THE DOWNFALL OF GORKI.
RUINED BY FLATTERY.

UNDER the somewhat colloquial American phrase of "Gorki's Finish" Dr. Filosofov, the well-known Russian literary and art critic, contributes to a recent number of Russkaya Mysi (Russian Thought) a searching criticism of Maxim Gorki's recent work, particularly his somewhat bitter reflections on American social and political conditions. Two things, he says, have ruined Gorki-" His successes and a naïve, poorly-digested Socialism." The latest productions of the celebrated Russian author, particularly "The Barbarians," "The Enemies," "In America," and "My Interviews," this critic thinks, have done so much to injure his literary fame, have "indicated such a decomposition of talent, that it is difficult to believe his regeneration possible."

HIS RAPID RISE TO FAME.

Rapidly surveying the career of Gorki, Dr. Filosofov points out his remarkable and rapid success. Not even Tolstoi and Chekhov received such "slavish and boundless flattery." Gorki was the hero of a day, the favourite of the public, in much the same way as an opera singer who in a few years turns the heads of all his admirers, and then, when he has lost his voice, passes from the scene and sinks into oblivion. There is reason for all this, says the Russian critic :

He appeared just at the right time. He touched such deep chords in human nature that he met with response throughout all "new Russia," which had just begun to awaken. The masses believed that his talent was inexhaustible. They flattered him, tickled his egotism, and almost literally made him their idol. They gave him no chance to concentrate himself, to realise the limits of his power and the nature of his talent. The drama "On the Bottom" was the summit of Gorki's productiveness. After the conception of this his downfall began. Since the whole world has read his productions, the whole world now sees how he has fallen, how he himself has reached the bottom of man's triviality and pretentious rhetoric. Gorki sincerely believed himself to be the ruler of the masses, the sovereign of their thoughts and hearts, independent, subordinate to no human soul-not realising how he had lost even the shadow of freedom.

Gorki, says his critic, rarely saw any true criticism of his work at home. He did see "critical hysterics and the outbursts of applause of the mob which, by idolising him, ruined him." Now this mob coolly announces that his latest productions have met with unanimous disapproval.

THE CAUSE OF HIS DOWNFALL.

Gorki's real force lay in picturing the type of the Russian tramp, the bosyak. As soon as he attempted "to sweeten the bitterness of this tramp's lot with the sugar of Socialism it is quite natural that he should have failed." As to his productions on American conditions, "In America" and "My Interviews," in these Gorki for the first time concerns himself with the world outside his own country, and does it "in a very careless way." Europe cannot trust, concludes Dr. Filosofov, Gorki's "superficial and banal impressions" :

All Gorki has told us about America he learned from the

window of his hotel or from the platform of the trolley car. They are little better than the usual generalising impressions of a tourist with a poor education and no knowledge of the language. What he expected and desired from America we do not know. Any provincial reporter, however, upon an order to write a couple of feuilletons, could have described America and American conditions just as well as Gorki has done.

COWPER AND HIS FRIENDS.
HAYLEY'S ECSTATIC VISION.

IN the July number of the Atlantic Monthly Mr. Edward Dowden tells the story of two manuscripts which William Hayley, the biographer of Cowper, prepared for posthumous publication. One, dated 1794, describes Hayley's efforts to obtain a pension for the poet; the other, dated 1809, is a memorial of Hayley's endeavours to serve his friend, and contains an account of devices employed to restore Cowper's dejected spirits. The manuscripts have never appeared in print.

The starting point of Hayley's "devices" was a letter from Cowper describing his perfect despair, and the idea occurred to Hayley that the supernatural might be used as a device to lift Cowper out of his melancholy. In his reply to Cowper, Hayley described an ecstatic vision in which he beheld two angelic forms kneeling on the steps of the throne of God. These were the poet's mother and his own mother in supplication for the restoration of Cowper's mental serenity. Cowper's mother said to Hayley that the poet would receive letters from Members of Parliament, Judges, Bishops, the Prime Minister and the King, thanking him for his devotional poetry.

