of Ephesus' of Petronius was the great-grandmother of the 'Yvette' of
Maupassant; and the dialogs of Herondas and of Theocritus serve as
models for many a vignette of modern life. The 'Golden Ass' went before
'Gil Blas' and made a path for him; and 'Gil Blas' pointed the way for
'Huckleberry Finn.' It is easy to detect the influence of Richardson on
Rousseau, of Rousseau on George Sand, of George Sand on Turgenieff, of
Turgenieff on Mr. Henry James, of Mr. James on M. Paul Bourget, of M.
Bourget on Signor d'Annunzio; and yet there is no denying that
Richardson is radically English, that Turgenieff is thoroly Russian, and
that d'Annunzio is unquestionably Italian.

In like manner we may recognize the striking similarity--but only in so
far as the external form is concerned--discoverable in those
short-stories which are as abundant as they are important in every
modern literature; and yet much of our delight in these brief studies
from life is due to the pungency of their local flavor, whether they
were written by Kjelland or by Sacher-Masoch, by Auerbach or by Daudet,
by Barrie or by Bret Harte. "All can grow the flower now, for all have
got the seed"; but the blossoms are rich with the strength of the soil
in which each of them is rooted.

This racial individuality is our immediate hope; it is our safeguard
against mere craftsmanship, against dilettant dexterity, against
cleverness for its own sake, against the danger that our cosmopolitanism
may degenerate into Alexandrianism and that our century may come to be
like the age of the Antonines, when a "cloud of critics, of compilers,
of commentators darkened the face of learning," so Gibbon tells us, and
"the decline of genius was soon followed by the corruption of taste." It
is the spirit of nationality which will help to supply needful idealism.
It will allow a man of letters to frequent the past without becoming