the history of American diplomacy is illustrated by a line of eminent authors, some of them having been, perhaps, more distinguished as writers than as diplomats; others having been more distinguished as diplomats than as writers; while others were equally distinguished in both capacities. There have been, of course, many successful and prominent members of the diplomatic and consular corps who would hardly have laid claim to membership in a body like the Authors Club, and yet who have not been at a loss to express themselves in excellent literary form.

That the roll-call of our literary diplomats (including in the term members of the consular service) is a significant one can be proved by imagining what American literature would have been without such names as those of Franklin, Irving, Bancroft, Hawthorne, Motley, Bayard Taylor, Donald G. Mitchell, Lowell, Howells, and Bret Harte.

The full list of our literary diplomats, liberally so defined, would include Jefferson, sent to France, as were John Adams and Franklin; the other Adamses, the Livingstons, Joel Barlow, Albert Gallatin, John Jay, John Marshall, Henry Wheaton, John Howard Paine, Nicholas Biddle, Edward Everett, A. H. Everett, W. Beach Laurence, Adam Badeau, George P. Badeau, George P. Marsh, Eugene Schuyler, W. H. Prescott, J. L. M. Curry, J. Ross Browne, Robert Dale Owen, Albert Rhodes, J. G. Nicolay, S. G. W. Benjamin, S. S. Cox, Rounseville Wildman-among those who have gone. Only on technical grounds would be excluded from such a category the name of Sumner, the traveled and literary statesman, who knew his Europe well, and who, as chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, helped to shape the diplomacy of the nation in trying times.

In our day are John Bigelow and Whitelaw Reid; that veteran and master diplomat, Andrew D. White; John W. Foster, Hannis Taylor, Carl Schurz, Oscar Straus, J. J. Piatt, John B. Moore, William M. Sloane, Nadal, Hardy, George F. Parker, J. Augustus Johnson, J. C. B. Davis, F. W. Seward, G. F. Seward, H. Vignaud, S. H. M. Byers, W. L. Alden, W. W. Astor, Penfield, Horton, Tourgee, Bishop, De Kay; Adee, who stands both for perpetuity, knowledge, and wit in the Department of State; Hay, one of the most

literary, as he is one of the most brilliantly successful, of the diplomats of the world.

It has been said that the frequent success of literary men in public affairs is natural and to be expected, because their profession trains them to see things as they are, and to state them clearly. At least, we know that their proportion of success in diplomacy, as well as in other affairs of government, is excellent. Some might say that as the world's business increases, diplomacy must more and more depend, in its highest responsibilities, upon special training; and that, on the other hand, as the world's literature increases, an even greater concentration upon his special work will be demanded of the writer. Yet a fresh view and a new hand, ideals of a different nature from those of the expert diplomatist, may at times be vastly useful in the diplomatic field; while a wider outlook upon the world may add both scope and power to the writer's art.

It is likely to be the case in America that as time goes on and our relations with foreign powers become more and more complicated and pressing, permanence in consular and diplomatic office, based upon knowledge and proved fitness, will be the rule. This may mean that it will not be so common a practice to take scholars and authors from private life and place them suddenly in foreign consulates and missions. But even then it is likely that our literature will be enriched by the work of men who have become authors while enjoying the opportunities for new studies and broader observation afforded by the foreign service of their country; so that if, hitherto, literature has contributed to diplomacy, hereafter we shall see our diplomacy contributing to our literature, as has, not infrequently, already been the case.

It would, indeed, be unfortunate if the diplomacy of the future should be entirely estranged from literature; for the markedly literary diplomat may be of high and particular utility in that nobler diplomacy which includes peoples no less than governments. This is the diplomacy which fosters peace with an economy which puts to shame the insane method of ever-increasing fleets and armies-a method which burdens the hapless people, in whole decades wherein no hostile sword is drawn, with the full cost of actual and bloody

war.

THIS

The Menippus by Velasquez

(SEE FRONTISPIECE)

HIS painting hangs in the Salon de Velasquez of the Prado Museum in Madrid, and measures five feet ten inches high by about three feet wide. It is life-size and painted on canvas. The figure is clad in a black cloak, and the painting has a warm brownish and grayish background. It is in the third or latest style of the artist.

The form of the figure beneath the cloak is well expressed. The boots are of a soft, deepbuff color, harmonizing well with the general scheme. The standing of the brown water-jar on the board, which is poised on two round stones, is said to have been a favorite feat of the philos

opher-a vainglorious formula of his sobriety and abstinence. He lived on beans, despite the fact that Pythagoras proscribed them.

At his feet lie an open folio on the left and a roll of parchment with an octavo volume on the right. He has the cheery, optimistic air of the true philosopher, though there is mingled somewhat of the Cynic in his expression. Note here what Lucian, the Greek poet and satirist, gives in his picture of Menippus, and how Velasquez takes the license of a poet in departing from him. The parchment and books at the feet may have been intended by Velasquez to symbolize the disregard and contempt in which he held the would-be philosophers of his time.

Timothy Cole.

To a Little Swedish Girl

WHE

WHEN Ragnhild brings the washing, If she 's got some time to spare, She takes her hat and yacket off, And sits down on a chair;

And then she starts to yabber,

Till we laugh and laugh and laugh,
And beg her yus' to yabber on-
We 've not enough by half.

She tells about Yorge Washington,
And how he yumped for yoy
When his father did n't punish him,
But called him noble boy;

And 'bout the yigs she dances

With Yohnson Yackson's Yim,
And all the yolly yokes he tells,
And what she says to him.
Ah, Ragnhild, little Ragnhild,
With the winsome flower face,
We love to hear your chatter

As it echoes through the place;
We love to feed you dainties

That we 've brought from near and far; To hear you asking if it 's yam

Or yelly in the yar.

We 'd like to see all little maids
So patient, brave, and sweet;
With hands so deft at tiresome yobs,
Such ever-willing feet.

May you, with yest upon your lips,
Yus' yog your way through life,
Till comes some lucky yentleman
To claim you for his wife.

Augusta Kortrecht.

It's a Careless Age, is Twenty-five

It's a careless age, is twenty-five,

And all of the world is fair.
There's a rondeau then for Molly's lips

And a sonnet for Helen's hair.
One easily sings of so many things,
And rhyme is quite within reach;
But one's figures when one is well, no mat-
ter what,

Are hardly figures of speech.

And at forty-why, one is n't quite passé; It is chilly, perhaps, not cold;

And sweet sixteen, be she kind as she may, You know that she thinks you old.

THE DE VINNE PRESS, NEW YORK