tial to the success of a work of art.
We were all getting somewhat tired, it must be confessed, of the old
places and the old themes. The insipid loves of Anthony Trollope's
blameless young people were beginning to pall upon us. The jaded palate
of the Anglo-Celtic race pined for something hot, with a touch of fresh
spice in it. It demanded curried fowl and Jamaica peppers. Hence, on the
one hand, the sudden vogue of the novelists of the younger
countries--Tolstoi and Tourgenieff, Ibsen and Bjornson, Mary Wilkins and
Howells--who transplanted us at once into fresh scenes, new people:
hence, on the other hand, the tendency on the part of our own latest
writers--the Stevensons, the Hall Caines, the Marion Crawfords, the
Rider Haggards--to go far afield among the lower races or the later
civilisations for the themes of their romances.

Alas, alas, I see breakers before me! Must I pause for a moment in the
flowing current of a paragraph to explain, as in an aside, that I
include Marion Crawford of set purpose among "our own" late writers,
while I count Mary Wilkins and Howells as Transatlantic aliens?
Experience teaches me that I must; else shall I have that annoying
animalcule, the microscopic critic, coming down upon me in print with
his petty objection that "Mr. Crawford is an American." Go to, oh, blind
one! And Whistler also, I suppose, and Sargent, and, perhaps, Ashmead
Bartlett! What! have you read "Sarracinesca" and not learnt that its
author is European to the core? 'Twas for such as you that the Irishman
invented his brilliant retort: "And if I was born in a stable would I be
a horse?"

Not merely, however, do our younger writers go into strange and novel
places for the scenes of their stories; the important point to notice in
the present connection is that, consciously or unconsciously to
themselves, they have perceived the mighty influence of this Clash of
Races, and have chosen the relations of the civilised people with their
savage allies, or enemies, or subjects, as the chief theme of their
handicraft. 'Tis a momentous theme, for it encloses in itself half the
problems of the future. The old battles are now well-nigh fought out;
but new ones are looming ahead for us. The cosmopolitanisation of the
world is introducing into our midst strange elements of discord. A
conglomerate of unwelded ethnical elements usurps the stage of history.
America and South Africa have already their negro question; California
and