crests of the sable hills that rose against the evening sky received a deeper worship, because their far shadows fell eastward over the iron wall of Joux, and the foursquare keep of Granson.

This Conference, if it is to keep within any reasonable bounds, must limit itself to the one point of description, but it is impossible to mention Mr. Ruskin's prose without confessing that it served many other and perhaps higher purposes. In its maturity it has been compared for flexibility and grace with Plato's Greek, and there can be no juster, as there can be no higher, praise; but it must be added that Ruskin could send through the grace and flexibility of his periods a prophetic intensity of passion to which Plato was a stranger; witness, for instance, the eloquent lay sermon called "The Mystery of Life and its Arts." In addition to this Greek lucidity and Hebrew earnestness he was the possessor of a very vigorous English turn for humor and sarcasm. The various courses of lectures, delivered as Slade Professor at Oxford, furnish abundant evidence. Everybody knows his picture of the Apollo of Syracuse cheek by jowl with the "self-made man;" his descriptions of the Thames Embankment and the Crystal Palace, and the story of the "little incident at Wallingford” (“Aratra Pentelici," lecture 3). Further, he had a mediæval love for mystical interpretation, which he was fond of exercising upon Shakespeare; see, for instance, an astounding passage in "Munera Pulveris" (chap. v), from which one sentence will be enough:

Prospero ("for hope"), a true governor, is opposed to Sycorax, the mother of slavery, her name, Swine-raven, indicating at once brutality and deathfulness; hence the line:

As wicked dew as e'er my mother brushed, with raven's feather, etc.

Ariel is the spirit of generous and freehearted service, in early stages of human society oppressed by ignorance and wild-tyranny; venting groans as fast as mill-wheels strike; in shipwreck of states dreadful, so that "all but mariners plunge in the brine and quit the vessel then all afire with me;" yet having in itself the will and sweetness of truest peace, whence that is especially called Ariel's song: Come unto these yellow sands, and there take hands, etc., etc.

In reading this and similar passages it is fair to remember that Ruskin usually supplies, in other parts of his voluminous writings, the antidote to any occasional piece of folly; and, in regard to Shakespeare, such may be found in the fourth volume of "Modern Painters" (part v, chap. xx). Of his socalled socialism, which, perhaps, has proved the most widely-effective part of his vast and lifelong energy, I am not the person to speak; nor, remembering that "Unto this Last" was expelled from the pages of Cornhill by the outraged optimism of Mr. Thackeray, can this be held a fit place for the discussion. I pass on to the consideration of Mr. Blackmore as a literary artist; and I will say of him just one word-that while incomparably Mr. Ruskin's inferior in the handling of sentences, which he was inclined to write in far too lyrical a vein, he was yet a master of the art, which the other lacked, of painting to the eye. As I look out of the window at the narrow lane piled up on one side with the drifted snow, which the eddies of wind have hollowed into the most fantastic shapes, I ask myself, "Has Ruskin given us that?" I do not remember at this moment in Mr. Ruskin's writings any description of snow, except the following passage in "Modern Painters" (vol. i, part 2):

In the range of inorganic nature, I doubt if any object can be found more

perfectly beautiful than a fresh, deep snowdrift, seen under warm light. Its curves are of inconceivable perfection and changefulness; its surface and transparency alike exquisite; its light and shade of inexhaustible variety and infinite finish, the shadows sharp, pale, and of heavenly color, the reflected lights intense and multitudinous, and mingled with the sweet occurrences of transmitted light.

That is an analytical description which might well prepare a reader for seeing the beauty of the next snowdrift he came across, but it would not conjure up before his mind's eye the picture of any snowdrift in particular, or indeed in general. But put by the side of it this passage from the chapter on "The Great Winter" in "Lorna Doone":

Behold there was no flock at all! None, I mean, to be seen anywhere; only at one corner of the field by the

Ever

eastern end where the snow drove in a great white billow as high as a barn and as broad as a house. This great drift was rolling and curling beneath the violent blast, tufting and combing with rustling swirls, and carved (as in patterns of cornice) where the grooving chisel of the wind swept round. and again, the tempest snatched little whiffs from the channelled edges, twirled them round, and made them dance over the chine of the monster pile, then let them lie like herringbones, or the seams of sand where the tide had been. And all the while from the smothering sky, more and more fiercely at every blast, came the peltwith winged ing, pitiless arrows, murky white, and pointed with the barbs of frost.

But although for people who had no sheep the sight was a very fine one (so far at least as the weather permitted any sight at all), yet for us with our flock beneath it this great mount had but little charm. Watch began to scratch at once, and to howl along the sides of it; he knew that his charge

was buried there, and his business taken from him. But we four men set to in earnest, digging with all our might and main, shovelling away at the great white pile, and fetching it into the meadow. Each man made for himself a cave, scooping at the soft cold flux which slid upon him at every stroke, and throwing it out behind him in piles of castled fancy. . . But before we began again, I laid my head well into the chamber; and there I heard a faint "ma-a-ah" coming through some ells of snow, like a plaintive buried hope, or a last appeal. I shouted aloud to cheer him up, for I knew what sheep it was, to wit, the most valiant of all the wethers. And then we all fell to again, and very soon we hauled him out. Watch took charge of him at once with an air of the noblest patronage, lying on his frozen fleece and licking all his face and feet, to restore his warmth to him. Then fighting Tom jumped up at once, and made a little butt at Watch as if nothing had ever ailed him, and then set off to a shallow place, and looked for something to nib

ble at.

Often and often the vanes went round and we hoped for change of weather;

The only change was that it seemed if possible to grow colder.

