"Ceneri e faville," is derived from Shelley's prayer to the West Wind to scatter like

In any case, there are more ashes than sparks among them, and the sparks seem devoid of any igniting or illuminating quality. It must not be forgotten that Carducci has rendered much service to the literature of his country as the editor of some of the principal Italian classics. An edition of Petrarch, published in 1899, is especially valuable, though it may be conjectured that the chief burden of the commentary must have fallen upon Carducci's coadjutor, Severino Ferrari.

Of late years Carducci has produced, or at least published, but little poetry; his appearances as a poet have been chiefly confined to odes on occasions of public solemnities, when he has always been worthy of himself. His position is one of singular good fortune both internally and externally. High honor has fallen to his lot; he is a Senator of the Kingdom, yet he lives quietly and unostentatiously at Bologna, the centre of a literary society devoted to him, and the object of universal respect throughout Italy. In the world of thought the fiery youth has come to enact the part of the sage mediator, which hardly any other Italian could perform with equal authority, and for which he is especially qualified by a perfect comprehension of the tendencies he would reconcile,-for he has participated in them all. A Republican in theory, he has the good sense to perceive that monarchy is essential to the weal of Italy, and the throne has no more devoted subject. Opposed as ever to priestcraft and priestly dominion, he is nevertheless a Theist, and his influence, though never ostentatiously exercised, makes wholly for the reverential recognition of a Supreme Power. In ethics Carducci treads the middle path with equal success; his austerity is displayed in his lofty standard of public virtue, not in the Puritanism which condemns natural emotions; while, on the other hand, his joy in life never degenerates into extravagance. In this he is distinguished from his only serious rival, the brilliant D'Annun

zio, a poet endowed with a more exquisite lyrical faculty than Carducci himself, and more productive and versatile, but never attaining to greatness. We speak merely of D'Annunzio's poems, with all their defects a treasury of beauty and melody. The romances by which he is so much better known want the first condition of a really good novel, the personages are wholly uninteresting and unsympathetic. If they were real they would be detestable, but in fact they are mere puppets. It may almost be laid down that the success of every novelist is in proportion to his power of interesting us in his characters, for the lack of which not all the splendor of even a D'Annunzio's diction

can atone.

The main distinction between Carducci and D'Annunzio is that D'Annunzio, partly even in his poems, and wholly in his novels, has stooped to minister to the corrupt tendencies of his public, while the general character of Carducci's work forms a silent protest against whatever is least satisfactory in Italian life and in the national character. Noble passages in recent Italian history prove the conventional notions of Italian effeminacy and frivolity to be greatly exaggerated: yet their prevalence proves that there must be a certain foundation for them. It is, therefore, almost startling to find the national poet the reverse of all that we have been taught to consider national, in his writings as in his physiognomy and manners, a hearty, jovial, slightly boisterous person, more like a typical Englishman than a typical Italian; with no abnormal endowment of subtlety or insight in the intellectual sphere, but gifted in their stead with a clearness of perception and a vigor of expression worthy of John Bright; in the world of politics, imbued as few continentals are with the English doctrine of equitable compromise; in his tastes a lover of country life and penetrated by its simple and salutary influence. there be a greater contrast than that between the Tuscan love of the town so humorously portrayed in Browning's "Up at a Villa-Down in the City," and Carducci's apotheosis of agriculture in the person of its chief minister in Italy, the patient ox, thus admirably rendered by Mr. Sewall?—

Can

"I love thee, pious Ox ; a gentle feeling

Of vigor and of peace thou giv'st my heart.
How solemn, like a monument, thou art!
Over wide fertile fields thy calm gaze stealing!
Unto the yoke with grave contentment kneeling,

To man's quick work thou dost thy strength impart :
He shouts and goads, and, answering thy smart,
Thou turn'st on him thy patient eyes appealing.

From thy broad nostrils, black and wet, arise

Thy breath's soft fumes; and on the still air swells,
Like happy hymn, thy lowing's mellow strain.

In the grave sweetness of thy tranquil eyes

Of emerald, broad and still reflected, dwells
All the divine green silence of the plain."

