cination of the romantic hero is his very goodness; and if the villain becomes the hero, this element in romance disappears. It can be replaced only by imputing to the wicked admirable sentiments, and these must be utterly inconsistent with their actions. "Don't," Thackeray beseeches, "let us have any juggling and thimblerigging with virtue and vice, so that, at the end of three volumes, the bewildered reader shall not know which is which; don't let us find ourselves kindling at the generous qualities of thieves, and sympathizing with the rascalities of noble hearts." Thackeray, thou shouldst be living at this hour!

Sham sentimentality Thackeray scorned, and the absurdity of its clash with realism he pointed to in his "rhymed review,” The Sorrows of Werther.

Werther had a love for Charlotte

Such as words could never utter;
Would you know how first he met her?
She was cutting bread and butter.

Only one kind of sentiment conjoins suitably with realism. This is the author's honest comment on his characters, and the merit of their thoughts and actions, which enables us to see them in their true light. The villain may fool all around him by a display of virtue, as does Iago, but his creator knows better, and intends that the audience shall see him in his true light. Instead of the soliloquies of the dramatist, in which the villain reveals his own wickedness and the good man his own virtue, Thackeray substitutes himself as the omniscient Chorus. To him the reader may turn with confidence whenever he feels the need of distinguishing the black sheep from his scapegoat. Best of all, in the homilies which accompany the labeling, Thackeray found a recompense for what one imperious lobe of his brain had otherwise denied him. The inhibiting force of his compelling realism had prevented him from drawing those ideal ladies and gentlemen about whose essential goodness and admirableness there never can be any doubt. As a result the elements were so mixed in his dramatis personae that the world recognized them as men and women rather than as heroes and heroines. But in preaching about them, there was for his estopped romanticism a way out.

Thackeray could have found no sympathy with Sainte

Beuve's comment on Gil Blas, that it is "moral like experience." For him morality, like truth, inevitably connotes preaching. Only in that preaching can his own sentimental, romantic heart manifest itself. In Vanity Fair, while describing his purpose concerning his characters, he lets us into the secrets of his own innermost feelings:

Occasionally to step down from the platform, and talk about them; if they are good and kindly, to love and shake them by the hand; if they are silly, to laugh at them confidentially in the reader's sleeve; if they are wicked and heartless, to abuse them in the strongest terms politeness admits of. Otherwise you might fancy that it was I who was sneering at the practise of devotion, which Miss Sharp finds so ridiculous; that it was I who laughed good-humoredly at the railing old Silenus of a baronet.

What! Mistake you, you deep-dyed romanticist, mistake you? And yet were it not for this very preaching, we might have been deceived.

National Elements in Stephen Foster's Art

J. G. BURTNETT
Pittsburg, Pennsylvania

That national peculiarities, prejudices, and misunderstandings are transient, evanescent, and meaningless when fused by personality, finds apt illustration in connection with a recent resolution of the Kentucky Assembly. No sooner had the Legislature of Kentucky appointed a commission to acquire as a memorial to Stephen Foster "Federal Hill Manor," where "Old Kentucky Home" was written, than Pittsburgh felt a thrill of pride and telegraphed her order of support. This incident naturally suggests some thoughts on the broader and more truly national influences of Foster's art.

Stephen Collins Foster was born in Pittsburgh at noon, July 4, 1824, the day that both Adams and Jefferson passed through the shadows. If in prophetic vision these patriots foresaw the dispute, vindictiveness and ungovernable passion that was to threaten the young Republic and end in bloody fratricidal strife, let us hope that they also foresaw how this human mite was to pluck the white flower of love from our national crown of thorns and immortalize its beauty, not by irrefutable logic, but by the power of verse and song. It is not our purpose, however, to enlarge upon biography further than is necessary to reveal some phase of his personality, or some quality of his work. While it is impossible to trace the beginnings of any life history back through interwoven conditions or generations in order to see at what time Fate said: "I find thee worthy; do this deed for me," yet there are undoubted facts of environment and heredity that certainly influenced the character and the art of this melodist.

