in the United States, or even elsewhere, it is more than likely that the association has adepts at the landing-places warned by cablegram-" So many bales will arrive by such and such a steamer. The late law on emigration, one of the many beneficent laws which Francesco Crispi proposed and succeeded in passing in 1889, is extremely severe on the emigrant agents and on clandestine emigration. Heavy penalties are inflicted on companies, on agents, on ship captains who contravene the regulations; and certain it is that if the captain of the emigrant ship does not do so, fugitives and criminals, as such, cannot land from Italy on foreign shores. But there are other transports than emigrant ships, and the Camorra probably avail themselves of these.*

The enormous emigration from Italy, belonging to the catalogue of "permanent" or more properly emigration for an unfixed period, now takes the Argentine Republic and Brazil for its chief objective points. In 1888, when the exodus reached its highest point, out of a total of 227,238 Italians who left their country openly for foreign shores, 104,353 went to Brazil, 75,029 to the Argentine Republic, and 47,856 to the United States. As a number of these compulsory exiles went from the northern provinces (Mantua and the Polesine), we have been able to follow the story of numbers; and, as far as Brazil is

* Professor Bodio, in his Report on Emigra. tion, gives very careful separate and comparative statistics; and here, as in all his information, his statistics may be relied upon as far as patience, and the starting without any a priori theory, can make them. Besides dividing emigration into temporary and permanent -or emigration for an indefinite period-he shows how the real bona fide permanent emigrant secures a passport, for which, if poor, he only pays 2 lire 40 ces. (2s.) instead of 10s., the price of an ordinary passport-so that he may be able, when in foreign lands, to appeal to Italian consuls for assistance and protec tion. But, on the other hand, many temporary emigrants who go to countries in Europe, hoping for work and finding none, em. bark at French and other ports, hence are not registered by the syndics of their communes ; others go in false name, and often buy the expensive passports. He considers that the clandestine emigration is chiefly composed of deserters or, strictly speaking, young men who "fit" as the year approaches when the mayor of the commune in which they reside would publish their names as bound to present them. selves at the conscription roll-call. And in the same way the criminal classes "emigrate."

concerned, it is a desolate one indeed. Large numbers died of black and yellow fever as soon as they landed, especially the women and the children. "No doctor, no priest," wrote one poor fellow; 'my dead wife and children are rotting in a ditch, and I have no means to return home with the rest." So the next year the emigrants to Brazil diminished to 36,000, and those to the Argentine Republic increased to 88,647, while the United States received 30,238 out of a total of 155,009. But last year affairs in the Argentine Republic came to grief, and the United States received in some months alone as many as 900 emigrants. At the present moment they probably have some 800,000 of Italian-born and Italian-speaking sojourners in the various States.

Hitherto, Italian emigrants in America. have been welcome guests as a whole. The report on European emigration, published by the statistical department of the United States, contains some interesting particulars concerning the Italian contingent, which, as a labor-seeking community, was insignificant before 1870.

Organ-men, and children with monkeys and white mice, and the traditional knife-grinder, excited the curiosity and pity of the Americans, but did not form any notable element of

the population. But these found that life was more worth living in America than in the taxburdened country from whence they came; so they wrote to their friends and families in Calabria, Basilicata, Salerno, to come and join them. Brothers and sisters, uncles and cousins, answered to the call. Then of course Italians from other parts of the country followed the example, and the rivulet became a stream and the stream a river.

The Italian race (continues the report) possesses certain intellectual and industrial qualities which render it acceptable to the American people. The genius of a people whose institutions and whose laws are the germ of all modern governments and legislations survives even in the illiterate classes. Character is the most appreciable quality of people who come among us; hence it is of primary importance to study the character of the Italians who land in our ports. It is well to begin this study in the Neapolitan provinces, because it is from these that the greater number of emigrants come to us. Hence (says Mr. Dingley), I have visited several ships full of emigrants as they arrived. Very few of them come from the cities, and generally whole families come at once. They are rustics with bronzed faces, work-hardened hands, stalwart frames, and if they are illiterate they are by no means stupid. They are chiefly peasants from Calabria. Many of them had been in the United States before, and had returned for their families.

They have courteous manners, and are well conducted. The Italian authorities visit every individual, examine his passports, ascertain whether they have been vaccinated and are in good health, and that they are not criminals (which in Italian would be that they have la patente netta-a clean police record). During the March of 1890 the current of emigration set in strongly again for the United States, owing to the crisis in South America.

