Probably three-fourths of the books that are read today for pleasure are fiction - that is, stories. Most of them are long stories in prose, called novels. The popularity of novels comes from the fact that theytell stories about imagined men and women; and that the reader can put himself in the place of an imaginary character, live the character’s life, go through peril anc suffering and joy and love. In short, while the reader is lost in the pages of a novel he is living another life, living at a faster pace than his real existence has, and feeling more keenly, yet with a delightful sense of unreality. Most novels have much to do with the emotion of love.

The novel, as we know it, is not two centuries old. Of course, story-telling is as old as civilization, by voice in narration, by acting on the stage and in books. But the novel as a distinct form of literary art is nearly new.

It is true that the prose tale was very well known through Lyly, Lodge, Greene and Sidney in the sixteenth century, through Mrs. Behn in the seventeenth century and Defoe in the early eighteenth century. But these early forms of novel were stories of adventure rather than studies of character under the influence of love. The novel as it exists today dates from 1740, when Richardson published his story PAMELA.

Samuel Richardson (168g-176x) was the son of very humble parents, his father being an ordinary carpenter in Derbyshire, where Samuel was born. The boy had very little education and at the age of seventeen he was
apprenticed to a London printer, who made Samuel work so hard that he had no leisure for reading or study. But he made up for the time of which his master robbed him by sitting up at night to read any books he could secure. The candles used for these midnight studies he bought himself, so that his master might not have to pay.

An unambitious, steady, plodding, honest and industrious, and perhaps a very commonplace young man was this Samuel; but after fifteen years he had some reward from the printer, for he married his master’s daughter, having now become a printer on his own account in a court off Fleet Street, close by the old Church of St. Bride. Here he continued for many years to carry on his business like any other printer of his time, living above his workshop and thus spending most of his time amid the smell of printer’s ink. We can well believe that he was a kind and considerate master, and it is said he used to hide a silver coin among the types at night so that the first man to arrive at the workshop in the morning might have it as a reward.

Richardson was not far short of fifty years old when he determined to make himself famous by writing a novel. He was perhaps somewhat vain of his literary powers—which at the early age of thirteen he had first exercised by writing love letters for some village girls. In fact, he continued to oblige with such letters for many years. At any rate, PAMELA was the result of the little printer’s resolution. He certainly succeeded in making himself famous. The rest of his days were spent with much satisfaction in writirig for the sentimental ladies of his time, to whom the pale and tearful heroines of his novels seem to have been strangely attractive.

Though so few of us read his writings today, the little printer certainly gave a great impetus to the art of fiction in England; and the careful and elaborate way in which he traced the natures of imaginary people was also imitated by writers on the Continent, chiefly in France. He died on July 4, 1761, and by his own request was buried in the Church of St. Bride, near to which much of his life had been passed.

Richardson’s three important works were PAMELA, CLARISSA and SIR CHARLES GRANDISON: and PAMELA deserves to he called great. An American critic, William Rose Benét, places it among the fourteen outstanding prose works of the eighteenth century. though OU might not find it very thrilling to read today. It is the story of a simple. unsophisticated  country girl, servant to a squire of doubtful morals. Pamela marries and reforms him.

PAMELA, like most of Richardson’s other stories, was written in the form of long-winded letters. The book was issued in “parts,” as they were called, somewhat as the continued stories in our magazines appear, spread over some months. Nowadays our lives are much too varied and active to leave time for reading such very long and unexciting stories as he wrote, but our great- great-grandfathers had more leisure and fewer interesting books, so that they could find time to follow the slow and steady unfolding of his appallingly lengthy tales. In country villages people used to wait anxiously for the arrival of the next “part” of his novels to find out what was to happen to the characters; and when the heroine of PAMELA married the rather unmanly hero, church bells were rung in some villages as though Pamela had been a real person.

When an author invents some unusual way of telling a story, it frequently happens that another author will turn it into ridicule by writing what is called a parody of it. So it happened with Richardson’s 1AMELA, which an abler and far more gifted man than Richardson, two years after its appearance, took as the idea of a very different sort of story called JOSEPH ANDREWS.

Henry Fielding, Whose Novels are Full of Life and Humour

The writer of this was a born story-writer, a man of great force of character, the son of distinguished parents, and well educated, His name was Henry Fielding, and he was born in Somersetshire, England, on April  1707.

Being fond of the pleasures of life and disinclined to work or to study too closely, Fielding left the University of Leyden, in Holland, and returned to London, when he was twenty. But he soon found that his father was not able to allow him so much money as he had expected, and he had to exercise his abilities by writing for the stage.

After a while he married a beautiful girl who had a small fortune; but this he soon contrived to spend, and at thirty-three he became a barrister (lawyer), though it was chiefly by writing hooks that he made his living. His wife died in 1743, and not long afterward he married a servant, who was a very good wife to him for the rest of his days. Poor man, he was not long to enjoy the success of the great books he had written or the advantage of the comfortable salary he received from a legal appointment given to him in 1749.

