HENDRIK C ONS CIENCE.* Trim novelists who stood highest in

the estimation of the present generation of readers are rapidly disappearing. It almost seems as if envious Time, passing over the cyphers, were determined to obliterate, first of all, the indicating figures. A couple of weeks ago, we had to deplore the death of Tourgenief ; we are now forced to speak of Hendrik Conscience as gone from us, Neither of these men will soon be forgotten, yet were we com- pelled to choose between their respective claims to grateful memory, we would venture to assert that the sweet healthful- ness of the Fleming is more valuable to humanity than the rare literary talent of the Russian.

Hendrik Conscience was born at Antwerp in 1815 ; his father was a Frenchman, his mother a Fleming. This fact deserves notice, for, while in his boyhood, Flemish was used almost ex- clusively in familiar intercourse, yet French was looked upon with something more than respect, as the speech of the educated. Young Conscience was fortunate in being able to learn both languages thoroughly ; his first literary attempts, however, were made in French. While yet a boy, he wrote some spirited little songs, which may still be heard from time to time in the streets of Antwerp. But in 1830 the revolution took place, and the uprising of the Flemish people was followed by a revival of Flemish literature. In 1838, Conscience published a historical novel in Flemish, entitled De Lemur van Vlaenderen, "The • Author of "The Lion of Flanders," " Veva ; or, the War of the Peasants%," "The Kiser." "The Poor Nobleman," " The Consoript," &c.

Lion of Flanders," and this work made the young man famous. From beginning to end the book is merely an expression of patriotic feeling, yet this fact alone is sufficient to explain its enormous success. All honours were shown by the nation to the interpreter of the national enthusiasm ; Conscience was made Keeper of the Records of the City of Antwerp and Registrar of its Academy of Arts. Six years later he was called to fill a Chair in the University of Ghent, and appointed by the King teacher of Flemish to the Royal children. Shortly afterwards, he was appointed Curator of the Wiertz Museum, at Brussels, which lucrative post he held until his death.

Conscience was not so widely esteemed and so protected with- out good reason. For thirty years he wrote indefatigably, yet neither the quantity nor the quality of his work bears such testi- mony to his industry as does the steady improvement visible throughout. Each novel was better than the preceding one. In The Progress of a Painter, he reveals to those who read between the lines how severely he judged his own productions, and how determined he was to accept from himself nothing less than his best. His humility, his industry, are both due to the earnest- ness and height of his aspiration. " The enthusiasm of my youth," he writes, "and the labours of my manhood were rooted in my love for my country." To raise Flanders, is to him the first, the holiest of all aims. But Flemish freedom is threatened by the power of France; accord- ingly, the two best historical novels of Conscience depict uprisings of the Flemish people against French despotism. In the quarrel between Edward L of England and Philip of France, Guy, Count of Flanders, sided with Edward ; and when Edward was recalled to make head against Wallace, Philip conquered Flanders. The scene of The Lion of Flanders opens at this moment. In the novel, we are shown how the whole country, from Artois to Zealand, revolted against the foreign foe, and how the French yoke was broken at Courtrai. The faults of the book are mainly due to the dislike which Conscience has for the French ; his antipathy to them. throws an air of exaggera- tion over the characters, and is so naively consistent as to be amusing.

In Veva ; or, the War of the Peasants, the scene opens in the last years of the eighteenth century. It will be remembered how the French Republican forces overran Flanders, and at .Temappes, in 1792, tore the Netherlands from Austria. The Flemings at first received the invaders well, and fraternised with the apostles of liberty ; but love soon changed into hate. The Conservative Flemings might have borne the abolition of all titles and privileges of nobility, but they could not be expected to like the new taxes levied under a foreign authority better than they had liked the old ones ; and when the home-loving peasants were forced by the conscription into the French Army, secret disaffection became open revolt. The conscripts fled to the woods, the peasants gathered into bands, and engaged in guerrilla warfare against the invaders. Flanders became another La Vendcle. The heroic but ineffectual resistance forms the thime of The War of the Peasants. As a fiction, this book is far superior to The Lion of Flanders. The plot is not so closely fettered to history, and the story gains more in dramatic unity than it loses in regard to historical accuracy. In both books the feeling is genuine, in both the style is vivid and picturesque, but in the later work the author has mastered his material, and the language, in ease and sobriety, is that of an artist in words. The book won for its author a world-wide reputation, and the French nobly replied to the attacks of Conscience, by being the first to admire the writer. Love of country manifesting itself in the desire for national independence was, as we have seen, the enthusiasm of the early manhood of Conscience ; but patriotism, to him, came to mean something more than the mere desire of freedom.

