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the nineteenth century Slav art was taken up by men of genius, who have spoken to all Europe.

Slav art has become a naïve "criticism of life." The word "criticism" must be used guardedly, as the Slav has little turn for abstract thought, such as the Greeks and Hindus showed: being without the curiosity of the former, and feeling more deeply than the latter, he is less able to settle down to calm contemplation. So perhaps we should say that Slav criticism is usually unconscious but sometimes deliberate, as in Tolstoy, who uses his powers as an artist to arraign the form of society. It was suggested that the Slav was able to accept the Gospel quite purely, because he had no motive for making the reservations which our attachment to Western institutions imposes upon us. This detachment inspires his art. We talk of his realism, meaning that he will not see things through a kindly haze, but in a dry light. Thus he has no feeling for the romance of war, being quite without the set of ideas connected with chivalry. Even in his unconverted days Tolstoy wrote of war (in Sevastopol) as if it were a horrible thing. Verestchagin, the painter, also treated war faithfully in his pictures. In like manner, Gorky does not take the evils that follow in the train of Western industrialism for granted; he paints them in their naked horror. Well he may; for certainly the Slav, like the Celt, seems to degenerate rapidly when he drifts into the slums of cities. Even Tolstoy is at times more impressionable than consciously critical: thus The Cossacks is written under the influence of Rousseau, the Kreutzer Sonata under that of Schopenhauer. In some ways Slav feeling seems to be expressed better by Turguéniev, a sweeter and milder nature than Tolstoy, whose asceticism has a touch of asperity.

Of all the arts, however, music is the

one by which the Slav has impressed the Western world. Music is hard enough to interpret authoritatively; yet it is scarcely fanciful, if we try to discern in Slav music a common expression of the Slav temperament. However elaborate the structure of a particular piece may be, it is likely to have its root in popular airs. Thus it never becomes artificial; there is always a certain spontaneity and freshness. The note of sadness is usually very clear. Sometimes it is too plaintive, as in Chopin, who would probably have been suspected by Plato, as tending to melt too much the heart of man, and make him a feeble warrior; in Tschaikowsky it is sterner, as it is in the solemn Prelude by Rachmaninoff. That music should never be exotic appears to have been recognized by Dvórak, the Czech musician; though he seems to have applied the principle with an odd confusion of history. For, being in America, he is said to have suggested to the people of the United States that they should base their music on negro melodies.

If we wish to see what has been the achievement of Slav music during the past fifty years, we have only to compare the record of the Slav with that of the Celt in the same period. The Slav has nothing like the "Eisteddfod" or "Feis," which are a kind of Dionysiaperhaps the idea of "competition" in music would seem to him incongruous -yet the Celt, with all this systematic cultivation, has not produced such masterpieces as those of the great Slav composers in our time. There is a great number of traditional Scottish, Irish, and Welsh airs; but they have never formed a basis for the elaboration of great works. Indeed, the history of Slav music is not unworthy to be compared with the rise of Greek drama, which also sprang from the simple songs of a rural community, met to celebrate some of the festal

occasions of their agricultural year. Each became-within the possibilities of its own medium-a sad musing "o'er the doubtful lot of human kind."

In suggesting that the Slav is melancholy and something of a fatalist, there is no intention to forget that he has a touch of Celtic irascibility. He has a bad name for wild retaliation; in Russia and in the Balkans oppression is answered by assassination, of which the Teuton has a genuine loathing. We were quite sincere in our horror of Celtic outrages in Ireland twenty years ago. The Teuton, however, forgets that he is sometimes responsible for maintaining a social order which breeds savage and murderous thoughts. He can be a partner in the oppression of one race by another; and then he neither understands the resentment 'which he is causing, nor the form in which the resentment expresses itself. In his own domestic troubles, he proceeds differently; if his rulers seek to oppress him, he uses such a weapon as the power of the Commons to refuse to vote supplies. He talks with unction of the "red fool fury of the Seine," or "the blind hysterics of the Celt," and is proud of a record in which freedom "slowly broadens down from precedent to precedent." The Teuton as poet has a touch of the lawyer or bureaucrat. One can only hope that, in Russia at least, Tolstoy's philosophical disapproval of appeals to physical force will be understood to imply, not only a withdrawal from military service, but refusal to use the bomb.

