ighly finished language, which bears the impress of
the labors of a hundred masters; while Kielland has to produce his
effects of style in a poorer and less pliable language, which often
pants and groans in its efforts to render a subtle thought. To have
polished this tongue and sharpened its capacity for refined and incisive
utterance, is one--and not the least--of his merits.

Though he has by nature no more sympathy with the pietistic movement
than Daudet, Kielland yet manages to get psychologically closer to his
problem. His pietists are more humanly interesting than those of Daudet,
and the little drama which they set in motion is more genuinely
pathetic. Two superb figures--the lay preacher Hans Nilsen and Skipper
Worse--surpass all that the author had hitherto produced in depth of
conception and brilliancy of execution. The marriage of that delightful,
profane old sea-dog Jacob Worse with the pious Sara Torvestad, and the
attempts of his mother-in-law to convert him, are described not with the
merely superficial drollery to which the subject invites, but with a
sweet and delicate humor which trembles on the verge of pathos. In the
Christmas tale, "Elsie," Kielland has produced a little classic of
almost flawless perfection. With what exquisite art he paints the life
of a small Norwegian coast-town in all its vivid details! While
Bjoernson, in "The Heritage of the Kurts," primarily emphasizes the
responsibility of the individual to society, Kielland chooses to
emphasize the responsibility of society to the individual. The former
selects a hero with vicious inherited tendencies, redeemed by wise
education and favorable environment; the latter portrays a heroine with
no corrupt predisposition, destroyed by a corrupting environment. Elsie
could not be good, because the world was once so constituted that girls
of her kind were not expected to be good. Temptations, perpetually
thronging in her way, broke down the moral bulwarks of her nature;
resistance seemed in vain. In the end, there is scarcely one who, having
read the book, will have the heart to condemn her.

Incomparably clever is the satire on the benevolent societies which
exist to furnish a kind of officious sense of virtue to their
aristocratic members. "The Society for the Redemption of the Abandoned
Women of St. Peter's Parish" is presided over by a gentleman who is
responsible for the abandoned condition of a goodly number of them.
However, it turns out