrors? This, too, is a question which they are asking in France, and one of the most sensible answers we have seen is that given by M. Raymond Poincaré in the Revue Bleue. A first step, he says, is to free ourselves from the superstitious regard for the printed page. There is, indeed, something besotted, something Arabic, in the awe of otherwise sensible men in the presence of a few lines of print. There it is in the papers! But, as M. Poincaré says, the very absurdities of the typographic gods thus worshipped are working their ruin. Even unedu

cated people are beginning to say that an extravagant article in a newspaper is of no more account than the maunderings of a drunken man in a café-perhaps it is really just that, only with the advantage of being in type. This is a great gain. To know Mumbo Jumbo of the press for the toothless old idol he is, is the beginning of better things. Then, as M. Poincaré adds, it is necessary for honest men to cultivate the new form of courage which the excesses of the modern press call for. They must learn to despise its attacks, to contemn and denounce its lies, to loathe its grossness. When we come generally to treat a coarse mountebank who has managed to possess himself of ink and paper and a cylinder press, as still nothing but a coarse mountebank, and leave off silly talk about "editors" and "the press," we shall have done a good deal towards driving back into its native sewer much of what passes for news and journalism.

IRISH AFFAIRS.

DUBLIN, December 25, 1897.

The Irish land question, as usual, is occupying a large share of public attention. The last Land Act was passed in 1896, and was a patch on the former medley of land laws. It purported to make great changes in the existing system, but one of the reasons why laws in Ireland fail in their intended effects is, that their administration is usually placed in the hands of persons who abhor the principles on which these laws are based, whose practice, if not whose object, is to make out that the new and disliked law means nothing, or as little as possible. And so it has been with the Land Act of 1896, which was passed through the House of Commons with enormous trouble, but also with much haste.

After two refusals to appoint a commission to inquire into the operation of a law that had not so far had any effect, Lord Salisbury at length surrendered to the landlords and appointed a commission of inquiry. It then appeared that what the landlords objected to was not the recent law, but all the laws regulating the relations of landlord and tenant and protecting the expenditure of Irish farmers from being confiscated by their landlords. Common decency would have required that at least one representative of the tenants' interests should have been placed on the commission. It consists, however, of (1) an English ex-Judge, Sir Edward Fry, an admittedly able and upright man, but steeped in the old and narrow traditions of English lawyers as to the rights of landed property; (2) a London surveyor and valuer, conversant with city property; (3) a Scotch agricultural surveyor; (4) an Irish landlord of the most aggressively violent type; (5) a solicitor whose principal business has been selling landlords' estates at high prices to the tenants.

experience in the land courts. Landlord witnesses have been allowed to express their thoughts and beliefs, to tell what they have heard and suspected, to ramble all over the land controversy and dilate on their alleged grievances; while tenant witnesses were sharply checked, told that what they were saying was not legal evidence and could not be received, and were allowed to be bullied and brow-beaten by the landlords' counsel, and generally hurried out of the witness-chair instead of being questioned at length on the points to be inquired into. At these inquiries it is impossible for a witness to state his views unless questioned skilfully and sympathetically; he is not allowed to make long statements, or anything in the nature of a speech; he is effectually shut up by being asked a very few unimportant questions, and then, "Is there anything else you wish to say?" He has attended in the belief that the commission want to get information from him, and finds that all they want is to get rid of him as quickly as possible.

The ignorance shown by the three British Commissioners of the conditions of Irish land tenure and of the Irish land laws is illustrated by their frequently asking the tenant witnesses, "If your rent is too high, why don't you surrender your farm to the landlord?" as if they were quite unaware that most Irish farms have been created by the tenants, and that their present value is due to the tenants' expenditure in building, draining, fencing, reclamation, and road-making. These Commissioners have not yet taken in that the law purports to give the tenant a right to hold his farm at a rent less than its present fair value, by the amount the tenant has contributed to make the farm of that value. It would be as reasonable to tell the Esquimaux that if the conditions of life in Greenland don't suit them, they can go away and live in London. The population of Ireland are not farmers by choice, but from the necessary force of circumstances; in the past they have shown a very great willingness to go away when it was possible. Even now it is the aim of many young people to save enough money to take them to the United States, though their parents, naturally enough, desire to keep them at home. Thousands of young people would still gladly leave Ireland if they had the means to do so, but only because the conditions of life are still such as to make comfort and independence impossible. The main question for the mass of the people is whether they can have their farms at such rents that they can "live and thrive." If they have, they may defy the landlord and his bailiffs, but unless rents are low, there can be no security for home or household. Eviction notices for impossible rents have already deprived hundreds of tenants of the qualified security of tenure which the Land Law of 1881 purported to give them.

