been accompanied by extensive material growth, especially in the amount of land cultivated, and in the number and value of the crops raised.

The strip of coast "depopulated by sea-robbers" is now thronged with villages, and nearly a quarter of the territory of the northern borderland, which formerly no one dared to cultivate, has been brought under the plough and yields an annual harvest valued at ninety millions of dollars. On fifty thousand square miles of what was till recently wilderness or desert, there are now to be found large towns surrounded by artificially irrigated fields, highly cultivated and bearing crops which add yearly over a hundred million dollars to the general wealth. The exports alone of cotton and tea, the cultivation of which was practically introduced by the English, were one hundred and fifty million dollars in 1905, while as a producer of wheat British India ranks fourth among the nations of the world.

In the ante-British times there were no roads, only bridle-paths. To-day there are more than one hundred and eighty thousand miles of road, and twenty-eight thousand miles of railway on which two hundred and forty-eight million passengers were carried in 1906. This fact means more than lies upon the surface. In times not very long ago the pilgrimages, which every Hindu endeavors at some time to make, were done mostly on foot. The rivers in their way were rarely bridged, and if they were swollen by the rains so that the customary fords were impassable, the multitudes going and returning from the shrine became congested on either bank. Their supplies were soon exhausted, and famine and its attendant diseases were the inevitable result. Even when there were no extraordinary difficulties to be overcome, the old and feeble, whose strength was exhausted by the journey merely, died in countless numbers by the way. For fifty miles from Juggernaut in every direction the paths were lined with the bodies of those who had perished in the attempt to prostrate

themselves before the car of their god. The pilgrimages have not ceased, but the excessive mortality consequent upon them has.

The building of roads has also added vastly to the amount of land cultivated and to the intensity of cultivation. Formerly the peasant only raised sufficient crops for the support of his family and for the payment of his land-tax. If the old system of regarding him, not as the owner, but as an hereditary tenant of the state, of land which by immemorial custom and unwritten law was inalienable, had prevailed, his poverty would not have been what it now is. But it was one of the mistakes of the British that they made land private property, in the expectation that by this means the position of the peasant proprietor would be improved and taxation placed on an equitable basis. The immediate effect was a sudden rise in the value of land and the enrichment of the peasant-farmer. But it was soon found that the village money-lender was the one who profited most by the new system. The natives, untrained to habits of thrift and unused to the possession of money, found themselves after a brief season of extravagant spending, dispossessed of the fields which they and their ancestors had cultivated for untold ages, and driven forth to become homeless wanderers and daylaborers, or, if they remained, hopeless serfs to their creditors. The rates of interest demanded were so high that even small debts became a terrible burden, as is shown by the following instance taken from an official report: "A small farmer borrowed ten rupees, and after paying one hundred and ten found himself in ten years still owing two hundred and twenty rupees on the loan." So far as our knowledge goes this is the only cause of the impoverishment of the Indian which can be charged directly to the British government. An encouraging fact in this connection is that in 1905 more than a million people had $44,690,043 deposited in the Post-Office Savings-Banks

alone, an increase of nearly eleven millions in five years. That the wealth of the country at large is increasing is shown by the fact that out of a total value of a billion dollars for the seaborne commerce in 1906, the value of the exports exceeded that of the imports by one hundred and eleven millions. On the other hand the value of the treasure brought into India in the last two fiscal years exceeded that carried out by one hundred and thirtyone millions. It is interesting to note in this connection that India's trade with the United States for the first ten months of 1906 was over fifty-six million dollars, which was an increase of twenty millions over the corresponding period of the previous year. Seven-eighths consisted of exports from India to this country.

From the fact that ninety out of every hundred Indians live in the rural districts the general educational progress has been slow. It has also been hampered by the grievous mistake of making English the language through which instruction, even in the primary schools, was given. The higher education has also had till recently for its exclusive aim the preparation of men for the civil posts, and many more have been graduated from the colleges than could obtain positions; consequently a most dangerous element has been planted among the people. This is recognized by the Indians themselves, as is shown by a speech in July, 1907, by the Maharajah of Kashmir. He said that "the chief cause of disloyalty was the educational system which sent out students with university degrees, but without occupation. The remedy lay in education in the arts and sciences, and this was the policy" which he intended to follow. This conviction of the need of technical and especially medical training characterized Lord Curzon's educational policy; and institutions having these ends in view, together with commercial and agricultural schools, and normal schools for training teachers, have been established throughout the land.

rulers, however, has been the education of the people in self-government. What progress has been made in this direction? In 1905 there were seven hundred and forty-six municipalities with a population of over sixteen millions governed by committees, the majority of whom are natives, and in many cases all are natives, elected by the ratepayers. These bodies have the care of the roads, water-supply, markets, and sanitation; they impose taxes, enact by-laws, make improvements, and spend money, but the sanction of the provincial government is necessary before new taxes can be levied or new by-laws brought into force. For many rural communities there are similar elected bodies having in charge roads, district schools, and hospitals. There are also representative assemblies or parliaments in two of the great native states. According to the latest statistics within my reach there are twenty-one thousand seven hundred and three natives holding civil appointments with salaries above three hundred dollars, the English numbering a few over a thousand. Two of the ten members of the council of the Secretary of State for India are Indians, and they are to be found in considerable numbers on the councils of the Governor-General and the provincial governors. Indians also hold commissions in the British army.