In what may be called his second period, Conscience devotes his powers directly to the task of social regeneration. Already in his historical novels he had shown his sympathy with the democratic leanings of his age by choosing his heroes from among peasants and artisans ; he now sets himself to depict the suffering of tin poor and to define its cause. In such novels as De Gierigaerd ("The Miser"), De Arms Edebnen (" The Poor Nobleman "), &c., he is determined "to apply the glowing steel to the cankered wounds of which society is dying." Now, in defining the cause of these wounds, Conscience gives proof of high intelligence :—

"The detestable doctrine," he writes, "that gold is chiefly to be desired, annihilates the very idea of self-sacrifice, of duty, of virtue. It is the death of all love, all honour, all endurance. The first-fruits of this creed have already been gathered. And so we find growing to-day in man, with ever-increasing rapidity, the instincts he has in common with the brutes, bodily lasts, material longings, together with an ever keener jealousy and envy of others."

The feeling of Conscience is here almost as intense as that of Ruskin, or even as that of Carlyle :—

" Since the higher classes themselves acknowledge that they have- no other right to their money than the simple fact of possession,. since they deny and decry personal worth, since they affirm that gold is powerful enough to transform a blockhead into a man of influence, why shouldn't the masses strive to take possession of this mighty gold, even by main force ? For when once they have it, the end justifies the means ; they are absolved by the mere fact of success.

Riches should be looked upon as a power which can only be hallowed by being consecrated to good, noble, and worthy ends."

After the warning comes the appeal. In book after book —such as Wat eene Albedo- Lyden San ("How a Mother can Suffer ")—he sketches the suffering, the degradation

of poverty ; again and again he shows how unselfish deeds react upon the doer, to the purification of the character..

Yet Conscience does not shut his eyes to the continuity of time, or of the process of development. He sees that the pro- gress made in one age may cost it far too dearly, and yet that the step taken may be fruitful of unmixed benefit to the future..

He, therefore, looks with sympathy upon the material progress of the present day. All the world knows how the Flemish peasant reclaimed from sterility that desert tract which lies between Antwerp and Venloo, how the industry of man turned the sand of an ancient sea into fertile land. All the world knows,. too, how Conscience has described the conquest :-

" That brave and toilsome peasantry stirred up the sterile depths,. and watered them with their sweat ; they summoned science and industry to their aid, drained marshes, diverted the streamlets that descend from the highlands towards the Meuse, and put them in circulation through innumerable arteries to fatten and enrich the land. What a glorious fight it was of man against matter. Oar descendants will hardly believe their own eyes when they behold a golden sea of corn or a dale of green grass where we have seen the sun mirrored in water, or on the glass-like surface of shining flint-Band."

There are some who will infer from these extracts that Con- science was rather a patriot and social reformer than an artist in the proper sense of the word ; nor up to the end of this, which may be called the second period of his life, would Conscience him- self have denied the impeachment ; years, however, bring the "philosophic mind," and in later life Conscience became' aware that the artist's mission was something other than that of a teacher in a Kindergarten. " Does not the poet' know by a sure and swift insight all things that are, and' is it not his task to depict them P" Of Conscience as an' artist, we shall say but little. Yet, inasmuch as we have made mention of his best work in the other lines of his activity, we cannot refrain altogether from speaking of his novel,. The Conscript, as of a work not unworthy of the author of The Mill on the Floss. There is, indeed, a difference of race between" Maggie Tulliver and Trine (short for "Catherine"); a difference, too, in the cadre of the picture, for Trine is a peasant-girl who can only write with infinite difficulty ; but yet we venture to think that no other hand in Europe in the last forty years could have given us Trine, save only the hand of George Eliot. As Gretchen is' the perfect German peasant-girl, so Trine is the ideal Flemish, one; and if both George Eliot and Conscience are greatly in- ferior to Goethe, their place is yet high enough, for they both stand in the first rank of European novelists. The fountains, too, of their enthusiasm may be traced to a common source ; that "love of man" which was the religion of the English-

woman, resulted often in effects closely resembling those due to the Christian sympathy with all that suffers so

deeply felt by the Fleming. This comparison with George Eliot is the best we can make. In both, there is the same humour, the same exactitude of healthy realism ; in both, the realism is used as a foundation on which to rear a superstruc- ture of emotion and thought; their methods are similar, it would ill become an Englishman to compare the results. Yet it may be said, in regard to style, that while the instrument used by George Eliot is far superior to that used by Conscience, the Fleming is undoubtedly the greater artist. To the homely 'vigour of the Teuton he has added the gracefulness, the measure, which are peculiar to the best French prose.

To compare Conscience to any other Flemish author would be to pay him a poor compliment, yet something may be done in this way, too, to define his position. As in England the return can be traced from the pessimism of Byron to the earnestness of George Eliot, so this rhythm in Flanders may be measured by com- paring the "Lucifer " of Vondel to the writings of Conscience. Nothing can be added to his reputation, whether as author or as man. He was regarded by the ablest critics with admiration, and his books have been translated into German, Italian, French, and English. Thousands of readers think of him with what must be called affection, and the secret of this supreme success must be sought in the sweetness of his nature. It is no small tribute to the inherent truth and beauty of the man's character, that we are compelled to use his own words when trying to describe him,—" I am one whom God endowed, at least, with moral energy, and with a vast instinct of affection."