him insensible to pain or knowledge, and the liquor has already begun its work of consolation. Wherefore, raving, beside himself, his mind distraught, Aligi curses the woman he should bless. And as Mila is removed amid the howls of the crowd towards the flaming pile that awaits her, in which witches and sorcerers are condemned to perish, Ornella alone, who knows her innocent, blesses her amid tears and wafts a kiss to her whom the angels await in Paradise.

Such is this tragedy based on the eternal truths that move the popular mind, for all primitive tribes seek to sanctify the domestic hearth and regard it as a sacred centre for defence and sacrifice, removing it mentally from the ordinary things of every-day life, and bestowing upon it an ideal life of its own. And this primitive force, living and active, ever ill suppressed, was recognized as a spot where the hand of violence and injustice was stayed. The hearth represented the fatherland in miniature, and whoever did not pertain to it was a stranger. But hospitality extended the benefits of the family to the refugee who sought an asylum, and thus opened the field to civic piety and established the laws and rights of the weak. In his "Heraclides," Euripides, in one single line, expresses the essence of this institution of Sanctuary. "It is better to wage a war than to cede to those who persecute a suppliant." And Jove, according to Eschylus, was the god of supplicants and terrible was his outraged ire. Thus Mila di Codra invokes the sanctity of the hearthstone in her appeal to Aligi not to turn her out, and points out to him the enormity of the sin he is about to commit against the most sacred of all traditions; and the shepherd is seized by a holy fear and falls on his knees. The Mother plays the part of generative vigor. As the origin of the family she speaks the language of eternal truths to the new bride as she offers her bread, the emblem of purity and of renascent force. Lazzaro di Roio is also an elemental force, cruel and potent. The crowd is a collective force, but it does not resemble the chorus of the Greek tragedies, exterior and passive personages. Here it has life and takes an essential part in the action. It arrogates to itself the executive functions of justice. The influence of traditional passions obscures the thoughts of all these semi-conscious forces, intellect is held in abeyance by instinct and by the substrata of religious superstition.

Among these elemental forces walks, alone and mentally free,

an ardent soul, Mila di Codra. She is the type of woman who has broken her fetters and elects to be alone, the woman whom the ignorant mass persecute, calumniate, and regard as personified sin. She is, too, different from her surroundings, they do not comprehend her. Of necessity she must be held a witch. And it is her lot to cross a threshold just at the moment that the household is celebrating a domestic festival, at the moment when the most sacred ritual traditions are in vigor. She is a suppliant; but, at the same time, to them she personifies vice. And the family, despite the traditions of the hearthstone, ejects her, in order that she may not bring upon them the maledictions of sorcery, that she shall not contaminate the holy of holies.

D'Annunzio's tragedy is verily hall-marked with a national impress and brings into high relief all the patriarchal instincts of the Latin people. In the first and third acts, the elemental forces have unchecked play. In the second, the tragedy is purified by the influence of a pure love, which, under the circumstances, and in view of the personages, shines out the more nobly. And Mila, purifying herself thus for the holocaust, merits the tears and kisses of Ornella, the pure virgin, the while flower of pity and innocence. Her feet walk towards the beautiful and purging flames, that will give peace at last to the daughter of Jorio, whose very name has been a terror. Thus she avenges once again, for love and woman, the sublime spirit of self-sacrifice.

HELEN ZIMMERN.

JAPAN AND ASIATIC LEADERSHIP.

BY PAUL S. REINSCH.

WITH the last decade there has dawned upon the Japanese mind an influence far transcending any former national experiences, the feeling of a sacred mission, by which the Island Nation is called to act as the guardian of Asiatic civilization, to summon the peoples of Asia to a realization of their unity, and to defend the ideals and treasures of Asiatic life against ruthless destruction through foreign invasion.

