The life of Walter Savage Landor connects, as does that of no other English literary man, the 18th with the 19th century. Born thirteen years before Byron, he survived by four years De Quincey and Macaulay. Perhaps an American may better realize the enormous span of his life, by being told that Landor was born in the year of Bunker Hill and died in that of Gettysburg. His literary activity continued through a period longer than the sum of all the years of his two early contemporaries, Byron and Shelley. His first book was published in 1795, when he was twenty years old; his last in 1863, when he was eighty-eight. For three-score and ten years he was a diligent student and author; yet some authors whose literary activity covers not a fourth as much time have left a much greater bulk of printed matter.

For several reasons this proud, terse writer is peculiarly worthy of attention to-day. The output of books is as excessive as the coinage of silver dollars, and in the one case as in the other the problem of storage begins to give concern. There is no such difficulty about the gold. Landor is one of the last of the virile race of literary goldsmiths who purged their metal of all baser alloy and wrought it curiously and daintily before displaying it as merchandise. To-day, when everybody writes and reads Views, Reviews, and Reviews of Reviews, it is highly instructive to linger over the compact pages of one whose literary conscience was so stern. If, as Carlyle persuades us, to labor is to pray, then Landor put prayer into every page he wrote; and his example might well shame the copious industry of some later authors who would fain substitute the pious will for the strenuous deed.

Landor, no doubt, is an old-fashioned writer. His fashion is to express noble and touching thoughts in the very choicest and concisest terms: an old fashion which must be revived if the recorded words of men are to be long preserved. Why is he so little read? Mr. Sidney Colvin, who has done more than any one else for Landor's fame, gives the following reasons: First, being classical rather than romantic, he naturally appeals to a smaller public; secondly, he exhibits a want of literary tact in writing for himself rather than for others; thirdly, his works lack consecutiveness and organic construction; fourthly, despite his constant effort to be clear, he is often obscure by reason of over-condensation.

It is very difficult to say anything worth while about this author after Mr. Colvin's elegant criticism; accordingly I take pleasure in referring the reader, for a fuller statement of the case for and against Landor, to the preface to Colvin's Selections from Landor" in the Golden Treasury, a little book worthy of a place in the selectest library, however small.

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More recently Mr. W. E. Henley, a Scotchman who seems to have borrowed hammer and tongs from the critical armory of the "savage and tartarly" school, has urged that "Landor's imagination is not only inferior in kind. but poverty-stricken in degree"; that as a dramatic writer he was incapable of conceiving the capacities of his situations, and conse

quently has failed to develop them; that his abruptness “is identical with a certain sort of what in men of lesser mould is called stupidity"; and more to like effect.

Mr. Colvin's enumeration of Landor's limitations is thoroughly judicious, while Mr. Henley's indictment may be best met by reminding ourselves that Landor was writing conversations and not dramas. His aim was not to develop situations, not primarily to create characters though he has created some,— but rather to put appropriate thoughts and opinions into the mouths of famous men and women of lands and ages. many But critics of Mr. Henley's stamp care little for an author's aim, -otherwise the following characteristic sentence of Landor's would have less point than it unfortunately still has: "The eyes of critof critics, whether in commending or carping, are both on one side, like a turbot's."

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Readers who refrain from looking in Landor for what he never purposed to give, will not be likely to complain with Mr. Henley of his poverty of imagination. It was by no means with the great dramatists that Landor would have thought of comparing his "Imaginary Conversations," but rather with the great writers of dialogue. He makes Barrow say to Newton: I do not urge you to write in dialogue, although the best writers of every age have done it: the best parts of Homer and Milton are speeches and replies, the best parts of every great historian are the same: the wisest men of Athens and of Rome converse together in this manner, as they are shown to us by Xenophon, by Plato, and by Cicero." Again, in his conversation between the two Ciceros, he makes Tully say "that the conversations of Socrates would have lost their form and force, delivered in any other manner." These remarks are recognized as having a personal reference; without them, however, it is surely obvious to any sympathetic reader that Landor's aim is primarily the lively and dramatic utterance of thought and opinion; only secondarily the creation of character; and that greatly as he cares for the suggestion of situation, he cares hardly at all for its development.

