vital, appealing and alive. The one, "magnificently imperturbed," preaches always a vehement, if austere, virtue; appealing from the present to the ancient traditions of an older time, to a past consecration of effort and sympathy in disinterested service. The other beats with the emotion of a crowd; from the midst of which, and as its voice, he directs men's gaze towards an illimitable future.

And the changes of the time could be no better illustrated than in the comparison of two appeals. In "The Purple East," contrasted with "The Seven Seas" of ten years ago, the divergence is manifest between one who is speaking the mind of a nation and one obviously beyond its sympathies. Mr. Watson appealed with a violence of despair for England to accept the obligations of her deliberate responsibility, to embark in the spirit of the old crusaders upon the vindication of an unchanging justice. And the note of a battling indifference and defeat is over all the volume. Mr. Kipling sang of the glories and the greatness of an Empire swollen into one-eighth of the habitable world and splashed around the seven seas; and every line of his vigorous verse seems punctuated with the applause of invisible multitudes.

Ten years after appear two other volumes almost contemporaneously. The time has changed. The wheel has come full circle. In "For England" there breathes through every page the consciousness of vindication, an appeal to a judgment which even now has proclaimed an honorable acquittal. In "The Five Nations" the rhetoric has passed into bombast; an audience slipping away or turning their backs is everywhere apparent. The sneers at indifference, the heaped up insults upon "fools" and "oafs," the jibes and abuse hurled upon a nation that will not rise to the new gospel, attest over the

Next to the work of this isolated figure you may turn to that particular literature of Ireland which has survived through all the clamorous days, and finds its most complete interpretation in the work of Mr. W. B. Yeats.

Mr. Yeats stands for the genius of the Celt; not unmixed, indeed, with a mysticism culled from other sources; but more than any other now representing the soul of a nation. He is the outstanding figure in a literary movement which is one of the vital things in the world of to-day, a movement of that Nationalism which is the antithesis of Imperialism, and whose scene is set in one of the great tragic failures of the world. From the heart of that failure, from a race as it would seem visibly dying in its own land, Mr. Yeats and his comrades proclaimed their judgment of the forces to which have been given domination. These triumphant and violent pæans of prog

ress, with its noise and bustle, its material opulence, its heavy destruction of all old and beautiful and quiet things, stand everlastingly condemned by one whose first search is for the Rose of undying beauty, whose concern is only with the ardors and hungers of the soul. He looks out upon the tumult and the shouting and the glory and the glitter of passing things. He learns that Tenderness, Compassion, Beauty, those white winged angels of human healing, find no place in this hot and heavy air. He stands aside, an apostle of defeat; of defeat yet triumphant in its fall, deliberately choosing allegiance to the vanquished cause. "They went out to battle but they always fell" is written all over this haunting and musical verse, this haunting and appealing prose. And into the old legends, mingled of dreams and shadows, from twilights and dim dawns, the mystery and the sadness of moving waters and hidden places, the wind among the reeds, the rose leaves falling in the garden, he has woven, with something of the quality of magic, all the sadness of an elegy over a doomed and passing

race.

Beauty and the love of beauty, the old things, the songs by the fire, the dreams by the fire light, are passing, passing from the world. The note of that passing and of the judgment of the destructive forces enters into a kind of exultant rejection of a civilization which carries even in its victory the seeds of decay; which has received its heart's desire and leanness in the soul. Here is the defiance of one who notes that all the noise and triumph of his conquerors will one day also become ashes and a little dust.

So the dominant note of the work of his attractive, wayward genius is this note of sadness and appeal, appeal from the call of the wind and shadowy waters, from a world ravaged by change and time to the "Land of the

And when at last defeated in His wars, They have gone down under the same white stars,

We shall no longer hear the little cry Of our sad hearts, that may not live nor die.