In that year Fielding wrote a very brilliant satire called MR. JONATHAN WILD THE GREAT, and in the same year appeared his most celebrated novel, THE HISTORY OF TOM JONES, which is one of the great masterpieces of English fiction. (This is also on William Benét’s list of foremost eighteenth- century prose writings.) Fielding’s third and last novel was AMELIA, which appeared in 1751. All his stories are written with a fine, vigorous feeling of life and overflow with humor, a quality in which Richardson was utterly deficient.

In 1754, while on a visit to Lisbon, where he had gone broken in health, Fielding died, and was buried in Os Cyprestres cemetery.

Laurence Sterne and Tobias Smollett Wrote Lively Fiction 

Laurence Sterne was born in Ireland, though his ancestors were English. He was born on November 24, 1713, and educated at Halifax Grammar School and Cambridge University, becoming a clergyman in the year 1738.

For a good many years his life was, no doubt, that of an ordinary English country vicar, except that, being satirical and bitingly sarcastic in his speech, thin in appearance and poor in health, he was probably by no means so pleasant a companion as a country parson ought to be.

When he was forty-six years of age he published the first two volumes of his clever and amusing book, THE LIFE AND OPINIONS o TRISTRAM SHANDY. Very soon the wit and humor with which the characters in this great work were drawn had made the name of Sterne famous; and for years new volumes of the work continued to appear, until it was completed in 1767, just about two months before its author breathed his last.

On the whole, Sterne was not a pleasant kind of man to contemplate, and although his books are full of high spirits and laughter, it is not always the healthiest laughter, nor are his sentiments such as do credit to a preacher of the Gospel who during his later years may be said to have written under the shadow of death. His other famous book is called A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. It is very Witty.

Tobias Smollett was a Scotsman, born near the “bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond” in March 1721. He went to school at Dumbarton and to Glasgow University, and when he was about fifteen was apprenticed to a surgeon in Glasgow. He wished, however, to be a writer, and at the age of eighteen went to London with a play which he had written. But no one would buy the play and, as he had no money, he went to sea as assistant to a naval surgeon.

After his return to London he practiced as a surgeon. He married a lady who had some wealth, and he wrote for a time more for pleasure than for profit. Later he adopted writing as a profession. He became a journalist, wrote histories and books of travel, translated foreign stories and edited papers.

But, above all, he produced three novels very similar in style to those of Henry Fielding, and nearly always mentioned in company with them as the best examples of English novels written before the time of Sir Walter Scott. They are full of interesting and lifelike characters, and his sailors, especially, are the breeziest, saltiest sons of the sea to be found in English story-books. The names of his three famous books are RODERICK RANDOM, PEREGRINE PICKLE and HuMPHREY CLINKER, the first being written in 1748, and the last in in September of which year Smollett died at Leghorn, in Italy, and was buried in the English cemetery in that city on the Mediterranean.

Goldsmith’s Gentle Humour Still Charms His Readers 

Oliver Goldsmith, whose VICAR OF WAKEFIELD is one of the most beautiful stories in the English language. Although he was a dramatist (his comedy SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER is a perfect stage play) and a poet (Johnson called him “the greatest poet since Pope”), we must never forget the importance of Goldsmith’s work as a story-teller. No one reading this book today would realize that the writing of novels was so new when it was written. The narrative is easy, the plot is natural.

In 1766 Oliver Goldsmith published his VICAR OF WAKEFIELD, and in 1778 Fanny Burney published her EVELINA. These novels were free from the vein of coarseness that spoils Smollett and mars Fielding. Goldsmith did not again attempt fiction. Miss Burney, who had begun with great promise and won well-deserved popularity, spoiled her style in her later novels, CECILIA and CAMILLA, by imitating Doctor Johnson’s most formal compositions. Before the close of the eighteenth century the novel had been fairly started and had been purified from its first failures in good taste.

In less than fifty years there were many writers of novels, and a larger proportion of the honors began to go to women than had been gained by them in any other field of literature. As with the drama in Shakespeare’s day, fiction reached its greatest height of glory almost suddenly. Less than forty years lay between the coming of the better novel in the EvELINA of Fanny Bürney, and the capture of the whole reading world by the novels of Sir Walter Scott. This sudden collection of stories, so varied in time, character and subject, can only be compared with the abundance of Shakespeare’s plays two hundred years before.

Fiction broadened out, after the domestic stories of Richardson, into wild and romantic fancies. A fashion was set by Horace Walpole in his CASTLE OF OTRANTO, a fearsome, supernatural story. Walpole put his talents into all kinds of things, and of course he had to try story-telling.

He was followed by other writers bent on making the reader’s flesh creep with mysteries. For a time, too, the novel made a fashion of using fine language that was quite unnatural. The most popular writer of that day was Mrs. Ann Radcliffe. Her ROMANCE OF THE FOREST is still worth reading as an illustration of a kind of fashion that, under various forms, creeps again and again into fiction and is thought by the uncritical to be thrillingly fine. Being unnatural, it fades away and is only smiled at by a later generation of readers.