Significant for Landor's choice of form is the fact that he was, like Milton, "long choosing and beginning late." It was in 1824, when he was nearly fifty, that his first "Imaginary Conversations" were published. By the time a man is fifty he has had occasion to make himself tolerably familiar with his powers and

limitations; and it was plainly by a sort of natural selection that Landor finally hit upon the one literary method suited to his genius. He must have discovered, with or without the help of the critics, that his forte was in concentrated vigor rather than in continuity. By skilful management of the dialogue form, however, this very defect in continuity might be turned to good account; accordingly his conversations are full of the subtle transitions and abrupt turns and returns of real conversation: they are never dissertations in dialogue. All reservations having been made, he is certainly one of our greatest masters of prose. In sentence form he is perhaps more exemplary than any other: no writer is crisper or clearer. His diction is of the choicest, though for the taste of to-day inclining a trifle too much, perhaps, to Latinism. "During my stay at this inn called Human Life, I would trust anything to the chambermaids rather than my English tongue." Having a full mind, the fruit of wide reading and deep reflection, he could afford to write clearly and concisely. "Clear writers, like clear fountains, do not seem so deep as they are: the turbid look most profound." Writing to please himself, not the clientele of some review,- still less any sect or faction,- he could afford to write carefully and with his eye on the object. "I hate false words, and seek with care, difficulty, and moroseness, those that fit the thing." Not being the slave of an editor or of a publisher, he could dwell upon his work; and, having abundant harvests, he could winnow. No writer has fewer commonplaces: "I have expunged many thoughts for their close resemblance to what others had written, whose works I never saw until after.”

To me, two of the most delightful features of the "Imaginary Conversations are the tenderness so frequently displayed, and the delicate but sure handling of female character. I know of no more exquisite pathos, no more refined expression of the love of man and woman, no more truth to woman's subtler instincts, than are to be found in such conversations as those between Esop and Rhodope, between Epicurus, Leontion, and Ternissa, between Achilles and Helena, between Agamemnon and Iphigeneia, between Dante and Beatrice.

Of Landor as a thinker, Mr. Colvin quotes Lowell to the effect that, in the region of discursive thought, we cannot so properly call him a great thinker as a man who had great thoughts. At any rate, he dwells habitually,

:

as Milton did, among great thoughts, and gives them memorable and original expression. If he is as discontinuous as Emerson, he is no less suggestive; if as immethodical as Montaigne, he is as far from writing any subject to the dregs. Mr. Henley asserts that he is a writer for writers: as everybody to-day writes, he should have a large audience. In truth, it were well if all who think of writing would read him in these days of vulgar diction and slipshod periods, and the low thoughts they accompany, Landor should be as tonic as an ocean breeze. But, if little read, he is at least well read; he is not the only great author whose audience remains "fit but few." Indeed, he expected nothing else; an artist, he worked for the few who value refinement. "Poetry was always my amusement, prose my study and business. I have published five volumes of Imaginary Conversations'; cut the worst of them through the middle, and there will remain in this decimal fraction quite enough to satisfy my appetite for fame. I shall dine late; but the dining room will be well lighted, the guests few and select."

The present edition of the Conversations is entirely adequate. Mr. Crump has done the editorial work unostentatiously, and apparently with great thoroughness. The principal changes made by the author in the text are given, a matter of great interest in the case of so careful a writer as Landor.

MELVILLE B. ANDERSON.

FINANCES OF THE AMERICAN
REVOLUTION.*

A student of the financial history of the United States welcomes any book which gathers together the scattered facts pertaining to the financial administration of the Revolution

ary War. This Professor Sumner has undertaken to do in a recent publication to which he has given the title, "The Financier and the Finances of the American Revolution," and he has done it in a very successful manner. It is, however, a difficult task; for, as he remarks in his preface, "The financial history of the Revolution is very obscure. The most import

ant records of the financial administration between 1775 and 1781 are lost. The finances

*THE FINANCIER AND THE FINANCES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. By William Graham Sumner, Professor of Political and Social Science, Yale University. In two volumes. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co.

of the Continental Congress had no proper boundary. In one point of view they seem never to have had any finances; in another the whole administration was financial." It is impossible to discover any principles worthy the name of financial principles in the manner in which the treasury of the Continental Congress was conducted. The history of the period is most instructive because of what it teaches by contrast.

There is another reason why a careful study of Robert Morris and his work in connection with the Revolutionary War is acceptable. The reputation of Alexander Hamilton as a financier is believed by some to be greater than is warranted by any financial achievement traceable to his influence. It seems to have been forgotten that Morris preceded him and that Gallatin followed him, the latter of whom at least was his equal in the mastery of financial details and in the grasp of political principles, though not possessed of so vigorous a personality. The over-praise of Hamilton as a financier is due to one of those accidents that sometimes control the writing of history; but now that Mr. Adams has given us the life of Gallatin, and Professor Sumner has placed within the reach of the student a sketch of Morris's relation to the Revolutionary treasury, it is to be hoped that our histories will in time cease to be distorted by over-praise of the financier of the Federalist party.

