It is hard work restating a problem in mathematics until every way of treating it has been exhausted, and it is harder when the factors are more than symbols. The tragic poet and the human novelist cannot treat the beings they have brought to life as abstract symbols, and if they would these creations of theirs will not let them. Sardou's automata could be shifted like pieces on a chessboard. They could not tyrannize or compel and so he could bring them into any combination he liked; and he chose, by experiment not by intuition, always the most effectively theatrical series of combinations that the plot could produce. his best he got his effects without tiring the spectator and without arousing his suspicion. He had the sophist's art of gaining ground, of establishing his argument by innocent assumptions which cumulatively gave the result he had in view all the time. The conduct of the plot in Fedora and Diplomacy is nearly faultless. Dante dragged perceptibly and in L'Affaire des Poisons it was proposed to murder a man who could hear every word that was spoken.

At

The lapses were wonderfully few and the skill in social panorama singularly effective so long as the picture was not exposed for examination. Either it passed quickly or the attention was diverted by dialogue which could not be neglected if the progress of the piece were to be followed. In a Sardou play a sentence, sometimes a word or a gesture, could not safely be missed. It was like reading a novel by a contemporary constructor, Gaboriau. He and Sardou might have changed places without much difference to the public if the Fates had so ordered. It is not a greater achievement to contrive good The Outlook.

plot plays than to contrive good plot novels, and in this case the novels were nearer to human nature than the plays. Sardou's people seemed to know that they were dramatis persona and acted accordingly. But compare for a moment, as we are on the matter of nature, the people of Sardou with the Normandy farm-people of Guy de Maupassant. Is there any more direct, impartial, and truthful depiction of life, any finer understanding of men and women than we get in Maupassant? Against his characters Sardou's people are reduced to phantasmal automata. All the same, was not Sardou right in his choice, in his rejection of life as a subject for the theatre? It seems as if he knew that the stage could not be true, that the finest technique in the world could not get an audience to accept human nature in a theatre as readers accept it in the novel. He who knew the utmost limit and capacity of the playwright's business must have seen that the conditions of the theatre, of society, forbid the full and simple presentation of life on the stage. He saw it tried, saw Ibsen rejected, Dumas and Augier forgotten. If any one could handle the instrument Sardou could, and he seems to have felt that there were certain important, vital, and profound things that it could not do. Sardou was an intelligent and practical man who could never have been got to see that the stage was doing its work when it was playing pieces in a half-empty theatre. good sense told him that all forms of art have their limitations and he got out of the stage to the satisfaction of the audience more than any other modern author has permanently and successfully got out of it.

His

C. G. C.

One of the charms of a simple society has always been the ease with which great public servants return to obscurity when their duties are ended. Cincinnatus at the plough has been extolled as the model of republican virtues, and an example for republican imitation. But, unfortunately, in a complex modern world Cincinnatus is not the best of models. We like to think that our great men are capable of this kind of noble eclipse, but we know very well that it is not practicable. A man who has held the reins of supreme power cannot sink into the herd, however earnestly he may desire it. The younger Pitt, when it seemed possible that he might go out of office, proposed to return to the Bar and attempt to practise. But if he had done this, he would not have occupied the position of an ordinary junior. The Bench and Bar would have been more than complaisant towards a man who had been Prime Minister, and might at any moment return to power,-a man who had such vast potential capacity for patronage. You cannot wholly dethrone those who have been once enthroned; a King in exile remains very different from the average citizen. This truism has led most countries to make provision for the retirement of their chief citizens by means of pensions. It is felt by most people that for a great public servant to be left to struggle among the crowd, handicapped in the race for success by the years he has given to the service of the State, is unworthy of the dignity of the nation. In America it is otherwise. The system inaugurated for a very simple society continues in the most complex of modern communities. The President, however high may have been his services, becomes at the end of his term an ordinary citizen, unre

warded and undistinguished. Grant joined the Wall Street firm of stockbrokers; Cleveland became a consulting attorney to a business house; Harrison went back to practise at the Bar; Mr. Roosevelt is to become a member of the staff of the Outlook,-not editor, but editorial adviser and contributor. The New York World in an article on Monday very rightly protests against the system which makes such things necessary. The World is a Democratic paper, and has never supported Mr. Roosevelt. But it argues with much justice that the dignity of the office of President is lowered if its occupant is thrust into private life at the end of his term to earn his living as best he can. It urges that a retiring President should be given a seat in the Senate and a pension of at least £5,000 a year, and the reasons it adduces will carry conviction to every student of politics and every well wisher of the American nation. In fact, the President should be treated as a soldier or sailor who has vacated an important post, but who is still fit for duty. He should be placed on half-pay.