Maria Edgeworth, Who Wrote About Life in Ireland 

Two other women novelists who wrote in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries are Maria Edgeworth and Jane Austen. Maria Edgeworth (1767-1849) began the localizing of the novel - that is, the special study of the character, manners and speech of a district. Her ground was rural Ireland, and her success probably had some effect in prompting Sir Walter Scott to present to the world in fiction the Scotsman, past and present.

The Edgeworths were an English family made Irish by living in Ireland for two centuries. They kept up a constant connection with England, where Maria was born, and while they were quite Irish in their ways they were able to see Ireland from the outside as well as the inside.

Maria Edgeworth’s father was a wayward man of genius, fanciful, masterful and full of fads, and one of his fads was to regulate the writings of Maria according to his own ideas. As his ideas of writing a novel were clumsy, his admiring daughter was handicapped by his interference; but her pictures of the Ireland she knew, in CASTLE RACK- RENT, THE ABSENTEE and ORMOND, are the best pictures we have of it in her day.

Miss Edgeworth brought fiction back to real life; and because she makes us feel she is writing about men and women as they are, her stories will live as pictures of life in the past that have a historical as well as a human value.

Jane Austen Makes Quiet, Dull Lives Seem Exciting

And so it is in an even greater degree with Jane Austen’s novels. These are of a far choicer workmanship. Jane Austen was a Hampshire girl, daughter of the rector of Steventon, where she was born on December i6, 1775. Her first complete novel, but one that was not published till after her death, NORTHANGER ABBEY, was a mixed description of Bath, then the chief health resort and social center of England, and a clever exposure of the style of Mrs. Radcliffe’s tales, in the height of their popularity. SENSE AND SENSIBILITY (1811), PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (1813), MANSFIELD PARK (1814) and EMMA (1816), make up a complete study of life in rural England.

Readers who want sensation, high-flown sentiment, an exciting or involved plot, stirring adventure, problems of passion or boisterous laughter need not trouble themselves with Jane Austen. But Jane, writing only about a quiet life which she knew very well, gives us a picture of the thoughts and ways of English gentlefolks a the end of the eighteentn century. It is faithful in drawing and delightful in its quiet humor.

Of the life of the poor and humble, we scarcely have a glimpse in her books, and the governing class that circled round the court is equally left alone. She seems even to be unaware of earth-thaking events of her day - the Napoleonic Wars, for instance. It is the comfortable landed gentry to whom Jane Austen introduces us. Her writing gives us the most finished picture of a section of English society that any novelist has drawn.

It has been said, and there is some truth in the criticism, that the men and women in any one of her stories are much like those of any other story, but with their circumstances and aims somewhat changed. That is natural since a rather narrow round of country life is shown with no sensational characters or incidents introduced. But this only makes the quality of her skill the finer when she holds our interest.

She fully understood her own limitations and never tried to do what was beyond her power. She wrote herself of “the little bit of ivory, two inches wide, on which I work with so fine a brush as produces little effect - after much labor.” But that fails to do justice to her method, though it suggests it. Scott was nearer the truth when he spoke of “the exquisite touch which renders commonplace things and characters interesting from the truth of the description and the sentiment.”

Miss Austen lived a very quiet country life, with gradually failing health before she reached middle age. She died at Winchester in her forty-first year on July 18, 1817, and is buried in Winchester Cathedral.

A List of the Greatest Prose Works of the Eighteenth Century

A few words more about William Rose Benéts list of the fourteen greatest prose works in English published in the eighteenth century. All but one are by British writers— the one exception is Benjamin Franklin’s PooR RICHARD’S ALMANAC. Nine are novels: ROBINSON CRUSOE, by Daniel Defoe; PAMELA, by Samuel Richardson; THE HISTORY OF TOM JONES, by Henry Fielding; THE ADVENTURES OF PEREGRINE PICKLE, by Tobias Smollett; THE CASTLE OF OTRANTO, by Horace Walpole; THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD, by Oliver Goldsmith; TRISTRAM SHANDY, by Laurence Sterne; EvELINA, by Fanny Burney, and PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, by Jane Austen. GULLIVER’S TRAVELS, by Jonathan Swift, is not really a novel, though it is imaginative writing.

Young as was British art in the eighteenth century, during the second half of the century England’s portrait painters held a place in the very front ranks of contemporary European art.

Their fresh, unworn lustre shone the more brightly in a period that elsewhere was rather dim. Foremost on the roll of these painters of portraits stand two names side by side - Sir Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough - for the owners of the names lived near together and knew each other, and painted famous likenesses of many of the same famous men and women. Reynolds was four years old when Gainsborough was born, and he lived four years after Gainsborough’s death.