At the moment there are confident prophecies that the present war will The Independent Review.

bring about a revolution in Russia. Many of us are slow to believe this, because we are convinced that the Russian Slav is incapable of self-government. For this purpose we are too apt to make Parliamentary institutions the test, and, not forward ourselves in local government, we underrate the possi bility of developing freedom and responsibility by local self-government. Hence we commonly ignore the work that has been done in this direction in Russia since the time of the Tsar Alexander II. We also forget that the Slav is better placed than we are for dealing with some of the economic problems that face large populations. His system of land tenure is not, like ours, much encumbered with the relics of feudalism. The village community is his unit; and, if it were not for heavy taxation, the Slav peasant would not be badly off. This, combined with a traditional distaste for town life, has helped to prevent a drain to the towns. Thus there has been no great physical deterioration; and the race has remained young and fresh. For such a race we feel that the future has possibilities. The Slav seems quite out of sympathy with the Positive spirit; and it may be that he will never give us great names in physical science or mechanical invention. Copernicus is almost the only great physicist who has arisen among the Slav peoples. If, however,, the race can resist the factory system, as it did the feudal system, and organize industry on the lines of labor co-partnership-and it has gone some way in this direction-it will have done much to make life more tolerable for large masses of men.

H. M. Conacher.

HOMEWARDS.

"We are twelve, twelve of us! Are we to burst in this stifling heat?" angrily howled an old man, leaning out of the narrow carriage-door. "Please,

look yourself," he continued, drawing back to show the train-conductor he was no liar.

"She must get in all the same," the man answered calmly, and turning to somebody behind him, who was quite silent, "Quick," he said, "up with you, give me that bundle. I'll hold it."

"No, no, thanks, it's all right, I can get up," murmured the woman anxiously; she caught hold of the handle with one hand, held tight to her breast a shapeless ragged bundle with the other, got up, and stood waiting in the middle of the railway carriage.

The door was shut with a sharp bang; the train moved; she staggered and would have fallen had not the old man who spoke before held her up. At the sudden shock a small, thin arm peeped out of the ragged bundle.

"Now, boys, we must make a little room; the poor thing cannot stand all the time," said the old man in a loud voice to his fellow-travellers.

"Let them make room on the other side," struck in his neighbor, but nobody moved. She was hanging on to the laden luggage-net, and stumbling at every shake.

"You are all thin ones over there," he continued, winking idiotically at the unwieldy paunch of the man near him, who was snoring.

"Dare say, when you've nothing to eat," answered two or three, and some scanned each other's faces in silent taunt.

"Now, then, let's squeeze up a bit, and make her a little room," spoke at last an old woman compassionately. "We shall be all the warmer!" she

added with a good-natured smile. Then they all moved to the left, except the man in the corner, who would not give up his place, and shrank nearer to the window.

The woman faintly said "Thank you," and sank down on the seat next to her kind champion; then drawing her arm with infinite care from under the ragged bundle, she stretched and moved it, with a sigh of relief, to release the cramped and aching limb.

"Bad job having to travel with babies," said the old woman, turning to her.

"I say, we don't want any squalling," cried out crossly a mealy-faced youth.

"Oh, he won't cry, you needn't fear," said the mother, with a strange, pale smile.

"Is he ill?"

"A little," she answered after an instant's hesitation, in a trembling undertone, blushing deeply.

"Where do you come from?" "America.

I landed this morning." Two of her companions who had sailed with her sighed. "All alone?"

"My husband . . . remained down there," she sadly answered, looking at her mourning.

"Poor thing! And where are you going now?"

"Home," naming a small village in the fever-stricken Maremma.

"Have you made a little money, at least?" With an eloquent Italian gesture she scraped her thumb-nail on the edge of her teeth; that was the only answer. Then a wretched slow chorus arose in that stuffy atmosphere: each resigned voice telling its brief tragical history.

"I made three hundred francs: it all went for medicine and doctors," so

said the pale-faced youth, and his paleness showed how useless it all had been.

"To go out, I sold my house and two fields: all my people died of fever!"

"We come from France," said another, pointing to himself and his neighbor. "We had to fly; they wanted to settle our hash."

"Here's my fortune," sneered another, holding up a five-franc piece.

The screech of the whistle seemed to jeer from time to time at all that wretchedness; those useless wails, floating from the narrow windows, found no echo through the vast expanse of the dumb and indifferent plains beneath!

Silence, indifferent, even hostile silence, was all that was vouchsafed to those pitiful tales. But how give pity when it was like hearing one's own story told over again?

Only the snorer moved uneasily every now and then, muttering words. "How good that child of yours is!" exclaimed the old woman.

The mother barely smiled. "Is it a boy or a girl?"

