from this human quarry, the manner cannot be such as is here, once and for all, subdued to the material which it would fain idealize. 6 How Stevenson might have triumphed in the South Sea, as he did nearer home, when left to himself, we conjecture from the opening pages of 'The Beach at Falesà.' It is a scene that arrests us immediately. And the subject, the entanglement, is a brave one,-how for love of Uma, that most touching savage girl, the rough trader undergoes taboo, and, after one moment of lawless passion, shares the child's suffering, despite all that would keep them asunder. Those who have read Le Mariage de Loti' will compare these two books, with many pauses of reflection. Pathos in Stevenson is seldom the dominant note; and, as he owned with charming sincerity, female character was at no time his strong point. Neither is the innocent, well-meaning Uma to be put on a level with poor little Rarahu, unacquainted as the latter was with our Christian moralities. Loti's heroine is a native Maori without any tinge of the baptismal immersion; she goes to our heart because of her great helplessness, her love which was strong as death, her death which was most pitable. And we know her mind in limpid clearness, for Loti sees deep and true. But when Uma falls down with that sudden cry at Wiltshire's feet, she has conquered us; the broken, absurd English pierces like a sword; we wonder if the story is to break out into a key beyond all we have read of Stevenson's, and carry us away into a pathetic of which we are already half-ashamed. It does no such thing, indeed; tender, well-pleasing, and always best when Uma speaks or is acting, it runs on to a rapid close, and makes no endeavour to rival Loti. But shall we ever forget the child Uma and her cry? There was the first chant of a South Sea poem here, which 'Ebb-Tide,' with its strong and painful figures, its floating Inferno of a drunken ship, and its horrible dénouement, will scarcely be thought to continue. These sequences of stirring action, marked by a rising call for more and more of the effects that satisfy the nerves by exciting them, and that only till the fit is past,-while they leave the nobler functions of the soul quiescent, have led some to imagine that Stevenson himself, as an artist, was on the downward path. The suspense and terror in which he now dealt so frequently, as in the murder-scene on board 'The Wrecker,' had too much of the physical, too little, if indeed anything, of that which delights by enlarging the heart. Certain it is, at all events, that he who declines to enter upon the ever-living questions of the spirit, and confines his descriptive powers to the instincts, the the primeval wants, the mere animal burden, of existence, will find his colours running out, his scenes monotonous, and his action, though enforced by quick and thundering tumult, less attractive in proportion as it is repeated. The motives of adventure do not yield us 'Reality's infinite sweetness'; they are drum music and mere trumpet-calls which we must not liken-how much less prefer!-to the mighty orchestra wherein all human instruments have their place and contribute to swell the rich and complex harmony. Shall we define the art of literature as thought in the form of feeling'? or say it is a compromise between sense and reason'? Ought the end it has in view to be the calling forth of courage and self-sacrifice, by holding up to men the glorious image of these things? Or, lastly, as we shall perhaps affirm, should it prophesy in speech understood by the multitude of those high mysteries which we worship as the eternal and the infinite? Take any of the definitions thus hastily shadowed forth, and remark in all of them that action and passion, scenery and incident, must be illuminated by something higher, by thought, reason, the transcendental; and then judge whether books so violently plunged into the dye of blood and suffering, fulfil their vocation. But Stevenson shall be his own judge. The mind which could reproduce, with such depth and power, in Ballantrae,' those great principles of conduct, that view of the enchainment of mortal things painted long ago by divines of the school of Calvin, in language and characters that shake the audience as though a new revelation, had proved his romance to be of the noblest kind. From adventures narrated for amusement, opium-dreams of the East, his genius had moved on to the tragic stage, still at a towering height above the common causeway, hung with funereal black, and in the style of a Webster much more than the Sophoclean poets, who, describing men with godlike eloquence, tell us all the while that they belong to us. The drama of conduct, not so visibly shaped by Destiny, with freewill acting a human part, was still to be made his own. Circumstances turned him back to the novel of incident, with motives added, but the characters so little transformed, the action so loud and boisterous, thatdespite an occasional beauty, a reminiscence of the master we look up to, and some fragments of his golden style-the rest is silence. But we have no intention of leaving this fair and delightful spirit in a mood of criticism. He will shine after many days, we trust, and hold fresh generations captive with the spell of romance. If we trace his borders, we are far from denying that within them is a garden of pleasure, watered with translucent translucent streams, adorned and shaded with all manner of trees as in a Paradise. We will gladly say that Louis Stevenson has set up and decorated with every precious stone a building so magnificent, that it deserves to be called the Taj Mahal of our prose literature. In a day of hard Realism, of petty novelwriting, he shed light on the province of which The Arabian Nights,' and Ariosto's 'Orlando,' and the Celtic fairytales are undying memorials. When the friends of Democracy, not knowing what they did, were fain to abolish the teaching of the classics, sneered at the antique, and trampled upon distinction, this lover of the Beautiful made them hold their breath, charming them into altered convictions by the clear and exquisite speech that did him honour. Him, also, the Pacific and that new Western world-the nations of tomorrow-drew on and on like a magnet, until his eyes were intoxicated with the vision of its lovely skies and waters, until the music of its winds gave him inspiration, and he dreamt of the Southern Odyssey which it was not permitted him to write. He