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essence, sounding their depths with ease; or, to change the illustration, he seized the kernel, and let the shell and There was its fragments alone. wonderful simplicity allied to his clear vision and his strength. He was more child-like than the majority of his contemporaries; and, along with this, there was-what I have already mentioned-a great reserve of power.. His appreciation of other workers belong ing to his time was remarkable. Neither he nor Browning disparaged their contemporaries, as Carlyle so often did, when he spotted their weaknesses, and put them in the pillory. From first to last, Tennyson seemed to look sympathetically on all good work; and he had a special veneration for the strong silent thinkers and workers. He was an idealist at heart. Underneath the realism of his nature, this other feature rose above it. He was not so much of a Platonist as a Berkeleyan, but faith in the great Kantian triad (God, Duty, Immortality) dominated his life-God being to him both personal and impersonal, duty being continuous unselfish devotion to the good of all, and immortality the survival not only of the race, but of all the units in it. If in "In Memoriam" the "wild unrest," as well as the "honest doubt" of our nineteenth century is embodied, a partial solution of the great enigma is, at the same time, offered; and while the intellectual form of his theism found expression in such lines as

He, they, one, all, within, without, The Power in darkness which we guess, its practical outcome was the attitude of trust and worship.

Tennyson appreciated the work of Darwin and of Spencer far more than Carlyle did, and many of the ideas and conclusions of modern science are to be found in his poetry. Nevertheless he knew the limitations of science, and he held that it was the noble office of

poetry, philosophy, and religion combined to supplement and finally to transcend it.

WILLIAM KNIGHT.

From The Speaker.

OLD FICTION.

No disputes or altercations are more foolish and vexatious than those about books and styles and methods, literary fashions, old and new. The ancients and the moderns, the classical and the romantic, the realistic and the fanciful -about these let professors rage in their lecture rooms. Your wise reader is a non-combatant; he will enter no lists, flourish no flag, call no man his master. His only enemies are vulgarity, blatant rhetoric, sham sentiment, the vanity that protrudes itself without amusing, and the egotism that crows without pleasing. These things he would gladly kill if he could; but knowing he cannot, he is content to leave them to the contempt and neglect which ultimately await them. All is fish that comes to the wise reader's net, provided it is edible, and if it is not he pitches it overboard; for, after all, the reader is the judge. One grows just a little sick of talk about authors, their works and ways. They are beginning to magnify their office mercilessly. They are assuming pontifical airs, and speak gracious words. They seem half to expect that you should rise when they enter the room. And yet they only exist to please us, to tickle our fancies, to while away our leisure; and for these purposes the dead author may equally serve our turn with the living ones. I say equally, for I hate the affectation that pretends that no book is worth reading unless it is a hundred years old. And so, too, to try to make out, as some do, that they have no time to read "Robert Elsmere" because "Tristram Shandy" is so fascinating is all affectation. Anybody, however busy, who has really formed the habit of reading can easily read, or try to read, all the novels likely to come his way. Nobody's life is more choked with detail than a bishop's, and yet all the more intelligent bishops are great novel-readers, and this because they are reading men. A great, a very great, number of persons have never formed the habit of reading. They

can read if put to it, but they would never do it for the mere fun of the thing. They have other pastimes. The place of books in the providential order of the world has been grossly exaggerated by book-makers. Look out at large upon the whole world, pry into men's lives, examine their banker's pass-book, travel in our self-governing colonies, talk to your next-door neighbor, go to the oval, pay gate-money at a football match, and you will have no mind to manuder about books, their ministry, and their mission. But though exaggeration and exaltation should be avoided, books, none the less, do play a part, though not the leading part, in the human comedy. There are many who, having formed this reading habit, are seldom less unhappy than when they have settled themselves in their chairs with a real live book in their hands; and, provided the book be alive, it does not matter a tinker's curse though the author be dead.

