la_ George Eliot. But he must be obtuse, indeed, to whom this
reticence is not more eloquent and effective than a page of
philosophical moralizing.

"Hope's Clad in April Green" and "The Battle of Waterloo" (the
first and the last tale in the Norwegian edition), are more
untinged with a moral tendency than any of the foregoing. The
former is a mere _jeu d'esprit_, full of good-natured satire on the
calf-love of very young people, and the amusing over-estimate of
our importance to which we are all, at that age, peculiarly liable.

As an organist with vaguely-melodious hints foreshadows in his
prelude the musical _motifs_ which he means to vary and elaborate
in his fugue, so Kielland lightly touched in these "novelettes" the
themes which in his later works he has struck with a fuller volume
and power. What he gave in this little book was it light sketch of
his mental physiognomy, from which, perhaps, his horoscope might be
cast and his literary future predicted.

Though an aristocrat by birth and training, he revealed a strong
sympathy with the toiling masses. But it was a democracy of the
brain, I should fancy, rather than of the heart. As I read the
book, twelve years ago, its tendency puzzled me considerably,
remembering, as I did, with the greatest vividness, the fastidious
and elegant personality of the author. I found it difficult to
believe that he was in earnest. The book seemed to me to betray the
whimsical _sans-culottism_ of a man of pleasure who, when the ball
is at an end, sits down with his gloves on and philosophizes on the
artificiality of civilization and the wholesomeness of honest toil.
An indigestion makes him a temporary communist; but a bottle of