enon of the successful failure. And no novel ever so searchingly revealed the inconsequence of what we do. Jeff might have succumbed to drink, but he did not; for he had inherited along with his maternal grandfather's weakness for wine a powerful will and a herculean constitution. He might have. formed a vicious liaison with Bessie Lynde, but the impressiveness and the very validity of the Lynde episode are conditioned by the fact that he did not. He might have been a murderer, but he spared when he had him by the throat the man who had insulted and injured him. He might at the very least have committed arson, but his hotel burned by accident during his absence. Jeff's character is implacably delineated in view of his intentions and potentialities, for which things there is no place in his philosophy. And this is the rare and peculiar capacity in which the art of Howells, with its scorn of crimes and climaxes, can touch deeply.

IV

This discussion has not taken us beyond the rudiments of Howells' humanism; it has but touched in its application to the simple though fundamental problem of personal ethics a spirit that was brought subtly to bear upon the social and political and religious life of the Republic through the most significant periods of its history. It is now the vogue to insist upon the infirmities of that spirit and in particular to discover in Howells' long and sympathetic association with New England his undoing. We are told that "he kow-towed to the stuffy nabobs of Boston," that he found in the circle of Lowell an intellectual haven in which the inquiry promised by his genius was effectually stilled. This fashion will disappear before a wider and deeper study of his works, in which it must become evident that no one has added anything to his depiction of that unofficial aristocracy with which he so intimately acquainted himself. Furthermore, the fact that the incident of Pfaff's beer-cellar has recently been brought out for another rehauling (the Freeman submitting that Mr. Don

Seitz may have put the final eriticism of Mr. Howells in mentioning his pausing gingerly at the door of Pfaff's and then passing on) suggests that those free spirits who make much of his timid respectability owe him a more careful reading. For no one has yet approached his ground as an analyst of the Puritan temperament. He has given us albeit with a touching sympathy the inside history of the civilization that came over to our shores in what is called by one of his British noblemen the "Mayblossom." The subtleties of Puritan hostility to the joy of living are nowhere fully exposed but in his、 pages. Nor is this incidental to the transcription of social types; for while Howells accords his subjects a complete and impartial acceptance, the impulse behind his portraiture is ever a feeling for the humanity that is alien to them.

One aspect of Howells' democracy that should be mentioned in conclusion will continue to occasion difficulty with his admirers-the democratization of the arts. For many it were easier to vision the brotherhood of man than, let us say, popular editions of the Howells novels. But Howells never relinquished his faith in the effectiveness of the novel as a socializing instrument. He thought of literature as already out of the palace and the cloister and perhaps as far as the forum, and cherished what seemed to many of his friends the optimistic delusion that it must one day reach the marketplace. He believed in Michael Angelo's "light of the piazza" as an artistic criterion, even when Tolstoi invoked it to condemn "The Last Judgment." Mark Twain, indeed, in a friendly letter, gave America one hundred years to make the Howells books as common as Bibles; but it were safer perhaps to rely on the more modest prophecy of Henry James, who looked forward to what he called a "beautiful time" when the critical intelligence, an entity about which he was somewhat doubtful, should begin to render Howells its tribute.

JULIET'S TOMB

BY J. F. SCHELTEMA

Fecund of anguish and misery, our World War abounded also in humorous incidents. One of its rattling good jokes was sprung upon us by the authorities at Rome, who, in their laudable solicitude for Italian art treasures and historical monuments, saw fit to class "Juliet's Tomb" at Verona among the latter, ordering that alleged burying-place of Shakespeare's precocious little heroine to be made bombproof and otherwise secure against Austrian air raids, which had done so much damage in Venice, Ancona, and Padua. The proceeding loses nothing of its savor by our granting that it was quite in line with the stand taken by the Italian Government when on October 30th, 1910, Signor Luzzati, then its Prime Minister, and the Marquis of San Giuliano, then Minister for Foreign Affairs, accompanied in a driving rain Sir J. Rennell Rodd, then British Ambassador to the Quirinal, from the railway station outside the Porta Nuova, along the Via Campone and the Via Capuccini to the Campo di Fiera for the unveiling of the Veronese sculptor Renato Cattani's bust of the English prince of poets and dramatists; Shakepeare in Carrarese marble, raised on a massive pedestal adorned with scenes from his immortal love story, being admitted to the company of the old heroes and rulers of the land, King Theodoric and Ezzelino da Romano, Martino della Scala, Can Grande and succeeding Scaligers, not to mention the locally most venerated saints, San Zeno, Santa Anastasia, and Santa Maria Matricolare. Coming out in festive dress, many a gay and pert Rosaline tripping among them, the townspeople showed a proper appreciation of the honor conferred upon their glorious city. Though wetted to the skin, they responded enthusiastically to the obligatory speeches in the Town Hall, some crying Romeo, some Juliet, and some the Swan of Avon, a fulfilment in gala of the latter's prophecy,

