iritual
conceptions should always maintain a basis in the world of fact, and
the greatest works of literary art, while taking their stand upon the
solid earth, have not feared to lift their heads to heaven. The
highest art is the union of both methods, but in recent times realism
in an extreme form, led by Zola and Tolstoi, and followed with willing
though infirm footsteps by certain American writers, has attained a
marked prominence in literature, while romantic writers have suffered
a corresponding obscuration. It must be admitted that the influence of
the realists is not entirely detrimental; on the contrary, they have
imported into literature a nicety of observation, a heedfulness of
workmanship, a mastery of technique, which have been greatly to its
advantage. Nevertheless, the novel of hard facts has failed to prove
its claim to infallibility. Facts in themselves are impotent to
account for life. Every material fact is but the representative on the
plane of sense of a corresponding truth on the spiritual plane. Spirit
is the substance; fact the shadow only, and its whole claim to
existence lies in its relation to spirit. Bulwer declares in one of
his early productions that the Ideal is the only true Real.

In the nature of things a reaction from the depression of the
realistic school must take place. Indeed, it has already set in, even
at the moment of the realists' apogee. A dozen years ago the author of
"John Inglesant," in a work of the finest art and most delicate
spirituality, showed that the spell of the ideal had not lost its
efficacy, and the books that he has written since then have confirmed
and emphasized the impression produced by it. Meanwhile, Robert Louis
Stevenson and Rider Haggard have cultivated with striking success the
romantic vein of fiction, and the former, at least, has acquired a
mastery of technical detail which the realists themselves may envy. It
is a little more than a year, too, since Rudyard Kipling startled the
reading public with a series of tales of wonderful force and
vividness; and whatever criticism may be applied to his work, it
incontestably shows the dominance of a spiritual and romantic motive.
The realists, on the other hand, have added no notable recruits to
their standard, and the leaders of the movement are losing rather than
gaining in popularity. The spirit of the new age seems to be with the
other party, and we may expect to see them enjoy a constantly widening
vogu