The genius of Reynolds and the genius of Gainsborough were of such different strains that they seem each to supply what the other lacks. While Reynolds was an eager student of art in books and in the works of the greatest painters, traveling abroad and copying their pictures in foreign galleries, until he became a truly learned connoisseur, Gainsborough gave himself to nature as to the supreme teacher and never traveled outside his native island, going back again and again to the woods and fields he loved best. Reynolds was a thinker, of keen, acute, well-balanced mind. He sought and learned how to get the results he wished. Gainsborough felt what he wished to express, and it came through his brush naturally or not at all. Reynolds was systematic and industrious, planning out his time and carefully observing his own regulations. Gainsborough followed his impulse; he might stand unoccupied for hours looking from the window of his studio, dreaming of beauty. His muse would not be driven. Therefore, although Reynolds left about four thousand paintings, Gainsborough can be accredited with not more than three hundred, and of these about eighty are landscapes. To both men we give our admiration - to Reynolds for his fine, deep color, his warm but subtle tone, his skillful and understanding way of presenting the figures and the personalities of his sitters; to Gainsborough for the soft, elusive, haunting beauty of scenes and forms in which we perceive his own tender wistfulness mingling with the unspoiled charms of nature’s self.

Joshua Reynolds (1723-92) was the son of a learned clergyman of Devonshire who kept a grammar school. It was there that Joshua studied as a boy, although he spent much of the time that was due to Latin and mathematics in dreaming or eagerly getting all that he could out of a few books on the principles of art. And because his drawings showed unusual skill and a mastery of the points he had studied out for himself, he went at the age of nineteen to London to study with a painter who was then a favorite but whose work has no value to us now. In a few years the young man confidently established himself in an independent studio. Then he had the great fortune to be offered a trip to Italy.

Sir Joshua Reynolds, First President of The Royal Academy 

Among the paintings of the Italian masters in the galleries the young Englishman walked, disappointed and dismayed because he could not feel their force and beauty as be had anticipated. But devotedly he studied and copied until he gained what he had lacked, and when he returned to England his knowledge of European painting was broad and discriminating. He was an authority. Immediately favor turned toward him. People flooded him with requests for portraits, and it was not long before he had a large house in London, with a luxurious studio, where he painted industriously from eleven until four every day. From that hour on be gave himself to social life, entertaining freely the most interesting and distinguished men of the time. Garrick the actor, Goldsmith the writer, Burke the statesman, and Dr. Johnson the philosopher were a few of his intimate friends, portraits of whom he has left us. At his balls the best society of London came together, for he was as noted for his distinction of manner as for his excellence in his art.

In 1768, when the Royal Academy was instituted, he was at once chosen as its president. Then he was knighted by George II, who later made him painter to the king. The last word of his last public address was by intention the mighty name of the artist who was his greatest admiration - “Michelangelo.” When Sir Joshua died he was honored in every possible way. He was buried in St. Paul’s Cathedral, in London.

Reynolds had remained a bachelor, with a sister to help keep his house; but who has painted pictures of childhood that we remember better or more affectionately than some of his? Groups of little ones with their mothers, like thatof Lady Cockburn and her children; portrait studies, like Master Hare and Little Miss Bowles with her dog; and others, like the Age of Innocence, and the cluster of Angels’ Heads, which are really five different studies of the one darling little head of Frances Isabella Gordon. Both of the last two pictures are in the Nationai Gallery, London. The painting of Master Hare can be seen in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, where there are several other Reynolds portraits. Many of his works are in the Royal Academy and the National Portrait Gallery in London; but numbers of them are in private collections in both Europe and America.

Sir Joshua, by experimenting in the production of the colors he most desired - warm browns and reds - used some materials that were not lasting, so that in some cases the paint cracked and sometimes even fell from the canvas. Thus a few of his paintings have been lost. He loved to give his portraits a grand manner, with heroic or historic feeling. And for pleasure he painted historic compositions. In the portrait of the actress Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse we can trace his intelligent admiration for Michelangelo’s style. In others we can feel the influence of Correggio, Raphael, Leonardo, Murillo and others. He did not imitate, but he had absorbed. Hogarth said: “There is only one school, that of nature.” Reynolds said: “There is only one doorway to the school of nature, and of that the old masters hold the key.”

Thomas Gainsborough, Who Loved His Native Countryside

Thomas Gainsborough (1727-88) was another English lad who neglected study for love of drawing and for love of the outdoor world, though he won greatest fame as a portrait painter. Always a dreamer and impulsive in his tendencies was Gainsborough; and his expression in line and color was spontaneous and free. Reynolds had moved with ease in a sphere of large experience in life. Gainsborough, more shy and retiring, had to be drawn into prominence. Although at fifteen he went to London to study, when three years afterward he began his career as an independent artist it was back in the retirement of his old haunts.

