The Macmillan Company's New Books THE EVOLUTION OF IMMORTALITY By the Rev. SAMUEL D. MCCONNELL. Cloth, 12mo, $1.25. Just Ready. "As some, but not all, animals have qualities that approach the human, so some people are immortal, but not all," says Dr. McCONNELL. His theory that immortality is the final result of the survival of the fittest, the highest step in a long chain of evolution, is thoroughly in unison with biological truth. It is a stimulating book, since it offers immortality as something to be achieved by personal effort instead of as common to all men without power to choose or to reject. THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, 66 Fifth Avenue, New York APRIL PUBLICATIONS GENERAL MEADE By ISAAC R. PENNYPACKER. A new volume in the "Great Commanders "series, edited by Gen. James Grant Wilson. With illustrations and maps. 12mo, cloth, $1.50 net. A discriminating, compact, and interesting study of the victor of Gettysburg, including his experiences in the Mexican War and services during the Peninsular campaign and afterward. A forcible argument is presented to show that General Meade was underrated by the Commander-in-Chief, and that he was entitled to the promotion given to another. WAR'S BRIGHTER SIDE By JULIAN RALPH, assisted by RUDYARD KIPLING, A. CONAN DOYLE, LORD STANLEY, and others. With introduction by LORD ROBERTS. One vol., 12mo, $1.50. Mr. Ralph vividly sketches the humorous and exasperating features of newspaper-editing in the field. A book so rich on the literary side and so picturesque in the circumstances of its origin deserves to be called unique. BIRD-LIFE A Guide to the Study of our Common Birds. By FRANK M. CHAPMAN, Associate Curator of Mammalogy and Ornithology, American Museum of Natural History; author of "Handbook of Birds of Eastern North America," "Bird Studies with a Camera," etc. One vol., 12mo, $2.00. New Popular Colored Edition, with numerous text cuts and 75 full-page lithographic plates, illustrating 100 birds in their natural colors after drawings by Ernest Seton-Thompson. THE SPANISH PEOPLE Their Origin, Growth, and Influence. By MARTIN A. S. HUME, author of "The Great Lord Burleigh" and "The Courtships of Queen Elizabeth," and editor of the "Calendar of Spanish State Papers," etc. The first volume in the "Great Peoples" series, edited by Dr. York Powell, of Oxford University. 12mo, cloth, $1.50 net. Dr. Hume's story of the evolution of the Spanish people is-told from a fresh point of view. He writes with all the advantages of the modern specialist, and his account of the development of the Spaniard will be found fresh, valuable, and entertaining. A SAILOR'S LOG Recollections of Forty Years of Naval Life, by Rear Admiral ROBLEY D. EVANS. One vol., 8vo, with 14 illustrations, $2.00. Admiral Evans's experiences have covered two important wars, a campaign against Alaskan pirates, hunting trips in China; service in every part of the world. It is a work of historical importance. A LANDMARK HISTORY The sweep of commerce is rapidly destroying the old landmarks of New York. Mr. Ulmann conducts a party of young people to places about the city interesting for historic events, and describes them most entertainingly. D. APPLETON & CO., 72 Fifth Ave., New York A Semi-Monthly Journal of Literary Criticism, Discussion, and Information. THE DIAL (founded in 1880) is published on the 1st and 16th of each month. TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION, $2.00 a year in advance, postage prepaid in the United States, Canada, and Mexico; in other countries comprised in the Postal Union, 50 cents a year for extra postage must be added. Unless otherwise ordered, subscriptions will begin with the current number. REMITTANCES should be by draft, or by express or postal order, payable to THE DIAL. SPECIAL RATES TO CLUBS and for subscriptions with other publications will be sent on application; and SAMPLE COPY on receipt of 10 cents. ADVERTISING RATES furnished on application. All communications should be addressed to THE DIAL, Fine Arts Building, Chicago. Leavitt's Reasons for Faith in Christianity. — Shields's The Scientific Evidences of Revealed Religion. Bradford's The Age of Faith. - Peabody's Jesus Christ and the Social Question. - Gordon's The New Epoch for Faith-Caldecott's The Philosophy of Religion in England and America. BRIEFS ON NEW BOOKS The Italy of the artists. - Graphic pictures of East London.-Man-building."