talent. The poet, artist, or statesman cut ting off into new ways, disdaining convention and tradition, and lighted by a higher, farther star than the ordinary eye can see: -who is first to bid him halt, cry warnings in his ear, and fling hard words at his back? The critic-a man of talent, an expert, the very embodiment of commonsense. And after the poet, artist, or statesman has had the crown of immortality on his brow for half a century, the men of common-sense will still be disputing whether anything so out of the usual order can "properly be called" poet, artist, or statesman. "The power, oh, yes, there is no denying that," they will by this time be conceding; but they will still be asking anxiously whether, put to such strange uses as it was, it may be put under any of their approved good labels. Ir seems always to be a question of more or less perplexity to the novelist, how far he shall allow the talk in his novels to go. To the reader, in the main, the matter is quite simple he likes abundant talk, and if there is too much of plain narrative he does not disdain to skip. But it is very certain, though he may not know it, that he owes his superior relish of the talk to a measure of reserve in the author in supplying it. A novel all talk would be as cloying as a dinner all tarts: very few readers like to read plays. Therefore, the novelists all consent that they must needs exercise a reserve; but concerning the degree and nature of the reserve, they differ widely. people absolutely and infallibly to the degree urged by Flaubert. In any novel will be found speeches that in themselves disclose nothing of the nature or mood of the speaker, and are but a convenient shift for trailing the tale along. On the other hand, Charles Reade himself could not have had unfailing confidence in his precept; for of one of his novels, he expresses a fear that it contains too much conversation. This no novel could do, if to make whatever of the story could be made into conversation were a true principle: unless, indeed, the novel contained matter unnecessary to the full development and relation of the story; which, in his own case, seems not to have been the ground of Charles Reade's fear. The common course, while lying between the two extremes, is not exactly a middle one. As the novel in its progress, responsive to life itself, has lost more and more the early fervor and force of incident, the novelist has been driven, out of sheer poverty, to depend more and more on talk. This necessity inclines him, at the present moment, perhaps rather more to Charles Reade's position than to Flaubert's. most scrupulous forbearer from romancing is under more or less urgency to be dramatic, to have his people do something. And when people in real life do nothing but talk, the illusion is easy that talk is in itself dramatic. The Urging the novelist further in the same direction is that quickening of the conscience which all artists have experienced At one extreme of opinion and practice lately with reference to truth and reality. is Flaubert, who, ascetic in everything per- So much talk that is entirely characteristic taining to his art, professed nothing less is still not defining. Instead of taking the than a "hatred" for dialogue in novels, speaker out of the crowd, it puts him in it. and put such rigor into the duty of keep- Under the ardor of a pursuit of reality, ing it characteristic, that no room was left some novelists have allowed their people to for slipping in the smallest speech designed be blunt and copious in talk of this sort. merely to help forward the story. At the Thus novels have seemed to be growing of other extreme is Charles Reade, who cau- late, not only more talkative, but talkative tioned himself, "When in a novel you find in a much smaller way: so that one wonyourself about to say anything, pull up and ders whether the shameless reader for ask, 'Can't I make one of my dramatis per- mere pleasure will not be driven to reverse sonce say it?' If you can, always do.” his wonted order and, skipping the dia Probably no novelist has repressed his logue, read only the direct narrative. ULPIANO CHECA'S "AN UNLUCKY MEETING." [Selections by Philip Gilbert Hamerton from Types of Contemporary Painting. See p. 312.] ENGRAVED BY F. S. KING. Peal on peal winding through the dewy air, With your delicious pain, O wild sweet haunting strain, Till the sky swell with hint of heavenly gleams What buoyant spirit breathes the breath of morn And earth's delight, Trumpets, O trumpets blest! Great voices, born Of consecrated gest, Across the ramparts ring and faint and fail! On some ethereal quest, Touch all the joyance to a tearful dew, And, heard, or guessed, Sweet, sweet, O sweet and best, O horns of heaven, give your hero hail, Copyright, 1894, by Charles Scribner's Sons. All rights reserved. No. 3 T By F. Marion Crawford ILLUSTRATIONS BY C. S. REINHART HE first impression made by Bar Harbor at the height of its season upon the mind of one fresh from a more staid and crystallized civilization is that it is passing through a period of transition, in which there is some of the awkwardness which we associate with rapid growth, and something also of the youthful freshness which gives that very awkwardness a charm. The name of Mount Desert suggests, perhaps, a grim and forbidding cliff, frowning upon the pale waves of a melancholy ocean. Instead, the traveller who crosses the bay in the level light of an August afternoon looks upon the soft, rolling outline of wooded hills, on the highest of which a little hotel breaks the sky-line, upon a shore along which villas and cottages stretch on either side of a toy wooden village, which looks as though it were to be put away in a box at night, and upon the surrounding sea, an almost land-locked inlet, in which other islands, like satellites of Mount Desert, are scattered here and there. As the little steamer draws up to her moorings the groups of people waiting on the pier stand out distinctly, and the usual types detach themselves one by one. The clusters of hotel-runners and express-men are lounging listlessly until they shall be roused to clamorous activity by the landing of |