if civilization it can be called; for these creatures are really savage animals, rooting in the slime and garbage at the base of our social fabric. Horrible they are in their degradation and brutality, bestial and loathsome some of them in their outward aspect; yet they have minds, and capacity for affection, and, as it turns out, souls that can be "saved," traits and qualities that are often attractive when the grime of the pit has been washed away. There is the Puncher, the ferocious prize fighter, the terror of the slum publichouses:

His face is pale, with that almost transparent pallor of the red-haired; the expression is weary, heavy, and careworn; the features are small, delicate, and regular; one cannot believe that the light-colored eyes have been hammered, and the small, almost girlish, mouth rattled with blows. The man might be a poet, the last rôle one would ascribe to him would be that of the Ring.

A more poignant sketch is that of the man who was known as Old Born Drunk, the street newspaper hawker who had never since childhood been quite sober. Here is the impression he made upon the Salvation Army officer by whom he was "saved":

She

The vileness of his clothing and the unhealthy appearance of his flesh did not strike the adjutant till afterwards. Her whole attention was held in a kind of horror by the aspect of the man's eyes. They were terrible with soullessness. She racks her brain in vain to find words to describe them. returns again and again to the word stupefied. This is the word that least fails to misrepresent what no language can describe. Stupefied! Not weakness, not feebleness, not cunning, not depravity, but stupor. They were the eyes of a man neither living nor dead; they were the eyes of nothing that had ever lived or could ever die the eyes of eternal, stillborn stupor."

Then there is the criminal who began going to prison at the age of nine, and at thirty-four had spent half his life in gaol; the Copper Basher, a ferocious ruffian who devoted himself to assaults on the police; and the Lowest of the Low, a drunkard, thief, and bully, who lived on the earnings of fallen women.

These degraded wretches, when Mr. Begbie made their acquaintance, had been rescued by the Salvation Army. The book is a pæan in its praise. Thanks to its officers and more particularly one young woman, known, not undeservedly, as the angel-adjutant, the Puncher and his companions in depravity had become sober, clean living, hard working persons consumed with "a passion for souls." The transformation is amazing. I do not wonder that Mr. Begbie is carried away when he surveys the process by which creatures almost below the level of normal humanity, ravaged by alcoholism, sensuality, and brutishness, are turned into respectable members of society. In all the cases "conversion" came suddenly, as it were by the blinding flash of some powerful light streamed into (or streamed from) the sinner's consciousness. It was the new version of the old miracle, the miracle of St. Paul, of Pascal, of Bunyan, and of many others, a miracle as old as Christianity, and. indeed, as old as Buddhism, and probably older still. This "call," this feeling of regeneration, of receiving grace, of "experiencing religion," is not the less impressive because it is familiar. How shall we explain the psychology of that condition in which the percipient seems to be born anew, and, in Professor James's words, "amid tremendous emotional excitement or perturbation of the senses, a complete division is established in the twinkling of an eye between the old life and the new," so that the sinner's evil habits fall from him like a garment, the drunkard shrinks from the taste of li

quor, the sensualist becomes chaste? Professor James does not explain it; nor can Mr. Begbie. Only he insists that religion alone, and apparently religion of the sensationalist, emotional, Salvation Army type can generate the requisite atmosphere. General Booth's miracles are only faint copies of those familiar in the history of all Christian and Mahometan revivalist sects and movements. They have been performed over and over again when Methodism has developed a spasm of energy, they were capped by Moody and Sankey, and they were achieved on a large scale and in very strange circumstances by the Mahdi in the Sudan. "Conversion," it seems clear, comes from an emotional stimulus working on a temperament more or less neurotic, touched with the abnormality perhaps of genius, perhaps of degeneracy, perhaps of hysteria, perhaps-like all Mr. Begbie's cases but one-of drink. He is surely wrong in declaring religion is the only exciting cause. Patriotism will often produce the same effect. Has he read the records of Japan? Or the story of Germany in the Napoleonic war? Or the veracious chronicle of Mlle. Boulede-Suif? I do not mean to be flippant in referring to this last example. It was a true instance of conversion, though religion had nothing to do with it. And Mr. Begbie is on insecure

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ground when he issues a challenge to science. Let science perform the miracles of the "Army," he says. Science has done them, as Mr. Begbie will see if he looks at the writings of those who have studied suggestion in the schools of Nancy and the Salpêtrière. Any modern text book on hypnotism will furnish him with scores of cases of criminals and degenerates who have been turned by suggestion to habits of decency, order, and honest living. If this treatment of moral and mental disorders has not been regularly practised, it is because it is so uncertain in its results. It does not appear capable of being applied to humanity at large. Most of Charcot's successes were obtained with hysterical women. Most of General Booth's, if we may judge from Mr. Begbie's record, are wrought on men diseased by drink and debauchery. In such cases the emotional stimulus has peculiar psychic effects; and I see no reason why treatment by conversion should not be studied as scientifically and dispassionately as treatment by hypnotic suggestion. I think the conclusion will be that the one is as limited in its curative application as the other; but both may be valuable remedies for certain intractable and obscure diseases, moral and physical. We may believe in miracles; but we ought not to expect them.

