form in Germany, in France, in Belgium, and even in England. It was no longer a mere revolt, and as an organized and disciplined movement it began to play an important rôle in the political life of Europe. It was hardly to be expected that the older men would fully understand the new movement, and it was but natural that in the main it was the younger men in literature and art who gave it expression. In any case nothing could be more remarkable than the rapid change following the seventies. After the vague democratic yearnings and the purely destructive criticism of the older generation, succeeded a gospel that dominated men of widely different talents; as, for instance: William Morris, Anatole France, Bernard Shaw, Maurice Maeterlinck, Alexander Kielland, Maxim Gorky, H. G. Wells, Giovanni Verga, Gerhart Hauptmann, Edmondo de Amicis; the scientists, Alfred Russel Wallace, Zanarelli, Lombroso, Grant Allen, Enrico Ferri; the poets, Giovanni Pascoli, Ada Negri, Edward Carpenter; and the artists, Walter Crane, Steinlen, and van Biesbroeck. Like the older men they too are in revolt. And yet that which had begun to take place among the disinherited, and to assume definite and constructive form, found these and other men of talent ready to give it expression in painting, in sculpture, in music, and in literature.*

* It is a matter for regret that I can merely mention the socialist poets Edward Carpenter, of England; Graf, Guerrini, and Pascoli of Italy; and Mrs. Roland Holtz, of Holland, whose poems are frequently printed in socialist papers as the songs of the movement. Nor can I more than mention Maurice Maeterlinck, John Galsworthy, Granville Barker, and Richard Whiteing, and the artists who make possible such first-rate comical and satirical socialist journals as "L'Assiette au Beurre," "L'Asino," and "Der Wahre Jacob." Walter Crane, the English, and Steinlen, Grandjouan, Delannoy, and Naudin, the French artists, lavish their great talents upon socialist

Whether we take the work of the forerunners of modern socialism, or that of the present exponents, we find the same methods used to interpret the social spirit. Both depict the life of the peasant and the industrial worker, interpreting the soul of the people in its patient and quiet dignity. Both portray the evils of modern society by problem plays and novels. Both struggle to give expression to the quest for the ideal whether in the individual or in social organization. And nearly all the writers leave at times the field of art to issue revolutionary pamphlets upon economics and politics.

Perhaps the highest social use of literature is in awakening a sympathetic understanding between different races or different classes of the same race. In the days of slavery, when whites looked upon blacks almost as beasts devoid of human sentiment, the work of Harriet Beecher Stowe proved a revelation, and aroused in all civilized countries profound human sympathy. Whatever defects it may have as a work of art, “Uncle Tom's Cabin" made the thought of slavery intolerable. It has always been easy for men to believe that they differ from other men, and that color, race, or nationality,

propaganda. In the expository literature of socialism, the Fabian tracts and essays rank high. Bernard Shaw's work stands out from among the others, and perhaps no other modern writer is capable of treating economics in so interesting a manner. Anatole France's "Monsieur Bergeret à Paris," and H. G. Wells' "The Misery of Boots," are pure literature; and while the work of Robert Blatchford is largely of a propagandist nature, he is richly endowed with that greatest gift of the artist, the power of seeing things and of making others see them.

Many well-known American writers and artists also feel the socialist impulse. William Dean Howells, Edwin Markham, Finley Peter Dunne, Jack London, and Upton Sinclair are among the best known, although nearly all of the younger men are coming under the influence of socialist thought.

religion, blood, or riches, almost any distinctive thing, separates them from the rest of human kind, and creates a gulf between what they are pleased to call superior and inferior people. Between races such feelings are more easily explained; although when such books are read as Du Bois' "The Souls of Black Folk," unfortunately too little known, the feeling of superiority is apt to give place to a humiliating sense of shame. But among people of the same race such feeling is less readily understood; and yet it is almost as common. The slaves of our country were of a different race from their masters; but the serfs of Russia were of the same race and creed, the same language and tradition, as the upper class. And yet Kropotkin says: "Human feelings were not recognized, not even suspected in serfs, and when Turguéneff published his little story of 'Mumú,' and Grigorovitch began to issue his thrilling novels, in which he made his readers weep over the misfortunes of serfs, it was to a great number of persons a startling revelation. They love just as we do; is it possible?' exclaimed the sentimental ladies.”

A similar effort to that of the above-mentioned writers is made by those who endeavor to picture the suffering grandeur of the toiling masses of field or factory. To two Belgians, one a painter, the other a sculptor, we are indebted for some of the most affecting pictures of misery that art has given us. Charles Degroux belongs to the earlier period, but his pictures serve even to-day to mould socialist sentiment. His canvases are tragic. His figures are broken by the burdens of misery, and a spirit of brooding sorrow and inevitable misfortune pervades his work. The other Belgian, van Biesbroeck, is a young man, who after achieving an excellent reputation

throughout Europe came back to his native town of Ghent at the request of the socialists. They have built him and his father a studio, and assure to them what they require; and these two work together to make beautiful the various coöperative establishments owned by the socialists. The older van Biesbroeck is a philosopher; the younger, an artist of exceptional talent. His portraits of the workers of Ghent will become historic, representing to future ages the barbarism of modern industrial society. His men, women, and children labor and mourn. They are superb figures, forcibly drawn, wonderfully chiselled, with the power to evoke precious and inexpressible emotions of sympathy and comradeship. Resembling Degroux in some ways, van Biesbroeck understands better the heart, and knows how to interpret in human terms the meaning of all the crushing burdens borne by those who labor. You see sympathy in all his work, - the sympathy almost of a mother for her child; and yet how powerful the lines, how firm and sturdy the figures.

Millet and Meunier have, of course, done an even greater work in picturing the soul of the people. They meet humanity at a higher level than Degroux or even van Biesbroeck, and yet it is not often possible to find in their work the same sympathy that pervades the work of the latter. Millet sometimes painted a brutish form without intelligence or spirituality, such as “The Man with the Hoe"; but his greatest work was to interpret the peasant full of elemental, primordial force. To see the superb action of "The Sower," the quiet power and skill of "The Man spreading Manure," to come across that lovely landscape with "The Gleaners" at work in the foreground, to grasp the infinite