The United States are the Eldorado for the Italians. One element in the Italian is more important and intense than in any other nationality: I allude to his love of country. The Irishman loves Ireland, the Englishman England, the German Germany; but more intense is the love of the Italian for his Italy, now be. come, with the conquest of her unity, a great country. Hence, when he has saved a pile of dollars earned in the United States he hastens home. He likes to spend his savings in his

own land; it seems to him a sacrilege to spend them elsewhere.

The American Consul at Naples writes: Ninety per cent, of the emigrants who start from here are peasants. They are not turbulent, but extremely docile, serious, and sober. Only one passion transforms an Italian into a demon that is jealousy.'

Another witness is Mr. Landor of New Jersey, who went expressly to study Italian agriculture in its home, and who now employs

numbers of Italians in the United States. Here is the pith of what he said to me (we are continuing to quote from Mr. Dingley's report):"There are 40,000 Italians in the city of New York and 20,000 in Philadelphia. In

neither of these cities is there an Italian prose

titute...

The Italians have numerous

families. In the Italian colony called Vine Land there are about 1000 Italians; about 200 are small land-holders. There is not a single Italian in the alms-house, not a single Italian beggar.

The Italians are well conducted, in

dustrious, and saving. The produce of 10,000 hectares of land cultivated by this little colony is enormous. The colony gives no trouble to the police. The Italians are not quarrelsome; they do not get drunk. They speak English, the children especially, and become

citizens and electors."

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The new immigrant law, which provides for the return at the expense of the company undesirable" persons, is a necesof sary and most wise measure for making the whole new system effective. The United States have given fair warning to Europe. "We will not," it says, 66 any longer receive your pauper, criminal, dying refuse. That is our decision."

The report of the Political Reform Union League Club of New York on the recent lynching of Italians in the State of Louisiana is a document worthy of the great American statesmen who did believe that the Decalogue and the golden rule must govern politics as well as other

human relations. The reformers deprecate the lynching of foreigners who had been tried by jury and acquitted.

No event in the history of our country has been so fraught with peril to our institutions, and it cannot be viewed without the gravest apprehension. Such examples are contagious, and no one can tell where next the mob may undertake to correct failures supposed to occur in the administration of the law. Every city of the United States has a condition of things similar to that which is reported to exist in New Orleans, as the anarchist troubles at Chicago, events at Cincinnati, and the New York riots of 1863 prove.

And in fact, those who remember the "methods of action" of the Clan-na-Gael political society-the brutal murders committed, the juries intimidated, and the escape of the murderers-and the so-called labor league of the Molly Maguires; those who follow up the proceedings of the Knights of Labor, the anarchists (none of whom by the way are even suspected of being Italians, but all society-destroying, individual-life-and-property-imperilling associations), can realize the extent to which Americans have suffered at the hands of their "foreign populations" (this without taking into account any of their difficulties with their colored population, whose entrance into their land is due to the mother

it

country, whose growth, increase, and past sufferings and present omnipotence are due to themselves, or rather to their forefathers, and North and South must 66 take them" to overcome the dangers among and disorders arising thence, and cropping up in ever new forms and phases). Hence we understand the treatment proposed by the reformers of New York, which will be sanctioned, we doubt not, by all, in treating with the "other side of the question. The members of the Reform Club, while condemning without qualification the lynching in New Orleans, examine its. full consideration of every American citiconditions and find that they demand the zen here as in many other States :

While we have taken into our body politic a vast number of honest and intelligent foreigners, who have accepted American citi. zenship in good faith, and contributed their full share of prosperity and glory to the country, we have also been flooded with ignorance, pauperism, and crime. being diluted and assailed by ways that are utterly alarming, and an immediate remedy is

Americanism is

demanded. We are unable to assimilate so much

ignorance, pauperism, and crime without danger, and illustrations of this are innumerable.

The better elements of the country have been overtaxed in dealing with this flood, and the religious, benevolent, and educational institutions of the country are appalled in the presence of the demands made upon them. The time is now propitious for agitating these questions before it is too late, and to see if something cannot be done to save the country and its institutions from the peril which men

aces them. The courts should rigidly and conscientiously enforce all the safeguards of the law against suffrage unworthily bestowed. The Federal Government and the Government of the several States should exercise all the

power they possess to keep out of the country all crime and pauperism. If the present laws are not sufficient others should be framed that will be sufficient to meet the necessities of the times, even if it becomes necessary to provide that every immigrant shall produce a consular certificate of good character before he shall become one of our family. It will be possible, and even easy, to ascertain the previous character of every proposed immigrant, and the means for procuring this information can and should be provided by the Govern ment. Neither the cost nor the difficulty of this duty bears any proportion to the im portance of the necessity of doing it for the good of the country. To postpone or to flinch from this issue would be perilous and coward ly, and, to a degree, indefensible in a great people. The doctrine contended for must not be applicable to any one nationality, but must apply to all nationalities alike.