The late spring and the cold wet summer of the past year almost completely destroyed the oat and potato crop in the poorest parts of the country, and the population of many districts is now face to face with famine.

nevertheless, and may be enforced by seizures of what goods can be seized, or by eviction. It has never been possible for the farmers in these districts to accumulate capital on which they could draw for support in years of scarcity. Stuart Mill's explanation of Ireland's poverty is still true of many large areas. "Returning nothing to the soil," he said, "the landlords consume its whole produce minus the potatoes strictly necessary to keep the inhabitants from dying of hunger." It is not possible to get exact figures on the subject, but it seems probable that at least £1,000,000 a year of rent is paid in Ireland by means of remittances received from friends and relatives in America and the Colonies.

The autumn speeches of political leaders of all parties have been devoted, not only to criticism and defence of the present Government's actions, but to the formulation of programmes for the coming session of Parliament. What is termed the alliance of the Irish Nationalists with the English Liberal party has been the subject of much discussion; but no such alliance exists. The Nationalists have, naturally enough, given a general support to the party that brought in the Home Rule bill, but have voted against them over and over again when that party, from the Irish point of view, was in the wrong. The Nationalists have been challenged to require from the Liberal party, or its leaders, pledges to put home rule in the forefront of its programme. But such pledges would be worthless unless the relative strength of English parties enabled Irishmen to compel their fulfilment. It is most improbable that the Liberals should ever have a majority in the Imperial Parliament without the help of the Irish, and only a united Irish party will enable the Liberals to make home rule an effective plank in their platform. Some of the stanchest English adherents of the home rule cause hold that until manhood suffrage is established, and the House of Lords reformed, abolished, or limited in power, no measure of home rule can be passed. It is manifestly useless passing any measure which it is known that the House of Lords can reject with impunity. Until the Liberals are in power, it would be quite premature for Irish parties to define what their action is to be. If it seems desirable to support manhood suffrage and abolition of the House of Lords' veto as a means to passing a home-rule bill, it would be both right and expedient for Irish members to do so.

The recent speeches of John Morley, Herbert Gladstone, Asquith, and other prominent English Liberals indicate that they are as firmly convinced as ever of the necessity of home rule for Ireland, in the interest, not only of Ireland, but of the British Empire. The Liberal leaders, however, show a great lack of affability and frankness towards Ireland. Their party can scarcely hope to return to power without the aid of the Irish Nationalists. But the English Liberals never speak in Ireland. If the leaders of the Liberal party made a practice of coming over here and declaring, not their programme in detail, but the principles on which they proposed to act towards Ireland, they might secure the support and the hearty cooperation of the mass of Irish voters. We have no doubt been fooled over and over again by promises from both English parties; but when the choice lies between the Conservatives and the Liberals, there is no

doubt that the majority in Ireland would support the party which advocates home rule and equal and simultaneous legislation for the two countries.

The overtaxation of Ireland continues to engage increasing attention. The Unionist party have now taken up the question with a good deal of the zeal of converts.. The decreasing population of Ireland, and its decreasing capacity to bear fiscal burdens, become more manifest every year; they contrast so strongly with the growth of population and prosperity in Great Britain that the unfairness to Ireland of the existing fiscal system can no longer be questioned. The report of the Royal Commission, presided over by Mr. Childers, three years ago, was conclusive, but highly embarrassing to the present Government, which announced that another commission would be appointed, practically to refute the conclusions of the former one. This has never been done; and it is well known that the reason is that the Government cannot get the services of men of sufficient eminence for their opinions to carry any weight, and subservient enough to report the conclusion wanted. The grievance is one which Irish Nationalists have never ceased to expose; the Irish Unionists are now convinced; but it is doubtful whether their convictions are strong enough to make them stand shoulder to shoulder with the Nationalists, and vote against the Conservative Government on vital questions as a means of compelling attention and action.

