NATH

Ν

THE VARNISH OF NATURE

ATURE covers all her works with a varnish of beauty, like the tender bloom that is breathed, as it were, on the surface of a peach or plum. Painters and poets lay themselves out to take off this varnish, to store it up, and give it us to be enjoyed at our leisure. We drink deep of this beauty long before we enter upon life itself; and when afterward we come to see the works of nature for ourselves, the varnish is gone: the artists have used it up and we have enjoyed it in advance. Thus it is that the world so often appears harsh and devoid of charm, nay, actually repulsive. It were better to leave us to discover the varnish for ourselves. This would mean that we should not enjoy it all at once and in large quantities; we should have no finished pictures, no perfect poems; but we should look at all things in the genial and pleasing light in which even now a child of nature sometimes sees them-some one who has not anticipated his æsthetic pleasures by the help of art, or taken the charms of life too early.

Complete.

THE

THE CATHEDRAL IN MAYENCE

HE cathedral in Mayence is so shut in by the houses that are built round about it, that there is no one spot from which you can see it as a whole. This is symbolic of everything great or beautiful in the world. It ought to exist for its own sake alone, but before very long it is misused to serve alien ends. People come from all directions wanting to find in it support and maintenance for themselves; they stand in the way and spoil its effect. To be sure, there is nothing surprising in this, for in a world of need and imperfection everything is seized upon which can be used to satisfy want. Nothing is exempt from this service, no, not even those very things which arise only when need and want are for a moment lost sight of — the beautiful and the true, sought for their own sakes.

This is especially illustrated and corroborated in the case of institutions-whether great or small, wealthy or poor, founded, no matter in what century or in what land, to maintain and advance human knowledge, and generally to afford help to those

intellectual efforts which ennoble the race. Wherever these institutions may be, it is not long before people sneak up to them under the pretense of wishing to further those special ends, while they are really led on by the desire to secure the emoluments which have been left for their furtherance, and thus to satisfy certain coarse and brutal instincts of their own. Thus it is that we come to have so many charlatans in every branch of knowledge. The charlatan takes very different shapes, according to circumstances; but at bottom he is a man who cares nothing about knowledge for his own sake, and only strives to gain the semblance of it that he may use it for his own personal ends, which are always selfish and material.

Complete.

THE FATE OF SAMSON

VERY hero is a Samson. The strong man succumbs to the

E intrigues of the weak and the many, and it in the end he

loses all patience, he crushes both them and himself. Or he is like Gulliver at Lilliput, overwhelmed by an enormous number of little men.

Complete.

ENLIGHTENED RATIONALISTS

A

MOTHER gave her children Æsop's "Fables" to read, in the hope of educating and improving their minds; but they very soon brought the book back, and the eldest, wise beyond his years, delivered himself as follows: "This is no book for us; it's much too childish and stupid. You can't make us believe that foxes and wolves and ravens are able to talk; we've got beyond stories of that kind!"

In these young hopefuls you have the enlightened Rationalists of the future.

Complete.

CO-OPERATION among PORCUPINES

NUMBER of porcupines huddled together for warmth on a cold

A day in winter, but, as they began to prick one another

with their quills, they were obliged to disperse. However, the cold drove them together again, when just the same thing

happened. At last, after many turns of huddling and dispersing, they discovered that they would be best off by remaining at a little distance from one another. In the same way the need of society drives the human porcupines together, only to be mutually repelled by the many prickly and disagreeable qualities of their nature. The moderate distance which they at last discover to be the only tolerable condition of intercourse, in the code of politeness and fine manners; and those who transgress it are roughly told in the English phrase "to keep their distance." By this arrangement the mutual need of warmth is only very moderately satisfied; but then people do not get pricked. A man who has some heat in himself prefers to remain outside, where he will neither prick other people nor get pricked himself.

Complete. All the foregoing were translated by T. B. Saunders.

OLIVE SCHREINER

(c. 1863-)

HE writings of Olive Schreiner are the firstfruits which modern Africa offers to world-literature. From the fall of

the Greek civilization in Egypt and of the Roman in Numidia until our own times, the "Dark Continent» has produced nothing except a few Arab songs and stories to which not even the most strained courtesy can impute literary quality. Olive Schreiner's "Dreams," however, have in them the unmistakable signs of such genius as immortalizes whatever it inspires. They are strange and fanciful, but they will not easily be forgotten. She comes of the Boer stock of Cape Colony. Her father was a Lutheran minister at Cape Town, and all her work shows the impression of this heredity. "The Story of an African Farm," which she published in 1883, was an immediate success, but it was not until "Dreams" appeared in 1890 that the full strength of her genius was evident. She left Africa for Europe in 1883, and she has since spent most of her time in England. She married Mr. Cronwright in 1894. Her latest publication, An English South African's View of the Situation" (1899), deals with the overthrow of the Boer republics by the English «Conservatives."

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THE

IN A RUINED CHAPEL

HERE are four bare walls; there is a Christ upon the walls, in red, carrying his cross; there is a Blessèd Bambino with the face rubbed out; there is a Madonna in blue and red; there are Roman soldiers and a Christ with tied hands. All the roof is gone; overhead is the blue, blue Italian sky; the rain has beaten holes in the walls, and the plaster is peeling from it. The Chapel stands here alone upon the promontory, and by day and by night the sea breaks at its feet. Some say that it was set here by the monks from the island down below, that they might bring their sick here in times of deadly plague. Some say that it was set here that the passing monk and friars, as they hurried by upon the roadway, might stop and say their prayers here. Now no one stops to pray here, and the sick come no more to be healed.

Behind it runs the old Roman road. If you climb it and come and sit there alone on a hot sunny day you may almost hear at last the clink of the Roman soldiers upon the pavement, and the sound of that older time, as you sit there in the sun, when Hannibal and his men broke through the brushwood, and no road was.

Now it is very quiet. Sometimes a peasant girl comes riding by between her panniers, and you hear the mule's feet beat upon the bricks of the pavement; sometimes an old woman goes past with a bundle of weeds upon her head, or a brigand-looking man hurries by with a bundle of sticks in his hand; but for the rest the Chapel lies here alone upon the promontory, between the two bays and hears the sea break at its feet.

I came here one winter's day when the midday sun shone hot on the bricks of the Roman road. I was weary, and the way seemed steep. I walked into the Chapel to the broken window, and looked out across the bay. Far off, across the blue, blue water, were towns and villages, hanging white and red dots, upon the mountain sides, and the blue mountains rose up into the sky, and now stood out from it and now melted back again. The mountains seemed calling to me, but I knew there would never be a bridge built from them to me; never, never, never! I shaded my eyes with my hand and turned away. I could not bear to look at them.

I walked through the ruined Chapel, and looked at the Christ in red carrying his cross, and the Blessèd rubbed-out Bambino, and the Roman soldiers, and the folded hands, and the rod; and I went and sat down in the open porch upon a stone. At my feet was the small bay, with its white row of houses buried among the olive trees; the water broke in a long, thin, white line of foam along the shore; and I leaned my elbows on my knees. I was tired, very tired; tired with a tiredness that seemed older than the heat of the day and the shining of the sun on the bricks of the Roman road; and I lay my head upon my knees; I heard the breaking of the water on the rocks three hundred feet below, and the rustling of the wind among the olive trees and the ruined arches, and then I fell asleep there. I had a dream.

A man cried up to God, and God sent down an angel to help him; and the angel came back and said, "I cannot help that man."