The perusal of the Vision by Cowper is said to have had a much better effect than could have been anticipated. The next step was for Hayley and Lady Hesketh to entreat those who answered to the description in the Vision to write to Cowper. Letters were received from Wilberforce (a member of Parliament), Bishop Porteus of London, and Bishop Watson of Llandaff. Meanwhile Cowper resumed his work on Homer, and Hayley flattered himself that his efforts had not been useless. But while Cowper could misery lay below, and to make escape from it was thus for a time keep his mind above his misery, the impossible.

Whether Hayley's visionary devices for Cowper's restoration were the lost labours of a love that was not wise, the same, says Mr. Dowden, cannot be thought of his unremitting efforts to secure a pension for his friend; but at the end of two years, when Lord Spencer's letter announced that the pension had been granted, Cowper was in no condition to be disturbed even by these tidings of good cheer.

COMTE ALBERT DE MUN contributes to the Dublin Review a paper written in French on the religious question in France. He concludes a survey of thirtyone pages by saying that the present crisis will end necessarily, sooner or later, in a new agreement with the Holy See.

ARE THE PEOPLE RELIGIOUS ?

REV. CANON BARNETT Contributes to the Hibbert Journal a characteristically thoughtful paper on the religion of the people. He takes up the statement frequently made that "the people are at heart religious." He testifies to the growth of greater tolerance and respect for the representatives of religion, as also to a widely spread kindness, generosity, and public spirit. WHAT IS RELIGION?

The Canon offers as a definition that "religion is thought about the Higher than self worked through the emotions into the acts of daily life," and goes on:

This definition involves three constituents:-1. There must be use of thought-the power of mental concentration-so that the mind may break through the obvious and the conventional. 2. There must be a sense of a not-self which is higher than self -knowledge of a Most High whose presence convicts the self of shortcoming and draws it upward. 3. There must be such a realisation of this not-self-such a form, be it image, doctrine, book, or life-as will warm the emotions and so make the Higher than self tell on every act and experience of daily life.

The

He asks how far these three constituents are to be found among the people. He grants that the nonchurch-going population are certainly using their powers of thought. This thought is directed towards the Higher than self. It goes toward goodness. "Universal homage is paid to the character of Christ." people have the_thought that the High and Mighty which inhabits Eternity is good. "But the nonchurchgoing population has no means of realising the Most High in a form which sustains and inspires its action." They cannot use the words about the Most High which the churches and preachers use. They see" what seem to them stiff services, irrational doctrine, disorganised and unbusiness-like systems, and the self-assertion of priests and ministers." In the case of the great mass of the people, the Canon declares," their thought of God is not worked through their emotions into their daily lives." The majority of English citizens would in an earthquake behave as brave men, but they have not the faith of the negroes who in the midst of such havoc sang songs of praise.

THREE INFALLIBLE SIGNS.

The

The three infallible signs of the presence of religion, he goes on to say, are calm courage, joyful humility, and a sense of life stronger than death. These signs are not obvious among the people. Canon thinks that as the end to which the world is moving is not a universal empire under the dominance of the strongest, but a unity in which the strength of each nationality will make possible the federation of the world, so the hope of religion is not in the dominance of any one denomination, but in a unity to which each is necessary. There is dawning on the horizon a greater lesson than that of toleration of differences; it is that of respect for differences. He says:

As that lesson prevails, each denomination will not cease to be keen for its own belief; it will also be keen to pay honour to every honest belief. The neighbourhood of another denomi

nation will be as welcome as the discovery of another star to the astronomer, or as the finding of a new animal to the naturalist, or as is the presence of another strong personality in a company of friends. The Church of the future cannot be complete without many chapels. The flock of the Good Shepherd includes many folds.

He concludes by saying that his own belief is that the eye opened by higher education is on the way to find in the present the form of the Christ who will satisfy the human longing for the Higher than self.