The promised local government bill of next session will afford an opportunity for all Irish parties to show some solidarity as to the financial treatment to be accorded to Ireland, and there are many indications that they will do so.

AN IRISHMAN.

LITHOGRAPHS AT DÜSSELDORF.

LONDON, December 29, 1897.

mendous influence for a while, and they are unquestionably historical documents of great

value.

If the comparatively limited number of French prints is a loss to the collection, since it is in France that the art of lithography was first developed and ultimately perfected, on the other hand it was in Germany that lithography was invented, and many of the lithographs shown are closely associated with the history of the invention. When, in 1795, Senefelder, much to his own surprise, and quite by chance, discovered a method of engraving on stone (lithography proper, surface printing, or chemical printing, as he called it, was not evolved by him until three years later), his first thought was to apply it to the printing of music. It is interesting, then, to find examples of the music produced by the Senefelder house at Munich during the very first period of its existence. Six variations for the piano are dated 1800 (the year in which Senefelder went from Offenbach to London to secure the English patent) and signed Theob: Senefelder; Theobold being one of the brothers taken into partnership by Aloys, the inventor, and afterwards the torment of his life. It is interesting again to see a print of 1804, with the title "Polyautographische Zeichnung"; Poly-autography being the name borne by lithography at the outset. Another notable print is a portrait of Senefelder, by H. Ott, printed at Offenbach by J. André, one of the house with which Senefelder's early fortunes were so intimately connected. And a clue to his after fortunes is to be had in the portrait of his grandchildren, Louis, Henrietta, and Christine; a lithograph by Llanta after a portrait by Ben. Adam, the children's guardian, published at Paris many years later for their benefit, they having inherited, with the family name, little but the family poverty and misfortunes. Work by Engelmann and Lasteyrie, the pioneers of lithography in Paris, both of whom studied with Senefelder, is here; and there are many examples of the copies of paintings and drawings made on the stone by Strixner, Piloty, Hanfstängel, and others.

An event that, in Paris, may attract the attention of the world, if it comes off in a small German town will, more likely than not, pass unnoticed. Everybody went to the centenary exhibition of lithographs held at the Champ de Mars in 1895, and everybody talked about it; next to nothing has been said of a no less interesting show just about to close at Düsseldorf. Of course, if this had been merely the Paris exhibition over again, there would have been no reason to speak of it. But, while it covers very nearly the same ground, while it also has its two sections-the one retrospective, the other representative of contemporary lithography-it differs in certain important details. In Paris, naturally, the French lithographers were chiefly in evidence; in Düsseldorf one sees more of the German work, both the old and the modern. Something of the character of the exhibition is explained when I say that it includes but one Raffet, but one Charlet, that there are but six prints by Gavarni, but two by Daumier; though it should be added that if there are only a couple of examples of Delacroix, these fortunately are from his "Faust"-the Margaret at Church and the Witches' Sabbath; designs which are seldom seen now, but were almost his earliest public profession of Romanticism, proving him, it was said at the time, a leader of l'école du laid. They strike one now as rather sensational and self-conscious, but be remembered, was in lithography, and they received the approval of Goethe, though this means little. They had a tre

When Senefelder joined with Baron Aretin to start a new firm in Munich, and the artistic possibilities of his method began to be practically realized, the copying of pictures and designs was the work to which artistlithographers were put, and Strixner and Piloty were among the first to execute Senefelder's commissions. His satisfaction with them he placed on record in his short Memoir. In the old days, few German artists of distinction ventured to use the stone as a medium of original expression; few attempted to vie with the inexhaustible caricaturists and illustrators of France, the industrious architectural draughtsmen and portraitists of England. It seemed as if Germany was content with the glory of the invention. Of the story of lithography in that country there would be little to tell, from the death of Senefelder until the present, were it not for Menzel; and it is, therefore, only as it should be that Menzel at Düsseldorf is well and characteristically represented. With Menzel, born in the opening years of the century, modern illustration, of which lithography is a branch, virtually begins, and his first work, it should

also, strangely enough, some of his most recent. The earliest of his prints now at

Düsseldorf dates back to 1835, the last, "Das Refectorium," belongs to 1860, so that the series is not altogether complete, though it affords ample proof that on stone, as on wood or paper, Menzel was the accomplished draughtsman, the master of his medium. Perhaps the most remarkable print is the very elaborate, highly finished "Christus als Knabe im Tempel," dated 1852, with its marvellous study of Jews.