He loved a quiet life in his own home, with his wife and his music and his dreams. He loved the familiar countryside of his boyhood, where meadows, trees and streams had sung to him and given him his first visions of beauty. There he lived and worked for fourteen or fifteen years before going to Bath, where he became popular as the portrait-painter of fashionable beauties and of royalty.

When he painted his rare portraits of lovely women he set them in an atmosphere of naturalness, for he seems to have perceived within them the impulses and feelings that belonged to them as human beings. His own sensitiveness helped him to catch vibrations from their hidden selves. A gentle melancholy and a brooding tenderness breathe lightly through the delicate colors with which the artist made his record of the impressions that came to him from his sitters. His pictures of children - whether peasants or gentler-born-show them moving with natural freedom through the light and air of out-of-doors. Among the most valued of his portraits are that of Georgianna, Duchess of Devonshire (now in America) and that of the Honorable Mrs. Graham (in the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh). For the most part his works are in private collections on both sides of the Atlantic.

Characteristics of Two Great Portrait Painters Compared

Sir Joshua Reynolds held that “the chief masses of light in a picture should always be of warm, mellow color, and that the blue, gray or green colors should be kept almost entirely out of these masses.” Whether or not, as has been said, Gainsborough deliberately took this as a challenge, he produced some most striking and beautiful pictures in which blue, gray and green form the central and dominant notes. Of these the most famous are his portrait of Mrs. Siddons in a blue-and-gray-striped gown and the picture known as the Blue Boy. In the latter - now in California - a charming boy in a costume of rich, pure blue stands out engagingly before a background of brown and green landscape.

As a rule, Gainsborough’s color is tender, soft and cool, greens and blues and grays and delicate yellows predominating; although in his landscapes - which he loved best of all to paint - he introduced warmer tones, rich browns and sometimes red. The landscapes show the same natural way of looking at things that we have noted in the portraits, the same originality of treatment. They are quiet in tone and feeling, with something of mystery or melancholy in their clouded skies or in the forest shade. They were made for his own pleasure, and few of them were sold during his lifetime. Appreciation of their value has grown with time, and they are considered the first examples of landscape showing a modern realistic treatment.

Gainsborough had not the reliable and cultivated correctness of Reynolds; but grace and spontaneity are in all his works - a peculiar distinction due to his faculty for seeing beauty in all simple things. “He had beauty in himself, and all his life it fed on simple delights.”

Sir Joshua Reynolds’ tribute in an address after Gainsborough’s death held a prophecy which has been fulfilled. “If ever this nation,” he said, “should produce genius sufficient to acquire to us the honorable distinction of an English School, the name of Gainsborough will be transmitted to posterity, in the history of the art, among the very first of that rising name.”

George Romney, Greater in Gift than in Character 

In George Romney (1734-1802) we come to an artist whose gift was great enough to make him a rival of Reynolds, but who had not the steady will, the resolution, in using his gift to carry it to the high performance for which it was fitted. In control of line he surpassed even the greater men, and his color and vivacity give his pictures true charm. While he did not make elaborate plans of composition, he had a natural ability for placing his figures so as to give a beautiful arrangement of masses and lines. The background is usually plain, laying the more emphasis on the portrait itself.

Romney’s faults are due to defects of character and to insufficient early training rather than to lack of genius. He had a tendency to lay plans larger than he could carry through, and in his later life this became almost a form of insanity. With one undertaking partly accomplished, he would turn from it to some new delightful project that beckoned. Had he possessed a firmer will, he would no doubt have reached great results.

Although his best work is to be seen in some of his portraits (chiefly in private collections), he painted, besides, historical and ideal scenes. His interesting and sad story is told elsewhere.

In Scotland’s Allan Ramsay (1713-84), a contemporary, you see, of the English painters of whom we have been thinking, painted portraits of many Scottish gentlemen and ladies which made his name well- known in England as well as at home. While his color is sometimes hard and opaque-looking, his drawing of the features is fine, and his pictures are marked by a grace that is characteristically his. The portrait of his wife is one of his most charming portraits. The latter part of his life was spent in England, where he became court painter to King George Ill.

Henry Raeburn (1756-1823), another Scottish painter, in childhood left an orphan and early apprenticed to a goldsmith, learned for himself the arts of miniature and oil painting. Possessed of the very qualities that Romney had not, he lost no opportunity of improving his knowledge and technique.

Scotland owes to this son of hers admirable portraits of many others of her honored children, including Sir Walter Scott. They are sincere and forceful likenesses, broad and well handled, somewhat crude in color and tone, but interesting in their vigor and power of characterization. Of Raeburn’s romantic marriage, which opened the way to study on the continent, you may read elsewhere. He became president of the Society of Artists in Edinburgh and, before his death, was knighted by the king. His portraits are in the National Galleries of Scotland and England and in a number of other public and private collections. One of the finest is that of Sir John Sinclair.

Among the lesser portrait-painters of the period in England we shall speak of three - Hoppner, Opie and Lawrence.

