EDITOR'S TABLE. 



701 



noted the startling fact recorded in it. The 

 gifted narrator tells us how, shortly after 

 the sun had sunk in the west, there came a 

 glow in the east, and presently ' the crescent 

 moon peeps above the plain ' " ; then you 

 tell Mr. H. R. Haggard that it " won't do." 

 Now I wish to call your attention to the 

 fact that there must be people who think it 

 will do, because, in " The Book-Buyer " for 

 April, 188*7 (Charles Scribner's Sons), in a 

 short review of "Cathedral Days," by Anna 

 Bowman Dodd, Mr. Edmund C. Stedman 

 quotes a descriptive passage. He says, 

 " Take this sunset picture with its felicitous 

 touch at the close." The " felicitous touch " 

 contains the following : " The work of the 



day for man and beast, and for the sun, as 

 well, was done: all three were going to 

 their evening rest. A boy with a sickle 

 over his straight young back walked near 

 us, whistling a gay little air. The sickle 

 was repeated in silver in the sky, the dawn- 

 ing crescent of the young moon cleaving the 

 eastern horizon." I do not like Mr. Hag- 

 gard's books ; they are as sickening as raw 

 meat. But he has been rated so soundly 

 on that one mistake that I wish it noted 

 that others, and educated people, too, can 

 make the same blunder. 

 Yours respectfully, 



Anne M. Johnson, 494 Centre Street. 

 Jamaica Plain, Mass. 



EDITOR'S TABLE. 



CULTURE AND CHARACTER. 



THAT intellectual superiority is not 

 an end in itself is apparent from 

 more than one consideration. Comte 

 has said with truth that " we get tired 

 of knowing, but never get tired of lov- 

 ing " ; and a writer who carries more 

 authority still has said that, when 

 tongues fail and knowledge ceases, 

 charity will still abide. What seems to 

 decide the question, however, is the 

 fact that, when knowledge or intellect- 

 ual power is made an end in itself, the 

 result is more or less failure and disap- 

 pointment. " Knowledge comes, but 

 wisdom lingers," the poet has said ; 

 and, to a reflective mind, the distinc- 

 tion between the two is not difficult to 

 seize. He who has knowledge only, 

 knows things and their relations ; him- 

 self and his relations, above all himself 

 in his relation to the true human ideal, 

 he does not know. He seeks to make 

 his knowledge subservient to his own 

 personal ends ; he does not regard it as 

 a revelation of duties to be done, of 

 sacrifices to be made, of heights to be 

 attained. He who has wisdom, on the 

 other hand, holds his knowledge in 

 trust for higher than personal ends, and 

 makes us realize, as other men do not, 

 the true value and dignity of knowl- 

 edge. 



Character, then, i3 the principal 



thing. It is character that we continu- 

 ally find to be limiting and conditioning 

 culture ; that is to say, if culture is not 

 carried farther than we find it to be in 

 certain cases, the reason is that the 

 character, the moral nature, has not 

 been such as to support and sustain a 

 truly generous culture. There is, per- 

 haps, a finely-developed sestheticism in 

 certain directions, but the lack of cult- 

 ure's perfect work is seen in a certain 

 hard materialism of personal aspiration. 

 The disciple, perchance apostle, of 

 beauty is far from beautiful when we 

 get a glimpse of his inner life and es- 

 sential aims. He has never learned that 

 the prime secret of all beauty in hu- 

 man life lies in disinterestedness, in the 

 ability to put self aside, on some occa- 

 sions at least, and to live in causes and 

 principles and, above all, in one's fel- 

 low-beings. Few things are more try- 

 ing than the mock enthusiasm of very 

 mediocre men and women for things 

 that they have learned to admire as by 

 rote, to hear the jargon of the literary 

 or artistic coterie ind to know how 

 little it all means as regards real eleva- 

 tion of character and sentiment. And 

 what we say of literary and artistic 

 coteries we might apply with equal 

 truth to scientific coteries, where mi- 

 nute points of classification and nomen- 

 clature are discussed with infinite zeal 