- Plain tales of the sea. -Recollections of an exile of the American revolution. The relation of the clergy to American letters. - Some interesting "yarns" of the sea. - A new biography of J. Fenimore Cooper. BRIEFER MENTION. PAGE 293 294 295 297 298 301 302 304 305 306 309 309 310 TEN YEARS OF MUSIC. The tenth season of the Chicago Orchestra has just come to an end, and the occasion seems to call for a few words of comment upon the history and purpose of this remarkable enterprise. When the Orchestra was organized in the autumn of 1891, and its support for three years was secured by a subscription guaranty of fifty thousand dollars for each year of that term, there were not many who were hopeful enough to believe that it was destined to become a permanent part of the higher life of Chicago. So many worthy movements had come to grief in the city, so many fresh enthusiasms had become chilled, so many commendable enterprises had suffered untimely defeat from the caprices of fashion, that the argument from analogy seemed to indicate a like end for the newly-established Orchestra. When the three years of the original plan were ended, and the subscription fund had been overdrawn instead of being merely exhausted, the prospect was dark indeed, and it looked as if the work would have to be abandoned as a failure. But the forces which had led to its foundation proved equal to the new demands made upon them; the public-spirited founders of the organization renewed their subsidy, and the work has gone on ever since without any derogation from the fine artistic ideals that were set at its inception. The annual excess of expenses over receipts has fallen in the ten years from more than fifty thousand to less than twenty thousand dollars, but it still remains a charge upon the group of men who have borne it from the first, and who have, moreover, borne it ungrudg ingly, conscious that they have been supporting one of the noblest of public causes. It is the gift of a third of a million of dollars freely made by these men to the community during the past ten years, that has enabled Chicago to boast of the finest orchestral organization and equipment in America. We will not seek to praise these men as they deserve, for they would be the last to wish for such praise; it is perhaps the chief virtue of their gift to art that they have made it for the sake of art and not for the sake of their personal reputations. But in spite of the manifest devotion of these men to a higher ideal than that of moneygetting, there are certain elements of public opinion so dense as to be incapable of realizing that the annual balance-sheet of the orchestral organization is not the chief source of concern to its management. Every year, when the figures are given out, and the deficit once more stares the public in the face, a cry goes up from the newspapers to the effect that the loss might easily have been avoided by bringing the programmes presented down a little nearer to the level of popular taste. Give us more "request programmes," it is said, put in a few waltzes and medleys of operatic airs, and the public will crowd the concert hall. This is true, no doubt, but it is not the wish of the management to secure large audiences at such a cost. The Orchestra is first and foremost an educational enterprise, and the requirements of art are held paramount by Mr. Thomas and his supporters alike. Those who cannot understand how practical men may be actuated by such a motive should fall on their knees and pray for enlightenment, instead of assuming the injured air of persons whose good advice is ungratefully rejected. Yet the advice is proffered year after year by the same persevering critics, and it seems quite impossible to convince them that it is not wanted, or that the men who are responsible for the work of the Orchestra know quite as well as their critics that the concerts could be made to pay if it were thought desirable. How well they have paid in a better than the commercial sense is apparent to every observer of musical conditions in Chicago during the past ten or twenty years. By dint of persistent hammering at the public, of giving the public what was good for it instead of what it wanted, Mr. Thomas has transformed the great modern composers, one by one, from esoteric mysteries into sources of vital enjoyment. To begin with, he forced Wagner upon an unwilling public until those who had come to scoff remained to pray, and a Wagner programme had come to be the surest means of filling the house from pit to topmost gallery. Then he dealt with Brahms, and Tschaikowsky, and Dvorak in similar fashion, and made them almost equally popular. Yet while pursuing this course, he did not permit the public to neglect the great composers who were in less need of such championship, and the works of Bach and Mozart and Beethoven were produced with generous frequency. Certain it is that the programmes which