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allowed, angry with one for not being just the individual she fancied, intolerant with unconscious petulance of gentle Cara,' only too conscious herself of her impotence to control or mollify. Blessing indeed it is that the end of years came first to Cousin Sara, that the survivor might have the more secure and easier content. And then the recollection once more gathers farther back-a glimpse comes here and there of 'dear Charles' (Mr. Bray). We are shown his cherished gift of the Dickens volume of verses with Cruikshank illustrations, which is read aloud weekly even now at the Sunday gatherings; and the tiny little figure rises behind the tea-tray and all among the dainty china ('the little "flower" set Charles and I had when we married') pours out, with almost unerring memory and the keenest relish, the rhapsody of the nonsense-rhymes. And then some note or piece of print occurs out of somewhere to suggest brother Charles,' and we hear of his intellectual labours and their reception by a few who 'understood.' We hear, too, how, Sunday after Sunday-his only free hours-he drew and coloured with such care and neatness the comparative table of Mankind and Nations-a Chart of the Stream of All Time-which hangs, now sadly faded, on the walls of the little glass-house. Yes, we may see the Temple-where my penates are'; and so, while tea-things are cleared, and when a protecting shawl has wrapped away all but the gentle, peering face and the sensitive fingers that so help the discussion of everything, we once again go round the Valhalla. There's Mill-John Stuart, you know—and Longfellow. Who's that? Oh, dear, my poor memory! Ah, Mr. Lowell, of course' (prints from the illustrated papersall these just pasted on the wall among shabby frames and an old sampler or two) 'And then wise Herbert Spencer and Carlyle' (an early faded photograph, this). 'Poor Thomas! Doesn't he look sad? And that's the prettiest picture I could find of an English girl' (this is a time-beaten lithograph), and then the dear little evolution chicken' (some coloured print showing an indignant chick repu diating its shell origin). Suddenly, the query flying at a tangent, comes some question about politics, and I am able to say that I have referred to her 'British Empire' (Cousin Sara's copy which she gave me】 to find an early crown-colony. 'Oh, but that book was carefully done, yet it was just too late; there was another before it, and it brought me nothing,' and this with the most charitable and gentle smile imaginable; but it had a good index, and every book should have that!'

And then, as we find ourselves back in the room, there is a little about 'dear Marian.' But it is ever a pious and chivalrous point of honour with this kind old lady to run no risk, even with trusted kinsmen, of enlarging upon the 'George Eliot' chapter of her life. After all, it cannot but be true that the 'Life and Letters show all that the world outside could claim to know of the intercourse between the great authoress and the 'Bray' household. There is one anecdote told us now for the first time-that long years ago, in days spent at Rosehill,' Emerson came lecturing to Coventry. Afterwards he stayed with the Brays, and fell upon talking with Marian Evans. A mild exclamation made Mrs. Bray inquire what had surprised him. I was asking Miss Evans what work had most impressed her, and she tells me Rousseau's Confessions," and I exclaimed that it was strange, as that had been my own experience.'

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The story continued that further quiet talk on the morrow was disturbed, for-hearing of the presence of the great American-the Flowers had driven over from Stratford, leaving at five in the morning, to invite him to Shakespeare's town; and so two carriages returned, the Flowers' and another containing Mr. and Mrs. Bray, Miss Evans, and Emerson; and the great man was left at Stratford! But in later years he again visited Coventry.

Another famous guest had been Thackeray. He came to lecture in Coventry,

and was received for the night by the Brays. For many years Mrs. Bray treasured a note with more than the pleasant convention of thanks for hospitality; it recited how comfortable his bed had been, conducing to the creation of a good chapter of The Newcomes,' upon which he was then at work.'