We have no wish to suggest that journalism is not a most useful profession and the Outlook a most capable and high-minded paper. It has an honorable reputation for sobriety and good sense, and with Mr. Roosevelt on its staff should be a great force in American public life. But we cannot feel reconciled to the system under which a President is merged in the publicist. Our first objection is very general, that the necessity to seek a means of livelihood may work very hardly in some cases. Mr. Roosevelt is a man of limitless versatility, and could have made his living in a dozen different spheres, from cow-punching to the management of a University.

But every ex-President may not be so happily situated. We can imagine a great First Citizen, a man with a real genius for politics, who would be hard put to it to earn a living. The younger Pitt, for example, would have done badly at the Bar, we are convinced, if he had had to rest on his merits as a pleader; and if Mr. Gladstone had had to make his way, say at the age of fifty, in a profession, we do not feel that his progress would have been very fast. The whole idea seems to us barbarous and uncivic. A man who is a true statesman by profession, who has dedicated his best years to the service of his country, should not be cast off when his term of service is accomplished. ture should be the care of the State. In the second place--and this objection applies especially to the case of Mr.

His fu

Roosevelt-an ex-President will find it difficult to become a private citizen, and may exercise an influence in a profession due, not to his present merits, but to his past dignities. We have already instanced the case of an ex-President pleading before a Court of Law. In journalism the danger is still greater. We would not for a moment suggest that Mr. Roosevelt will not make a brilliant journalist. His many books and his Messages to Congress show that he has a mastery over the written as well as the spoken word. But the main appeal of his articles will be that they are signed by an ex-President, and by one who even in his retirement remains by far the greatest figure in America. Mr. Taft is the inheritor of the Roosevelt tradition, but he cannot be its spokesman while we have Mr. Roosevelt writing weekly in the columns of the Outlook. The whole situation will be very delicate. One of the two political centres of The Spectator.

gravity will be in the Press, and the Fourth Estate will acquire a dominant place in the political organism. The fact is that Mr. Roosevelt is too big a man to be a journalist or a lawyer, or indeed any sort of private person. His influence will be illegitimate, because it will not be based on his private capacity, but on his public antecedents. In politics Mr. Roosevelt is too masterful a figure to make the rôle of freelance either safe or profitable.

The final objection is that America in relegating her ex-Presidents to the ranks is losing a great asset. The President is the chief executive officer of the Republic: he is the true American Foreign Office: he is the head of the Army and the Navy. His experience, even during one term of office, is so wide and varied that he becomes a most valuable adviser on all public questions. In the case of one who has served two terms this experience is unique. Such a man has had a political training far more useful than any to be met with in Congress or in the Senate. He has acquired the habit of treating great affairs in a large spirit, and he is not to be befogged by any complexity of detail. He is a true expert in statesmanship, and as such should be kept always on call. It is surely the height of folly to drive such men out of politics altogether, or, if they retain their political interests, to force them into journalism for an outlet. Let the State retain their services by, as we have said, placing them on half-pay. Then they

will always be available for arbitrations, home or foreign, Special Commissions, confidential inquiries, or any other delicate and responsible nonparty work which the Executive may desire to entrust to a man of special authority and experience.

Buried treasure and a North American Indian are subjects of which one hardly thinks in conjunction, but Mr. Charles Major has given their association an air of probability in "Uncle Tom-Andy-Bill," and has added bears, not of the unspeakable variety, cud. dled by mamma's darling boy, but real bears with good stout claws, and he has made twelve excellent stories of two boy pioneers. The narrator is one of those boys grown into a beautiful old age, and in Mr. F. Van E. Ivory's good illustrations, he and his circle of hearers dispute the reader's interest with the bears and the treasure. The Macmillan Co.

The "Chronicles of England, France and Spain" which that vivacious and entertaining historian, Sir John Froissart, wrote five and a half centuries ago, more or less, are published this year in a new and condensed version, in a volume of beguiling attractiveness, by E. P. Dutton & Co. Twelve quaint illustrations in color by Herbert Cole add to the beauty of the book. Readers to whom Sir John is hardly more than a name, if they happen upon this charming book, will find themselves drawn on from one dramatic chapter to another until they are more thrilled than by any latter-day historical romances.

