from the kitchen in my young At this point I, the writer, felt a about. There was now no meaning in the name Proxime accessit. The MS. was worthless. I woke out of my hypnotic state to a knowledge of these vexatious facts, and as usual I had no redress. I couldn't strike a woman, and I went to bed a sadder though perhaps hardly a wiser man. I resolved that I must make a decided stand the next day, and not allow any base advantage to be taken of me. But how to take Justice by the forelock was the difficulty, and, as before, I found myself baffled. On coming downstairs I found the old dame occupying my chair, while before her lay the sketch of a tale which I had hoped that day to advance towards completion. It was entitled 'Cam's Humiliations,' and was to be a really pathetic and artless relation of the unlooked-for and unaccountable disasters that overtook a young man of exceptionable character and abilities, by name Campbell. Born under an unlucky star, he was not only to suffer, but to become involved in disgrace and ruin. He was, while really innocent and praiseworthy, to bring dishonour on himself and family; to be checkmated at every turn; to be jilted; to marry the wrong woman, owing to a clerical error in the copying of a note; to have his house burnt down; his children born with squints,—and all for nothing, apparently. You can guess how very touching and appealing such a story might be made in good hands,-I use the words "good hands" advisedly. Well, there was Modernité with my ink-bottle and blotter in front of him, an expression of self-complacent mock modesty on his face, and an ear all attention to what appeared to be dictation. "What's going on here?" I inquired. "Oh, it's your story," said he, in a sort is doing it her own way. She says you've no notion of fair-play," and he shook his head gravely at me with an assumption of virtue and injured rectitude that fairly staggered me. "Sit down and be quiet," he continued; "don't disturb the old lady." "But it's my story, madam," I cried. "Please go back to your corner, and let me deal with Cam and his humiliations. I'm bound to see him out of the wood myself." "Justice, young man, is not to be tampered with," said she. "That young stranger in the corner, who seems to be all that a young man should be, has offered to write at my dictation, and I beg you will not interrupt. I hope you will show the same reverence for my age and infirmity which my nice young friend here does." "That's a nasty one for you," whispered Modernité, pursing up his mouth and looking as if butter wouldn't melt in it. "You atrocious humbug!" said I, "what do you expect to gain by this? Is your name down in the old lady's will? For that the days of Justice are near a close is evident." I got no reply, for old Dame J. began in a clear voice to unfold my tale in her own way, righting all Cam's wrongs, meting out strict justice to all the characters. life. There were no humiliations. Cam had it all his own way. Share and share alike was the key-note throughout. What possible use could I make of a story which was now a contradiction in terms? I was humiliated, but Cam certainly was not. Again I found myself without redress, confronted by an adversary whose sex and age shielded her from the shaking my hands tingled to administer. The MS. found its way to the drawer with the other two. That night, before going to bed, I got out my fourth and final ream of foolscap. "Was ever paper more truly named," quoth I, "as far as I am concerned?" Glancing upwards I saw that the unities were sticking close to the ceiling head downwards. I knew that meant sleep-sound sleep; for I had studied the habits of the Cheiropoda when a boy. "Now," said I, "I'll write the name ready, and come down very early in the morning and get possession of the field." So I took my paper and wrote very clearly SOLUS CUM SOLA. A TALE OF ARCADY. It was to be a graceful, classical story, full of fountains and grottoes and tegmine - fagis. You know the sort of thing, interTheocritus and Ovid and Properspersed with apt quotations from tius. Solus was to meet Sola in an ilex grove, and they were to go together to some festival in honour of Bacchus - a white heifer covered with garlands between them. Then they were to dance round a stone image of another god, and to twine acanthus round each other's heads. There was to be a great deal of grape-juice flowing, and a goat cropping up everywhere, and a troublesome faun in the background trying to attract Sola's attention. It was to be a picture of that loveliest of