SCHOOL GARDENS FOR CONSUMPTIVE CHILDREN. How serious a scourge consumption is in France is well known, but the country is waking up, and with admirable zeal is trying to discover the best means to combat the evil.

Louis Rivière, in the Correspondant of July 10, gives an interesting account of the work of Professor Grancher. His aim is before all things, he says, to preserve the child. In 1903 he founded the Society for the Protection of Children against Consumption, a society which seeks out the children of consumptives in Paris, and sends them to the country, in peasant families, to be looked after by physicians selected by the society.

OPEN AIR SCHOOLS.

But the work of this institution being, naturally, very limited, M. Grancher has conceived another plan. Thanks to a municipal councillor, the City of Paris has conceded a piece of the Bois de Vincennes, and to it bands of forty to a hundred school children are sent every day. More than 1,200 children thus enjoy games in the open air.

For children already attacked by the disease, a prolonged stay in the country, with suitable treatment, is necessary. For these two open air schools are to be started, and the children will continue their school work under the supervision of a doctor. A similar system is at work in Berlin, where Dr. Bendix conceived the idea of the school in the forest. The children arrive by tram or walk to the school (a wooden building) about half-past seven in the morning. Immediately on their arrival they are given a plate of warm soup and a piece of bread. After their first lessons they have a glass of milk and some bread ; at midday, a meal of meat, green vegetables, and and at four milk and bread. potatoes; At seven they return to their homes. The Municipality undertakes to pay the cost of the poor children; the rest pay according to the means of their parents. The first school was open from August to October in 1904 and the results were satisfactory; and in 1905 the success of the system was still greater. The report for 1906, when the number of children was to be doubled, is not yet published.

The school in the forest is reserved for delicate children predisposed to tuberculosis. For those already attacked by the disease day sanatoriums in the forest have been established by many German cities.

GAMBLING IN DEATH.

SOME STARTLING ALLEGATIONS. ALTHOUGH expressly forbidden by law, speculating in life insurance policies on human lives, says Mr. T. W. Wilkinson in Chambers's Journal, is still carried on wholesale in certain parts of the country, notably Swansea, Belfast, Blackburn, Glasgow, and other towns with a large industrial population. In these towns there are, he asserts, thousands of people holding policies on lives in which they have no insurable interest :

Some working-class people are paying as much as twenty shillings or twenty-five shillings per week in premiums, while there are plungers who "put" hundreds of pounds every year on "good subjects," of whom, unfortunately, there is no lack in industrial centres. These are mostly shopkeepers in squalid neighbourhoods; and, knowing as they do practically everybody within a radius of a quarter of a mile, they are able to select their lives so that they run absolutely no risk, provided the insurance companies do not repudiate their agreements. Indeed, men of this class have made fortunes out of life offices which have gambled with them knowingly or unawares.

INSURING PAUPERS.

Mr. Wilkinson makes some startling statements regarding the methods employed by those who indulge in this despicable form of gambling. Rascally agents who stick at nothing to get business are in many cases to blame :

At

They badger people to insure anybody they know, preferably somebody with an obscure disease or a "churchyard cough"; they themselves fill up the proposal forms with a callous disregard of truth unmatched by any class except witnesses in the Divorce Court; and, if need be, they find a disreputable, broken-down doctor to make the medical examinations. their instigation and with their aid, persons disposed to gamble in death begin by insuring their friends and neighbours, and, when these are exhausted, perhaps fall back on old paupers whose shakiness warrants a prognosis favourable to their cupidity. Such denizens of life's backwaters are, indeed, favourite subjects in some towns, most of them being insured, generally without their knowledge, by one or more gamblers.

Paupers in the workhouse are considered fair game. About twenty to forty pounds is frequently paid to gamblers on the death of a pauper, and so prevalent is this speculation in death in some regions that the Boards of Guardians endeavour to compel the gamblers to pay the funeral expenses. A certain big operator, a woman, says Mr. Wilkinson, invariably paid for the funeral of the people she insured.

PROFESSIONAL DUMMIES.