The same feeling for nature appears in Carducci's most elaborate poems; when fashioning himself after the antique he is no less the poet of the life around him; and even when evoking the past it is usually for the admonition of the present. It was no doubt his revolutionary ardor that originally made him the popular poet of his day, and it is to the honor of his country to have maintained on at that eminence when his mission has become that of the thinker and artist. His early work will still keep its place in virtue of its poetic quality, and when his work is reviewed as a whole, it will appear, notwithstanding occasional excrescences and aberrations, a work for all sections of his countrymen, the enemies of the national unity alone excepted. These, whether ultramontanes or anarchists, have no part or lot in Carducci. No living writer more distinctly embodies the best and highest thought of his environment; few poets have gained so high a position simply as lyrists, with so little indication of creative or dramatic power. Any temporary vicissitude in this great reputation would be an evil sign for Italy, but could not permanently affect a fame reared on the impregnable foundations of great thought and great style. It is rather for Italy to show whether she is capable of maintaining the high ideal he has set Carducci will be a great glory to her, or a great

before her.

reproach.

CONTEMPORARY FRENCH PHILOSOPHY'

ALFRED FOUILLÉE, Menton, France.

During the second half of the nineteenth century, France witnessed a remarkable philosophical movement, in which speculations of the loftiest and boldest form concerning the world and life made their appearance, in opposition to the official philosophy, at once timorous and despotic, of Victor Cousin and his school.

The general direction of French philosophy in the second half of the nineteenth century may be characterized as the endeavor to harmonize naturalism and idealism,—an endeavor which has terminated in accordance, more or less, with the different mental tendencies of those whom it has attracted. Devotion to facts and devotion to ideas are, moreover, two tendencies henceforth inseparable in the case of every theorist who has at the same time respect for science and a taste for philosophy.

The second half of the nineteenth century presents two distinct periods, one in which naturalism predominates, and, towards 1855, invades literature itself, the other in which idealism finally takes the lead. The year 1851, which was in France the critical year of the century, witnessed the dissolution of all dreams of social and religious reorganization, of liberty, and of universal brotherhood. Force triumphed; there was a retrograde movement; the fact gave the lie to the idea. As a result of the tri(1) Translated by Professor H. A. P. Torrey of the University of Ver

mont.

Copyright, 1902, by Frederick A. Richardson.

umph of the positive sciences and of the historical sciences, which were based upon the theory of evolution, it was believed that philosophy would resolve itself into history,-nay, even into philology, into "erudition"! Philosophy was Comtism contracted, and at the same time a decapitated Hegelianism. There was a desire, to use Taine's expression, to "solder" the moral sciences to the natural sciences;-solder, nothing more appropriate, but to identify and to confound, that was the danger. And the danger was not always avoided. To this period belong the names of Vacherot, of Taine, and of Renan, to whom we should add Littré, if the latter had not limited himself to a positivism devoid of all genuine originality.

It was during the last thirty years of the century that the idealist movement appeared. Already Secrétan and M. Renouvier had published great works that were inspired by spiritualistism or criticism, but these works did not receive the attention nor, above all, exert in full the influence due to their merits. It was from the University of France that the impulse was destined mainly to proceed.

The upper Ecole Normale, the competitive examinations in philosophy, the theses for the doctor's degrees, the examinations of the Academy of moral and political sciences, had their part in the new movement of mind. The official report of M. Ravaisson, in connection with the Universal Exposition of 1868, upon "Philosophy in France in the Nineteenth Century" was a kind of eloquent manifesto in which the loftiest views were set forth with a magisterial authority. M. Jules Lachelier was already professor at the Ecole Normale, and his thesis upon "Induction" stood at the head, in the Sorbonne, of the long list of theses, which, under diverse titles, were destined to attract attention. To follow the historical order we are obliged to mention the fact that we ourselves were for a short time the colleague of M. Lachelier at the Ecole Normale, that our thesis upon "Liberty and Determinism" followed a year after his own (1873), and was preceded by our memoirs on the "Philosophy of Plato" and the "Philosophy of Socrates" (1869).