There is little in the personal biography of Morris to claim attention. His father was a Liverpool merchant, and early sent his son, Robert Morris, Jr., to Philadelphia, where he was placed in a mercantile house. The younger Morris was a daring speculator, and took delight in great commercial enterprises; and, as might be expected from such a person, he was somewhat lavish in the display of such wealth as he possessed. The chief peculiarity of his public career is that when Superin

tendent of Finance he exercised for the benefit of the public treasury the same sort of ability that marked his career as a merchant, and his reputation was so great that notes which he issued passed current rather because of his signature than because the Continental Congress promised to support them. It was his willing

ness to assume risks and his command over exthose characteristics which are sure pedients to bring a man to the front in Wall Street speculations that gave Morris his preeminence as a financier.

Morris was appointed Superintendent of

Finance in 1781. Congress had up to this time maintained direct control over the financial affairs of the country, and only after repeated failures was the thought impressed that the administration of a public treasury is an executive and not a legislative function. Though an officer of Congress, Morris always conducted himself as though he were at the head of a responsible executive bureau. In one sense it was fortunate that the finances of the country were in so confused a state when he assumed control; for the credit of the country having been all but lost, the proposals of the Superintendent were considered more candidly and adopted more readily than would otherwise have been the case. The history of the finances of the Revolutionary War from 1781 is the history of a series of temporary expedients. Still, there are certain clearlydefined steps by which the lost credit of the country was finally restored, and they are summarized by Professor Sumner as follows:

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The first important step was the formal recognition of the collapse of paper currency, which occurred shortly previous to the time Morris assumed office. This, while doubtless for the time it influenced unfortunately the public credit, provided a clear field for other financial transactions; and it is to the praise of Morris that no further reliance was placed upon inse-cure paper notes. Anticipation of taxes and funds," he wrote in his first communication to Congress, "is all that ought to be expected from any system of paper currency." The second important step was the establishment of what Morris always called a National Bank. "I mean," he said, in speaking of the bank, "to render this a pillar of American credit." This bank, as established by Morris, was rather a peculiar institution, judging by the modern standpoint of what a bank is. It was partly a means of obtaining subscriptions for public necessities, partly a means for funding debts which had previously been contracted, and partly an institution for placing the loans of the government among the people. It, how ever, served its purpose, and one cannot fail to be struck with the great ingenuity of the man who planned it and for all practical purposes directed its policy. In the third place, Morris took steps towards introducing a system of taxation; and although the effort produced trivial results, it yet exerted an influence upon public credit. And, finally, it was through the vigor which he infused into the financial transactions of this country that Holland was

brought to loan money to Congress without a guarantee from France.

It is impossible to determine very accurately the cost of the Revolutionary War. The amount expended" at the Treasury," reduced to a specie basis, was $92,485,693; but besides this there was expended away from the Treasury enough to cause the total cost to the American States to amount to $135,000,000. Besides this sum, the expenditures of France are estimated by Professor Sumner to have been not less than $60,000,000. And the net amount received by Congress as the result of taxation on which to float so large expenditure was but $2,025,099.

The career of Morris after he resigned his control of the treasury is not especially instructive. structive. He served as Senator from Pennsylvania during the first six years under the Constitution, but his interest in the development of the newly-founded city of Washington was greater than in public questions. He was a speculator by nature, and therefore could not be a statesman; and it is a curious commentary that the man who by his personal credit carried the finances of the Continental Congress through its greatest crisis should have suffered reverses when operating on his HENRY C. ADAMS.

own account.

THE EVOLUTION OF ANTIQUE ART.* M. Georges Perrot, the eminent French archeologist who more than ten years ago set out upon an investigation of the art of Greece, has now arrived within sight of his promised goal. It was a herculean task he proposed to himself, of tracing from its sources the evolution of that antique art which in the regular line of development culminated in the glori ous achievements of Hellenic genius. He began with an exhaustive research among the remains of Egyptian architecture, painting, and sculpture, and, carefully following the path as it opened before him, embraced in his survey

the records found in the ruins of the chief na

tions of anterior Asia, Chaldæa, Assyria, Pho

* HISTORY OF ART IN PERSIA: From the French of Georges Perrot, Member of the Institute, Professor in the Faculty of Letters, Paris; and Charles Chippiez. Illustrated with 254 New York: A. C. Armstrong & Son. engravings in the text, and twelve steel and color plates.

