read of this delicious, free-souled, innocent kinswoman to Folle-Farine and Ariadne, how any human brain could be so multiplex and many-shaded as that of Ouida. What gulfs of difference separate this new heroine of hers from the world-encompassed and society-beset beings whom she has so recently pictured! And yet for a time the novelist has dropped her microscope (often so foolishly misemployed) and the poet has resumed her neglected lyre. The old notes are still struck with dulcet harmony. "In Maremma" is Ouida again at her loftiest and most authentic. She shows in it her old impetuous desire to feel with and for the persecuted and maltreated of the earth. I cannot explain why it should not be ranked with the three great masterpieces to which I have already made such enthusiastic reference. Perhaps it should be so ranked. If there is any excuse for depriving it of a place on this exquisite list, that excuse must be found in its more earthy raison d'être when compared with the almost ethereal spirituality of the other books.
"Wanda," "Princess Napraxine," and "Othmar," coming afterward with a speed of succession that showed the most earnest industry, have given proof of their author's second return to at least relative realism. But "Wanda" is a romance of inexpressible grace and force. It is the purest romance: to speak of it as highly colored is like calling a particularly rich sunset overfraught with glows and tints. Judging it by the modern methods of the "naturalistic" school is to pronounce it a monstrosity of art. But a great many of the elder Dumas' works would suffer in a like way if so considered, and nearly every prose line of Hugo's would fall under the same ban of disfavor. "Wanda" is a great romantic story. Its mode of telling is one protracted intensity. Its fires burn with a raging and heavy-odored flame. But they spring forth, for all that, with no ungoverned madness. They are kindled by a hand desirous of their heat and curl, but avoidant of their reckless outflow. It is very easy to denounce such a tale as vulgar. In these final years of our dying century all literary fierceness and eagerness of this kind are so denounced. If romanticism is to fade away forever, this volcanic bit of sensationalism is undoubtedly doomed. But its sensationalism is of the sort we think of when we remind ourselves of "Monte Cristo" and "Le Juif Errant," The haughty Austrian countess, with her prestige of stainless pedigree and her imperial self-esteem,—the Russian serf who has concealed his disgraceful birth under a stolen title,—the Hungarian nobleman of almost kingly rank and unblemished honor, who contemptuously lays bare the shameful brand of imposture in his rival,—the ancestral castle in the Tyrol, with its obeisant swarms of vassals and its regal household admin-