But perhaps the strongest evidence of the growth of the ability to govern themselves is the discontent which prevails among a certain section of the people in different parts of the country. It is so far from being universal or even general, however, that nine-tenths of the natives are absolutely ignorant of its existence; that is, it has not reached the rural peasantry. A few, consisting almost entirely of the educated class known as Baboos, demand absolute freedom from British rule,

independence. The wiser, and better informed, including the representatives of the sixty-two million Mohammedans, simply ask for a larger share in their own government. This request Mr. Morley,

mised shall be granted as speedily as possible; and the taking of two natives into his Council was a first and most important step in that direction. This Swadeshi movement, as it is locally known, is not a sudden and unexpected event. When it was announced nearly a hundred years ago that the aim of the government was to raise the Indian people to a condition in which true self-government should be possible, there were numerous warnings that such a policy would inevitably lead

to revolutions. But the spirit in which these warnings were received then as well as now is shown in the memorable speech of Macaulay in 1833. After an eloquent prophecy that under the present system of government the public mind of India would expand until it had outgrown the system, and that at some future age their Indian subjects might demand European institutions, he added, "Whenever the day comes it will be the proudest day in English history."

IN 1891 Mr. Davidson published two small volumes of extracts from Dumas's Memoirs; but the complete work now appears in English for the first time.1 Mrs. Waller, the translator, her publishers, and Mr. Andrew Lang, in his graceful introduction, have unquestionably rendered a considerable service to English literature. Certain persons may be annoyed, or may profess to be annoyed, because a few passages more suited to French than to English taste have not been omitted; but there are strong arguments in these matters for the policy of all or none.

Those who are curious in translation will compare Mrs. Waller's work and Mr. Davidson's with much interest. Sometimes one catches the author's spirit better, sometimes the other. Quite often neither catches it at all. In literal accuracy Mr. Davidson has distinctly the advantage. Indeed, Mrs. Waller's slips are rather too frequent. Some of them may perhaps be explained by the extensive collation to which she refers in her

1 My Memoirs. By ALEXANDRE Dumas. Translated by E. M. WALLER, with an introduction by ANDREW LANG. London and New York: The Macmillan Company. 1907-08.

preface, and in which I have been unable to follow her. But no difference of text can justify the omission of the pretty touch, comme les trois Curiaces, which Mr. Davidson justly notes as most Dumas-like. Deux mille becomes in the translation "ten thousand." Comme je l'ai fait remarquer does not mean "as I had noticed;" and cette œuvre de perfec

tion que l'art atteint parfois en dépassant la nature is not adequately rendered by "that perfect standard to which art everywhere attains when it surpasses nature." Nevertheless, in spite of these and similar lapses, Mrs. Waller contrives to catch a considerable amount of the grace and ease and lightness of her elusive original; and the book is thoroughly readable, — surely the first essential with Dumas, who is always readable, if nothing else.

Mr. Davidson, whose excellent volume on Dumas must be the foundation of any careful study of the subject, dismisses his author with the remark: "Except for increasing the already ample means of relaxation, he did nothing to benefit humanity at large." But is not this a rather grudging epitaph for the creator of Monte Cristo? Are the means

of relaxation so ample that we can afford to treat La Tour de Nesle and La Reine Margot as alms for oblivion? Would Stevenson have read Le Vicomte de Bragelonne six times, would you or I have read Les Trois Mousquetaires more times than we can count, if other relaxation of an equally delightful order were indeed so easily obtainable? In spite of the flood of historical novels and all other kinds of novels that overwhelmed the nineteenth century, story-tellers like Dumas are not born every day, nor yet every other day.

For he was a story-teller by nature, one who could make a story of anything, one who did make a story of everything, for the joy of his own childlike imagination. "I am not like other people. Everything interests me." The round oath of a man, the smile of a woman, a dog asleep in the sun, a bird singing in a bush, even a feather floating in the breeze, was enough. Fancy seized it and wove an airy, sunbright web about it, glittering with wit, touched with just a hint of pathos; and as we read, we forget the slightness of the substance in the grace and delicacy of the texture.

It is an odd thing, this national French gift of story-telling, of seeking by instinct the group-effect, as it were, of a set of characters, their composite relations to one another and the development of these relations in dramatic climax. English writers, from Chaucer down, dwell by preference on the individual character, force it only with labor and difficulty into the general framework, from which it constantly escapes in delightful but wholly undramatic human eccentricity. To the French habit of mind, such individuality is excrescent and distasteful. Let the characters develop as fully and freely as the action requires, no more. They are there for the action, not the action for them. Hence, as the English defect is dull diffusion and a chaos of disorder, so the French is loss of human truth in a mad eagerness for forcible situations, that is to say, melodrama.

