priest, Dr. Jose Búrgos, was accused of being one of the prime movers of this rebellion, and was executed on the Luneta, in Manila, with other real or supposed leaders.

Dr. Burgos had been much beloved by many young men, who had been taught by him, and his execution was bitterly resented. A few years after his death some of these young men and their friends banded together under the name of "La Liga Filipina." The ostensible object of the league was reform under the Spanish government, but in reality, it is said, the members of the league cherished hopes of ultimate independence for the Philippines. The league was small, its members being young men of wealth and education. The most illustrious member was its originator, Dr. José Rizal y Mercado.

4. Jose Rizal.

A. Early Years.*

"Jose Rizal was born in 1861 in the small town of Calamba on the south coast of the lovely lake of La Laguna, in Luzon. His parents were homely but well-to-do rice-growers of unmixed Tagal breed, and their greatest desire was to see Jose a comfortably settled priest. He received his first education in his birthplace under the tutorship of the Tagal priest, P. Leontio, whose remarkable talents and wealth of knowledge abashed many a European traveller. On Leontio's advice, Jose was sent to Manila to the Ateneo Municipal, a school managed by the Jesuits on broader lines than those under the direction of the friars. It was here that Jose assumed the name of Rizal. The family name was really Mercado, but Jose's elder brother, Don Parciano, who was studying under that name in Manila, and who had been expelled from the University for having lived with the priest Jose Búrgos, executed as one of the suspected revolutionists

* Review of Reviews for April, 1899, page 471, summary of an article in the Nordisk Tidskrift, published by P. A. Norstedt & Sons, at Stockholm.

A PEOPLE WITHOUT A FATHERLAND.

21

of Cavite, and who was also in bad odor on account of his liberal views, had advised his young brother to take the name of Rizal, that he might not be persecuted for his name's sake, and hindered in his studies.

་

"José was himself destined to experience early enough the bitterness of being of Tagal blood, and at school, where he was always at the head of his class, he brought upon himself the hatred of the Spaniards by reciting, on the occasion of a prize distribution, an ode composed by himself in which he alluded to his fatherland.' An Indio' is not allowed this expression. He may not say 'patrio' only 'pais' (country). Only the Spaniards have a fatherland. In many other ways he was taught the difference between the colored children and the white, the former being looked upon as a lower race, whose faults and weaknesses were always pointed out, while their efforts and their progress never received the acknowledgement and praise accorded to the white. The prejudice awakened in his heart against the Spaniards faded nevertheless, as he grew older, and he was wont to say: 'When I read or hear the contemptuous European judgments of my people, I remember my own youthful ideas and the anger that might flame up in me is quenched. Smiling, I can repeat the French," Tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner."'

"Having taken the degree at Manila, Rizal betook himself to France and Germany where he knew that medical science must have reached a higher excellence. He studied at Paris, Heidelburg, and Leipsic. Simultaneously his interest in social and political problems was strengthened and developed ; and noting how little Europe really knew of the Philippines, he resolved to portray his birthland in a novel, which was published in Berlin, in 1887, under the sufficiently significant title, 'Noli me Tangere' [Touch me not]. This book along with other 'impias y pestilenciales novelas,' such as the works. of Dumas (father and son), Balzac, Victor Hugo, George Sand, Aygnals de Izco, Walter Scott (!), and Paul de Koch, not to mention Zola and Daudet, was forbidden by the church. 1891 the sequel, Il Filibusterismo,' was published at Ghent."

In

Rizal's novel, "Noli me Tangere," has been put into English under the title of "An Eagle Flight" (published by McClure, Philips & Co.). This novel has been described as "A poet's story of his people's loves, faults, aspirations, and wrongs." Mr. William Dean Howells comments upon it as follows:

"It was written by that beautiful soul, Jose Rizal, whom the Spanish despatched to his last account in pure despair of finding any charge against him, a few years before we bought a controlling interest in their crimes against his country. It would have been interesting to know what we would have done with such a political prisoner, if they had handed him over to us, and whether, perplexed by the problem of a man who could be accused of nothing, but whose whole generous life accused the alien oppression, we should simply have shot him, as the Spaniards did. But he is gone, and his book remains, and though we might have a copy of it publicly burnt, that would probably not put an end to it. In fact, that might inspire the advertiser to take hold of it, with the hope of getting it forbidden in the mails. I should like to suggest some such measure to him, though I am afraid he might be disappointed when he came to look at the book and found it merely an exquisite work of art, with no imaginable leze-America in it.