E. P. Dutton & Co. are the American publishers of the new and sumptuous edition of the "Confessions of St. Augustine" which was the subject of the article, "Heart of Fire," reprinted in the last issue of The Living Age from The Nation. This edition follows the text of Dr. Pusey which, in turn, was based upon the translation made more than two hundred and fifty years ago by the Rev. W. Watts, D.D.,

but thoroughly revised. Many American readers will be delighted to own this beautiful edition of the ancient Christian classic, with its exquisite miniatures and illuminated borders and its attractive typography.

The fifth volume of The Works of James Buchanan (J. B. Lippincott Co.) covers the years 1841-1844, and is mostly filled with Mr. Buchanan's speeches upon pending measures in the Senate. There are also letters upon public questions written to friends or critics; and interspersed with the graver writings are bits of personal correspondence which give a more intimate view of Buchanan's personality, as for example notes to his niece, Miss Lane, in which he expresses satisfaction with her behavior at school and gives grave directions about trifling matters. Altogether this compilation serves to make more alive both the man and his times.

The sixth volume of the Helen Grant series shows the young heroine amusing herself with post graduate work, with such occasional interruptions as a visit to West Point or a little journey to New York, and serious talks with some of her former college companions. Places in many educational institutions are offered to her and the discussion of their faults and merits is valuable to any girl who intends to teach. The next volume, "Helen Grant, Teacher," will show how she herself has profited by it, and may also show what fate brings to her and to the remaining lover of those whose destiny seemed to lie in her hands in the earlier volumes. Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co.

The usual bewildering variety of Christmas cards, tags and labels comes

this year from E. P. Dutton & Co. They are of every form and style, some sufficiently beautiful to make a suitable Christmas present by themselves, and others well adapted to enclosure with Christmas gifts and letters. Among the prettiest of them are half a dozen or more, conveying Christmas wishes and greetings in poems written by Mary C. Low. Well adapted also to Christmas uses are a number of beautifully decorated wall-cards, conveying sentiments of friendship or religion. Among the most attractive of these are "Sympathy," "Our Burden Bearer," "Pleasant Thoughts," "Prayer," "Slumber Song," "Jesus Loves Me," "Endeavor," "Character," "Action," "Lend a Hand," "Life," and "Life's Roses."

The heads of two panthers grin at one another across the cover of Miss Anne Warner's "The Panther," and the entire figure of the creature appears upon the cover of the book in an attitude to haunt one's slumbers, and within is an allegory printed on pages with a symbolic border in violet, and a very good allegory. To tell its actual subject is to forestall the reader's pleasure in discovering what is the real name of the pretty, kittenish thing that grows with every thought and glance bestowed upon it, and having pursued its frightened victim for days and nights, at last, long leagues away from home and love, tears out her heart, and leaves her dead. The impressive pictures by Mr. Paul K. M. Thomas are perfectly in harmony with the text and scarcely less impressive. Small, Maynard & Co.

"Animal Life," Mr. F. W. Gamble's small treatise on adaptations and innate causes of the various forms is a remarkable study of the magic of life. The author proceeds in the development of his subject by considering in turn, movement, the acquisition of

solid food, and the nervous control of response to changing order, the three chief agents by which the faculties of the animal are evolved, and thus gives his readers an ally for their observation and experience, and an aid in organizing their knowledge of animal life. The chapters on the senses, the colors of animals, and the welfare of the race are especially interesting, and the chapter entitled "The Life Histories of Insects," with its stories of bees, wasps, and ants, will be found especially useful by teachers trying to lead children to take a general view of their own knowledge and to perceive the relation of each fragment to the others and to the whole. Very good illustrations are provided for use not for ornament, but many of them are portraits of beautiful creatures. The Macmillan Co.

Miss Florence Converse has mingled much knowledge in her "The House of Prayer," the story of a child whose mother, going away for a visit, bade him to remember to say his prayers, much to his dismay as he felt himself unable to say them without her. The next day he discovered a tiny rock chapel in the wood guarded by an angel who was extremely kind to him; and for his further consolation his grandfather, who was writing a book about prayers, showed him some especially beautiful Litanies. Between these two instructors, he learns many interesting things about religious matters and their connection with every day affairs, and a friend of his grandfather's, an ambassador, instructs him in the ways of strange folk, and gradually he comes to understand some of the great Christian mysteries. The story, although exquisitely told, is hardly adapted for children as young as the small hero, but rather is it for those who are older. It is a beautiful little tale and its writing, its picture