Where the living author most feels the competition with his dead brother is that the dead authors have all undergone, or are quickly undergoing, the painful process of being "weeded out," whereas the living authors (God bless them!) are all alive together, bobbing and smiling, the good and the bad, those destined to live and those foredoomed to die there they all are, flaunting their vanities, vending their wares; in short, living authors from whom you must pick and choose. Consequently, whilst it seldom happens to a "general" reader to read a bad dead author, he must frequently read a bad living one; and he thus learns to associate grip and style and humor, and all the unspeakable delights of literature, with the past, and is apt hastily to assume that no one is fit to compare with the dead but sceptred sovereigns who rule us from their urns. This is a terribly unfair test to which to submit the living author. On the other hand, to be alive counts for something. Let us never forget that. Nor do the dead have it all their own way. It is an advantage to be near your audience. I once heard John Bright say that no

orator can really move a popular assembly unless he lets them see his boots. He must not sneak into a pulpit, or cower behind a reading-desk, or mix himself up with a table-cloth, but boldly come out on to the open platform and let the people see him, from the crown of his head to the sole of his feet. Now it is very difficult to see the boots of an Elizabethan. There is always something a little puzzling in the point of view of an old writer that puts you off. Tennyson would have been very angry if anybody had told him outright that he was a greater poet than Milton, and yet many a sorrowful heart has found a pleasure in reading "In Memoriam" which "Lycidas" could never have given them. Shakespeare is supreme for his poetry, his passion, and his worldly wisdom, but it will hardly be pretended that his method of characterization satisfies the year 1897. Ibsen is more interesting to the man of the hour.

Turning particularly to the old novels, what do we find? First this—that they are nearly all dead. To say that nobody reads them all would be dangerous; for there is always somebody in some odd corner of the world reading, or pretending to read, everything. I do not believe any book is ever absolutely forgotten. There is still a sale for these old things. People buy them out of the catalogues, where they crop up under the title "Old Novels"-forlorn creatures with sentimental titles, in odorous calf. They still beckon one with a withered finger to come and share their solitude and make love to them after the fashions of 1750. But it cannot be done, and when they tumbie out of their parcel you speedily perceive you have bought so much lumber. To draw up a list of eighteenth-century novelists that are still alive would be to invite censure. ut, roughly speaking, when you named Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Smollet, Sterne, Goldsmith and Madame D'Arblay, you cannot be very severely handled. If you are fond of classification, you might make another list and include Mrs. Charlotte Lennox,

have

Mrs. Frances Sheridan, Mrs.

Clara Reeve, Mrs. Ann Radcliffe, Godwin, whose novel "Caleb Williams" appeared in 1794, and-well, others could be added, but it would be an empty parade, anu I might be tempted to name authors whose works I had never so much as held in my hands. If you are a great reader of book catalogues, it is hard to distinguish between the books you have read and the books you have not.

How do the great names compare with the novelists of the last few decades? There is "Tom Jones;" shall we compare him with Mrs. Gaskell's "Ruth"? What a gulf between them! The truculence of Thomas, his frank, four-footed indecency, the simple characterization of Squire Western and Blifil, the transcendent charms of Sophia, who, knowing-no one betterthe beastliness of man, finds her happiness and her religion in forgiving him and throwing her snowy arms round his bull-neck. What a tale it is! What movement, what spirit, what noise! How all these contrast with Mrs. Gaskell's pretty, timorous, dressmaker's apprentice, her sorrows and her fall. Tom Jones-honest Thomas! -would have seduced fifty Ruths in half the time and without any of the fuss. "Tom Jones" is often called a healthy book; if it is, it is the health of the body, not the soul. Mrs. Gaskell was a great writer, and in all her books we see the spirit of her time. The great pieces of Richardson-his "Clarissa," his "Grandison"-are themselves as much a contrast to Fielding as any modern can be. Richardson is unsurpassable. His touch is certain, though his thumb is coarse. He is the most courageous novelist that ever lived in England. His great length is, no doubt, a barrier in his path, but were I asked to name the one English novel I would back against all time as the one most likely to maintain its reputation and secure a constant supply of readers-though not necessarily a great number at any particular moment, I should unhesitatingly name "Clarissa." What other large canvass