The traffickers in policies sometimes aspire to higher things, having thousands of pounds at stake on a few lives. A race of "professionals" has grown up ---that is, men who for sixpence or a shilling will let anybody insure them. Pay this fee and they will sign proposal forms all day long. In real life they are mostly loafers, casual workers, or unskilled labourers. A certain insurance office made some curious discoveries as the result of a special investigation into its business in a northern town :-

A so-called poultry salesman, who was insured for about nine thousand pounds in the aggregate, proved to be a market loafer;

a pipe manufacturer, on whose life were policies to the amount of three thousand three hundred and eighty pounds, was in fact a vendor of clay-pipes-when not in the workhouse; a coal dealer worth one thousand nine hundred pounds dead was virtually a pauper alive, the only justification for his description being that he had sometimes hawked coals in bags; and an undertaker and coach proprietor resolved himself into a cabwasher and stable-assistant, though he was insured for four thousand pounds.¡

The gamblers have been known to hasten the desired end by plying their victims with drink. In order to obtain a doctor's certificate they lend their tools the necessary clothes, etc., required to play the part of a man in a position to insure his life for a good round sum. If all that Mr. Wilkinson says about this evil is true, it is clear that the law as it at present stands is ineffective. He suggests by way of remedy that the Legislature should at least impose a penalty for every insurance effected contrary to the true intent and meaning of the Act. Speculative It insurance of infants is now practically unknown. should not be impossible to make the gambling in adult lives equally rare.

"GOD IN TERMS OF PURPOSE."

As against the idealism of Hegel, served up by Mr. Campbell in his talk of the Divine immanence, Professor A. C. M'Giffert in the Hibbert Journal puts the Kantian interpretation of God in terms of rational purpose. He goes on to say :

Ritschl followed the same line, but gave to the purpose of God a Christian interpretation, seeing in the Kingdom which Kant had represented as God's great aim, not a kingdom of virtue and happiness beyond the grave, but the reign of the spirit of love on earth. One may think as one picases about Ritschl's theology. It is full of defects, and has been made worse rather than better by his followers. But in its interpretation of God in terms of purpose, and in its interpretation of the Divine purpose in terms of Christ's ethical message, it points the way along which Christian thinkers who seek a theology that shall support the modern social gospel will do well to travel.

We need a God of purpose, and a God whose purpose is identical with the supreme Christian purpose, and this God we get in the revelation of Jesus Christ. Studying Him, we discover that His great end was the Kingdom of God, the reign of the spirit of love among men, and that He believed this to be the supreme concern of the God whose will was His meat and drink. And the complete victory which He won over the world in spite of His apparent defeat, won through faith in God and through devotion to His purpose, and the victory which we ourselves win when we follow Him in the like trust and in the like devotion, give us the strongest possible guarantee that there is such a God as Jesus revealed, with such a purpose as He fulfilled. Living in faith in Him and in devotion to His will we are victorious, and bringing others to a like faith and devotion we give them, too, the victory.

The Bishop of Clogher in the same magazine finds the positive and impregnable content of Christian ethics in the idea of the Kingdom of God. "Christ can identify the good of the individual with that of the community without destroying the independence of the former, because the Kingdom is no mere state or social organism, but a union of human souls in God."

Lactose or Milk Sugar. 6.21 0.31 4.88 0'71

Human Cow's Goat's

12.59 2.29 3.78 87.41 12.83 3.55 3.69 87.17 14'29 4'29 4.78 4:46 0.76 85.71

In a crêche at Alexandria babies fed direct from the goats are plump and rosy, need no medicine, rarely cry, just drink and sleep. Accounts from all parts of the country show that the children of agricultural labourers rarely get any milk at all. A correspondent is quoted who says :-

Seventy-five per cent. of the cottage families in the country could keep a goat or two if they would; and, besides nourishing the children better, could find both income and interest in so doing; but they will not.

GOAT-KEEPING PROFITABLE.