HISTORY OF ART IN PHRYGIA, LYDIA, CARIA, AND LYCIA. From the French of Georges Perrot, Member of the Institute, Professor in the Faculty of Letters, Paris; and Charles Chippiez. Illustrated with 280 engravings. New York: A. C. Armstrong & Son.

nicia, Sardinia, Judæa, Syria and Asia Minor, Persia, Phrygia, Lydia, Caria, and Lycia.

The results of this enormous preliminary work are enclosed in ten imperial octavo volumes, which are a noble monument to the conscientious, ably-directed, and fruitful industry of their author. The two numbers of the series recently placed within the reach of the public contain, in one, the story of the art-life of Persia in the other, that of the four nations last named in the catalogue given just above. They are of the same texture as the volumes preceding them-minute, comprehensive, compact, masterly treatises, awakening in an equal degree interest in their subject and respect for the talents of one who has so splendidly undertaken and executed an arduous enterprise.

The history of Persian art covers but a brief period. The career of the nation was swiftly run. Upon the foundations laid by Cyrus the Great, in 558 B.C., there rose, like a brilliant dream, a civil structure which became the most powerful in the world and the centre of the civilization of its time. Twelve kings, including the usurper Smendis, sat in the order of their inheritance upon the throne erected by Cyrus, and revelled in the oriental might and magnificence he had established. Then the dynasty abruptly terminated. The armies of Alexander and of Darius III., known as Codomannus, met on the fatal field of Arbela, and the unhappy Persian commander perished a year later, 330 B.C., at the hand of one of his own satraps. Thus was the existence of one of the proudest of the great Asiatic monarchies compressed into a term scarcely exceeding two centuries.

Prefacing his main account with a sketchy outline of the physical features of the country surrounding the seat of empire in ancient Iran, of the striking points in the history of its kings, and of the tenets of the national religion, M. Perrot proceeds to a critical examination of the testimonials relating to Persian art that are at present accessible in the archives of literature and in the few remains of once populous cities which still stand on their original sites or have been unearthed by resolute explorers. He leaves to the future exposition of M. Dieulafoy, a fellow countryman and archæologist, the scanty materials lately obtained from the long-lost city of Susa, the Shushan of the book of Esther, whose wealth and extent when captured by Alexander were almost beyond description. But from Pasargadæ, the residence of Cyrus, and Persepolis, enriched

by the palaces of Xerxes and Darius Hystaspis, and from a few less important ruins, he gathers every rescued fragment, and with wonderful patience and skill fits one to another and reads from their obscure surfaces a connected history as inipressive as it is ingenious.

A few rock-cut tombs are found near the sites of the royal cities. They are mausoleums attesting the grandeur of despotic sovereigns. No burial-places of the people have been discovered. Indeed, none ever existed; as, in accordance with their religious teachings, inhumation was avoided, and the bodies of the dead were exposed, as by the Parsees of to-day, to the obscene ravages of birds of prey. Neither were there temples for the worship of their gods. Sacred rites were performed in the open air, before altars on which a flame of pure fire was kept burning as a symbol of the supreme deity, Ahûra-Mazda, the source of light and life. These Atesh-gah, or fire-places, in a ruinous state, are scattered over the land, the sole representatives of the religious architecture of the old Persian empire.

To the royal residences of Pasargadæ and Persepolis we must look almost exclusively for examples of Persian art. There were no walled towns at least in the time of Alexander,— their defense being entrusted to fortresses; and the dwellings of the people were built of wood. These last have utterly perished. The life of the nation was bound up in the king and the officials and attendants ministering to his will. On colossal mounds of artificial construction, his halls of state and private palaces, with the homes for his women, were erected; and here were expended all the inventions of his own and tributary nations, to surround him with the pomp and luxury befitting a barbarian monarch of unexampled wealth and boundless authority. The famous edifice at Karnak can alone compare in size with the wonderful Hypostyle hall of Xerxes at Persepolis, the roof of which was supported by a hundred lofty columns. This probably served the purpose of a throne room; while the palace, dedicated to the king's personal uses, was even more magnificent, exceeding in dimensions and lavish adorn

ment any structure of any age built of wood or stone. In its main apartment seventy-two pillars lifted their airy and elegant shafts to the ceiling, and the walls of the entire interior were encrusted with ivory, precious woods, and gleaming metals, and hung with the costliest tapestries. Reproductions of these sumptuous edifices, in their supposed original splendor, are