all things, a solitude à deux; and of course that French "quote" was to come in, "Quelle belle chose est la solitude quand on a quelqu'un à qui on peut dire, 'Quelle belle chose est la solitude!"" Solus and Sola were to be quite inseparable dear things, and they were to totter downhill together like Baucis and Philemon, hand in hand, full of a sweet natural piety, humanity, and anthropomorphism—“Et sol crescentes decedens duplicat umbras." I went to bed with ears that 'rang to many a flute in Arcady," and was up before dawn. Creeping softly down-stairs, I was surprised to see a light under the door of my study. I opened the door and went in suddenly. Modernité bounced up like a parched pea off my writing-chair- there was no trace of the other concomitants; before him lay a pile of manuscript. "Sit down and let me hear what you have been doing," I said, as calmly as I could. "Oh, nothing," he replied, evasively. I glanced over his shoulder. He had written my story. There it lay, in that upright, square, fin de siècle caligraphy so unlike the time-honoured "hand as when a field of corn bows all its ears before the roaring east." I read it, wondering and puzzled as to its purport. The opening chapters reasoned high of providence, fore-knowledge, will, and fate as viewed by the search-lights of the nineteenth century. Could it be a religious novel? No; for the next chapter was devoted to pigeon-English as she is spoke at Hurlingham among the submerged upper tenth. Then would come a chapter in which Modernité had VOL. CXLIX.-NO. DCCCCVII. mounted his hobby and ridden away to the borders of that discovered country from whose bourne far too many travellers return nowadays-that land where insoluble problems stalk and confront the unwary like highwaymen with the words, "My solution or your life"; a land of the bittern and cormorant; an habitation for dragons, and a court for owls, where the wild beasts of the desert shall also meet with the wild beasts of the island, and where the satyr shall cry to his fellow." I will do Modernité the justice to say that he only rode to the borders of this doleful region, and, seated on his gaunt Rosinante of a hobby, surveyed the scene through the wrong end of his telescope; so that, after all, he couldn't see very much. But that he should wish to ride in that direction at all was what astonished me. When there is a fair, pure territory governed still by idealism, the entrance to which is guarded by no fierce lions, and where the wayfaring man though a fool may not err therein, why ride through a quickset hedge to reach that other, that debatable land, the republic of Realism? "I can't make you out, Modernité," I said, looking at him fixedly. "You see," he answered, glancing at me furtively, "these are all burning questions of the day." "Burning!" I replied; "I wish they were burning in the fires of Tophet." "You haven't read the preface to the little story," he said, uneasily. "It might give you a clue to some of your difficulties." I turned to the preface, which had before escaped my notice. It was very short, and I give it in extenso as follows: "By a grimmer law than Grimm's, s and z are often controvertible, and thus 'Solus cum Sola' becomes 'Solus cum Zola.' The ≈ adds that savour of realis 2 T tic philosophy without which no modern novel is complete, and which the spirit of the age demands. Be sure you ask at all libraries for 'Solus cum Zola, not 'Sola- "You have gone and ruined my story," I said; "you know it was- "" "Truck? yes," said he. "Well," said I, "there's a Truck Act now which enables an author to- "Stop, stop!" he cried; "I see you know as much about what goes on in Parliament as you do about what goes on in the world around you. My dear old boy, you're out of it. You think you've caught me, but it's just t'other way about. I've caught you, and I am hurrying you along nolens volens. You'll have to publish that last story. The others I don't think so much of. Old Di's might pay, but 'Solus cum Zola' would make your fortune. Why, every schoolboy would wish to buy it." "Yes, you fiend,” said I, "that's the pity of it.' "And it's a book that no nice girl would like her mother to read," he added: "that's also a good advertisement." "Hush!" said I, and seizing the MS. I flung it into the fire. There was dead silence in the room for three minutes. "All my pretty chicks at one fell swoop," thought I, glancing towards the drawer of unusable MSS. and at the ashes on the hearth. Then turning to Modernité I said, "It's never too late to mend. You have not very