He wrote before the great American language was born, and he wrote as
well as any novelist of his time. If he pitches upon episodes redounding
to the glory of the young republic, surely England has glory enough to
forgive him, for the sake of his excellence, the patriotic bias at her
expense. The interest of his tales is convincing and unflagging; and
there runs through his work a steady vein of friendliness for the old
country which the succeeding generations of his compatriots have replaced
by a less definite sentiment.

Perhaps no two authors of fiction influenced so many lives and gave to so
many the initial impulse towards a glorious or a useful career. Through
the distances of space and time those two men of another race have shaped
also the life of the writer of this appreciation. Life is life, and art
is art--and truth is hard to find in either. Yet in testimony to the
achievement of both these authors it may be said that, in the case of the
writer at least, the youthful glamour, the headlong vitality of the one
and the profound sympathy, the artistic insight of the other--to which he
had surrendered--have withstood the brutal shock of facts and the wear of
laborious years. He has never regretted his surrender.



AN OBSERVER IN MALAYA {3}--1898


In his new volume, Mr. Hugh Clifford, at the beginning of the sketch
entitled "At the Heels of the White Man," expresses his anxiety as to the
state of England's account in the Day-Book of the Recording Angel "for
the good and the bad we have done--both with the most excellent