554 BELLES-LETTRES 



the people, each in its own region best fitted to phrase the feelings and 

 the aspirations of races dissimilar in their characteristics and in their 

 ideals. No one tongue could voice the opposite desires of the northern 

 peoples and of the southern; and we see the several modern languages 

 revealing by their structure as well as by their vocabularies the 

 essential qualities of the races that fashioned them, each for its own 

 use. Indeed, these racial characteristics are so distinct and so evident 

 to us now that we fancy we can detect them even though they are 

 disguised in the language of Rome; and we find significance in the 

 fact that Seneca, the grandiloquent rhetorician, was by birth a Span- 

 iard, and that Petronius, the robust realist, was probably born in 

 what is now France. 



The segregation of nationality has been accompanied by an increas- 

 ing interest in the several states out of which the nation has made 

 itself, and sometimes even by an effort to raise the dialects of these 

 provinces up to the literary standard of the national language. In 

 this there is no disloyalty to the national ideal, rather is it to be 

 taken as a tribute to the nation, since it seeks to call attention again 

 to the several strands twined in the single bond. In literature this 

 tendency is reflected in a wider liking for local color and in an intense 

 relish for the flavor of the soil. We find Verga painting the violent 

 passions of the Sicilians, and Renter depicting the calmer joys of the 

 Platt-Deutsch. We see Maupassant etching the canny and cautious 

 Normans, while Daudet brushed in broadly the expansive exuber- 

 ance of the Provencals. We delight alike in the Wessex-folk of Mr. 

 Hardy and in the humorous Scots of Mr. Barrio. We extend an equal 

 welcome to the patient figures of New England spinsterhood as drawn 

 by Miss Jewett and Miss Wilkins, and to the virile Westerners set 

 boldly on their feet by Mr. Wister and Mr. Garland. 



What we wish to have explored for us are not only the nooks and 

 corners of our o\vn nation; those of other races appeal also to our 

 sympathetic curiosity. These inquiries help us to understand the 

 larger peoples, of whom the smaller communities are constituent 

 elements. They serve to sharpen our insight into the differences 

 which divide one race from another: and the contrast of Daudet and 

 Maupassant on the one hand with Mark Twain and Kipling on the 

 othfT brings out the width of the jrap that yawns between the Latins 

 (with their solidarity of the family and their reliance on the social 

 instinct) and the Teutons (with their energetic independence and their 

 aggressive individuality). With increase of knowledge there is less 

 likelihood of mutual misunderstandings; and here literature per- 

 forms a most useful service to the cause of civilization. As Tennyson 

 once said. "It is the authors, more than the diplomats, who make 

 nations love one another." Fortunately no hitrh tariff can keep out 

 the masterpieces of foreign literature which freely cross the frontier, 