His birthplace, which has been acquired by Pittsburgh as a memorial and has become a shrine for pilgrims from all parts of the globe, stands now almost within the confines of tenement districts, yet in 1824 the then thriving little city lay two and a half miles below the broad pasture lands and wooded acres owned by William Foster. The location chosen for the family country seat, known as "White Cottage," evinced in its

founder a decided feeling for nature, as it afforded an unobstructed view of the beautiful hills that cradle the crystal waters of the Allegheny and yet was accessible to the city, as the highway of what was then the far west and the great east ran through the estate. There is no doubt that "White Cottage" was the abode of unusual wealth and refinement, such as was in keeping with the prosperous merchant, the leading citizen, the public servant, honored with trusts by his fellows, the guardian of education, and the zealous churchman-for such was William Barclay Foster, father of the poet.

William Foster was of pure Celtic stock, a native of Virginia, born and reared in the social and economic conditions that were favorable to slavery and made it flourish. At sixteen, carrying with him the traditions, the manners, and the customs of the land of the Cavalier, he came to Pittsburgh. In an incredibly short time, by industry, cleverness, and a genius for details, he made himself a noted factor in merchant circles. From him the son inherited the Celtic peculiarity of visioning nature and life in its minutest details.

But the father who gave him temperamental traits and the enviable material environment whereby life was not too hard for the artistic temperament to flourish, was not the only source of inherent and acquired excellence. His mother was a woman of rare beauty and noble character. She was descended from English ancestors, long settled on the eastern shore of Maryland, and from a family gifted in music and poetry. Elizabeth Foster, born in affluence, bred amidst unusual opportunities, was always distinguished by deep religious feeling; this so impressed itself upon her children that their wildest mood never carried them beyond its restraint. She was also endowed with rare common sense that drew back from the too unusual or the too unique. Fearing those common extremes, exhibited by people of an artistic temperament, she opposed her son's becoming a professional poet or musician. That her intuitions were justified is proven by the fact that Stephen Foster verified tradition by living the wild, irregular life of genius. That his wayward habits were never so pronounced as to shut out a vision of the noble, the beautiful, and the good is doubtless due to her influence. The pathos and remorse voiced in "Com

rades Fill no Glass for Me" needs no comment. "A Dream of My Mother" and "Farewell, Sweet Mother" show that filial love and its teachings held sway in his soul to the last.

At his thirty-eighth year the fires of genius went out; he died in New York City and lies buried in Allegheny Cemetery, Pittsburgh, on the hills across the river from "White Cottage." The solicitude of the mother had sent him to Cincinnati to learn the "ways of trade" with his brother, but nothing could change the direction of his inclinations. In that bustling Ohio City a deeper and closer intimacy with slavery and its attendant institutions was afforded by voyages up and down the Ohio and the Mississippi. Nevertheless, it is a mistake to suppose that Foster's knowledge and interpretation of negro life and character was largely or fundamentally acquired on these trips. The father and mother were both born and bred where the institution of slavery, at least economically, was taken as a matter of course, and where no family was without its negro servant or servants.

That the Foster family brought to their northern home the institutions, the customs, and the manners of their forbears is an unquestioned fact. In the veins of his mulatto nurse mingled the blood of a West-India negro mother and of a French father. This "bound girl" Olivia was an expert dancer and taught the art in "select families." She was accustomed to take the child Stephen to her own church. If we knew only this fact it would tell us how the traditions, the customs, and the feelings of the "Old South" were transmitted to this, and to many other households of early Pittsburgh. In the close domestic relations with negro servants in his own home and the homes of relatives, as well as by observation while associated in business with his brother, we must look for the influences that made Foster the true interpreter of the thoughts and the emotions of a race placed in a unique and never-to-berepeated relation to another people. No other people ever came into contact with the black race in the same intimacy, the same close touch, and yet with the peculiar aloofness as the southern whites in slavery days. The Southerner had and still retains an understanding of, and an affection for the negro.