LITERATURE (FICTION), AMERICAN. 



the same time he secretly courted the interposi- 

 tion of the European powers, and by giving secret 

 pledges to Russia gained what appeared to be a 

 diplomatic victory when that power stepped in 

 and, backed by Germany and France, forbade the 

 retention by Japan of the Liao-Tung peninsula, 

 which the Japanese were not unwilling to evacu- 

 ate. He played Great Britain against Russia, but 

 with all his craft could not prevent the seizure of 

 naval stations by the powers when Russia took 

 Port Arthur and began the Manchurian Railroad. 

 His guiding iniluence at Pekin passed over to 

 reactionary Manchus, and he became again a pro- 

 vincial ruler. The Boxer outbreaks and the anti- 

 foreign counsels at court he was not in the posi- 

 tion or on the spot to prevent. The occupation 

 of Pekin by the allied troops proved to the anti- 

 foreign Chinese that they were still unable to 

 carry on war against Europeans. Li alone held 

 the keys of Chinese diplomacy, and had never lost 

 the confidence of the Empress Dowager, who owed 

 her ruling position no less to him than he owed 

 to her his advancement. During the crisis he 

 appealed, with the other southern viceroys, to the 

 powers to respect the sovereign rights and the ter- 

 ritory of China. When he was first recalled to 

 Pekin the allies forbade his passage, and he had 

 no intention of going at that moment. The Brit- 

 ish distrusted him as a friend of Russia; but the 

 Russians did not trust him, knowing that he was 

 alive only to the interests of China. When the 

 conditions for the evacuation of Pechili had to 

 be discussed, Li-Hung-Chang was appointed at 

 the head of the Chinese commission, having full 

 powers to treat with the foreign ministers at 

 Pekin. He was an invalid subject to crises that 

 brought him to death's door; yet all the negotia- 

 tions were conducted by him. It was his skill and 

 authority in diplomacy that brought the powers 

 and the Chinese court into final agreement. When 

 Russia pressed on China during the joint negotia- 

 tions the Manchurian convention, Li appealed in 

 protest to the powers, and Russia deferred the 

 matter till after the peace negotiations were con- 

 cluded. Then the negotiations with Russia were 

 resumed, and Li's death was said to have been 

 caused immediately by the heat and anxiety with 

 which he resisted some of the Russian demands at 

 one of his conferences with the Czar's minister. 

 Although he knew no European language, Li- 

 Hung-Chang always was glad to meet eminent 

 foreigners who visited China, and always im- 

 pressed them with his fine presence and dignified 

 manners, and interested them with his searching 

 questions, his artful compliments, and his shrewd 

 and humorous criticisms and broad philosophy. 

 In 1896, after attending the coronation of the 

 Czar, he made the tour of Europe and the United 

 States, and was so accessible and genial wherever 

 he went that no Chinaman was so well known 

 abroad. 



LITEB ATTIRE (FICTION), AMERICAN. 

 The utter futility of the perennial effort to de- 

 duce from literary phenomena a general law that 

 shall change criticism from an art into a science 

 becomes more apparent with every passing year. 

 Aristotle, Plato, Sainte-Beuve, Emerson, Barrett 

 Wendell, and the anonymous journalistic book 

 reviewers have vainly sighed for a working for- 

 mula that should sift the chaff of print from the 

 wheat of literature, a golden rule of letters from 

 which no appeal could be taken by author, pub- 

 lisher, or reading public. How ancient and how 

 futile is this quest for an infallible touchstone that 

 shall enable the critic to distinguish at once be- 

 tween the counterfeit and the real in any line 

 of art is amusingly suggested by Rudyard Kip- 



ling in his satirical poem The ( 'onutuli nn; of the 

 Workshops : 



When the flush of a. new-bora .sun I'd . l.uui's 



green and gold, 

 Our lather Adam hat under the tree ami ;;. a 



stick in the mold, 

 And the ftrst rude sketeh that tho world had seen -.va.s 



joy to his mighty heart, 

 Till the devil whispered behind the leaves, " It'., i>reMy, 



but is it art ''< " 



To the literary critic who glances casually back 

 upon the output of American fiction during thu 

 opening years of the twentieth century conie.s, 

 perhaps, the melancholy thought that " we know 

 as much as our father Adam knew." We see 

 novels that defy almost every recognized rule of 

 fiction-writing winning the most astounding suc- 

 cess from a commercial standpoint, while the 

 judicious grieve and marvel at the seeming pref- 

 erence of the public for the bud to the blossom, 

 for the fragment rather than the completed whole. 



The conservative critic holds, to use a mathe- 

 matical illustration, that the novel should be 

 cubical in form, but, lo! Kipling, Bacheller, and 

 others give it a linear demonstration, and point 

 for vindication to their green laurels and yellow 

 gold. 



One of the perils, however, that the critic of 

 contemporary fiction must avoid lies in mistaking 

 striking exceptions for proofs of a general tend- 

 ency. While it is true that the elongated char- 

 acter sketch or the amorphous presentation of 

 local color masquerading in the garb of novels 

 have won rich rewards for their authors and pub- 

 lishers, it is satisfactory to observe that fiction of 

 a higher order, showing more regard for the tra- 

 ditional obligations of its own art form, has not 

 failed of popular recognition. The applause won 

 by Gilbert Parker's The Right of Way from both 

 the public and the critics restores our faith in the 

 ultimate triumph of the axiom, as true in art as 

 in mathematics, that the whole is greater than 

 any of its parts, that a fragment can never be 

 anything but a fragment. The Right of Way is 

 a novel that is, it is an artistic presentation of 

 human life, combining narrative interest, charac- 

 ter drawing, and development, the interplay of 

 physical and psychical forces in the forging of 

 individual destinies; not disdaining the devices 

 that beget suspense, nor the cumulative effects 

 that produce both minor and major climaxes. 

 Here is no overemphasis in the wrong place, no 

 thrusting of too great a load upon the shoulders 

 of a single character, no effort to make an envi- 

 ronment do duty in place of a plot, or a quaint 

 remark in dialect satisfy the reader's longing for 

 an episode. It is not too much to say that Mr. 

 Parker is one of the comparatively few success- 

 ful novelists of the day who realize that they owe 

 many obligations to their readers, that vivid de- 

 scription can not atone for lack of ingenuity in 

 plot, nor one effective bit of character work sat- 

 isfy the demands of a long novel. 



" The strenuous life " is an expression that has 

 come into general vogue of late. Uttered first by 

 the President of the United States, who has dem- 

 onstrated the efficacy of his practical philosophy, 

 it has taken its place as a phrase that represents 

 the intensity of modern effort in various lines of 

 endeavor. That the young century has great 

 work to do in old and new fields of activity is a 

 creed to which the dominant nations of- the earth 

 unanimously subscribe. But for what we call 

 modern progress we are still seeking a sanction. 

 There are those who ask it from religion, those 

 who demand it of science, and still others who 



