MR. STEVENSON'S FABLES.

SOME of the late Mr. Stevenson's fables, which have been appearing in the August and September numbers of Longman's Magazine, are almost more remarkable than any

of his more elaborate compositions. They are essentially modern in their structure and go to the very roots of the paradox which all the deeper modern thinkers find in human life, though they do not pretend to find any solution of that plainest, and which does not bury itself in as much mystery as many of the others, and has therefore much less of literary charm than those which are more complex in their structure.

It concerns itself with the double tendency in modern thought to praise the natural selection of the strong from amongst the weak, and yet at the same time to praise equally, and perhaps rather more emphatically, the disposition to impose on the strong the special duty of helping the weak. Both tendencies

cannot, according to the drift of Mr. Stevenson's fable, be

equally sacred, for they neutralise each other, and if you leave them to fight it out, it will end in the strong man making short work with the weak, not because he is weak, but because he is so ostentatiously inconsistent with himself in praising strength for itself, and yet praising it also for casting its shield over weakness,—and so blowing hot and cold with the same breath :—

" There was once a sick man in a burning house, to whom there entered a fireman. Do not save me,' said the sick man. Save those who are strong.'—' Will you kindly tell me why ? ' inquired the fireman, for he was a civil fellow.—' Nothing could possibly be fairer,' said the sick man. The strong should be preferred in all cases, because they are of more service in the world.' The fireman pondered awhile, for he was a man of some philosophy. Granted,' said he at last, as a part of the roof fell in ; 'but for the sake of conversation, what would you lay down as the proper service of the strong?'—' Nothing can possibly be easier,' returned the sick man : the proper service of the strong is to help the weak.' Again the fireman reflected, for there was nothing hasty about this excellent creature. I could forgive you being sick,' he said at last, as a portion of the wall fell out, but I cannot bear your being such a fool.' And with that he heaved up his

fireman's axe, for he was eminently just, and clove the sick man to the bed."

it would be hard to put into more forcible language the paradox that the modern reason preaches one doctrine, and the modern conscience an exactly opposite doctrine, and that if you cannot reconcile them the modern conscience will generally succumb, because its principle will seem to be an ostentatiously oracular condemnation of common-sense.

The literary merit of these fables, however, is not seen at its .best in such a fable as this. "The House of Eld," in the August number of Longman's, and " Something in It," in the September, are much more remarkable as literary produc- tions. The former appears to be intended to illustrate the hopelessness of attacking the ascetic attitude of the human conscience by an exposure of its superstitious character.

Asceticism is a plant which seeds itself. If you weed it out, it will be found to have left its seeds in the soil, and the seeds will spring up again as soon as you fancy

that you have extirpated them. Naturals expellas fared,

tamen usque recurret. The hero of the fable is a symbolic representative of the Protestant Reformation who attacks the sorcery of the Roman Catholic asceticism, and apparently succeeds in extirpating it, only to find that at the cost of tears and blood he has transferred the self-torture of the Catholic conscience to the self-torture of the Protestant con- -science which galls and ulcerates the human soul just as oppressively as before, only that it tortures it on the side of the heart, instead of on the side of the flesh. In the perhaps still more remarkable fable, published in the September

-number of Longman's Magazine, called "Something in It," Mr. Stevenson touched a still greater and more overwhelming source of bewilderment in modern faith. He pictures for us a missionary who derides all the superstitions of the heathen

mind only to find them besetting himself and all but over- whelming him by their evil necromancy ; and pictures him as saved not so much by his faith in the truth of the Christian Gospel as by his deeply rooted habit of holding faithfully by the promises he had given. Like Sir Alfred Lyall's European, who, without any belief in Christianity, yet preferred to be a martyr rather than to bow down before a superstition which he despised with all his intellect rather than with all his soul, Mr. Stevenson saves his bewildered and doubting missionary, more by the habit of mind which Christianity had bred in him, than by his real and conscious faith. When the missionary hears the pagan legends of the island in which he is preaching, he says very decidedly, " There is nothing in them ; " and to prove that there is nothing in them, he goes to swim in the bay which he is told is the very scene where these pagan legends grew and flourished. When he finds himself caught by the eddy, and whirled to the steps of the phantom house M. which the evil deity of the legend is supposed to abide, he goes on saying there is nothing in it, till the house vanishes, and be finds himself entangled amongst the weeds in which he is drowned. But when he awakens to a hereafter in the very meshes of the evil enchantments of which he had heard, and with the fragrant "kava of the dead " almost at his lips, he changes his mind, and confesses to one of his own converts whom he finds in the same evil predicament, that his Christian Gospel had nothing in it. The fable concludes thus

