truly religious. But the desire to sting is a very human quality, even at the cost of the inner consciousness of unfairness. Therefore it is to be questioned whether we are to take certain light dismissals of dogmatic truth at the face-value of the words with which they are dismissed. Moreover, we cannot place the period of finality after such Shavian expressions which we fault, or seek to interpret them without some sympathetic attempt to know as much of the inner man as he rather grudgingly reveals. The point remains, however, that in taking not phases of thought, but what is expressed on the whole, we are, therefore, in Mr. Shaw's debt from the moral and religious point of view.

Now, what has been written is not of fered as a Shavian defense, but what the spirit of fair play prompts to the point of recognition of what he has contributed to religion in his insistence upon true values by his method of subtle contrasts, implication, and assertion. It is an attempt to form a truer religious estimate of a man who is so singularly gifted and prepared as to need no other defense than his own. The courage that can stand undismayed amid the hurling of epithets-jester, egotist, pessimist, atheist-and give us a conception of greatness in characters that only thinly disguise his own conception of himself, and, with winning results, introduce us to a Cæsar of Shavian voice and Shavian soul as a veritable self-interpretation, is a courage that, whatever else we may think about it, is seen to be rooted in a masterly capability and a knowledge of a fundamentally unchanging human nature. Of course it shocks us; our breath is taken away by what would be termed in most

men colossal impudence. But we are unjust if we deny sincerity by calling it egotism. Shaw more than fills the measure laid down by Schopenhauer where man can rise above the conventional conception of modesty-that is, the consciousness of unusual power in himself and the possession of great talent. Genius cannot be blind to itself and its powers, and that which affects a mincing modesty is a genius plus insincerity, which is not genius at all. We have no valid reason for questioning Mr. Shaw's sincerity.

up.

It is when we probe beneath the surface, in so far as we aim to be fair, even though we cannot wholly indorse, that we perceive moral purpose. It is not satire for satire's sake; it is not destruction for destruction's sake; it is not irreligion assailing religion, but the prophetic expression of the paradox that destroys to build We have talked all too long of the destructiveness of Mr. Shaw, just as we have assumed all too readily that he has revealed all there is to reveal of himself. And in all the talking and judging of the man from the point of view of our own destructive criticism, we have overlooked the debt we are under to him in his clever, if rude at times, awakening of the religious conscience to the pettiness of shams and deceits and all the smallness that will creep into our lives and hinder the cause we presumably and confessedly have at heart. Mr. Shaw has made a valuable contribution to the welfare of religion, and perhaps in no particular better than in the means he has afforded us of more generally reviving a commonly neglected religious practice and duty, in furnishing us with his most excellent and up-to-date books of self-examination.

CLEVER woman, recently desiring to express her acute disgust at the inconsistencies of our latter-day civilization, spoke contemptuously of "this so-called twentieth century of ours." And perhaps we are justified in the inference that she did not think that this century was very much better than any other century. Now, we must admit that the world did not turn over a new leaf with the end of the year 1900 and that the seasons still follow each other with monotonous regularity. Yet there are improvements here and there to be noted by the observant; and the more observant we are, the more likely are we to discover that many of the things we proudly vaunt as new are closely akin to other things familiar to our forebears. In fact, it is one of the characteristics of this so-called twentieth century to seize on an old device and to utilize it afresh in a most unexpected manner.

What is so up-to-date, for example, as the cinematograph or kinetoscope which projects our moving pictures? And what is so out of date as that discarded toy the zoëtrope? And yet the scientific principle underlying the biograph is the identical one upon which the zoëtrope was also based.

We have all seen performers cast the shadows of their hands upon an illuminated screen to imitate the heads of men and of beasts. And on rainy evenings in country houses some of us have moved in front of a lamp and thrown our own profiles upon a suspended sheet. This latter device was ingeniously employed by Mr. Barrie with humorous effect in the final act of the "Professor's Love-Story," when one of the characters sees the black profiles of other characters projected sharply on the drawn shade of the window before which he stands.