In his later work, indeed, Mr. Yeats has passed to a real Eastern Nihilism; to Du Bellay's "Le Grandeur du Rien"; and the thought even that "Le Grand tout" into which "all other things pass and lose themselves" is some time itself to perish and pass away. In that remarkable play, "Where there is Nothing," which perplexed the inhabitants of Kensington last summer and provided food for the facile humors of the dramatic critics, there is an almost passionate expression of this hatred of "making things," this hunger for the primitive abyss and vold. Paul

vital, appaling edge, the hero, is a kind of wild my preaching the return, not to dways a vetement?, but to nothingness. He seeks appeting the iction first in the passing from Get mattos of tificiality of society to live with pasakers on the open road; from this aceticism in the monastery; and other bas it again to the simplicities of the red abbey and bare subsistence

in day to day. His followers who ve been drawn by his message totalmisunderstand this new strange be gospel of despair, and are found planarning to build up again all which he has destroyed. In an impressive passage, which forms the climax of the play, this apostle of Nihilism proclaims his faith:

Oh! yes, I understand, you would weave them together like this (weaves the osiers in and out), you would add one thing to another, laws and money and Church and bells, till you had got everything back again that you have escaped from. But it is my business to tear things asunder like this (tears pieces from the basket), and this and this.

"At last," he cries, in the scene in the crypt, "we must put out the light of the Sun and of the Moon, and all the light of the World and the World itself. We must destroy the World; we must destroy everything that has Law and Number, for where there is nothing, there is God."

Yet at other times this defiant Eastern assertion of the ultimate triumph of cold and darkness gives place to a hope that the weak things of the world may even at the end overcome the strong; and Beauty and Romance and the old Desires of the heart and the vision of larger spiritual horizons return again into the common ways of

men.

The movement of thought which has made the good citizen, or has been made by him, has surrounded us with comfort and safety and with vulgarity

and insincerity. One finds alike its energy and its weariness in churches which have substituted a system of morals for spiritual ardor, in pictures which have substituted conventionally pretty faces for the disquieting revelations of sincerity, in poets who have set the praises of those things good citizens think praiseworthy above a dangerous delight in beauty for the sake of beauty.

But while the old is crumbling the new is building. There is still the hope that "the golden age is to come again and men's hearts and the weather to grow gentle, as time fades into eternity"; and at times a sudden conviction in the coming of "a change, which, begun in our time or not for centuries, will one day make all lands holy lands again."

Mr. Yeats, partly through the expression of a national movement, partly by the appealing force of his talent, has attained even under the uncongenial skies of the Reaction some recognition of his sincerity and power. An English author, Mr. H. W. Nevinson, no less individual and arresting, and far less detached and remote from definitely English ideals, has waited longer for acceptance. Only with the production of "Between the Acts," a few months back, was there apparent something like a general acknowledgment of his talent. His work, like that of Mr. Yeats, belongs to a period of protest-protest against a dominant spirit whose departure seemed far distant. This protest has taken varied forms: the appeal of the poor against the cruel indifference and, perhaps, more cruel "charity" of the rich; the appeal of the little nations with their particular civilizations against an Imperialism which rolls as a Juggernaut car, guided by sightless eyes, not deliberately but clumsily, over all their variegated lives; the appeal of the ancient, wayward things of man's exist

ress, with its noise and bustle, its material opulence, its heavy destruction of all old and beautiful and quiet things, stand everlastingly condemned by one whose first search is for the Rose of undying beauty, whose concern is only with the ardors and hungers of the soul. He looks out upon the tumult and the shouting and the glory and the glitter of passing things. He learns that Tenderness, Compassion, Beauty, those white winged angels of human healing, find no place in this hot and heavy air. He stands aside, an apostle of defeat; of defeat yet triumphant in its fall, deliberately choosing allegiance to the vanquished cause. "They went out to battle but they always fell" is written all over this haunting and musical verse, this haunting and appealing prose. And into the old legends, mingled of dreams and shadows, from twilights and dim dawns, the mystery and the sadness of moving waters and hidden places, the wind among the reeds, the rose leaves falling in the garden, he has woven, with something of the quality of magic, all the sadness of an elegy over a doomed and passing

race.