We call upon the press and the public to discuss this subject until a remedy is found that will rid us of the foreign bandits, anarchists, criminals, and paupers, who menace this country. Therefore we recommend the adoption of this resolution :

Resolved, that we call upon the Federal Government and upon the several States to use every lawful means in their possession to prevent the importation of criminals and paupers; and we call upon the courts to rigidly administer the laws of naturalization, resisting the importunities of political parties to cloak improper persons with the rights of citizenship; and resolved, that we call upon the press and the public to agitate and discuss the subject of the importation of criminals and paupers to the end that, if the present laws be not sufficient to save the country from peril, others may be enacted which shall be effectual.

A remarkable document this we think; one which recommends itself to all justiceloving, fair dealing minds. There is not one word in it to offend Italy, or any other nation which hitherto has discharged its surplus population on to the hospitable shores of the United States-tares and wheat mixed in unascertainable propor

tion.

As far as Italy is concerned, she has shown herself capable of dealing with her criminals, and it will not be her fault if,

escaping from her soil, they are received in Europe and allowed to embark for the other side of the Atlantic. There at least the Americans will defend themselves," not by lynching and perpetuating the lawdefying, justice-cheating propensities of all criminal classes, but by sending them back whence they came at the expense of those who illegally or fraudulently or even carelessly brought them. As to her pau

pers, Italy can provide for these also by simply carrying into execution without fear or favor the Reform Bill on charitable institutions, for which the preparatory studies were made during his first administration in 1876, when Giovanni Nicotera was then now Minister for Home Affairs; and converted into law (after fierce battles and strenuous opposition by the Church and her friends) by Francesco Crispi in 1890, the last year of his administration.

as

The poor of Italy possess in their own right more than two milliards of capital, producing 100,000,000 lire per annum. Hitherto, this wealth, enorinous for so poor a country, has been reduced to less than one-half by the ecclesiastical administrators and by lay agents; by taxation and by deductions for cult. In Milan, where the reform was made by the province and the communes, the charitable institutions serve their rightful objects, and by the new law will, we trust, maintain the pauper population all the country over. There are 20,000 edifices in which to house all the old, sick, lunatics (for whom other provisions are also made), the deaf, dumb, blind, and incapables, also the orphans, the waifs and strays of incivilization. Nicotera has pledged himself to the immediate application of this beneficent law, and if a mistaken policy does not lead other members of the Ministry to seek reconciliation with the irreconcilable we do not doubt of his success. Then again we see with joy that the present Minister of Public Works means to carry into effect another scheme of Crispi, and Miceli, late Minister of Public Works, till now tabooed because theirs; namely, the establishment of home colonies, not on the blue-skyand-green-field cottage system for irredeemable criminals, for whom there are ergastoli and prisons to spare, nor for lazy able-bodied paupers, but by a system of works for workers in the redemption ot the marshy, uutilled, but fertile lands of

the Roman Campagna, of the neglected but most fertile island of Sardinia, and let us hope of some portions of Sicily. Of other schemes long since undertaken and carried on for the housing of the poor, for the establishment of industrial schools, we have not time now to speak, but it can be shown, in much less space than is necessary for the sad subject in hand, that Italy has done more for the "redemption of the masses" than any one is aware of. Unfortunately in Italy the very classes which in England and America do their best in that direction, the clergy and the religious classes of all denominations, in Italy do nothing for the people save to mulet them of money for masses for the living and the dead, for the " prisoner in the Vatican, for the maintenance of illegal associations and prohibited fraternities. The Pope and the priests do not approve of the laws of the land; hence conscription, civil marriage, and other laws are ignored, or open disobedience to them is enjoined at the confessionals, and often from the pulpit.

Of late years the ultra-radicals who, until the death of Dr. Bertani, devoted themselves to the alleviation of misery and the diminution of crime, have abandoned that field of usefulness for sterile and dangerous political agitation, leaving social questions to puddlers in muddy waters, and to anarchists-though these in Mazzini's Italy find a barren soil. There are signs, however, that certain lessons received, and certain dangers noted, have not been useless. If these come back to their old allegiance to real reform and to the faith that made Italy one, free, and united, the next statistics of crime and pauperism in Italy will place her on a quite other footing on the progress-showing table of Europe.

Meanwhile, and without a misgiving, we may assert that Italy will never allow her century-old friendship with the United States to be broken or even cooled by an "incident'' resulting from the combined dark deeds of criminals and cowards.

