dwell in unity with the non-religious section was not in the nature of things to be expected, and the struggle over the "Kielland affair" was merely the first symptom of much deeper-lying dissensions. In the end, the stipend was withheld, though one yearly payment was accorded by special vote. I must not omit to mention that Björnstjerne Björnson, generously indignant at the slight passed on his brother-poet, whose political and religious standpoint was identical with his own, resigned the stipend which he had held for many years.
If I were asked to express in a word what seems to me, not the highest, but the most obvious and indisputable quality of Kielland's work, I should say its readableness. I look along the row of his novels on my shelf, and the stereotyped phrase of the stereotypical reviewer flows to the point of my pen:—"There is not a dull page from beginning to end." The first step at least, in novel-reading, is as a rule laborious. In approaching the works even of the greatest writers one is apt to plod a little painfully at the outset, until the gathering interest—I will not say the thickening plot—begins to carry one along. Few novelists, to my thinking, can compare with Kielland in the knack of