And in the toy-shops the parents of ingenious children can find a box containing directions and materials for a more elaborate exhibition of shadow-pantomimes, whereby little plays can be performed by cardboard figures set before a lamp and behind translucent paper. Nothing could be simpler or seemingly more juvenile, and

yet in the years that immediately preceded this so-called nineteenth century of ours, this childish toy was taken over and improved by a group of progressive French artists, who raised it almost to the level of a fine art. In France the primitive entertainment was entitled Chinese shadows, ombres chinoises; and it was Caran d'Ache who transformed them into French shadows, ombres françaises.

In France these "Chinese shadows" have been popular for now more than a hundred years, since it was in the eighteenth century that the performer who took the name of Séraphin established his little theater and won the favor of the younger members of the royal family by his presentation of the alluring spectacle, the rudimentary little piece, still popular with children and still known by its original title, "The Broken Bridge."

It may not be fanciful to infer that the immediate suggestion for this spectacle was derived from the contemporary vogue of the silhouette itself, this portrait in flat black taking the name from a Frenchman who was minister of finance in 1759. At all events, it was in 1770 that Séraphin began to amuse the children of Paris, and it was more than a century thereafter that Lemercier de Neuville elaborated his ingeniously articulated pupazzi noirs. It was a little later still that Caran d'Ache delighted the more sophisticated children of a larger growth who were wont to assemble at the Chat Noir with the striking series of military silhouettes resuscitating the mighty Napoleonic epic. And it was at the Chat Noir again that Rivière re

vealed the further possibilities latent in shadow-pantomime and to be developed by the aid of colored backgrounds supplied by a magic lantern. Restricted as the sphere of the shadow-pantomime may seem to be, the native artistic impulse of the French has been rarely better disclosed than by their surprising elaboration of a form of amusement seemingly fitted only to charm the infant mind into an entertainment satisfactory to the richly developed esthetic sense of mature Parisian playgoers. Just as the rustic revels of remote villagers contained the germ out of which the Greeks were able to develop their austere and elevating tragedy, and just as the modern drama was evolved in the course of centuries out of the medieval mysteries, one source of which we may discover in the infant Christ in the cradle still displayed at Christmas-tide in Christian churches throughout the world, so the simple Chinese shadows of Séraphin supplied the root on which Parisian artists were able to graft their ingenious improvements.

The little spectacle proffered originally by Séraphin was frankly infantile in its appeal, and "The Broken Bridge" is as plainly adjusted to the simple likings of the child as is the lamentable tragedy of Punch and Judy or the puppet-show in which Polichinelle exhibits his hump and his terpsichorean agility. The two arms of the broken bridge arch over a little stream, but fail to meet in the center. A flock of ducks crosses leisurely from one bank to the other. A laborer appears on the right-hand fragment of the bridge and begins to swing his pick to loosen stones at

the end, and these fragments are then seen to fall into the water. The figure of the workman is articulated-or at least one arm is on a separate piece and moves on a pivot, so that a hidden string can raise the pick and let it fall. The laborer sings at his work, and in France he indulges in the traditional lyric about the Bridge of Avignon, where everybody dances in a circle. Then a traveler appears on the lefthand end of the bridge. He hails the laborer, who is hard of hearing, but who finally asks him what he wants. The traveler explains that he wishes to cross, and asks how he can do this. The laborer keeps on picking away, and sings that "the ducks and the geese they all swim over." The irritated traveler then asks how far it is across, and the laborer again sings, this time to the effect that "when you 're in the middle you 're half-way over." Then the traveler inquires how deep the stream may be, and he gets the exasperating response, still sung, that if he will only throw in a stone, he 'll soon find the bot

tom.

This dialogue bears an obvious resemblance to that traditionally associated with the tune of the "Arkansaw Traveler."

Then a boatman appears, rowing his little skiff, his backbone pivoted so that his body can move to and fro. The traveler makes a bargain with him, and is taken across after many misadventures, one of them with a crocodile, which opens its jaws and threatens to engulf the boat, this amphibious beast having been a recent addition to the original playlet, and probably borrowed from the green monster not long ago added to the group of Punchand-Judy figures. The exciting conclusion of this entrancing spectacle displays a most moral application of the principle of poetic justice. The ill-natured laborer advances too far out on his edge of the broken bridge and detaches a large fragment. As this tumbles into the water, he loses his footing and falls forward himself, only to be instantly devoured by the crocodile, which disappears with his unexpected