Of all

have we to nang beside it? George Eliot's novels, "Middlemarch," perhaps, has the best life. There is room to turn round in it. It has homes and houses, parsons and doctors, auctioneers and veterinary surgeonsthere is a certain movement and bustle, the stir of existence the hum of life. Lord Lytton essayed the same high thing in "My Novel," but I fear he failed. Smollett is an author one fain would love, but he has almost made it impossible. People who can really enjoy "Peregrine Pickle" will never need their fingers to hold their noses. But if you compare him with Captain Marryat, you see at once what a big man he was. And what a writer of verse! As for Sterne, simply to think of "Tristram Shandy" is to be full of laughter and golden-eyed delights. It does for humor what Pickwick does for fun. 'These two books are the most laughter-provoking in the library. But from all imitations of Sterne may Heaven deliver us! But Heaven, I am afraid, is not a holder of Sterne stock, yet one would not willingly address a prayer elsewhere. With the "Vicar of Wakefield" no one will pick a quarrel, and in these days of women novelists who can grudge little Miss Burney her fast-fading laurels. Of Defoe there is no time to speak.

The modern novelist cannot fairly complain of having unduly to compete with the dead. The annual output of novels is about half as great as the whole number of novels by dead men which are still largely read. Nor is it customary to thrust the merits of the dead novelist offensively into the faces of the living. The great Sir Walter knew no jealousy whilst alive, nor has his posthumous reputation been used as a stick for chastisement. Indeed, I doubt whether full justice has ever been done in print to the dozen great novels of Sir Walter Scott. Ruskin has once or twice begun to do it, Mr. Gladstone has had his say about it; but criticism has, for the most part, been content with generalities, and to write of the "Waverley Novels" very much as a penny-a-liner on a newspaper will de

scribe a new hotel furnished from top to bottom by Messrs. Maple, of the Tottenham Court Road. There is no feud between the old fiction and the new. Mankind will always love a good story,well told: It will never quarrel with a Tolstoi or neglect a Wilkie Collins; it can read both "Emma" and the "Massarenes," though no doubt it will go on reading "Emma" after it has forgotten the "Massarenes." Cocky is good-very good-but he (perhaps) is not good enough to live; that was his own opinion, and it is mine. But, for all that, he is good-very good -and if people are found reading the "Massarenes" a hundred years hence, if I can then be pleased I will be.

There is no room in the republic of letters for "chuckers-out." Old Father Time is the only "chucker-out" allowed upon the premises. No other is needed. He has a ruthless besom; but till he spies us out and sweeps us away as does an angry housemaid a cobweb, let us chirp merrily over our cups and give everybody his chance of winning the favors of that good-natured idiot-the reading public.

AUGUSTINE BIRRELL.

From Knowledge. PHOTOGRAPHY IN NATURAL COLORS. Like the cry of "Wolf! wolf!" raised by the thoughtless shepherd, the announcement that "photography in natural colors" is at last discovered has been so often made that all men who know aught of photography are apt to shake their heads in graver doubt when each new claimant comes. Like "psychic" photography, the photography of color has been so largely the subject of fraud and misrepresentation that even an honest worker must expect to be met with scepticism-especially when he makes a mystery of his methods, and talk of largely capitalized syndicates is in the air. This is the case with the latest discoverers; and though one of them has succeeded in inducing Sir Henry Trueman Wood and Captain Abney to vouch for the apparent ac

curacy of his statements, neither of these gentlemen knows the materials employed to produce the effects that have been shown.

In briefly dealing with this subject I am bound to give a few words to its earlier history, but will confine my survey entirely to the direct or purely photographic methods. The indirect or three-color method, by analysis and subsequent synthesis of the light-color effects, is well known as a practical and commercial success. The earliest recorded observations of photography in natural colors are of much earlier date than the invention of photography Itself, for while the Daguerreotype was not announced until 1839, the principle of direct color photography was made public by Scheele and Senebier (1777-1782).

