of
knowledge there is less likelihood of mutual misunderstandings; and here
literature performs a most useful service to the cause of civilization.
As Tennyson once said: "It is the authors, more than the diplomats, who
make nations love one another." Fortunately, no high tariff can keep out
the masterpieces of foreign literature which freely cross the frontier,
bearing messages of good-will and broadening our understanding of our
fellowmen.

IV

The deeper interest in the expression of national qualities and in the
representation of provincial peculiarities is to-day accompanied by an
increasing cosmopolitanism which seems to be casting down the barriers
of race and of language. More than fourscore years ago, Goethe said that
even then national literature was "rather an unmeaning term" as "the
epoch of world-literature was at hand." With all his wisdom Goethe
failed to perceive that cosmopolitanism is a sorry thing when it is not
the final expression of patriotism. An artist without a country and with
no roots in the soil of his nativity is not likely to bring forth flower
and fruit. As an American critic aptly put it, "a true cosmopolitan is
at home,--even in his own country." A Russian novelist set forth the
same thought; and it was the wisest character in Turgenieff's 'Dimitri
Roudine' who asserted that the great misfortune of the hero was his
ignorance of his native land:--"Russia can get along without any of us,
but we cannot do without Russia. Wo betide him who does not understand
her, and still more him who really forgets the manners and the ideas of
his fatherland! Cosmopolitanism is an absurdity and a zero,--less than a
zero; outside of nationality, there is no art, no truth, no life
possible."

Perhaps it may be feasible to attempt a reconciliation of Turgenieff and
Goethe, by pointing out that the cosmopolitanism of this growing century
is revealed mainly in a similarity of the external forms of literature,
while it is the national spirit which supplies the essential inspiration
that gives life. For example, it is a fact that the 'Demi-monde' of
Dumas, the 'Pillars of Society' of Ibsen, the 'Magda' of Sudermann, the
'Grand Galeoto' of Echegaray, the 'Second Mrs. Tanqueray' of Pinero, the
'Gioconda' of d'Annunzio are all of them cast in the same dramatic mold;
but it is also a fact that the metal of which each is made was smelted
in the native land of its author. Similar as they are in structure, in
th