He puts the cost of feeding a goat in the country at 8d. a week, and in the suburbs at 1s. 9d. He says:

One of the most reasonable balance-sheets we have seen made out by a goat-keeper was the following:

EXPENSES.

:

£3 10s., and sold locally in about two years' s. d. time at IIOS. (reckoning interest).

food, stud fee (Is.), and incidentals

contribution in respect of labour and housing

I 2

2 12

I O

£4 14

THE CREED OF A BLIND OPTIMIST. VERILY the blind shall lead them! We have been

taught by many thoughtful philosophers that all our

ideas come to us from what we see and hear and feel of the outward world. But, says Mr. Edward Everett Hale, writing in the New York Outlook for July on Helen Keller's life, here is this young woman who cannot see and cannot hear, yet whose idealism is more ideal than that of nine out of ten of the ten sense people:

In the eternal controversy between the Word and the Fact she cannot see the written word in the stars, in the ocean, in the green grass, in the violet or the dandelion. She cannot hear the spoken word in the song of the blue-bird or the cricket or the peep-frog or the thunder of the surf on the shore. But none the less she does know what is the omnipotence of God, what is the Infinite range of Hope, and what is Faith in the unseen.

She has found out what is the practice of optimism. Dr. Hale quotes the following passage from her little book on Optimism as best embodying this blind girl's view of life and its duties:—

If I should try to say anew the creed of the optimist, I should say something like this: "I believe in God, I believe in man, I believe in the power of the spirit. I believe it is a sacred duty to encourage ourselves and others; to hold the tongue from any unhappy word against God's world, because no man has any right to complain of a universe which God made good, and which thousands of men have striven to keep good. I believe we should so act that we may draw nearer and more near the age when no man shall live at his ease while another suffers."

THE TASTE OF GOAT'S MILK. The alleged unpleasant taste of goat's milk is due to adventitious causes :

From repeated experiments which we have made, we have found that people who taste clean goat's milk for the first time are unable to distinguish it from cow's milk except by its greater richness and sweetness.

The breeds which furnish the best milk are the Alpine, Toggenburg, and Maltese, and the AngloNubian in some strains. It is surprising, after all this, to hear that the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries refuses to permit the importation of goats, alleging fear of the introduction of foot-and-mouth disease. The writer concludes :---

It is interesting to contrast with the attitude of the Board the action of the United States Department of Agriculture. A professor on its staff lately came to Europe and took back with him to America no fewer than sixty-eight goats.

But the economic aspect of Professor Fick's house does not begin with the daily meals. In the first place, he would like to change the present hostile relations between landlord and tenant, and to accomplish this he suggests that the tenants shall take over part of the mortgage on the property, the mortgage share to be held by the tenant only as long as he occupies a flat in the house. Under this system it is expected the tenants will not consider their apartments temporary abodes. They are to feel like partners in the enterprise, and the proprietor is also to receive a greater revenue from his property than he does at present. In addition to co-operative financing, it is suggested there should be co-operative planning and building, and the control of the house should be in the hands of the tenants.

THE FOOD OF THE POOR. "TELL me what you eat and I will tell you what you are," wrote Brillat-Savarin. The food of the savage, says Dr. Regnault, who contributes an article on the Food of the Poor to the first July number of La Revue, is as coarse as his physique, but civilised people, like the savage races, often reject the best food for no other reason than that they have not been accustomed to it from childhood. We have only to remember how difficult it was to get the potato introduced; it took years to induce the poor to eat horseflesh (in France); and to-day the poor will have nothing to do with the new vegetable butter, which is described as economical, easy to digest, and agreeable to the taste.

THE FIRST SOUP KITCHEN.

Much food is wasted, because the poor despise it or do not know how to utilise it. In 1840 Madame Robert conceived the idea of providing the poor of Paris with a meal of vegetable soup, a slice of boiled meat, a piece of bread, and a glass of wine for four

sous.