This was a dread place to reach for any of the sons of men. But of all who ever came there, the missionary was the most con- cerned; and to make things worse the person next him was a convert of his own. Aha,' said the convert, so you are here like your neighbours ? And how about all your stories?'—' It seems,' said the missionary with bursting tears, that there was nothing in them.' By this the kava of the dead was ready and the daughters of Mira began to intone in the old manner of singing. ' Gone are the green islands and the bright sea, the sun and the moon and the forty million stars, and life and love and hope. Henceforth is no more, only to sit in the night and silence, and see your friends devoured ; for life is a deceit and the bandage is taken from your eyes.' Now when the singing was done, one of the daughters came with the bowl. Desire of that kava rose in the missionary's bosom ; be lusted for it like a swimmer for the land, or a bridegroom for his bride; and he reached out his hand, and took the bowl, and would have drunk. And then he remembered, and put it back. Drink ! ' sang the daughter of There is no kava like the kava of the dead, and to drink of it once is the reward of living.'—' I thank you. It smells excellent,' said the missionary. But I am a blue- ribbon man myself ; and though I am aware there is a difference of opinion even in our own confession, I have always held kava to be excluded.'—' What !' cried the convert. Are you going to respect a taboo at a time like this ? And you were always so opposed to taboos when you were alive!'—' To other people's,' said the mis- sionary. Never to my own.'—' But yours have all proved wrong,' said the convert.'—' It looks like it,' said the missionary, and I can't help that. No reason why I should break my word.'—' I never

heard the like of this ! ' cried the daughter of Pray, what do you expect to gain ? '= That is not the point,' said the mis- sionary. 'I took this pledge for others, I am not going to break it for myself.'—The daughter of Miru was puzzled ; she came and told her mother, and Mini was vexed; and they went and told Akaiinga.= I don't know what to do about this,' said Akaiinga ; and he came and reasoned with the missionary.= But there is such a thing as right and wrong,' said the missionary ; and your ovens cannot alter that.'—' Give the kava to the rest,' said Akaiinga to the daughters of Miru. I must get rid of this sea- lawyer instantly, or worse will come of it.'—The next moment the missionary came up in the midst of the sea, and there before him were the palm trees of the island. He swam to the shore gladly, and landed. Much matter of thought was in that missionary's mind. seem to have been misinformed upon some points,' said he. Perhaps there is not much in it as I supposed ; but there is something in it after all. Let me be glad of that. And he rang the bell for service.

Moral.

The sticks brrak, the stones crumble, The eternal altars tilt and tumble, Sanctions and tales d.slimn like mist About the amazed evangelist. He stands unhook from age to youth Upon one pin-point of the truth."

We should certainly never have supposed that the missionary of this fable stood " nnshook " at all, either from "age to youth,"—does that mean from age in this world to youth in the next ?—or in any other direction, however topsy-turvy. That missionary when " he rang the bell for service " must have felt himself very unworthy to take up the role of evangelist again, even though his habit of holding by his pledged word had really proved "a pin-point of the truth." Indeed, he himself could only say to himself that though there was not much in it, as he had formerly believed, there was "something in it after all," since it had broken for him the evil spell of the enchantments, though it had not proved strong enough to dispel them altogether. The paradoxes of pagan legend had maintained their ground, though they had not wholly prevailed over the spirit of his higher faith. Mr. Stevenson represented his missionary as only just able to rescue a small salvage from the wreck of his faith, and by no means as having quenched, as St. Paul puts it, "all the fiery darts of the devil." But this is, on the whole, the drift of these fables. A remnant of faith appears to survive the paradoxes of life in most of them,—not a few, like "The Song of the Morrow" and "The Poor Thing" are too mys- tical for any clear interpretations at all,—but most of them bring out Mr. Stevenson's belief in a real difference between truth and falsehood, in a real " touchstone " which reduces falsehoods to their natural ugliness, and illuminates the severe outlines of unpalatable truth.

And this was the characteristic feature of Mr. Stevenson's genius that his mind was always full of the prolific doubts of the age, but nevertheless always disposed to admit that amidst all our doubts there is a triumphant residue of faith. In most sceptical ages, the reverse has been true, the doubters have attributed the victory to doubt, and have looked with scorn on the credulity of faith. But our modern doubters, while steeped in the uncertainties with which the numberless host of difficulties and hesitations have filled them, generally lean to the side of faith. Even the agnostics are agnostics with a reserve ; the newer criticism dwells as much on what it rescues from the wreck as on what has disappeared with it; the paradoxes of life are so painted as to show us how it is that "the heavy and the weary weight of all this unintelligible world " is lightened, and not so as to overwhelm us beneath that crushing load. Mr. Stevenson does occasionally give us a purely cynical fable like " The Yellow Paint " and " The Penitent ; " but all the fables into which he threw his genius are certainly meant to show that amidst all the paradoxes of life, the paradoxes which dupe us into illusion are less to be trusted than those which illustrate the victory of faith and hope. Mr. Stevenson's imagination was fuller of the light than of the darkness.