Beauty and the love of beauty, the old things, the songs by the fire, the dreams by the fire light, are passing, passing from the world. The note of that passing and of the judgment of the destructive forces enters into a kind of exultant rejection of a civilization which carries even in its victory the seeds of decay; which has received its heart's desire and leanness in the soul. Here is the defiance of one who notes that all the noise and triumph of his conquerors will one day also become ashes and a little dust.

So the dominant note of the work of his attractive, wayward genius is this note of sadness and appeal, appeal from the call of the wind and shadowy waters, from a world ravaged by change and time to the "Land of the

And when at last defeated in His wars, They have gone down under the same white stars,

We shall no longer hear the little cry Of our sad hearts, that may not live nor die.

In his later work, indeed, Mr. Yeats has passed to a real Eastern Nihilism; to Du Bellay's “Le Grandeur du Rien”; and the thought even that "Le Grand tout" into which "all other things pass and lose themselves" is some time itself to perish and pass away. In that remarkable play, "Where there is Nothing," which perplexed the inhabitants of Kensington last summer and provided food for the facile humors of the dramatic critics, there is an almost passionate expression of this hatred of "making things," this hunger for the primitive abyss and void. Paul

Ruttledge, the hero, is a kind of wild Tolstoy preaching the return, not to nature, but to nothingness. He seeks satisfaction first in the passing from the artificiality of society to live with the tinkers on the open road; from this to asceticism in the monastery; and then again to the simplicities of the ruined abbey and bare subsistence from day to day. His followers who have been drawn by his message totally misunderstand this new strange gospel of despair, and are found planning to build up again all which he has destroyed. In an impressive passage, which forms the climax of the play, this apostle of Nihilism proclaims his faith:

Oh! yes, I understand, you would weave them together like this (weaves the osiers in and out), you would add one thing to another, laws and money and Church and bells, till you had got everything back again that you have escaped from. But it is my business to tear things asunder like this (tears pieces from the basket), and this and this.

"At last," he cries, in the scene in the crypt, "we must put out the light of the Sun and of the Moon, and all the light of the World and the World itself. We must destroy the World; we must destroy everything that has Law and Number, for where there is nothing, there is God."

Yet at other times this defiant Eastern assertion of the ultimate triumph of cold and darkness gives place to a hope that the weak things of the world may even at the end overcome the strong; and Beauty and Romance and the old Desires of the heart and the vision of larger spiritual horizons return again into the common ways of

men.

The movement of thought which has made the good citizen, or has been made by him, has surrounded us with comfort and safety and with vulgarity

and insincerity. One finds alike its energy and its weariness in churches which have substituted a system of morals for spiritual ardor, in pictures which have substituted conventionally pretty faces for the disquieting revelations of sincerity, in poets who have set the praises of those things good citizens think praiseworthy above a dangerous delight in beauty for the sake of beauty.

But while the old is crumbling the new is building. There is still the hope that "the golden age is to come again and men's hearts and the weather to grow gentle, as time fades into eternity"; and at times a sudden conviction in the coming of "a change, which, begun in our time or not for centuries, will one day make all lands holy lands again."

Mr. Yeats, partly through the expression of a national movement, partly by the appealing force of his talent, has attained even under the uncongenial skies of the Reaction some recognition of his sincerity and power. An English author, Mr. H. W. Nevinson, no less individual and arresting, and far less detached and remote from definitely English ideals, has waited longer for acceptance. Only with the production of "Between the Acts," a few months back, was there apparent something like a general acknowledgment of his talent. His work, like that of Mr. Yeats, belongs to a period of protest-protest against a dominant spirit whose departure seemed far distant. This protest has taken varied forms: the appeal of the poor against the cruel indifference and, perhaps, more cruel "charity" of the rich; the appeal of the little nations with their particular civilizations against an Imperialism which rolls as a Juggernaut car, guided by sightless eyes, not deliberately but clumsily, over all their variegated lives; the appeal of the ancient, wayward things of man's exist