We were leaving, for fear of her weariness, when she prayed us to stay, and said we should have some music. With trembling hands she lifted the lid of the large piano which filled one side of the room, and then put wonderful energy into it and drew much sweetness. For half an hour we sat very quiet, while the evening gathered the twilight without. The life in the room was in the gentle music, played almost faultlessly, and with a wealth of association. Beethoven is her favourite, and supplies the interludes for the hymns that 'belonged to this or that dear one; this was brother Charles's '-' dear Mary liked this one so'-and then, reciting a verse without more melody than her voice's quivering own, she would play the air. Our dear father's favourite was

"Teach me the measure of my days,

Thou maker of my frame."

The liquid, nearly tremulous sound of the words was lost in the sounding chords. The room seemed very full of strong natural piety.

A few quiet moments over, we moved to the window to see the sun's glow finally fade. He will come again to-morrow, and, besides, he has gone to light those dear folk over the edge. Do not you think the punctuality of Nature is very beautiful? And those stupid people will fight-fight-over the miracles. Oh, dear, I ought not to say that!'

And then, with a multitude of promises to come again, the price of which was a protest that she should not meet the night air by the opening door, we left her.

It was like the final closing of that household of deep friendship, where once, long years before, George Eliot paused with a visitor as they closed the garden door on entering, to say, 'I do indeed feel that I shut the world out when I shut that door."

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And what more could friendship say?

WARWICK H. DRAPER.

Shortly afterwards, on May 4, 1855, Thackeray wrote to Mrs. Bray acknowledging, in a letter which she long treasured, a box of Coventry ribbons for his daughters, with messages to her husband and sister. I wonder,' he said, ‘if I shall ever walk with my girls in Stoneleigh Park with you and Mr. Bray in our company, and your little girl trotting on ahead picking flowers as many coloured as Coventry ribbons?' And, in a postscript, 'Did you find out the interpolation in the last number? Fred Bayham's speech at the dinner, and the description of the furniture and the barrel organ, were done upstairs in that sunny bedroomnay, in that snug bed.'

GRANDEUR ET DÉCADENCE DE

BERNARD SHAW.

BY A YOUNG PLAYGOER.

MR. BERNARD SHAW has done so much for us. He has added so much to the interest and the gaiety of life. He has been the mainstay, for more than a twelvemonth, of the only theatre in London. He has removed from the English stage, Mr. Pinero and Mr. Carton alone with him, the reproach that we live on borrowed goods or on makeshifts strung miserably together without the life or distinction or certainty of genuine works of art. He has drawn out so much that was latent in the capacities of English acting. The performances of Mr. Granville Barker, of Miss Sarah Brooke, of Miss Fairbrother, of Mr. Barnes, of Mr. Louis Calvert, are memories still fresh, and still delightful. M. Antoine himself would not be ashamed of the care and completeness seen at the Court Theatre, and in this too Mr. Shaw has had his part. Finally, Mr. Shaw has fought for a hearing, fought openly and honourably without other recompense for years than that of scorn and unmeasured abuse, and won it by the strength of his own hand. He has proved in himself the powers of a practical dramatist of the first rank. Therefore we would not seem ungrateful. And yet and yet . . . But it is a 'yet' that differs in its essence from the sounds vented by press reporters floundering in the wake of the fashion from conventional horror to second-hand eulogy. The object of this paper is simply to put into words this yet,' not to examine the value of what Mr. Shaw holds valuable. It will not question his ideas, but note what he does with them.

There is coming into fashion a new style of criticism, by which it would seem that the matter of Mr. Shaw's plays is so marvellous that the manner of its presentation is without importance. Say that the action in John Bull's Other Island' is defective, say that the characters in Man and Superman' are common, say that the dialogue in 'Major Barbara' is fruitless, and you are met by the retort: This is the drama of ideas. Of course people who don't like ideas don't appreciate Shaw.' Now this seems a poor

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compliment to pay Mr. Shaw. Ideas! Of course Mr. Shaw's plays are full of ideas: so is The School for Scandal,' so is Goethe's 'Faust,' so is 'L'Ami des Femmes,' so is L'Article 330,' so are all the good plays since the world began. How can any good work of literary art be without ideas? How could any intelligent man refrain, even if he would, from putting his ideas into his work? Plays differ one from another not by containing or not containing ideas, but by the kind of ideas that each contains, and by the manner in which the playwright treats them. Yet there are some, it seems, who believe it to be the simple fact of Mr. Shaw's ideas, and not his treatment of them, that makes his plays so good to see. Are there really, or do they deceive themselves? Do they really suppose that without his unique mastery of the stage, his genius for farce, the brilliance of his imagination, his peculiar brio, those plays would draw packed houses night after night by virtue of their philosophy? It must be potent then, this philosophy, to attract them so. Let us for a moment consider it.