now attract the largest audiences are of the sort that would have been most certainly doomed to failure in the early years of the missionary and educational work done for Chicago by the devotion of this unbending idealist. The largest audience that ever assembled for a concert in the Chicago Auditorium an audience that filled all the seats and packed the foyer behind the seats with the dense rows of the standing was the one that gathered there a few weeks ago to hear a programme consisting of two sym phonies and a concerto for piano and orchestra. As recently as ten years ago this achievement could not possibly have been realized. During the ten years that the Chicago Orchestra has exercised its beneficent ministry, over two hundred programmes have been prepared, and each of them twice performed, once in the afternoon and once in the evening. The list of the works produced at these concerts comprises practically the whole répertoire of the modern orchestra, and makes a most imposing showing as printed in the last concertbook of the season just ended. It includes, for example, sixty symphonies, by nearly half that number of composers. Of these symphonies one hundred and seventy double performances have been given, the C minor of Beethoven heading the list with twenty afternoon and evening presentations. The forms of the concerto, the concert overture, the suite, the rhapsody, and the symphonic poem are represented in equally rich variety, and nearly all the great works for solo performance likewise appear in the list. Taking the name of Beethoven alone, we find, besides fifty double performances of the nine symphonies, more than fifty double performances of other numbers. Wagner is represented by almost everything that can possibly be used for concert purposes, over sixty distinct numbers being included in the programmes, with nearly three hundred double performances. The above facts and figures will give some faint idea of the musical feast set before the Chicago public during the past ten years by Mr. Thomas and his musicians. It has provided nothing less than a liberal education in music for many thousands of people, and the community as a whole with a spiritual uplift that no psychological calculus has the power to estimate. For this best of gifts we wish to express our appreciation and to record our heartfelt gratitude to the men at whose hands it has been received. ALEXANDER CALDWELL MCCLURG. The death of Alexander Caldwell McClurg, on the 15th of April, deprived the business and intellectual life of Chicago of one of its most conPhiladelphia in 1834, and was educated at Miami spicuous figures. General McClurg was born in University. He enlisted as a private in the Civil War, and rose to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel and Brevet Brigadier General. His military record was one of distinction; he took part in the battles of Stone River, Chickamauga, Missionary Ridge, and Atlanta, besides accompanying Sherman on his famous march to the sea. After the war he came to Chicago and engaged in the book business, at first with S. C. Griggs & Co., then with Jansen, McClurg & Co., and finally became head of the firm of A. C. McClurg & Co., which was reorganized as a stock company about two years ago, with General McClurg at its head. The bookselling business of this house grew to great dimensions, and the publishing department, although less important, attained a highly respectable development under the personal direction of the head of the house. General McClurg was actively interested in many of the organizations of the intellectual forces of the city, particularly in the Chicago Historical Society and the Chicago Literary Club. He also did much valuable work in behalf of the American Copyright League. The events of recent years ranged him stanchly on the side of the traditional political ideals of his country, and the cause of anti-imperialism found in him an energetic and outspoken ally. THE DIAL owes a special tribute to his memory, both because of his frequent contributions to its pages, and because the firm of which he was a member was part owner of the journal, as well as its publisher, during its first twelve years. Inasmuch as play-goers have been seeing tragedies ever since the time of Eschylus, and probably long before, it would seem an easy thing to say what tragedy is. Yet it has proved to be not an easy thing at all. Aristotle apparently settled it for his own time, but his ears must have burned during the last three centuries, and still nothing is decided. * The latest word comes from Prof. E. E. Hale, Jr., who in a recent number of THE DIAL takes issue with Mr. W. L. Courtney for