Sidney Low.

This week seems a good time to point out how sorely "a new way of life" is needed by the novel-reading public. It is the week when most people harbor a thought or two about trying to do with less of this or that; when they are more willing than usual to acknowledge that a reduction in the quantity of something or other they have been accustomed to consume might conduce to

better qualities both in it and in themselves. We are going to recommend the enlarging of such seasonable aspir ations to embrace a new object. The senseless and wasteful deluge of fifthrate fiction that pours every spring and autumn from the publishing houses might be abated if those who flounder amongst it would this year resolve to bring to the selection and consump

tion of a six-shilling novel at least as much discrimination as they bestow on buying and drinking their whisky or their tea. It is true that these are after their kind stimulating, whilst the book will be more often than not nothing but water and ink; but this shows only the more cause for a caveat emptor, since we presume she or he fondly hopes to find the novel after its fashion stimulating also.

And so it should be-a healthy stimulant to the reader's heart or understanding or both. The art of the novelist at its best-even at its secondbest-is a noble and beautiful thing. It blesseth him that gives and him that takes. No art holds out to the artist more subtle opportunities for the selfexpression which he has need of and which we rejoice in; no other works of art come home to men's business and bosoms with a closer intimacy than his. The characters of a great novelist are our personal friends or our laughingstocks--sometimes a little of both, and both are good to have. Not all the changes and chances of mortal life can ever quite deprive us of what he gives us when once we have made it our own. The names of the children of his imagination become household words; and-though this is by the way-they remain associated with his own nameunlike the poor dramatist's offspring, whom if they are good or striking children are frequently appropriated by another species of artist with a claim to have "created" them. And yet, homely and familiar as the creations of the great novelist grow to be, the whole world is the province of his art: an art which (as John Henry Shorthouse, apparently corroborating without much improving upon William Shakespeare, wrote of the stage) is a glass wherein human life sees itself reflected, learns its own story, and watches a number of other things. It is because we believe in the high func

tion of the novelist that we deplore the present degradation of his craft in the hands of so many incompetent professors of it. We are not using that word by way of allusion to the class of fiction which the New Censorship proposes to advertise by anathema, a conveniently representative collection of which we saw the other day gathered together in a bookseller's window. A fine art is enough degraded when persons without either vocation or apprenticeship practice it—not as George Eliot said we might all practise art, as a sort of private devotion and preparation to understand and enjoy what the few can do for us, but as public performers. A large amount of presentday story-writing shows neither insight into character, nor knowledge of the world, nor a decent technical equipment for any sort of writing at all. Human life certainly cannot see itself reflected in it, and would gather but a very garbled version of its own story from it. It shows indeed little but a feverish desire to be "topical" at all costs, and a hasty attempt by its authors to launch their ventures, where possible, upon some passing wave or other of public interest. It is not, however, to be supposed that because the name of some new thing, temporarily a subject of general curiosity, is dragged in by way of title or otherwise, much more real information will be given than could be gathered about aeroplanes, let us say, by inspecting the charming flying-machines figuring in this season's pantomimes. There is that distinction between the worst books about the navy or what not and the up-to-date topical novel, that the first do tell you something. "Submarines!" says (presumably) the up-todate fictionist. "Rather difficult to ascertain precisely what is inside a submarine, but the name's a draw"; and in "The Submarine King" published soon afterwards appears a boat of this de

scription (speaking broadly) with a la dies' cabin and everything handsome about her. But even with this unusual accommodation the human story would seem to have refused to settle down in her. "Identification by finger-prints is pretty new," murmurs (we imagine) another intending scribe; "we'll have a secret surgery to which criminals shall resort to have their thumbs skinned." But to this attractive establishment when set up, as it presently is on paper, nothing like human life as we know it ever came. Slang of course is always fairly fresh-continually renewing its youth: to make a lavish use of the very latest on every page, not in the dialogue to give point to character but when speaking in their own proper persons, appears to be regarded by several writers as bestowing that cachet of modernity upon their works which must be got somehow. Even where the backbone of the story resembles some fossil melodrama from the south bank of the Thames, the lugger of the abductor lying hove-to in the offing will have become a motor-yacht. The writers we have in mind all show this haste, this frenzied rush to get level with the passing hour, though it be but with a catchword; and meanwhile the immutable facts of life which should be their study remain unobserved. They have not even time to know the details of their mise-en-scène. The stage and the studios are perennial subjects of interest to outsiders, and are therefore much in favor as backgrounds: it asks, one would think, but little trouble to find out what these safe cards are really like-superficially at all events. Yet we find descriptions of theatres where the footlights are on the wrong side of the curtain and the prompter on the wrong side of the stage; and through the introduction of a woman novelist of course we recently made the acquaintance of an undraped model who until she moved The Saturday Review.

could not be distinguished from a marble statue even by another woman in the same room.

