the national conscience was destined soon to show its urgent and prophetic character. The hour of danger was drawing near, but this time the enemy would be confronted by a people conscious of their own individuality, united by a tradition which they understood and to which they attached themselves.

The writers and poets who were to come after this great leader, understood the nobility and power of their task and followed without swerving the social plan that he had laid down for them: to develop, through study, the moral virtues inherent in the race, to sing of the native land, and to glorify the idea of the country. Here again in the work of a certain man, do we find these qualities united. And if I give only the name of Juhani Aho and limit my remarks to him alone, I make the same reserves that I made just now in favor of Ahrenberg, Lybeck, Adolf Paul, Reuter, Helena Westermarck, Zilliacus, Minna Cauth, Reijonen, and many others who, indeed, are worthy of more than this simple mention. But I cannot pass over in silence another category of contemporary writers, not so great, perhaps, as Juhani Aho, but, like him, very typical and interesting because they are not the descendants of some family inheritance; they owe nothing to a university education but are the result of a century of ethnical development. They are not rare orchids, long and anxiously tended in the warm air of a hot-house, but lowly field flowers that no one has sowed or watched over, they have sprung up because the soil had been rendered fertile by incessant labor. I speak of the peasant poets.

During these last years, Finland has given rise to a great number of these poets and to me there is nothing more indicative of the intellectual development of the race. Until such phenomena are to be found in the lowest circles of its population a young people cannot with truth pretend to maturity. This is the sign that the permeation has been complete and that the great harvest is drawing near.

One of the most representative of these peasant poets is Pietari Paivärinta. Having one day broken his leg, he was for a long time forced to stay in bed, and, to occupy the long days, he began to write "his life." The son of an exceedingly poor workman and obliged to beg from door to door, he began at twelve years of age to earn his own living; he was married at twenty and with his wife, entered domestic service until, by dint of saving his money, he was able to buy a small field and to build a rough cabin. Then followed poverty and misery; the frost destroyed his poor little harvest. Thanks to his beautiful voice, he found a place where he could sing in church. His energetic character made him appreciated by his fellow citizens and he was sent as the

representative of the village of Landtag. During his political life, he became a drunkard and once, under the influence of drink, he struck his wife, then, overcome with remorse, he redeemed himself by practising total abstinence.

All this is told in his book. Three leading ideas stand forth clearly. The first is an apology for the small husbandry. Divided property assures the greatest amount of cultivation to the earth for each one struggles desperately in the little field that belongs to him. The second is a plea against alcoholism and the third is in praise of married life. The presence of a woman at a man's side in the struggle of life is the source of strength and happiness. Like all the peasant poets of Finland, Paivärinta is religious and his thoughts upon the duties and acts of life are charged with the principles of Christian morality. Love for one's neighbor is the very basis of social acts. Besides Paivärinta, there are numerous other poets: Heikki, an old farm hand, Filander, who bought and sold plots of ground, Meriläinen, the blacksmith, Juhanna Kokko, a forester, and Eero Lissala and Otto Tuomi, two peasants. Each one has given a most accurate picture of the life of the people and their work merits a special essay.

Juhani Aho, to whom we must now return, started in life as the son of a small country parson,' he was destined when still very young to a liberal career, he studied at the university, and became a journalist. His first literary works were faithful and brilliant studies of the life of the people. In his narratives, "Quand le Père Acheta la Lampe" and "Le Chemin de Fer," he portrayed with great cleverness and exactness the revolution of the peasants against modern inventions. Later, the circle of his observations widened. He took his models from the middle class. He produced "La Fille du Pasteur," where he draws the picture of a young girl, in a well meaning but narrow society, who is weighed down by a life utterly devoid of pleasure. A long sojourn in France, and the study of our French stylists, gave him the elegance which he lacked.

The Finlanders were, indeed, rather displeased by his sometimes violent naturalism, but they could not deny his incomparable talent for description. And they were soon to bless this writer whom, for a moment, they had repulsed. In the hour of danger, he showed himself to be an admirable fighter, bringing all the poetic genius that was in him, to the service of his country, upholding, encouraging, and leading his compatriots. Thus, more than half a century distant from each other, (1) The Finlanders are all, without exception, Lutheran Protestants. This is one of the principal reasons why orthodox Russia persecutes them as she does.

at the very moment when their help was most needed, two poets came forward to take their place in the first lines of the battle. Victory rewarded the efforts of the first, why should she not smile also upon the second? And as I write these lines, I think of another poet who has gone from us, who also left his novels and his descriptions of social life, that he might come to his country's aid: Emile Zola. As we stand before the action of such men, we know better how to appreciate the nobility of the literary art; they have extended its horizon. Not only

have they contributed to enrich the patrimony of the national glory, but they have further shown themselves to be as much, if not more, necessary than the politicians and the chiefs of the army. During the last ten years, Juhani Aho has written fifty short stories, keenly emotional and idealistic, which, rapidly spreading among the people, have rendered them enthusiastic and given them courage in adversity. It is a temptation to quote all of them, each one contains so much charm and nobility. Perhaps it is true, however, that to appreciate them one must be well informed of the slightest events of the contemporary struggle, with which they are closely associated by a very transparent symbolism. In "Le Conseil du Fou" (a story of the time of the Inquisition), the author alludes to the ordinances concerning the press,-almost all the papers have been suppressed on account of their criticisms of Russian politics. He describes a heretic who, in spite of torture, will not renounce his belief. The court fool advises the executioner to gag him so that he cannot protest, but this advice has an effect exactly opposite to what the inquisitors had desired. When the people no longer hear him cry, they begin to cry out themselves and the punishment falls; wishing to silence the voice of a single man, they raised the mighty outcry of the whole multitude.