however melancholy the limitation might be, that the formers'

woes shall serve

For sweet discourses in (all) time to come

More than her native or naturalized heroes and rulers of the land, more than the saints honored at her altars, it is the famosissimo poeta of foreign birth that profits Verona by urging thither the commiserating whose souls still melt at the sad tale of the star-crossed lovers. It is Juliet's Tomb that draws the tourist "doing" Italy, rather than the Duomo with Tizian's Assumption, the Arch of the Scaligers, the Loggia planned by Fra Giocondo or the palaces built by Michele Sammicheli. The soft spot in our hearts makes all of us yearn to pay our respects to the tender passion at the Sepolcro di Giulietta, undismayed by the opinion of too precise archaeologists who call it a fake. If we may believe Girolamo della Carte, something similar to Romeo and Juliet's misadventurous amours did actually occur in Verona about the beginning of the fourteenth century, in the reign of Bartolomeo della Scala, Shakespeare's Prince Escalus, but..........But why this butting of buts? Let us divest ourselves of the cavilling spirit of unbelief, fortified by the strong faith of the eminent composer, Victorin de Joncières, who complained that such a sacred relic was so badly looked after and that its reliquary, the so-called chapel wherein it is cased, was so badly out of repair. Or, if we must be skeptically inclined, let us rejoice in the knowledge that, when cell and sarcophage become unfit for further display in the course of their being clipped off by souvenir-gathering devotees; that, when the "sacred relic" has been carried off piecemeal, an enterprising generation may be trusted for obliging us with a new and equally authentic mise-en-scène to stage what scoffers jeer at as the permanent hoax of Verona.

Its insistence on being the genuine article makes it almost an act of contumacy to spend any time or thought on the other lions of the city, transformed by Sammicheli, no less

great as a military engineer than as an architect, into one of the most formidable strongholds of Europe. Its turreted walls of fortification, razed according to the provisions of the Treaty of Luneville, but rebuilt by the Austrians, are still pierced by the Porta Nuova and the Porta del Palio, those splendid gates of his design. Let nobody slight them, not even the most devout worshiper at Juliet's shrine. They are well worth our attention together with the Arena, that fine Roman amphitheatre, traditionally known as King Theodoric's house. And on hot afternoons, loitering under the cypresses of the Giardino Giusti, we can digest the impressions received in palaces and churches like San Giovanni in Valle or San Giorgio in Braida or San Bernardino, not quite so pretentious as Santa Anastasia and San Zeno Maggiore, but sincerely inferior as regards artistic merit. And we can enjoy at our leisure the magnificent view over the Lake of Garda wedged between the mountain ranges through which the Adige and the Chiese foam down from the Tyrol to the fertile plains of the Veneto and Lombardy. Then, refreshed by having abandoned ourselves for a space to the embrace of a dolce far niente which agrees so well with the enjoyment of a landscape under a southern sky, our wrath will be aroused with northern vigor by the marks of vulgar hands on stuccoed walls, sculptored detail, and statuary. Admitted as guests to proud ancestral estates and country-seats, to rare collections of art in historical homes, touring plebeians manifestly find their low satisfaction in defacing everything they can lay their insolent fingers on, chipping, whittling, recording their uninteresting names as if to testify to the truth of the very pertinent adage

Ce n'est que la canaille

Qui met son nom sur la muraille.

Alas! it is not only the sightseers that revel in destruction and spoliation. Even worse vandals are the "experts" responsible for the deliberate mutilation of many a noble building,