All this points to hurried output, a lack of preliminary study and a total disregard for the dignity and responsibility, as we understand it, of the story-teller's rôle. We should have no objection to any number of people making public exhibitions of ineptitudeindeed, it would be their business and not ours-if the reputation of a branch of humane letters were not involved. It is probably useless to ask any of these estimable people but inept writers to think more and to write less. Writing shares with acting a false appearance of extreme easiness. Most other arts are protected by a rather conspicuous chevaux-de-frise of initial technicalities. But any young person who is sound in wind and limb and who can more or less subdue a Cockney accent may spend fully six years in the discovery of her inability to represent anything whatever except her engaging self. Similarly anybody, young or old, who can put pen to paper-and unfortunately we most of us can-may shut themselves up in a room for an even longer period before finding out that after all he or she really had nothing to say. Meantime we suppose they will go on saying it—in print, at six shillings a volume-unless it can in some way be brought home to them that nobody marks them.

And so we too must appeal to the People. Let the Boffins of this country be more on their guard as to the credentials of their literary acquaintance. We are afraid it is the Boffins who are largely to blame for the quantity and the quality of this torrent of fiction. Let them resolve to be more circumspect to read far less fiction without a warranty beforehand. Let them turn over a new leaf-only onethis year.

It is a curious and suggestive fact that the general diffusion of scientific knowledge, so far from destroying superstition, has actually enlarged its area of influence. Nothing could appear at first sight to be more antagonistic to the fostering of a credulous belief in the intervention of supernatural agencies in human affairs than the vast collections of our National Museum and the solicitude of its guardians for their widest possible publicity. And yet we have lately seen, in the very penetralia of that Temple of Science, crowds hurrying past the painted lid of a mummy-case, and scarcely daring to give it a side glance, terrified by tales of a malign ka hovering invisibly in its vicinity. Within a few minutes' walk of the museum, again, we find Mr. Stead busily running "Julia's Bureau," and imparting to the newspaper reader departed statesmen's views of current politics. The procedure at this bureau seems to be based on an amalgam of the spirit-rapping manifestations of the last half-century and the more sober investigations of the Society for Psychical Research, founded by the late F. W. Myers.

I do not question the good faith or the scientific spirit in which the lastnamed Society's researches have been conducted. On recently reading, however, Sir Oliver Lodge's quotations of the curiously incoherent communications alleged to have come from its departed founder, I was at once reminded of the famous "Vision" in Tucker's Light of Nature, wherein are described the difficulties besetting a disembodied spirit's efforts to convey its thoughts and wishes to others. Now when we consider the literary and scholarly atmosphere in which the cultured mediums of the Society have lived and moved, it is not to be doubted that

some of them at least would be familiar with Tucker's vision, either in the voluminous original work or in Hazlitt's more readable abridgment. If that supposition be correct, there would be no difficulty in assigning a perfectly natural source to these broken messages, in the sub-conscious reminiscences of the mediums themselves, entirely independent of any exterior intelligence whatsoever. So far, then, we do not seem to have advanced one step in the direction of a scientific necromancy beyond what we are told in Homer's Odyssey or Scripture narrative.

But not to become lost in the mazes of mythology that such allusions as these would allure us to, I must leave the spectral Teacide at Salumis, and the Great Twin Brethren, to whom the Dorians pray, at Lake Regillus, and confine myself to Western Europe and the ethnological problems so closely intertwined with its superstitions. Southey's version of the Chronicles of the Cid happens to be on my desk. Near the end of the chronicle I come upon this tale: "For the night before the battle was fought at the Navas de Tolosa, in the dead of the night, a mighty sound was heard in the whole city of Leon, as if it were the tramp of a great army passing through. And it passed on to the Royal Monastery of St. Isidro, and there was a great knocking at the gate thereof, and they called to the priest who was keeping vigils in the church, and told him that the captains of the army whom he heard were the Cid Ruydiaz and Count FerMan Gonzalez, and that they came there to call up King Don Ferrando the Great, who lay buried in that church, that he might go with them to deliver Spain. And on the morrow that great battle of the Navas de Tolosa was fought, wherein sixty thou