think that his elder is his
better. The younger man's distinction is very largely due to a fine
self-command, a faculty of self-criticism, which in its way cannot
easily be overpraised. He has not Stevenson's exquisite and yet daring
appropriateness in the choice of words, but his humour is racier and
scarcely less delicate, and in passages of pathos he knows his way
straight to the human heart As the invention or discovery of new themes
grows day by day less easy--as the bounds of the story-teller's personal
originality are constantly narrowing--the purely literary faculty, the
mere craft of authorship in its finer manifestations must of necessity
grow more valuable. Mr. Barrie is a captain amongst workmen, and there
is little fear that in the final judgment of the public and his peers
he will be huddled up with Maclarens and Crocketts, as he sometimes is
to-day. But Dr. Mac-donald, though he has not sought for the finenesses
of mere literary art with an equal jealousy, has inherited a bigger
fortune, and has spent his ownings with a larger hand. He has perhaps
narrowed his following by his faithfulness to his own inspiration, but
his books are a genuine benefaction to the heart, and no man can read
them honestly without drawing from them a spiritual freshness and purity
of the rarer sort. There is an old story of a discussion among the
students of their time as to the relative merits of Schiller and Goethe,
The dispute came to Schiller's ears, and he laughingly advised the
combatants to cease discussion, and to be thankful that they had both.
I could take a personal refuge there with all pleasure, but the critical
rush to crown the new gods is a new thing, and, without stealing a leaf
from the brow of the younger writer, I should like to see a fresher and
a brighter crown upon the head of his elder and bigger brother.

X.--THE PROBLEM SEEKERS--SEA CAPTAIN AND LAND CAPTAIN

It is so long a time since Mr. W. H. Mallock published the 'Romance of
the Nineteenth Century' that the book might now very well be left alone,
if it were not for the fact that in a fashion it marked an epoch in
the history of English literature. It was, so far as I know, the first
example of the School of the Downright Nasty. For half a year it ran
in 'Belgravia' side by side with a novel of my own, and under those
conditions I read as much as I could stand of it. Its main object
appears to be to establish the theory that a young woman of ref