The "tall talk stalking up and down" anent sealed orders to Italian admirals; of ironclads and gunboats weighing anchor for the Gulf of Mexico; of passports made ready for the much beloved American Minister in Rome (whose departure thence would be as much regretted as is Baron Fava's from Washington), are but so many canards invented by Italy's false

friends and envious fratelli. Not a word of this bombastic trash do we read in the Italian newspapers. Nor is it possible that a Cabinet which contains two such members as Giovanni Nicoter and Pasquale Villari, than whom no two living men have done more to stamp out misery and crime in their native land, would, for a crime-originated catastrophe, consent to any step which would inevitably precipitate their country into an abyss from which Garibaldi redivivus could not extract her.

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No! Italy, at an overburdening sacrifice to herself, at a cost which every Italian suffers from, but pays punctually, if not cheerfully, has organized an "every-citizen-a-soldier" army; has created a magnificent fleet simply and solely for her own defence. And for the same object she has entered into an alliance which, if not exactly a union of hearts," is one of vital interest. Even as she must have the integrity of her own territory guaranteed, so has she undertaken to guarantee the territory of her allies against all redeemers and revendicators of provinces, ceded by treaty or lost through the fortunes or misfortunes of war. Of such fortunes Italy is, alas, only too competent a judge. But, bitterly as she ever mourns the loss of Nice, and much as she desires to see Savoy ceded to neutral Switzerland, she does not deem it her right to keep Europe in a state of turmoil and apprehension, or to stir up the inhabitants of those provinces to impotent rebellion.

Consequently she is less inclined than other nations to sympathize with those who thus bewail "spilt milk."

Her fleet she maintains in spick and span order for the protection of her coasts, for the prevention of playful descents on her arsenals or the possible renewals of guards of honor to the prisoner at the Vatican. Insufficient for a filibustering expedition, it is a fair fleet for defence, consisting of 17 iron clad warships, with other four nearly completed, 270 gunboats, ocean-torpedoes and torpedo vessels carrying 2000 guns, of which three fourths are of recent type, with a crew of 20,000 on active service, besides 559 officers, and 41,000 men on unlimited leave or in re

serve.

Never a dingy will she spare needlessly from the Mediterranean, which neither she nor, we imagine, Great Britain intends to allow ever to become a " French lake," though Tunis, Toulon, Corsica,

I.

In the following lines I will endeavor to explain the views I have formed upon the Art of Fiction during the twenty years I have practised that art. My first novel, which, thank Heaven, is still unpublished, dates from 1871, and was called, Without God. It was a very profound study of the connection between Atheism and emotion, for at that age we are not perplexed by any kind of doubt. In those days it would have given me infinitely less trouble than it does now to write this article. Like all beginners, I had a theory, complete in all its parts, upon the subject of romantic literature. Now I have merely tastes and hypotheses. I know well enough what I like in works of fiction, but I also know that I care nothing for many of those works which aesthetically are superior to others on which I dote. When we have reached this point it is awkward work to dogmatize seriously. Here, however, are some general observations which may at least serve as a contribution, as you say in England, to the discussion of the subject under consideration.

In the present day, when we speak of the Art of Fiction, we refer especially to the novel. For the last hundred years that kind of fiction has in fact absorbed all the others. Epic poetry has nearly disappeared. Theatrical productions go on diminishing in every country. Lyrical genius is rarely displayed. Novelists, good, bad, and indifferent swarm, on the NEW SERIES-VOL. LIII., No. 6.

other hand, in endless numbers, and their works multiply in every direction. For the modern novel admits of infinitely varied treatment and consequently attracts the most diversified minds, another sign of the vitality of this class of writing. To confine myself merely to examples in France, whenever a writer distinguished in one branch of literature has turned to another, he has always gone to the novel. Benjamin Constant, the statesman, produces Adolphe; M. Taine, the philosopher, produces Graindorgé; Fromentin, the painter and historian of art, produces Dominique; Sainte- Beuve, the critic, produces Volupté; Jules Vallès, the revolutionary and pamphleteer, produces Jacques Vengtras. Poets like Hugo, Musset, Gautier, Lamartine, Lamartine, Vigny, also turned to the novel with a natural impulse when they wished to rest from poetry in prose, and Les Miserables, L'Enfant du Siècle, La Morte Amoureuse, Graziella, Cinq-Mars, show the marvellous flexibility of a form of literature in which intellects the most diversified move with complete freedom. If we add to the list of these occasional novelists the professional novelists, we find that in France alone three generations of writers have been engaged almost exclusively in this work without exhausting it. In one we find masters like Balzac, Stendhal, Georges Sand, Mérimée. In another, Flaubert, Octave Feuillet, the brothers Goncourt, shine out brilliantly. In the third we find writers of vigorous talent like Zola, Daudet, Maupassant, Loti. In work of this

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