John Hoppner (1758-1810) confessed himself to be a follower of Reynolds; and though he painted some landscapes and pictures on ideal subjects, his portraits, especially those of women and children, are considered his most successful works. They are still sought and treasured, although time has dimmed the beauty of their coloring. An attractive example of his portraiture is the group of the Sackville children. Hoppner was a man of social accomplishments, who could count among his sitters members of the royal family and such celebrated persons as Sir Walter Scott, Wellington and Lord Nelson.

John Opie (1761-1807), when as a young man he went to London from his native Cornwall, became the fashionable portrait painter of the town, hailed as the self-taught, independent artist. After the wonder had subsided and he was less pressed with orders, he worked hard to learn how to overcome his faults, and divided his time between portraits and historical canvases. His pictures have far more vigor of treatment and more individuality than elegance and grace.

In Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830) we come to the successor of Sir Joshua Reynolds in the post of painter to the king. Lawrence showed unusual talent as a boy and won fame while still in his teens. When he was only twenty-one years old, he was elected to the Academy by especial favor. Having started so young to observe and record the forms and features of society, he became very skilled in reproducing the airs and graces of its ladies and gentlemen. He drew well and painted in an easy manner, using a brilliant coloring that was sometimes hard in effect. Of all that he produced his pencil and crayon studies are rated as the most successful.

To Whom All Things Were Kin

In a green Italian field one summer day, almost seven hundred years ago, a small man, clad in a worn, patched robe, raised his head to the sky and called to the birds flying above him. Hearing his voice, they paused in their flight and glided to earth. Birds from the trees flew down to gather at the feet of this man. They seemed to bow and nod as he spoke to them.

“My little sisters the birds, much do you receive from God your Creator, and always and in every place you ought to praise Him. He has given you freedom to go into every place, and also did preserve your seed in Noah’s ark, so that your kind might not perish from the earth. Again, you receive from Him the element of air which He has made for you.

God feeds you and gives you the rivers and the fountains to drink from; He gives you the mountains and the valleys for your refuge, and the tall trees wherein to build your nests.

And as you can neither spin nor sew, God clothes you, you and your children.

Your Creator loves you much, since He has given you so many marvelous gifts. So beware, little sisters of mine, of the sin of ingratitude, but ever strive to praise God.” When the preacher had ended his sermon, the air filed with the glorious songs of the birds.

They soared into the sky, then divided into four parts like a cross. One group flew to the north, another to the south, the third to the east, and the fourth to the west, bearing the message they had heard to the four corners of the earth. The shabby little man left the field and continued his journey.

This man had not always been such a picture of poverty. Once he had been the most elegantly dressed young mati in Assisi. His father, Pietro Bernardone, a wealthy merchant, hoped that his son Francis would also become a merchant. Francis did not object to this and started working for his father. He loved fun and was a leader of the young people at the feasts and festivals. He wasted a good deal of money on rich dress, yet he always could spare a coin to any poor beggar who crossed his path. Francis had a careless, kind heart. He was afraid of only one thing, lepers.

One day, as he rode through the countryside, he saw a figure walking toward him on the road. Suddenly he realized that the man was a leper. With a start Francis spurred his horse to avoid meeting with this fearful being. Then, a new courage filled his soul. He sprang from his horse and threw his arms about the leper.

This incident marked a change that was taking place deep within Francis’ spirit.

This man who loved gaiety and laughter and freedom so well had to spend a miserable and lonely year as a prisoner of war, and his imprisonment was followed by a period of illness. He had time to think, to become acquainted with his own soul. When he came back to the busy life of Assisi, his family and friends soon learned that Francis had turned a very important corner. Forgotten were the parties, and the beautiful clothes and the wasted hours.

There were at this time in Italy many small old churches falling into decay— people were growing worldly and selfish and had little time for the simple, sincere devotion of the early Christians. Francis went from town to town, repairing the old churches with his own money and his own labor, aided by a few friends. When his father refused to give him any more money, he and his little band lived as beggars. They even took a vow of absolute poverty, promising to own nothing, lest the love of possessions corrupt their shining purpose.

Many people laughed at Francis and his band; but he preached in the market-places, begging men to be true to their own highest natures. He touched the hearts of multitudes. Singly, by tens and by hundreds, his band grew, until 5,000 men from all walks of life - rich and poor, young and old, ignorant and learned - put on the beggarly robe and became followers of Francis. The Pope blessed the rule of life which Francis planned, and the Franciscans, as they were called, formed the Friars Minor (Little Brothers).

A lovely girl, Clare Ortolana, under his advice, organized a women’s branch of the order: these women became known as Poor Clares.

Some there were who listened to Francis and almost wanted to follow him; but they could not say farewell to their homes or their dear ones, or their duties. For such Francis suggested a rule less rigid. This membership became known as the Third Order of Saint Francis. It, too, grew and flourished.

