Yet whatever one's sympathy, one cannot forget that she was independent in fortune and might have freed herself from many galling restrictions, had not rank and social position meant so much, had she been willing to do what most of all she dreaded-appear ridiculous or in bad form. A concrete instance is her belief in the movement to extend the rights of women, but her refusal to take part therein lest she should seem absurd and receive the disapproval of those who ruled the royalist drawing-rooms of Paris. Later, perhaps, this courage might have come, but she was still a young woman who, naturally enough, wished to be courted and admired.

Throughout it is a character of just such seeming contradictions, well calculated to strengthen the prejudices of those to whom repression and tranquillity are so desirable above all other gifts of Heaven, that they can imagine few greater misfortunes than "to live with a genius." Alternately Mlle. Bashkirtseff is miserable and in ecstasies, amiable and ill-humored, engaging and annoying, morbid and gay. At one moment she beseeches the strangely heathen god, whom she seeks to bribe and cajole— the next she is without faith. She is generous or niggardly and calculating. She wishes others to be happy, but makes them wretched if their enjoyment is not such as she approves, or must be had at any cost to herself. She is foolish and hot-headed, or composed, resourceful and discreet.

Abhorring lack of savoir-vivre in others, she herself is often wanting therein to a degree difficult to reconcile with her pride and instinctive worldliness. Undoubtedly the primary impression is that of conflicting qualities, giving no definite personality —of a meaningless existence, whose scattered endeavors ended, upon the whole, in failure. Nevertheless, broadly considered it is the drama of a talented, forceful woman, thwarted and hampered by the situation of her sex-of the woman who is so far above the average in mind and power, that, as Mr. Bernard Shaw points out, society provides for her no favorable institutions. But more universally, more permanently significant, is the account of a being to whom no institutions could be favorable, since all such imply willingness to reckon with others in the scheme of things. Hers was one of the type-lives of humanity

-a soul which seeks no happiness save its own, desires nothing save to gratify an inordinate, wholly personal ambition, yet is tormented by an intelligence too far advanced to admit of contentment in complete and entire selfishness.

She quotes Balzac as expressing her inmost wish-" to be celebrated and beloved." From earliest childhood she has imagined herself various exalted personages. Her very dolls had been kings and queens. The studies into which she threw herself with such passion were chosen because she had read of them as affected by the great men and women whose careers she meant to equal or surpass. She fed upon the lives of Greek and Roman heroes, and worshipped those of her own day who were in high places. She liked to fancy herself in some lofty position, winning by amiable condescension the adoration of the multitude. "I feel a contempt for the humble and inconspicuous,' she tells us. The thought of leaving the world without having made a name for herself was unendurable. Her desire to become a great singer was that she might have "the satisfaction of being renowned, known, admired." "Those who do not desire these things are not entitled to credit for modesty," she observes. "It is simply that they cannot see as clearly as do I." This, too, was the underlying motive of her work in the studio. She planned to spring into fame, to make a sensation, not to win by slow degrees, ploddingly, as was necessary for lesser mortals, but to have within three years such a reputation that her name should be in every mouth, that "all heads should turn and conversation cease" as she entered a drawing-room. "If painting does not bring me glory soon enough, I will kill myself," she avers in undoubted earnestness. Not by any means was she the "ardent and marvellous artist" whom Theuriet apostrophizes. In her calmer moments she herself acknowledges this. "I am not an artist. I wished to be, and I am clever enough to have acquired certain things. But it is with art as with whatever I undertake I go about it with address and intelligence, that is all." By hard, though intermittent, work, she mastered many technicalities, and saw and painted skilfully, but without richness, power or marked individuality. A Meeting-bought by the French Government after her death, and hung in the Luxem

bourg galleries-shows her abilities to have been those of a superior order of illustrator, who might have won some reputation as a painter of street characters-a field the value of which her keen wit let her appreciate.

But to put a scene upon canvas was not the compelling urge she experienced when it became a matter of expressing what she thought and felt. As to the latter she tells us, "There are things which will destroy you if you do not write them out, to be read -and so divided to infinity." "It is a need without arrière pensée-like the need to breathe." This is vocation, but her career as a painter was chosen, deliberately, with weighing and calculation. Where she wishes to paint a picture there is almost always painful indecision between several subjects, none of which attracts her strongly. Either she selects what is commonplace to the point of banality, or aspires to something beyond her powers -the Death of Orpheus, a Carnival Scene, Ariadne Deserted, Ulysses and Nausicaa, the Women at the Tomb.