Even in Hugo, in Balzac, in Flaubert, in Zola, one has an uneasy feeling that melodrama is not too far away. In Dumas it is frankly present always. The situation - something that shall tear the nerves, make the heart leap and the breath stop for Dumas there lies the true art of dramatist and novelist. And what situations! No one ever had more than he the two great dramatic gifts, which perhaps are only one, the gift of preparation and the gift of climax. "Of all dénoûments, past, present, and I will say even to come," writes Sarcey, “that of Antony is the most brilliant, the most startling, the most logical, the most rapid; a stroke of genius." Henri III, Richard Darlington, La Tour de Nesle are full of effects scarcely inferior. If one thinks first of the plays, it is only because in them the action is more concentrated than in the novels. But in novel after novel also, there is the same sure instinct of arrangement, the same master's hand, masterly for obtaining the sort of effect which the author has chiefly in view.

And perhaps the melodrama is not quite all. The creatures are not always mere puppets, wire-pulled, stirring the pulse when they clash together, then forgotten. We hate them sometimes, sometimes love them, sometimes even remember them. Marguerite and Buridan are not wholly unreal in their wild passion. The scene of reconciliation between the Musketeers on Place Royale has something deeper than mere effect. And these are only two among many. Under all his gift of technique, his love of startling and amazing, the man was not without an eye, a grip on life, above all, a heart that beat widely, with many sorrows and many joys.

Then the style is the style of melodrama, but it is also far more. No one knew better how and when to let loose sharp, stinging, burning shafts of phrase, like the final speech of Antony, "Elle m'a résisté ; je l'ai assassinée,” — shafts which flew over the footlights straight to the heart of every auditor. But these effects

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would be nothing without the varied movement of narration, the ease, the lightness, the grace, above all, the perpetual wit, the play of delicate irony, which saves sentiment from being sentimental and erudition from being dull.

Dumas's style has been much abused, and in some ways deserves it. Mr. Saintsbury considers that the plays have "but little value as literature properly socalled," and that "the style of the novels is not more remarkable as such than that of the dramas." But how far more discerning and sympathetic is Stevenson's characterization of it: "Light as a whipped trifle, strong as silk; wordy like a village tale; pat like a general's dispatch; with every fault, yet never tedious; with no merit, yet inimitably right." As for dialogue, — that subtlest test of the novelist's genius, which neither Balzac, nor Flaubert, nor Zola could manage with flexibility or ease, Dumas may have used it to excess, but who has ever carried it to greater perfection? In M. Lemaître's excellent, if somewhat cynical, phrase, Dumas's dialogue has "the wonderful quality of stringing out the narrative to the crack of doom and at the same time making it appear to move with headlong rapidity." But let it string out, so it moves. And surely Dumas's conversations do move, as no others ever have.

In the hurry of modern reading, few people have time to get at Dumas in any but his best-known works. Yet to form a complete idea of his powers, one must take a much wider survey. All periods, all nations, all regions of the earth came at one time or another under his pen. Of course this means an inevitable superficiality and inaccuracy. But one overlooks these defects, is hardly aware of them, in the ease, the spirit, the unfailing humanness of the narrative. Take a minor story like L'Isle de Feu, dealing with the Dutch in Java and with the habits and superstitions of the natives, snake - charming, spirit - haunting, etc. Everywhere there is movement, life, character, the wit of the Impressions de Voy

age, the passion of La Reine Margot. And if Dumas does not quite anticipate the seductive melancholy of Loti's tropics, he gives hints of it which are really wonderful for a man who had never been south of latitude thirty.

Perhaps, outside of the historical novels, we may select four very different books as most typical of Dumas's great variety of production. First, in Conscience l'Innocent, we have a simple idyllic subject, recalling George Sand's country stories: peasant life, rural scenes, sweet pictures of Dumas's own village home at Villers-Cotterets, which he introduced into so many of his writings. Second, in the immense canvas of Salvator, too little appreciated, we have a picture of contemporary conditions, the Paris of Sue and Hugo, treated with a vividness far beyond Sue and a dramatic power which Hugo never could command. Third, comes the incomplete Isaac Laquedem, the vast Odyssey of the Wandering Jew, in which the author planned to develop epically the whole history of the world, though the censorship allowed him to get no further than the small Biblical portion of it. Few of Dumas's books illustrate better the really soaring sweep of his imagination, and not many have a larger share of his esprit. Lastly, there is Monte Cristo, which, on the whole, remains, doubtless, the best example of what Dumas could do without history to support him. "Pure melodrama," some will say; in a sense, truly. Yet, as compared with the melodrama of, for instance, Armadale and The Woman in White, there is a certain largeness, a sombre grandeur, about the vengeance of Dantès, which goes almost far enough to lift the book out of the realm of melodrama, and into that of tragedy. And then there is the wit!

But it is on historical romance, whether in drama or fiction, that Dumas's popularity must chiefly rest. He himself felt it would be so, hoped it would be so; and his numerous references to the matter, if amusing, are also extremely interesting.