"I don't know whether it ought to be astonishing or not that a little saffron man, somewhere in that unhappy archipelago, should have been born with a gift so far beyond that of any or all the authors of our roaring literary successes; but those things are strangely ordered by Providence, and no one who reads this pathetic novel can deny its immeasurable superiority. The author learned his trade apparently from the modern Spanish novelists, who are very admirable teachers of simplicity and directness, with a Latin grace of their own. But he has gone beyond them in a certain sparing touch, with which he presents situation and character by mere statement of fact, without explanation or comment. He has to tell the story of a young Filipino (much like him

MR. HOWELLS' CRITICISM.

23

self), well born, nurtured in luxury, and sent out to Spain to be educated, who returns to the Philippines to find his father dead and his memory dishonored by the monks whom the son supposed his friends. The son inherits their enmity; they break off his marriage with the girl to whom he has been betrothed from childhood, involve him in a pretended conspiracy, and compass his ruin and death. A multitude of figures, men, women and children, peasants, townsfolk, cleric and laic, of all the mixtures of race, from the pure Spanish to the pure Filipino, pour through a succession of scenes without confusion or huddling. The many different types and characters are rendered with unerring delicacy and distinctness, and the effect of all those strange conditions is given so fully by the spare means that while you read you are yourself of them, and feel their hopeless weight and immeasurable pathos, with something of the sad patience which pervades all. There are touches of comedy throughout: Rizal is a humorist as well as a poet; he has a tragedy in hand, but life has taught him that not all, or even most, spectators of tragedy are of serious make or behavior. His story has the reliefs without which a world where death is would not be habitable; but even in the extreme of apparent caricature you feel the self-control of the artistic spirit which will not wreak itself either in tears or laughter. It is a great novel, of which the most poignant effect is in a sense of its unimpeachable veracity."

Rizal's own preface has been translated into English as follows:

"To My COUNTRY.

"The records of human suffering make known to us the existence of ailments of such nature that the slightest touch irritates and causes tormenting pains. Whenever, in the midst of modern civilizations, I have tried to call up your dear image, O my country! either for the comradeship of the remembrance or to compare thy life with that about me, I have seen thy fair face disfigured and distorted by a hideous social cancer.

66

RIZAL'S MANY GIFTS.

Eager for thy health, which is our happiness, and seeking the best remedy for thy pain, I am about to do with thee what the ancients did with their sick: they exposed them on the steps of their temples, that every one who came to adore the divinity within might offer a remedy.

"So I shall strive to describe faithfully thy state without extenuation; to lift a corner of the covering that hides thy sore; sacrificing everything to truth, even the love of thy glory, while loving, as thy son, even thy frailties and sins.

"JOSE RIZAL."

"Rizal was not only a clever political author, and a tuneful and touching poet, but also a sculptor of considerable ability and originality, whose portrait bust of the Filipino-Creole, Dr. T. H. Pardo, was exhibited in the Salon. article is accompanied by two pictures of terra-cotta statues Here Stolpe's by Rizal, which were given to his friend Blumentritt. The one is called, The Victory of Life over Death,' and shows science standing on a skull, with a flaming torch upheld in both hands. In 1887 Rizal returned to Hong Kong where he organized the famous Liga Filipina (Philippine League), which was the basis of the Revolutionary Society of the Sons of the Nation.

"After several years of absence and travel during which he was incessantly agitating he returned to Manila in May, 1892."*

B. Persecution by the Friars.

As soon as he returned to Manila, Rizal was arrested. The Custom House officers claimed that they found seditious proclamations in his baggage. With regard to this accusation, Mr. Foreman says † :

"It is contrary to all common sense to conceive that a sane

* Continuation of Review of Reviews article.

+"The Philippine Islands," by John Foreman, F. R. G. S., page 532.