Francis of Assisi lived from 1182 to 1226. The religious orders that he founded have since spread over the globe. They have made many contributions to the world’s knowledge and civilization. Yet it is not as rounder of the Franciscans that Francis is most widely known today. He is remembered for his love of nature. The birds were his little sisters, the sun and winds were brothers, the moon and waters were sisters, and all created things were kin. He found a joy on earth more real and lasting than men can ever know who give their hearts to possessions. The poet Emerson might have been thinking of Francis when he said:

Cheerily know, when half-gods go The gods arrive.

CAESAR (see’-zer)

Gaius Julius Caesar (100-44 B.C.) was the greatest man of ancient Rome. Though he was descended from an old aristocratic family, he was a member of the popular party from his earliest youth.

Marius, the leader of this party, had married Caesar’s aunt; and he took a great interest in the promising youth.

When he was eighteen, Caesar faced mortal danger. Marius was now dead; Sulla, who had been his bitterest enemy, was in power. He demanded that Caesar should divorce his wife Cornelia, the daughter of one of Marius’ friends. Caesar refused; and he escaped the wrath of Sulla only because the Vestal Virgins (see page 3226) pleaded for the lad. “That boy,” grumbled Sulla, as he granted Caesar’s pardon, “will some day be the ruin of the aristocracy, for there is in him many a Marius.”

In 76 B.C. Caesar sailed for the island of Rhodes, in the Mediterranean Sea, in order to study oratory—the art of making speeches. He was captured by pirates off Miletus, in Asia Minor, and kept a prisoner upon the island of Pharmacusa till he was ransomed by his friends. While in captivity Caesar laughingly told the pirates that some day he would have them all crucified. His captors thought it a great joke. But, sure enough, after he was released, young Caesar came back with a powerful expedition, captured many of the pirates and succeeded in carrying out his threat.

When he returned to Rome, he did all in his power to win the favor of the people by means of gifts and entertainments of all kinds. After he had used up his own fortune in this way, he borrowed large sums from the moneylenders of Rome. His efforts bore fruit. He became a great favorite with the people, who elected him to public office again and again.

Caesar had won success as a public leader, but his debts threatened to overwhelm him. So he got the help of his friend Crassus, the wealthiest man of Rome, in arranging for payments to the anxious moneylenders. Caesar was now put in charge of a military campaign in Spain, and for the first time he showed his military genius.
In 6o B.C. Caesar formed a political partnership with Crassus and Pompey, who at that time was considered the foremost Roman citizen. These three men were now all-powerful in Rome; and Caesar had no difficulty in winning election as consul. After serving a year as consul, he was made governor of several provinces, including Gaul (the land we know as France).

In the course of the next ten years he conducted a series of magnificent campaigns in Gaul; he subdued the barbarians who had defied Rome in many parts of that region. While governor of Gaul, Caesar crossed the Rhine River twice and carried the war to the German tribes that dwelt on the other side of that river. He also made two expeditions to England, where no Roman had ever landed before. Caesar has told us the story of his campaigns in his Commentaries of the Gallic Wars, a work familiar to all young people who study Latin.

Caesar’s victories caused Pompey to turn against him, and by 49 B.C. open fighting broke out between the two men. Caesar defeated his rival in the battle of Pharsalia in 48 B.C. and pursued him to Egypt, where Pompey met his death. Caesar remained in Egypt for a time, for he had fallen victim to the charms of Cleopatra, a beautiful Egyptian princess. He even fought a war so that Cleopatra might rule over Egypt together with her young brother.

He then departed for Asia Minor, where King Pharnaces of Pontus was threatening the Asiatic possessions of Rome. Caesar routed the army of Pharnaces in the battle of Zela (47 B.C.). Then he sent the senate a message that consisted of just three words:

Veni, vidi, vici.—”I came, I saw, I conquered.”

Cesar turned his attention next to the remaining supporters of Pompey. The victories of Thapsus (46), in Africa, and Munda (45), in Spain, made him the master of the Roman world. Many people at Rome were now filled with fear and trembling, for hitherto the victors in civil warfare at Rome had generally brought about a reign of terror. But on his return to Rome, Csar pardoned those who had fought against him. Now he ruled alone. His word was law.

We tell you about the achievements of Csar as dictator in our article on the Roman Republic. There is no doubt that he did much for the Roman state. There also seems to be little doubt that he wanted to become king. He had his friend, Mark Antony, offer him a golden diadem, or crown, and he only refused because the people greeted the offer with howls of disapproval. At any rate, Csar determined to keep the supreme power in his own family; he named his grandnephew and adopted son, Octavius, as his successor.

His enemy, Gaius Cassius, formed a conspiracy against him and won the help of Marcus Brutus. Brutus had fought at Pharsalia against Csar, who had pardoned him and showered favors upon him. Brutus joined the conspiraCy against the man who had befriended him because he thought that he would thus help to bring back the good old days of the Roman Republic.