And always she seeks what will challenge attention, will bring her into prominence.

One commentator has observed that because of this consuming ambition Marie Bashkirtseff was not a true,woman. But it were perhaps as well to reserve one's judgment until more women of forceful personality shall have bared their hearts as truly.

Certain it is that, with her golden hair, her large wondering eyes, her sensitive lips and dimpled chin, with her exquisite coloring, her daintiness, grace and coquetry, the appearance at least, was, as she herself puts it, " diablement feminine." And she had the womanly longing to win affection. Very early she voices a plaintive regret that, though her suitors became fascinated, enamored, "they do not love me-who have so much need of love." She herself, of course, has never experienced the sentiment-despite the orgies of romanticism in which she indulged over "the shadow of the Duke of H-" and the illusive Pietro.

Yet always she dreams of love, and wishes for it--imagining herself as yielding in glorious and dramatic abandonment (albeit only under sanction of Church and State) to some god-like, conquering mortal, who shall go beyond even her own estimate of

her desirability. What comes at length is a tender, yearning, half-protecting affection whose nature she herself does not quite comprehend.

It was not his reputation which drew her to Bastien Lepage. In the circle of her acquaintance there were others more distinguished, and with more evident charm of mind and form. That which made its appeal was the soul that "had seen the Vision shining in the eyes of his Joan of Arc."

Here indeed seems to be the ultimate meaning of Marie Bashkirtseff's quest. Always she was striving toward a Vision, a Beauty worshipped ignorantly, perceived in fleeting glimpses— and with less than which she could not be content. It was to be found, she supposed, either upon the heights of the world, or in the Art which contented many. But the nearer she approached to the heights, the more she doubted its presence. And Art failed when intelligence, refusing complaisance, showed her unsparingly that it could not be the all-sufficient purpose of a life.

This it was which made it impossible for her to rest satisfied. Hers was the pagan nature in process of transition to a higher ethical plane. Already she had the virtues of the ancient civilizations, honor, pride, courage, ambition, chastity, the worship of pure intellect and of material perfection, the desire-if not the temperament to achieve Stoic self-control, and fearlessness in the face of Eternity.

That there was something beyond all these she dimly guessed. Yet what it might be she could not accept upon the word of others. She was not of those who learn by "borrowed experience." As she tells us repeatedly—that knowledge only she felt to be hers which she had gained for herself, at whatever cost. And the cost was usually great-in proportion as the nature was strong, wilful and definite.

If one regards it merely as the record of a troubled, though brilliant life, ending with death, one must be grateful at least that there came at its close, a little of happiness.

But for those to whom our lives are many, with wisdom to be gained in each, it will seem, no doubt, that howsoever the cords of the lyre slacked and grew mute, one true note before the silence offered promise of distant harmony.

A

EDITORIAL NOTES

The Panama Canal Bill

GOOD deal of unnecessary vehemence has been wasted over the Panama Canal bill. The question is one of facts, not of excitability; of interpretation, not of

irritation.

The canal has been brought into being by American enterprise; it has been paid for, unstintedly, by American money. It is, therefore, quite natural that Americans should look for some special returns for themselves, for a legitimate preference over the ships and citizens of the countries that did not contribute in any way toward the enormous cost.

That is one side of the question.

On the other side, we have the Hay-Pauncefote treaty, with its binding obligations; and we have the financial conditions with regard to the up-keep of the canal-conditions which, of course, depend largely upon the interpretation of treaty engagements.

THOUGH we have provided the money for the construction of the canal, we are scarcely prepared to maintain it in perpetuity as a family convenience, through which our own ships shall pass free of cost, while our Government cheerfully defrays the annual expenses. Even if we were prepared to take this attitude, the contingency has been excluded by the negotiations which made it possible for us to complete the canal without interference or rivalry. We desire, and have given pledges, that it shall be used by the ships of all nations, and that those nations shall contribute, through reasonable tolls, a sufficient sum to make the canal self-supporting. We must, therefore, concede that the nations from whom we expect to derive an annual income, and who have an admitted right to use the canal, have the right also to protest against conditions which they consider to be unfair, with regard either to the imposition or the remission of tolls. To relieve some, or all, of our ships from payment, would throw a larger burden upon the ships discriminated against, if