presenting the leading idea of tragedy as a conflict, and himself maintains that its essential element is really "the strange and unexplainable courses of life." The first theory is certainly incomplete. It would follow from it that all plays are tragedies, since no real plot can be constructed that is not based on conflict of some sort. Obviously, we must also consider the nature of the conflict, the manner of its course and termination, and the character of the participants. Briefly stated, it seems to me that the conflict must involve great suffering, otherwise it is simply heroic (instance the Heracles), or comic (instance Falstaff); that it must end in failure, and that this failure we must, as we look back, feel to be inevitable, that is, in accordance with law, and not the result of arbitrary fiat or of accident; finally, the fighter himself must be a great nature, since otherwise he can neither greatly suffer nor *"The Idea of Tragedy in Ancient and Modern Drama. Three Lectures delivered at the Royal Institution by W. L. Courtney." I have as yet been unable to see the book, so know it only through Mr. Hale's criticism. greatly contend, and our interest in him cannot be lasting. Ibsen's "An Enemy of the People is not a tragedy, because its hero, Stockmann, does not fail; he wins, and at the end of the play he is more fit than at the beginning. The same is true of " A Doll's House ": Nora has struggled somewhat as one does in a dream, but by the end of the play she has waked, and is ready to make a real fight of it, with a life-time ahead in which to do battle, and not for herself alone. Hauptmann's Hannele, on the other hand, is not a tragic but a pathetic figure: she suffers but does not fight; she is a helpless child done to death by a brutal fate, but comforted at last by her radiant death-visions. "The Second Mrs. Tanqueray " shows conflict, and inevitable failure, and suffering, but fails of greatness because its characters, eccentric or clever or charming or whatever else, are fundamentally mediocre; whereas "Magda' ("Die Heimath"), though less clever, is greater, by reason of its heroine and her superb vitality. But while the conflict-theory fails through incompleteness, the mystery-theory, as we may call Professor Hale's, fails rather through a confused use of terms, and this in a number of ways. "Hamlet," we are told, is tragic because we do not understand it. "As soon as we understand it, it ceases to be tragedy." And the tragedy lies, it appears, in the fact that, though endowed with such gifts as ought to bring success of the best kind, he yet does not succeed, and we cannot see why. Yet it is admitted that we do see how, for "when the conditions are once given, we do not deny a single step." What, then, is seeing why, if it is not just this seeing how things happen, this following their course step by step from beginning to end? Do we, or can we, in any other sense see why anything happens, from the processes of digestion to those of the poet's fancy? Unless, indeed, we expect to fathom what we, by misleading anthropomorphism, call the "motives," of what we, again by misleading anthropomorphism, call "the Creator." And inasmuch as the same mystery lies over all things, we cannot regard it as the special ear-mark of a particular class. Again, "The Second Mrs. Tanqueray" is deemed tragic because "although we know that she could not have turned over a new leaf (gluing the old ones down), we are not at all clear as to why she could not. It seems as if she should have had a chance." On the contrary, Mrs. Tanqueray's case appears to me a particularly clear one, both in its nature and in virtue of its presentation; nothing could be easier to understand, in the only way in which we can ever understand anything. The tragic element in "L'Aiglon" is accounted for as in "Hamlet." Professor Hale thinks the Duke, "on the whole, an attractive man with a good head and heart and great ambitions. People love him; he ought to do well. Now he does not do well at all." But here again there seems to me nothing mysterious. I should, indeed, prefer to describe the Duke as an attractive boy with a poor head, diseased sensibilities, and spectacular dreams, but Professor Hale himself admits his "besetting triviality," and in fact explains satisfactorily just why the Duke could not possibly "do well." There is in it no "strange unexplainableness," except, as suggested above, of the sort that all things possess. We may, if we like, make a mystery of the fact that anæmic though attractive boys do not succeed, and that great fathers sometimes have unsuccessful sons, but there is not much to gain by it. According to my way |