These workers discovered that chloride of silver deposited on a smooth surface was darkened by the action of light; but they also went much further, and found that if the light-colored chloride were exposed to a spectrum of white light the coloring of the silver salt bore considerable resemblance to the colors of the spectrum by which it was produced. From that day to this the selective coloring of silver chloride has been the basis of many attempts to perfect photography in natural colors. Seebeck, of Jena, brought the subject prominently before the public in 1810; while Ritter, Wollaston, (Sir) Humphry Davy, and Thomas Wedgwood, all worked upon and reported their experiments in 1801-2. The four last named applied their energies mainly, if not entirely, to the darkening effect, without regard to color; but the difficulties were the same in regard to both branches of the subject, and the main difference is that although the fundamental difficulty of "fixing" the image has been overcome in ordinary photography, it has remained insurmountable in the color work. When once it had been found that silver chloride was changed from (practically) white to (practically) black by the action of light, it was a simple matter to see that by shielding a portion of the surface behind a stencil, a silhouette portrait, or a fern-leaf, a picture of the shield in white upon

worker is said to have rendered some of his "heliochromes" permanent, but I can find no trace of his having claimed so much; no permanent works are known to exist, and it is known that many of his pictures were very fleeting. Poitevin, in 1868, stated that the colored image could be "fixed" by means of sulphuric acid; and I believe he gave to the late J. Traill Taylor certain of these colored pictures, which, "kept in a drawer without any special precautions," retained their colors for (at least) several years. But Mr. Taylor found it impossible to fix similar impressions by any application of sulphuric acid that he could make, and I believe that all other experimenters have been equally unsuccessful.

black, would be obtained. Working jects-brightly dressed dolls, etc. This with leaves, it would soon be apparent that great delicacy and gradation of the darkening effect was obtainable, for wuile the ribs and veins of the leaf would be represented by white, its thinner parts were distinctly but faintly tinted. Here was the germ of a very beautiful decorative art, even before the camera method was suggested; but the difficulty remained that if the picture were examined or exposed in daylight the fainter portions at once began to be tinted, until gradually the whole sheet became one color, and the picture was lost. For a long time no method of preventing this was discovered, but eventually a solvent was found which would attack and dissolve the silver chloride, but which would not affect the salt in the dark state to which it was reduced by the light's action. Hence, after printing under a leaf, the uncolored silver chloride could be dissolved out and the picture remained as a permanent silhouette.

It might seem as if this method ought to apply to the colored as fully as to the monochrome image, but this is not found possible in practice. In one case there is a definite chemical change, reducing the silver from the chloride to the metallic state. In the other there is a change too subtle for our present chemical and physical knowledge, so that we cannot expect success by this method until science has progressed considerably. By far the most exhaustive scientific work upon the photo-sensitive salts of silver, especially upon their colors, is that carried on by the late M. Carey Lea, who saw no prospect of success as a result.

To return to the earlier days: Sir John Herschel made reports upon his work in 1819, and in 1841 he expressed before the British Association the opinion that his experiments might lead to the production of naturally colored photograms. Robert Hunt, working from 1840-43, published his results in 1844, under the title of "Researches on Light." In 1848, Edmond Becquerel produced some exceedingly sensitive silver surfaces, on which he made pictures in color, not only of the spectrum, but also of natural ob

In March, 1890, Franz Veresc, of Klausenberg, exhibited at the Photographic Institute, Vienna, results on both glass and paper, which were highly praised at the time, and believed to be of great promise. The newspapers of the whole world rang with his fame, but nothing further has been heard on the subject.

The next important announcement, and one that has been fully justified, was made in June, 1891, when Alphonse Berget published, "Photographie des Couleurs par la Méthode interférentielle de M. Lippmann." A preliminary announcement had been made in March of the same year by M. Lippmann himself. The process is totally different, in theory and in practice, from all others, and from the scientific point of view is perfect. It has, however, certain serious practical disadvantages, which I shall shortly mention. The method is based on the "interference" of light waves, and depends upon the idea that if light waves are reflected back along their original path in such a way that they twice pass through a sensitive film, the silver will be deposited in lamina in the thickness of the film; the distance between the laminæ being governed by the wave-length of the light. Thus, every portion of the film has an arrangement of its silver particles in definitely placed strata, and forms, after development and fixation, a light-filter allowing only light of the same wave-length

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