Or again on the same page:

Foreseeing how the snow was spread
Lightly over everything
Covering up the hills and valleys
And the foreshore of the sea,
They contrived a way to crown it
And to glide like a flake along.
Through the sparkle of the whiteness
And the wreaths of windy tossings
And the ups and downs of cold.
Any man might get along
With a boat on either foot
To prevent his sinking.

I have no doubt there are numberless 'passages in Blackmore which are made by this lilt of his, just as there are numberless passages in Ruskin made by his alliteration, though occasionally we come upon a place which excess has marred.

In

The characteristic talent of Mr. Dixon did not lie in his descriptions of natural scenery, though his lyrics contain such, but in his human portraits. person he closely resembled Chaucer, as we see him in Hoccleve's picture, and in manner as he describes himself to us in the "Canterbury Tales;" and in his wide and humorous interest in types of humanity, especially ecclesiastical humanity, and in his power of drawing them he suggests Chaucer more than any one else. Of course, he had quite other than a merely Chaucerian interest in Church questions: but with that we are not concerned. It is fair to say that quotations do him injustice, because he did not patch his historical work with set pieces of character-paint

1 Some of Dixon's footnotes on Froude's notions of veracity are very lively reading. There is a charac teristic one in vol. iv, p. 372, from which I will only quote one sentence on Mr. Froude's style: "The chancellor and the clergy were springing at the leash like hounds with the game in view, fanaticism

ing, but allowed his view of the actors to express itself by the way. But here and there we get a more or less formal summing-up, and of such a specimen may be welcome. Here are some general remarks on the character of Henry VIII, of whom Mr. Froude made a hero.1

Henry had long been in a declining state of health, suffering severe pain and uneasiness from his corpulence and the diseases of his constitution. He seems, however, to have been able to exert his will to the last, and never to have fallen so low as to be entirely at the mercy of the men around him. It was to the advantage of the courtiers, so long as he lived, implicitly to obey him. They bore with his irascibility, and followed him without murmuring even when he desired the destruction of many among them. Particular ambition might have been dangerous to the loyal society of which he was the head, and the extinction of one or two was always better than the peril of all. Henry was indeed the man who was fittest to direct the revolution of the rich against the poor. His stupendous will was guided by certain primary and unfailing instincts; his fierce temper would brook the domination of no human being. The subtlest flattery failed to insinuate itself into him, the haughtiest spirits got no hold upon him; arduous or splendid services awoke in him no sentiment of royal confidence. The proud Wolsey, the astute Cromwell, to whom in succession he seemed to have abdicated his kingship, found that they had no more power over him than the last dicer whom he had enriched. When he met with a conscience that resisted his enormities, his resentment was implacable. . . . In truth there was something unintelligent in the incapacity of attachment, the inacessibility to kindly feeling, which was Henry's strength.

and revenge lashing them forward.' If a hound were held in the leash and lashed forward at the same time, there is no knowing what he might do Mr. Froude is fond of the word lash; and indeed it has a fine lashing sound.

clouds with the summits rising above them to the sun. Height on height they stretch away on every side till they are lost in a murky cloud of smoke inland. These buildings are all iron-cored, and the masonry is only the shell that cases the rooms in them. They can even be built downward. You may see one of them with eight stories of brick wall above, and then four of a vacant skeleton of girders below; the superstructure seems to be hanging in air. BroadThe Cornhill Magazine.

er and more massive than the tall buildings of New York, older also and dingier, they do not appear, like them, simply boxes of windows. Who would suppose that mere lumps of iron and bricks and mortar could be sublime? Yet these are sublime and almost awful. You have awakened, like Gulliver, in a land of giants, a land where the very houses are instinct with almost ferocious energy and force.

Urbanus Sylvan.

One night when the sluicing rains had ceased, three white men sat on the veranda of an isolated factory hidden among the cottonwoods and oil-palms stretching between Calabar and Forcados in the Niger Protectorate. Behind them the pile-raised room, which was lighted by a smoky lamp, reeked of mildew and paraffin. Moisture trickled down the wainscot, and a damp and musty odor drifted through the casement to meet the heat outside. Beneath, in the sodden compound, a group of heathen Krooboys crouched round a smouldering fire, crooning a dismal chanty to the tapping of a drum, and beyond that the forest rose like a wall. Steam hung in fleecy wreaths half-way up the great cottonwood trunks, while above it sombre foliage and bare, withered limbs were outlined dimly against liquid indigo.

The dead, still air seemed heated to the temperature of an oven, and when presently a silver radiance brightened behind the cottonwoods, and the first rays of the rising moon touched the muddy river which oozed past the stockade, Edward Halliwell, missionary, mopped his streaming forehead as he turned in his chair.

"What was the last news from the

bush, and what do you think of the prospects of a general rising?" he said. "I could only gather rumors on my journey here, and now I have rested I must hurry on again."

The speaker was young in years, though old with the experience which comes with suffering, and he was there because, having some skill in medicine, his aid had been sought by the headman of a stricken tribe. His listeners were little more than lads, and yet they, too, had learned something of the mystery of life and death in that region of pestilence. So they looked at one another, until Parker, the elder, said:

"The news is bad, sir. They're dying like flies in the bush country, and if you go there the fetich priests will fasten the blame on you. Besides, the neighboring headman, Shaliwa, is not to be trusted. There's no doubt the inland tribesmen are out on the raid; sent us a message last week they were coming to burn us out, and if Shaliwa joins them they'll probably do it. Not safe for you to go on, sir, and risky for us here. Murder and sickness let loose everywhere."

The missionary sighed a little, and glanced down the oily river, the high