long to live; the century is nearly out, and your place will know you no more. Couldn't you have kept a gallop for the avenue? No; you're too effete even for that. You're a poor, sickly, morbid, moribund, joyless creature; you're perforated with the fret-saw of civilisation-one can see through you in every direction. Have you brought with you seven spirits more wicked than yourself, or am I misjudging you? Spirits of unrest, of anarchy and confusion, of disorder and disrespect, seem to hover in your train. In the last century (in France, at least) society knew how to take off its head; in England, in this century, it hardly knows how to take off its hat." I was just warming with my subject when Modernité rose hastily, saying "Ta-ta. always go out before the sermon, -most people do nowadays. I've done all I can for you. Bye-bye,” and he skipped towards the open window, where the wind caught and carried him away, and I saw him no more. To be eloquent without becoming a bore has always been my difficulty. And there is only one thing Modernité can't stand. He can stand garbage, fribbles, toys, booths, spooks, agnostics, religious novels, slums, Ibsen, good works, bad works, indifferent works; but he can't stand a bore-so they tell me. Shall we all become bores and thus get rid of him? The task might not be beyond, our strength. O. J., Author of "Doves and Ravens," "The Muqaddam of Spins." IDYLLIC SWITZERLAND. SWITZERLAND looks but a small country on the map. But if it could be rolled out, and its vertical as well as horizontal acreage fairly estimated, it would be shown to occupy a considerable space. Perhaps it represents about a third of the whole Alpine region, of which it forms the centre. Being the centre, it ought seemingly to possess the highest mountain, Mont Blanc, but does not. France and Italy claim the monarch between them. If they were minded to bring their international differences to the ancient and sensible arbitrament of single combat, instead of ruining each other and themselves by monster armies, their champions might fight it out before the eyes of the world on the summit, each standing on his own national ground. This popular country, where every one goes in summer who does not own or rent a Scottish moor, or possess the right of catching salmon in Norway, seemed to me to have become too decidedly public property to be longer attractive, and in August 1890 I was led, somewhat under protest, to the holiday haunts of younger days. But Switzerland, I soon acknowledged, possesses the charm of Desdemona, that "infinite variety which "custom can never stale." In fact, there are many Switzerlands. There is one political and historical, another topographical. One speaks German, another French, another Italian, another Romaunsch. One is Catholic, the other Protestant. One is Radical, the other Conservative, for though both are Republican, there is all the difference in the world between a republic by the grace of French Revolution and the devil, and a republic which has its roots in history, and may claim quite as much as the oldest monarchy to found its title-deeds on the grace of God. Then there are, to divide them according to the manner in which visitors regard and use them, four Switzerlands-Alpine Club Switzerland, Philistine Switzerland, Family or Idyllic Switzerland, and unknown or neglected Switzerland. Alpine Club Switzerland is all composed of peaks, passes, and glaciers, from which the valleys in which the Philistines (contemptuously called by the climbers the Subalpine Club) love to congregate, look merely like huge dark chasms which break the white continuity of the ice-regions. The capital of this polar district is Zermatt. The Philistine capital is not called Gaza or Ashdod, but Interlachen. Idyllic Switzerland is too rural to own a capital, but its termini are Appenzell and Fribourg, and its point of central interest is somewhere near Châteaud'-Oex. Unknown Switzerland centralises itself nowhere, but its best expression is the unfrequented Black Lake, about twelve miles westward from Bulle. It has been dragged to the light of publicity to some extent by the pleasant pen of M. Victor Tissot. If it must have a capital, I should place it at Gruyère, world-famous for its cheeses, which, though they look like millstones, are decidedly eatable. At present our concern is with the region which we call, for various reasons, Idyllic, Arcadian, or Family Switzerland. It is entirely a pastoral country: the majority of its inhabitants are composed of goats and cows and sheep, named |