To come to the modern section is to find the German artist at last, after a long century, beginning to understand the resources of lithography, and to use it as a means of multiplying-not reproducing, as the critics usually describe it—an original design. There is no doubt that the new vitality given to the art has come to Germany by way of France. If it had not been for L'Estampe Originale, and other publications of the kind, we might not have had Pan or Jugend, that extremely clever weekly, now published at Munich. But the younger Germans, wherever they derived their inspiration, have not allowed their debt to others to suppress altogether their own individuality, though they are too ready to cringe before the decayed remains of English Pre-Raphaelitism, and though with many individuality is but another name for affectation. You feel this even in the work of Hans Thoma, distinctly the strongest of them all. Often as his lithographs have been shown in the smaller London galleries, I have not seen such a complete collection as he has sent to Düsseldorf. One may weary a little of the mysticism, at present the fashion, that has guided him in the choice and treatment of bis subjects. But Thoma can draw, and most of the modern mystics cannot, their mysticism being a cloak to hide all technical defects. He is a genuine primitive, but whether the resurrection of the technical shortcomings of the primitives is the highest form of art, the future must decide. Personally, I am of the opinion that very little of this sort of work will be heard of by coming generations. More individual really than Thoma are men like A. Frenz and Otto Greiner. They, too, are mystics, if you will, but their mysticism is carried out in a modern spirit. They are prophets of the uglythat is, they give the most realistic renderings of their models-but often the results are very fine, and at times, though rarely, very decorative in the right sense. They have always enough character to be interesting. There are many other Germans who show good or clever lithographs; but to mention them all would be to produce a list of names meaning little in America, where, I fancy, their work is still to be seen. It is more to the purpose to point out that the two great achievements of modern lithography in Germany are, first, the excellence of the portraits that are being made on stone and paper, chiefly by Fechner, Gentz, and Kalckreuth; and second, the beauty and distinction of the color work. This has absolutely nothing in common with the chromolithography of commerce. The effect is at times produced by using one or two different colored inks on a tinted paper, a favorite device; at others, by printing in flat washes, somewhat in the manner of the Japanese wood-engraver. Wonderful prints have been done in this way, far more effective, for instance, than the colored reproductions after Mr. Nicholson, not the work of the artist, of which so much has recently been heard in England. For, as a draughtsman, Mr.

Jan. 13, 1898]

Nicholson can but rarely rank with the German lithographers.

Of the work sent from other countries, there is nothing much to be said. The only seen before which lithographs I had not were above the average struck me as the portraits of Mesdag and Menzel and other celebrities by the Dutchman J. Veth; portraits full of character. A large display is made by France, but to the work of Fantin-Latour and Helleu, of Dillon and Lunois, of Lautrec and Steinlen, and innumerable others, I have referred so often in writing about the two Salons that it seems suI was describe it again. perfluous to surprised, however, to come upon two examples of Manet which I do not think were with his lithographs at the BeauxArts in 1891, or at the Champ de Mars in 1895. One is another version of his execution of Maximilian, and it is curious to note how much more the commonplaceness of the composition is felt in the print than in the picture. Manet was the incomparable painter in Le Bon Bock and similar themes, but the dramatic was a quality which did not come within the range of his powers. It is curiwho was such a ous, too, to find a man so clumsy with the master of the brush lithographic chalk. But Manet seldom could express himself in black-and-white, whatever his medium. With the exception of his drawing of the Raven for M. Mallarmé's translation of Poe, I know of no illustration by him worthy of a place beside his paintings.

