a good deal of fresh and interesting matter. Mr. Auberon Herbert's essay, from the point of view of literary distinction, comes as a relief; but it is too individual and peculiar to be considered in a general notice.

Mr. Raffalovich's essay upon the Houses Question is a significant instance of the curious reluctance to try and understand the true relation between individual and social reform. It is perfectly true that individual enterprise may do much; but it would not do much if it had not a compulsory public power in the background. And private enterprise is certainly unequal to such large schemes of improvement as Birmingham and Glasgow were able to carry out. Private action is more flexible and more adapted to particular problems; but when it runs against a barrier it must have the power of transforming itself into public action. Legislation, however, which is not informed with public interest and sentiment, is likely to be dull and ineffective. Public interest is needed, not only to carry out, but to make the law. Given this spirit and purpose, it is well to arm it with public power, but not to rely upon it. Local authority must be ready to act, but only if backed by the sympathy and activity of individual citizens.

What we have to see is that individual initiative, law, and public opinion are only different ways in which a higher social conscience expresses and embodies itself. And it is not individual enterprise which in itself has value, but individual enterprise as the instrument, conscious or unconscious, of social purposes. There is no more virtue in mere individual enterprise than in mere law. The limits of individual liberty must be defined by the social interest, and the limits of law by the interest of personal freedom and character; for the social interest can only be realized through and in the wills and minds of the members of society. The degree to which the co-operation of the public power is necessary cannot be determined by a hard and fast line. But as the subdivision of labour and interest is carried further and further, it is likely that the demand for it will be more rather than less. Public purposes can be less

and less left to the blind and unconscious movement of individual interest, and the conception of their range will be widened with the greater refinement and sensibility of the social conscience. The signs of the times are not against, but with the State. And public action will take many forms, chiefly the form of local administration, and of local provision of the things which do not hinder, but promote, the powers of the individual-the needs of art, and culture, and recreation. It is by the action of municipal bodies and of district councils (it may be of parochial councils), rather than by that of centralized administration, that social reform will be most effectually advanced. It is difficult to see, for instance, how the provision of allotments and agricultural cottages can be practicable till local councils are given compulsory powers of purchase and of construction. But in the case of all provision by public power of such things as the people cannot provide for themselves, we must observe certain conditions. They must be things which are of primary and recognized social importance; they must be practicable; and the action of the public power must not be such as to supersede or discourage individual responsibility and independence, or habits of voluntary association.

But all this implies a conception of "individuality" and of the "State" that is not dreamt of in the philosophy of this book. It still moves among the mechanical conceptions of the "State" and the "individual" that theory has discarded and practice has discredited. A truer philosophy leads us to the conception of a society in which all are equally means and equally ends : in which every individual realizes the social reference of all doing" and "having;" and the State comes to be regarded, not as a "least common bond," but as the highest of human achievements, being nothing else than society organized for the attainment of the common good.

SIDNEY BALL.

FEW

HENRIK IBSEN.

EW will deny that Ibsen is becoming a considerable force in our time, whether for good or for evil; and, as with so many other teachers, he is already suffering injustice at the hands both of friends and enemies. Of all the curses from which a great teacher suffers, none perhaps is worse than that small band of esoteric followers who are bent on telling the world how extremely clever they are in understanding one who is "caviare to the general." They fix on the most bizarre and extravagant parts of his teaching, and try to shock the world instead of converting it; proud to remain in a minority of superior persons. And this folly has produced its effect: many good people are rapidly coming to believe that the repulsive pessimism of "Ghosts" and "Hedda Gabler" represents all that Ibsen has to tell the world; and the cry which these honest critics raise is taken up by those who dread all originality, and by that still lower class of disappointed dramatists who are jealous of the attempt to bring the Norwegian plays upon our English stage.

