556 BELLES-LETTRES 



grandmother of the Yvetteoi Maupassant; and the dialogues of Heron- 

 das and of Theocritus serve as models for many a vignette of modern 

 life. The Golden Ass went before Gil Bias and made a path for him, 

 and Gil Bias pointed the way for Huckleberry Finn. It is easy to 

 detect the influence of Richardson on Rousseau, of Rousseau on 

 George Sand, of George Sand on Turgenef, of Turgenef on Mr. Henry 

 James, of Mr. James on M. Paul Bourget, of M. Bourget on Signor 

 d' Annunzio; and yet there is no denying that Richardson is radically 

 British, that Turgenef is thoroughly Russian, and that d ; Annunzio 

 is unquestionably Italian. 



In like manner we may recognize the striking similarity but 

 only in so far as the external form is concerned discoverable in 

 those short stories which are as abundant as they are important in 

 every modern literature; and yet much of our delight in these brief 

 studies from life is due to the pungency of their local flavor, whether 

 they were written by Kjelland or by Sacher-Masoch, by Auerbach 

 or by Daudet, by Barrie or by Bret Harte. " All can grow the flower 

 now, for all have got the seed"; but the blossoms are rich with the 

 strength of the soil in which each of them is rooted. 



This racial individuality is our immediate hope; it is our safeguard 

 against mere craftsmanship, against dilettant dexterity, against 

 cleverness for its own sake, against the danger that our cosmopoli- 

 tanism may degenerate into Alexandrianism and that our century 

 may come to be like the age of the Antonincs, when " a cloud of critics , 

 of compilers, of commentators darkened the face of learning," so 

 Gibbon tells us, and "the decline of genius was soon followed by the 

 corruption of taste." It is the spirit of nationality which will supply 

 needful idealism; it will allow a man of letters to frequent the past 

 without becoming archaic and to travel abroad without becoming 

 exotic, because it will supply him always with a good reason for 

 remaining a citizen of his own country. 



VI 



Whether it is due to this correction of cosmopolitanism by national 

 ideals, whether it is rather to be credited to the spread of democracy 

 or to the increasing use of the scientific method, the fact is indis- 

 putable that since the slow disintegration of the Holy Roman Empire 

 was followed by the steady compacting of the modern nations with 

 their several tongues (finally forcing the abandonment of Latin as 

 the universal language of the learned), there has been no epoch until 

 the present when all men of education and of culture have been able 

 to consider themselves as citizens of the world. Perhaps it is not 

 fanciful to see in this Congress of the Arts and Sciences satisfactory 

 evidence of the solidarity of the artists and of the scientists of every 

 race. A Congress like this has been possible only within the past score 