sleeps on the peak of Vailima, a sign, a memory, a regret to all that pass by in ships,—one of the glories of his native land, fit to be named with Burns, who flung his heart into the fire where it glowed and shone unquenchably; with his worshipped Scott, the rhymer, the story-teller, whose legends and humours will outlast revolutions; with Carlyle, a dreamer also, and denizen of the great, immortal, and high-soaring realms of imagination where the spirit is free and creative: with all who have joyed in the detachment from things of dust which is a child's inheritance, and which genius alone preserves when the battle of life closes round it. One word must be added in praise of the admirable edition of Stevenson's writings which is now in course of publication. In convenience of size, and in beauty of type, it leaves nothing to be desired. A literary artist so consummate as Stevenson deserved, above all recent men of letters, that his work should be preserved in the most faultless shape which the art of the printer could devise. Let us hope that it will be made as perfect in its completeness as it already is in its form. ART. Vol. 180.-No. 360. 2 A ART. III.-1. L'Histoire des Prisons. Par P. J. R. Nougaret. Paris, 1797. 2. Les Prisons de Paris sous la Révolution, d'après les relations des Contemporains. Avec des Notes et une Introduction par C. A. Dauban. Paris, 1870. ENGLIS NGLISH visitors to the French capital have often gazed with interest at the round towers, conical spires, and long stone façade of the oldest and most memorable prison of Paris, and felt a strong desire to visit the interior of the famous Conciergerie. In September 1893—the centenary year of the most blood-stained period in the existence of the prison-a student of the Revolution obtained from the Préfecture de Police a card of admission which enabled him to gratify a long-cherished wish. With some little excitement our student stood upon the Quai de l'Horloge, between the great round towers, called la tour de César and la tour d'Argent. Until 1864 the waters of the Seine washed the foot of the iron walls and the bases of the massive towers; but now both walls and towers rise out of the pavement of a tolerably broad quai which extends between the quiet river and the picturesque old prison. The visitor stops before a large iron doorway, which contains a small door, furnished with un pétit Judas, through which the janitor can inspect him. He rings a heavy bell which, to the fancy, seems to sound with a hollow, sepulchral tone; and then the lesser door is opened, and a French jailer appears. The present functionary-who bends over the order of admission-is a man of about fifty, short, moderately stout, with iron grey hair, a sallow face, and little hard eyes which look about suspiciously. The student raises the foot and bows the head as he enters through the little door, and finds himself in a dark courtyard. The wish of years is fulfilled at last, and he actually stands within that Conciergerie which holds so grim a place in history, in romance, and in terrible human tragedy. The full title of the place is la Conciergerie du Palais de Paris. It was, in old times, a prison forming part of the palace of the kings of France; and, as in the case of our own Tower, palace and prison were Siamese twins. Turning to the right out of the courtyard, the guide unlocks a heavy door, descends a few steps, and ushers the visitor into the noble old guard-room of the palace of the kings. Here everything is mediæval in character. Columns rise from the stone floor and spread themselves out into vaulted, groined, springing arches extending to the roof. The place stands silent and empty. It is one that appears to require fulness of life; but there is now no clash of arms, no glint of armour; no groups of armed soldiers throng the floor between the gracefully stalwart columns; and no voices are echoed by the shadowy, vaulted roof. Over a stone wall which rises to about the height of a man's chin, the eye looks into the cuisines de Saint-Louis, so called, and into bare hearths and cold fire-places. The guard-chamber is picturesque and imposing in its stately architecture, and vividly suggests visions of the state and splendour of that feudal royalty which needed ample military watch and guard. Time, which changes so many things, has given up the old palace of the kings to become a palace of justice. Palace and prison were rebuilt by King Robert (1031-1060), and Saint Louis and Philippe le Bel greatly enlarged the stately edifice; but, in the Conciergerie, one lingers almost impatiently over the relics of feudalism, eager to begin to see all that is still left of the great prison of the French Revolution. The connexion of the Conciergerie with the Revolutionary Tribunal, and with its many victims, is the dominant fact in the history of the prison. We are disposed to neglect its criminals in favour of its victims; and yet the two towers at the entrance contained the dungeons of Ravaillac and of Damiens. These two criminals were tortured, as were others, in the tour de Bon-Bec, dite la Bavarde, dite aussi tour de Saint-Louis. Their dungeons in the two main towers are now used as prison offices; and the cabinet du directeur is in the tour de César. The Revolutionary Tribunal was installed in the Conciergerie on the 2nd of April, 1793; and its sittings were held in the room which is now la première chambre civile of the Palace of Justice. With the creation of the dread tribunal began the last bloody act of the French Revolution in the Conciergerie. The comparatively unaltered and yet much altered ancient part of the prison witnessed some of the most moving scenes, enclosed the most eminent victims, contained some of the greatest villains, of the catastrophe. That part which we are now about to enter, still affords evidence for history, material for romance, and stories of pathos. Even now, a visit to the Conciergerie is sorrowful, painful, sombre. It stirs feelings, wholly deep and somewhat morbid, at the thought of the horrors, sorrows, sufferings, tears, despair, which its dumb walls have witnessed. It forms a stage on which were displayed such agony, so much heroism, that a sight of it excites both pity and admiration. It is haunted by phantoms of jailers, headsmen, and their hosts of victims. The shadow of dreadful memories descends upon us as we tread its stones. From the Salle des Gardes the ancient prison is entered 2 A 2 through |