The only lithographers the Germans have so far discovered in England are Shannon, Whistler, and Halloway: I give the names in the order in which they appear in the introduction of the catalogue. As in its pages, so upon the walls, it is to Mr. Shannon prominence is awarded, though he owes to Mr. Whistler almost everything that he has not borrowed from Sir E. Burne-Jones. In this section, however, I am afraid the hanging committee were altogether at sea; they have solemnly hung, as a lithograph, an etching by an artist who is not an Englishman, but an American, and who has made many lithographs. But, after all, as I have said, it is because of the chance it offers for the study of German work that the exhibition is worth seeing, and I only regret that it has been held in one of the smaller towns so rarely visited by the foreigner.

N. N.

Correspondence.

A CORRECTION.

[We should have been glad to have Mr. Carpenter's explanation of the apparently curious selection of a "well" as a place for a bird to sing in. Grosart suggests that it was doubtless an Eastern sunken well, with trees around it; and he gives another similar citation. This use of the word, we confess, had not occurred to us, nor had it apparently occurred to the editor of the Pickering edition of 1847, who gives the word as "dell." In the case of Peele's fine poem it is obvious that "prayers" must be prolonged into an emphatic dissyllable if the line is to read rhythmically. It is a curious fact that Segar, reprinting the poem only twelve years later than have treated Peele's edition, should "prayers" as a monosyllable, and apparently inserted "old" to make out the line.-ED. NATION. ]

27

THE SPECIE CIRCULAR ONCE MORE. TO THE EDITOR OF THE NATION: SIR: In the Nation of December 30 appears a communication from the University of Chicago which undertakes to make a positive contradiction of Prof. Sumner and Mr. Schouler in their assertion that a circular similar to the noted specie circular of President Jackson was issued in President Your correspondAdams's administration.

ent would deserve praise for historical re-
search if he were a trifle less inclined to
"Similar" is a generic
historical censure.

term not equivalent to "identical"; and it
would seem that, after three columns of
rather fine-spun exposition, he has hardly
made his point that there was no similarity
He quotes from a
in the two documents.
debate in the Senate on this subject, in
which Benton maintained that there was a
strong similarity, while his distinguished op-
ponents, in their eager antagonism to Jack-
son, maintained as stoutly the contrary.
Something should be allowed for party rage
in such a debate; for, as Sir Roger de Cover-
ley used to observe, "there is a great deal
to be said on both sides."

Not content with his dogmatic conclusion,
your correspondent further proceeds to im-
pugn Mr. Schouler's accuracy and care-
fulness "in making important statements,"
and charges him with transferring to his
own pages both the assertion and reference
from Sumner's 'Jackson,' without verifying
In the first place,
the one or the other.
Mr. Schouler evidently did not consider the
matter of much importance, as it had only a
casual bearing upon his description of Jack-
son's specie circular; and in all such mat-
ters any historian appears justified in citing
so excellent a financial expert and scholar as
Prof. Sumner by reference to his book and
page accordingly. But, as a matter of fact,
Mr. Schouler did verify Prof. Sumner's re-
ference for his own statement, and derived
the same impression that Prof. Sumner him-
self did. Mr. Schouler's offence consists (4
Schouler 262) in describing Jackson's specie
circular in his text, and then adding as a
passing comment in the foot-note that "a
similar circular" was once issued by Jack-
son's predecessor (citing, besides Sumner's
Jackson 336, 7 J. Q. Adams's Diary 427).
Adams's Diary, when referred to, shows that
the specie circular issued by Rush was
stricter in terms than that preceding it,
In
and caused anger in Southern quarters.
any comparison of these two circulars it
should be borne in mind that the United
States Bank had failed to procure a re-
charter, and that its currency was no longer
in normal circulation for Government dues
when Jackson's specie circular was issued.
Your correspondent seems hardly to have
taken this point into consideration in his
J. S.
criticism.

January 4, 1898.

PROTECTION OF FOREIGNERS. TO THE EDITOR OF THE NATION: SR: The letter under the above title in the Nation for December 2 is funny enough, but the piece of stupidity it commemorates is outdone by the practice of the customs for years past under all administrations. It is very well known that Timothy Cole, an American-born and educated artist, has been working for the Century in the reproduction of works of art by various masters, and that