The idea was soon taken up by other philanthropists, and the free distribution of soup in large cities has been continued to the present day. But these institutions have not learnt much in the meantime, except that machines and utensils have been introduced, making it possible to utilise many substances hitherto rejected by transforming them into soup which can be easily assimilated. There is always the same routine as to menu. The cheapest and most nutritive cereals, such as rice, are not used. Perhaps this is not the fault of the institutions, for prejudice should be taken into account. Innovations are apt to be badly received by such a clientèle as soup kitchens have to cater for.

HOW SOYER FARED IN IRELAND.

Dr. Regnault recalls the case of Soyer, the famous cook, who declared he had discovered a way to fight the famine in Ireland. He went to Dublin, and prepared a number of vegetable soups which were found perfect. Soon kitchens for the distribution of soup were established, and every day might be witnessed processions of starving people to these institutions. All went well till Soyer had the unhappy idea to publish a pamphlet explaining his system, and when it was discovered that little or no meat was used in the preparation of the soups, the newspapers protested, declaring that such food could have no nutritive value and would only cause disease. England, they said, had invented this food to pacify Ireland by thus getting rid of the many turbulent spirits whose existence was an unceasing cause of anxiety, and Soyer had to make his escape from the country to avoid being lynched.

DIETETICS AS A UNIVERSITY SUBJECT. Lassalle once observed that the social question is, first of all, a question of the stomach. The superficial observer concludes that the working man lives well because on pay-day his wife spends most of his money on the most expensive foods. But supposing

the working classes know how to buy and to cook, there remains the all-important physiological side of the question. Food ought to be regulated by the work to be performed and the climate and the season. Workmen performing hard physical labour usually eat too much meat and too little vegetable food, and they drink enormous quantities of alcoholic drinks. Sedentary workers also eat too much meat and too little of fresh vegetables. They should not drink wine, but plenty of pure water. Women workers eat too many things which are not nutritious, and they are badly nourished. Sedentary workers alone have a meal before starting work. Much persuasion will be required to correct all these errors of diet, but a great deal can be done by means of lectures, pamphlets, etc.; and, concludes Dr. Regnault, it is the duty of the People's Universities to teach the working classes what to eat and how to buy and cook.

THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF THE POOR.

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In the second July number of La Revue Professor Alfredo Niceforo gives us an outline of the science which he has created, namely, the Anthropology of the Poor. He considers the two classes, the poor and the well-to-do, from the physical, physiological, mental, psychological, ethnographical, and other standpoints, and is obliged to admit the physical and mental inferiority of the poor; but he says many of the drawbacks from which the poor suffer are the result, and not the cause, of external conditions and surroundings. Professor Niceforo has studied the poor rather than poverty and misery in the abstract.

WAS PURITANISM UNLOVELY?

IN the London Quarterly Review Mr. W. Fiddian Moulton takes occasion from Dr. Dale's "History of Congregationalism" to confess to a disposition to regard the dominant Puritanism of the Commonwealth as an unlovely and disappointing thing. He says:

In the sphere of religion the result is as disappointing, after the heroism of the age of suffering, as the miserable travesties of Parliamentary government are after the great years 1625-29 and the early years of the Long Parliament. Dominant Puritanism was not true to its own principles; it was founded upon a noble conception of religion, but it failed to conform to it. Cromwell was one of the first to see the righteousness of religious toleration, and his enactment reads like an anticipation of the millennium until we find that "this liberty" is not to be "extended to popery nor prelacy," and the whole edifice tumbles down in disgrace.

Nevertheless Mr. Moulton allows :-

Upon the standards of conduct the Puritan influence has unquestionably told strongly for good. In the day of his power the Puritan was narrow and hard. He banned many a harmless pleasure and inculcated many a profitless discipline, with the result that the nation bounded to the opposite extreme of licence when the restraining hand was removed at Restoration. But the glory of the Puritan was that he brought everything to the touchstone of his conscience.

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DR. W. H. FITCHETT is contributing a series of articles to the Quiver on "The Beliefs of Unbelief." In the August number he deals with the first article in the Apostles' Creed.