It is but a short time since the broader and more representative minds among the Asiatic races have begun to realize the unity of Asiatic civilization. The endless variety in speech and custom, the difference in character and temper between the Chinese and the Hindu, the opposite political destiny that has made one nation subject to foreigners while it has led another into an honored position among the independent Powers-all these differences can no longer obscure the deep unity of customs and of ideals that pervades the entire Orient. This unified character of Oriental life, in its essence so totally different from Western civilization, frequently expresses itself on the surface in customs and institutions which seem to us bizarre and even barbarous, and which invite the active reformer from the West to sweep them away and put in their place a more enlightened system. But whoever considers carefully the conditions of the Orient may arrive at a very different conclusion, and may see even in these apparently backward institutions the marks of a broad and noble ideal of life. The vastness of Oriental populations, the long duration of their institutions, create a feeling of permanence and peace. The frequency of natural catastrophes, the overpowering aspect of mountains, torrents, and typhoons, have given the Orientals an entirely deferential attitude towards nature,

which they have not tried to conquer or subdue. Busied rather with the causes of things and with the general laws of existence, they turn to religion and philosophy, and give but little attention to practical facts, to scientific control of the forces of nature, and to the betterment of social conditions. The pessimistic tinge of Oriental thought is due to this feeling of helplessness, which causes the world and existence to appear as a great procession of shadows, full of suffering and evil. But in all this impermanence, in the multitude of fleeting and ephemeral individual existences, the Oriental mind sees the manifestation of an omnipresent force eternal change, symbolized by the figure of the dragon. The deepest feeling in Oriental thought is the poetry of vanishing life. The withered rose, whose fragrance has delighted us for a day, is but the symbol of the maiden's beauty and the grace and activity of the young warrior, who also fade and fall after a brief span, their places taken by a new array of budding spirits.

The intellectual bond which unites the Orient, and best interprets its deepest soul, is Buddhism. Resting upon the same philosophical foundation as Brahmanism, it really constitutes the missionary principle of the great Indian religion, through which the Farther Indies, China, and even the distant islands of Japan, were brought into touch with the original seat of Oriental thought and culture. The poetry of Oriental thought finds its most potent expression in the philosophy of eternal change and final annihilation of all sensible existence, taught by Gautama. This Asiatic religion of poetic insight is the expression of that higher ideal to which all the activities and ideas of Oriental life are tributary-search for the universal principle, together with endless variety in individual existence. Thus the rural locality is the real centre of Asiatic life. There is nothing like the European centralization of authority and culture. Local self-government, with little interference by the central authorities, the preservation of immemorial customs, not reduced to set form nor modified by conscious legislation, such is the framework of Oriental polity. In China, the village governs itself, while the Imperial government fills the function of a counsellor and defender. Industry is similarly decentralized; it is carried on in the homes of the artisans, where labor is not a curse, but a natural activity and manifestation of daily life, graced by the VOL. CLXXX.-No. 578.

artistic character which pervades all Oriental handicraft. High respect is everywhere paid to intellectual forces, not only in the lands of the Brahman and Mandarin, but in the more militant Japan. Practical religion is made up partly of an idealization and worship of the all-encompassing forces of nature, partly of a feeling of loyalty to the spirits of the ancestors, whose thoughts and work are embodied in the life and spirit of the nation to-day.

Of this vast and ancient civilization, Japanese life is the flower and concentrated essence. The foundation stock of the Japanese nation was animated by the nomad instincts of Western Asia, by the fierce courage of marauding tribes. The original basis of their national life is a worship of the past and of nature. Their temples commemorate the lives of heroes, but their festal days are not the anniversaries of battles; they mark the birth of flowers. In April, the multitudes begin their fond pilgrimages to see the blossoming cherry-trees, languid summer brings the nymphlike lotus, and late in fall the gorgeous chrysanthemum draws its crowds of worshippers from village and town. These earlier romantic and warlike instincts have been sobered and steadied by the social morality of Confucius, bestowed upon Japan by the Chinese nation, that great civilizer of Northern Asia. This system is often characterized as a congeries of mere platitudes; yet it has constituted an invaluable training in the simple and homely duties of neighborly life and in practical morality, a training necessary to the Orientals who are so idealistic, and so prone to overlook the near for the distant and mysterious. Coming last among all these influences, the poetical religion of Buddhism found the Japanese soul an especially responsive medium. The fleeting shadows of existence, lovely in their rapid succession and tragic death, the mystery of the soul, in which the memories of the past existence are reechoing-these were the forms of thought evoked by the great Asiatic religion in Japan. The flower of all these civilizing influences-Japanese art-was acquired from, and based upon, continental forms, and even now it best shows the historical development of the latter. Indeed, the genesis and progress of Oriental art can be studied in its completeness only in Japan, where the treasures of the past have not been at the mercy of succeeding waves of ruthless conquerors. But the Asiatic modes of art assumed an added re