"A boy," she answered. "How old?”

"Nine months."

"God bless him!" The mother shuddered.

"Let me see it," continued the old woman, curiously, getting nearer.

"No, no," she cried with sudden agony. Then she added: "He is asleep, poor darling!"

It was midday. All now were quiet, exhausted by the hot weather. Some began to eat: they produced from ragged pockets or from inside unbuttoned shirts parcels with very dubiouslooking contents. The fat man, roused at last from his sleep, bought some bread and sausage at a station. mother also bit at some dry bread. "And that poor child, aren't you going to nurse it?" asked the old woman.

The

"Why, we've been here five hours and it has not sucked yet." The mother started.

"Yes, now... in a moment," she faltered faintly; and when her bread was finished she began very slowly to unfasten her dress, while the old woman watched her with a look of infinite tenderness, the look of all women who behold a mother's loving, holy care. She scarcely lifted a corner of her shawl, put her feet up on the opposite seat, and bending over her baby raised it to her breast.

The men made more room for her, asked her to lean back comfortably, full of respect for that mother who reminded them of their own young wives and baby children, reminded them of all the joys and sorrows in their distant homes.

"You can't have much milk," muttered the old woman.

"Oh, quite enough: too much even," she replied with a voice that sounded like a broken sob.

All the travellers were silent, for the heat of those burning hours was dreadful; a few smoked, two or three slumbered. Not a breath of wind stirred the still and heavy air. The train sped on, running to its destiny. "Bye-bye, baby," softly sang the mother, "bye-bye, baby————”

The men, soothed, shut their weary eyes.

The train drew up: a shout, a name. The mother started to her feet, hurried to the door, tried to open it.

"Wait, I'm coming," growled the conductor. With a hurried "Happy journey to all" the woman jumped down; the train was off again, but she stopped, staring at it stonily.

"Well, what are you up to there, like a scarecrow," said someone behind her. She started in a fright and rapidly walked away, hugging the child to her

breast. Out of the station, on the right, ran a lonely, sunny lane, bordered by thick grass; she walked steadily on for a long time, and when it seemed far enough stopped, sat down by the side of a ditch, and with her trembling hands began to unroll very slowly the shapeless, ragged bundle. It was the small body of a cold, livid child. The mother watched it intently, watched with tenderness and fear-she dared not touch it: the baby was dead; he had died two days ago, whilst yet at sea. They would have plucked him from her and sunk him in the bottomless depths. Never! Her mother's love The Speaker.

found strength to dissemble, to play that terrible part. But now she had saved him! The only boon those distant, cruel lands had left her! The sea could not drag him away now.

"Baby, baby, your own mother's baby!" she cried, frantically kissing the poor closed eyes, the little black mouth. "Oh, dear little baby!" and she trudged across the smiling fields, rich in the golden corn, holding forth to the sun the frozen little body.

Far away, against the pure, blue horizon, stood out the village cemetery's crosses, sombre and sad.

Amelia Rosselli.

MANNERS AND MORALS IN THE KENNELS.

Those writers who have studied the intelligence of animals have paid but little attention to the mental characteristics of the foxhound. Most of the dog stories that are told to exemplify some point of canine psychology are of the intelligence displayed by our house pets or by collies. Now, no careful observer can doubt that the dog learns many things from his constant association with man. The close and steady watching of his friends, to which the faithful animal's affection prompts him, opens out to him a new region of thought, and removes him to a certain distance from others of his race. As the companion of man, he puts away many doggish ways, and within the limits of his capacity he adopts those of the beings he loves. Thus among these specimens of the race we seldom see the dog as he is, but rather as the friend of man. While he has lost many of the resources of the canine race, he has gained some of the pleasures and many of the pains of mankind.

The only place where we can view

dog nature in a condition at all approaching that of its primitive state is in a kennel of hounds. There, and there only, I think, we see the animals living in a state which is a meetingpoint between the community life of the wild dog and the artificial existence of the dog which is in fact a member of our family.

It is in the kennel that we can trace the beginnings of the remarkable intelligence which dogs manifest. Professor Romanes, in his "Animal Intelligence," remarks that the psychology of the dog would require a treatise to itself. But Darwin opens out a whole train of thought on this subject when he points out in "The Descent of Man" that social animals possess the highest possibilities of mental development among brutes. No one can doubt that the intelligence which originally led animals to perceive the advantage to the race of uniting into a community must have been above the average, or that a community life having been once adopted, the beginning was made of that upward progress to what we may

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