The first thing, then, to remember, which, in its most essential sense, many forget, is that Ibsen is a Norwegian, and neither an Englishman nor a mere citizen of the world. No doubt some of his more thoughtful followers have been careful to remind us that Ibsen writes in a language unknown to most Englishmen, so that much of the force of his language must be lost in translations, and particularly in prose translations. But the point which, in most discussions on Ibsen is lost sight of is, that he belongs to a country which is free from many of the difficulties and miseries of our more complex civilization, and which has to face problems of a different kind. This forgetfulness seems to have led many excellent men among

the extreme State Socialists to claim Ibsen as their own, on the very superficial ground that he, like them, is discontented with the state of society around him; and to overlook the more important facts that he is fighting against entirely different evils, and that he advocates, as I shall presently show, an exactly opposite remedy to that of State Socialism.

This peculiarly national character of Ibsen's work is brought out with admirable clearness by his countryman Henrik Jäger, in the "Life" which has been translated into German by Heinrich Tschalig. Henrik Ibsen was born on March 20th, 1828, in the town of Skien, which then contained about 3,000 inhabitants. But, at about the age of sixteen, he removed to a still smaller town, called Grimstad. The sense of the smallness of the surroundings, and the narrowness of the life in towns like these, left a deep impression on his mind. The kind of life which prevailed there is described by his biographer in the following words :

"Like most Norwegian towns east of Christiansand, it is a small shipbuilding settlement, well-to-do and substantial. And with well-to-do-ness comes satisfaction with one's position. In so small a town the thoughts of the inhabitants do not fly either far or high; when the people venture out of doors it is generally merely to ask whether the ship has come in safely, or to examine the last calculations about freight. Only rarely do the great events of the world throw a half-spent wave on these coast towns and then the folk exchange a few words of sympathy over the last news when they meet in the streets; then they shake their heads and. walk on. In such a town is a club, a chemist's shop, a barber's shop, and a hotel. The chemist's shop is the exchange of the town, where all loungers meet and discuss the events of the day, especially those of the town, which are always the most important. Every one knows every one else intimately; no peculiarity in the private life of any one is hidden. And all exchange greetings: the richest man receives the most profound bow, the next richest the next lowest, and so on down to the workman, who gets only a nod of the head, when he stands respectfully with his hat in his hand. The stranger who comes into such a town is astonished at all the respectful greetings which he receives from the poor people who meet him, and he feels himself quite uncomfortable at this cringing servility.

But that impression is due to ignorance of the patriarchal condition of the society. . . . The simpler man knows this, and finds it, for the time, the wisest course to adapt himself to circumstances when he meets a well-dressed man in the street, especially when he does not know who he is; for one cannot tell what sort of a Personage he may be. In such a town all goes evenly, calmly, slowly people have plenty of time, and quick work is troublesome work; if a man does not come to-day he will to-morrow. All that goes beyond the customary is exaggeration; personal peculiarities are reckoned as faults; every unusual and strong development of life is looked on as overstrained, and to be overstrained is a crime."

Now, it may be said that this is a picture which has been drawn more than once, mutatis mutandis, by English novelists; nay, even by at least one American novelist, in the story of "John Ward, Preacher." But, however correct we may think such descriptions as pictures of out-of-the-way life, neither Englishmen nor Americans would say that they represented the most distinctive features of the life of their country. We have in this account no reference to a wealthy and luxurious aristocracy imitated and hunted by those below them in social position; no picture of a miserably housed and over-rented proletariat; no allowance of room for startling crimes and vices. But Ibsen, as his biographer assures us, has accepted this picture, not as an exceptional representation of Norwegian life, but as representing its most distinctive features. At a later time we are told that he found in Christiania much the same characteristics that he had found in Skien and Grimstad. The absence of the evils of a richer and more complex society seems to bring into greater prominence this dull small life, and to produce, in Ibsen's view, a peculiar kind of hypocrisy and pharisaism. But before considering Ibsen's remedy for these evils it is necessary emphatically to state, that he is no coxcomb looking down on his country unsympathetically from a superior height. One of his first appearances as a dramatist was connected with the attempt to secure the performance of national dramas in Norway, and to weaken the overpowering Danish influences which then ruled the Norwegian stage. He has studied his country's history, and embodied