How touching is the story of the old, dying mother whose son has been ordered to collect signatures for the great national address to the Czar. The son wishes to remain but the mother tells him to go; she has never been able during her life to do anything for her country and now she can. The son leaves her and the mother waits anxiously until the hour is past when he would have returned had he missed his train, then she dies happily.

How noble is this other story of the old pastor who, when he is ordered to read from the pulpit the new decrees that are ruining Finland, puts them aside and on Sunday reads to his parishioners the famous charta of Alexander I. at Borgo in 1809, in which he swears to bring liberty to Finland.

The Finnish flag has just been suppressed. Nevertheless, Juhani

Aho immediately improvised a wonderful poem. The flag was blue and white; he writes, "is not the heaven blue, are not the clouds white, the lake, too, is it not blue, and the sail of the bark that skims over the lake, is white?' There is thus a succession of brief poems and short stories, simple, almost childishly symbolical, but their influence upon the people has been profound.

The poet knew his people, he knew their persistent idealism, their thirst for heroic poetry; why should he not, through the distance of the ages, put in force again the miracle of Wainamoinen, who disarmed his adversary by the single power of his song? Alas! events have contradicted his hope. The measures of oppression are daily more exacting and more cruel. Finland will soon be no more than a geographical expression, but the magnificent efforts of her poets will not have been in vain. They have saved the soul of this little people. Russia may cut down all her trees even to the smallest bushes, she may tear up the young shoots, but, hidden in the earth, the roots are still alive, ready to bloom anew when liberty is restored; and I cannot bring this short study to a better conclusion than by quoting a beautiful passage from Juhani Aho, who is reflecting upon the future of his people:

"Is not Finland similar to the Greece of former times and is not our people a new race of Hellenes; have we not our archipelago as the Greeks had theirs? Have we not struggled, as they struggled, against superior forces, have we not our Thermopyla, our victory at Salamis, have we not saved the western culture? They had their Homer and we have our Kalevala, but our heroes are fighting for a worthier

cause.

"Agamemnon, Menelaus, and Achilles fought to recapture Helen; Wainamoinen, Ilmarinen, and Lemminkainen struggled to win back the Sampo. The former took a city and destroyed it, the latter won the light of the mountain from Pohyola.

"The former gained their victory with the sword, the latter with the might of the Word, which will some day, perhaps, conquer the whole world. The strength of the Greeks did not rest merely in the victory of their weapons, but still more in their art, in their literature, and in the increase of their agriculture.

"And in these things also lies our own strength."

Truly, the poet is right; the power of thought surpasses that of arms. And faith in a superior ideal of beauty and justice is the only true leaven of immortality.

A

L. JOUBIN

THE UNIVERSITY OF RENNES

MONG the animals which from all time have excited the terror or the astonishment of navigators, and, on this account, have given rise to most extravagant stories, we find the octopi occupying the chief place. These beings have forms so strange, and they attain to so great dimensions, that the ignorant do not hesitate to put them in the category of "Sea Monsters," which is composed as a whole of "horrible beasts."

My purpose in writing these lines is simply to make my readers change their minds with regard to these beings which are calumniated and to show them in quite a different light. Of this family of animals there generally is known only a single representative, the common octopus. On account of its ugliness, this poor animal has a deplorable reputation and excites, when spoken of, only a feeling of disgust.

Who, when spending a season at the sea-side, has not turned aside in horror as he met on the strand that shapeless, slimy mass, with long, reddish arms, covered all over with dangerous looking suckers, dragging itself along with great difficulty over the sand? This wretched creature is still more hideous when, gasping frightfully and looking like a horrible bundle of entrails, it is carried along hanging from the end of a fisherman's hook!

In opposition to the generally accepted opinion, and at the risk of being accused of a paradoxical cast of mind, I constitute myself the advocate of this hopeless case and I mean to demonstrate that, acquainted with only a single specimen, people judge but ill of a family in which are found animals charming, sociable, delicate, graceful, and upon occasion winning in their ways. To subject them all to the feeling of disgust inspired by the octopus is tantamount to an unqualified refusal to do justice.

I hasten to admit that this creature is hardly pretty amid the conditions in which we usually meet it; but (permit me the comparison), if in order to judge of the human race you went and examined specimens of it in a morgue or in a dissecting room, in an asylum for aged idiots or in a pathological museum, there is a strong presumption that you would form a rather unfavorable opinion of our æsthetics!

The case is the same for the octopus.

To form an equitable judg

Translated by Mr. J. D. M. Ford of Harvard University.

Copyright, 1903, Frederick A. Richardson, all rights reserved.