Apart from their vivid satire, and many taking points of private ethics, the series of plays we possess from Mr. Shaw's pen are composed in the main round two principal ideas, concerning the relations of the sexes and the relation of man to society. It is in these ideas which might fitly be studied in the questions: What is man to woman? and, How can society be reformed?—that the dramatic merit of Mr. Shaw's matter, as contrasted with his manner, must be sought. To the question What is man to woman? Mr. Shaw has a very definite answer which takes up a considerable space in two of his plays and almost the whole of a third. Man to woman, says Mr. Shaw, is nothing but the means by which she may perpetuate the race. In woman the fundamental instinct is the sexual instinct, and the sexual the parental. Women choose the men they marry because their instinct selects them as well fitted to be fathers, and hunt them down when they are unwilling. Blanche hunts down Trench in Widowers' Houses,' and Gloria hunts down the dentist in 'You Never Can Tell,' just as Ann hunts down Tanner in 'Man and Superman.' 'The whole purpose of nature embodied in a woman' makes woman what she is with regard to man, and gives her at once the necessity and the power to woo, to persuade, to prevail, to overcome': thus Tanner puts it. Now the hunting of men by women, or by their mammas, is an ancient theme, and we all know about how much truth it contains; but by isolating and insisting on the idea to such a degree Mr. Shaw

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monstrously exaggerates its importance. Est-ce que tous les enfants ne sont pas naturels ?' says the duchess in a famous French play: no one denies that the maternal passion is 'natural'; no one denies that it frequently enters as a cause into a woman's desire for marriage, and perhaps, though by no means certainly, more often than the paternal passion into a man's: but,' Est-ce que toutes les passions ne sont pas naturelles?' To deny that is to make the mistake made by people who talk about 'nature,' while they forget that man is part of it. Even if it were not apparent to every observer that many women love for the sake of love, or for the sake of money, or to get away from the 'happy English home' that Mr. Barker has so happily depicted, and not at all for love of children, and that the maternal passion is often deceived and unsatisfied, still it would be true that one passion is as 'natural' as another, and consequently tells us as much about the whole purpose of nature'; and all passions do not make for the propagation of the race. Besides, the idea, with what truth there is in it, is not new and is not neglected. Shakespeare gives it us, and Molière, and Pailleron (by its opposite), and Thackeray in a wellknown passage remarks that any woman without an absolute hump can marry any man she chooses. And there is a certain refrain, not necessary to quote, that belongs to a song called 'La Chatte': but the name of Béranger does not find a place in the select group of authors whom Mr. Shaw recognises as his kin. Still less convincing is the complement to this theory, the idea that the only marrying men are those capable of being serviceable fathers, an idea exemplified by Charteris in The Philanderer' and Tavy in 'Man and Superman'; for is it not contradicted almost daily by experience, and is it not notorious that, so far from the artistic temperament being an old maid's temperament' (so says Ann Whitefield), men and women gifted with it are often more highly sexed than the common run?

Round this idea, then, three of Mr. Shaw's plays are built, while in a fourth, Candida,' we find it illustrated by the direction in which the woman's affection turns. Must it be insisted that Mr. Shaw's excellence is not really due to his mere belief in it? The question, indeed, provides and always will provide vast materials for his art; but Mr. Shaw's answer, thrown into such high relief by his delivery, is not, though suggestive, capable of creating the interest that we feel in such a play as 'Candida.' It takes too little account of the complex factors interwoven with the one

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