Caesar was attacked by the conspirators in the senate house on the Ides of March (March 15), 44 B.C. He tried to defend himself at first. But when he saw Brutus among those who sought to slay him, he said sadly:

Et tu, Brute? - ”Thou, too, Brutus?”- covered his face with his robe and accepted his fate. He died, pierced by more than twenty wounds, at the foot of Pompey’s statue.

This astonishing man excelled in many ways. He was one of the world’s greatest soldiers, worthy to be compared with Alexander the Great, Hannibal and Napoleon. He was a statesman and lawgiver of the first order. He was greatly esteemed for his eloquence by the Romans. Unfortunately only his Commentaries on the Gallic Wars have come down to us, but he wrote many other works, of which ancient authors speak highly.

ANTONY (an’-toh-nee)

Mark Antony (83?-3o B.C.), whose name in Latin was Marcus Antonius, was an ambitious man, who for a time was master of half the Roman world. He neglected his studies as a youth and wasted his time with gay companions. No one thought that he would ever amount to much.

But when he entered the armies of Rome, he found his real calling. He fought in Syria, Palestine and Egypt and won the reputation of being a brave and energetic officer. He then served under Julius Caesar in Gaul and became his right-hand man. In 50 B.C. Antony went to Rome to serve Caesar’s interests. He was elected as tribune of the people, an important office that carried with it the right of veto over the acts of the senate. As was expected, Antony used his powers to help Caesar’s cause and aroused the anger of the aristocratic party at Rome. He had to flee for his life and took refuge with Caesar in Gaul. He was with that general when he invaded Italy and drove Pompey and his supporters into exile in 49 B.C.

While Caesar was dictator of Rome, he honored Mark Antony greatly. In the year 44 B.C. the dictator was assassinated by a band of conspirators led by Cassius and Brutus. Antony thought it wise to adopt a cautious policy. He soon came to terms with the senate, which backed the conspirators. But when he delivered a funeral oration over Caesar’s body, his eloquence so inflamed the excitable people of Rome that Cassius and Brutus and the rest did not dare remain in the city.

For a time Antony was the most influential man in Rome. But he soon found a rival in Octavian, Caesar’s adopted son and heir, and presently the two men were engaged in open warfare. Then they joined forces. Together with Marcus Lepidus, they formed a triumvirate, or government by three men, in 43. In the following year Antony and Octavian routed the armies of Brutus and Cassius in the battle of Philippi. It was Antony who won the day by his generalship.

Not long afterward Antony became the ruler of all the provinces east of the Adriatic Sea, while Octavian and Lepidus took over the rest of the Roman world. Antony now met the woman who was to become his evil genius. This was the beautiful Egyptian queen, Cleopatra, who in years gone by had won the heart of Caesar. Antony fell madly in love with Cleopatra. He had married Octavia, the sister of Octavian; he now sent her back to Italy while he remained in Egypt in the company of Cleopatra.

From now on he was Cleopatra’s slave. From time to time he would bestir himself and would become again for a while the great general that he used to be. Most of his time, however, was spent in the luxurious court of Cleopatra in Alexandria. Antony forgot that he was a Roman; he assumed the airs and the ceremonies of an Eastern despot. This conduct disgusted some of his Roman friends. They left him to enter the service of Octavian, who now ruled alone over western Rome.

By 32 B.C. Octavian and Antony had broken off relations and they began to prepare for a fight to the finish. At last, one day in September, 31 B.C., the fleet of Octavian faced the combined fleets of Antony and Cleopatra off Actium, in Greece. In the mighty sea battle that followed, Antony and Cleopatra were routed and they had to flee to Alexandria.

In the following year Octavian appeared off Alexandria with a powerful fleet and army. Antony’s fleet and his cavalry went over to Octavian; his infantry was cut to pieces in battle. He now heard a rumor, which later proved to be false, that Cleopatra had taken her own life. In despair Antony slew himself by falling on his sword. He was spared at least the suffering of learning that Cleopatra had tried to betray him and to make peace with Octavian.

CICERO (siss’-e-roh)

Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 B.c.) was the foremost orator of ancient Rome. In his youth he studied the law, literature and philosophy with equal zeal. He also tried his hand at soldiering, but he did not distinguish himself. So he gave up all hope of a military career and determined to win fame as a lawyer. He soon became one of the most successful lawyers of Rome. So renowned was his eloquence that the courts were always crowded when it became known that Cicero was going to speak.

The Romans, who always greatly esteemed orators, elected Cicero to a number of public offices, including the highest office of all, the consulship. While he was consul, in 63 B.C., Rome was threatened by a great conspiracy, led by Catiline, a worthless member of the aristocracy. The conspiracy was revealed to Cicero, who denounced Catiline in the senate house in one of the most famous orations of all time.

Catiline managed to make his way out of the city, but some of the conspirators were caught. Cicero had been given great power in order to crush the conspiracy, and he now had five of the conspirators put to death without a trial. Catiline was later defeated in battle and slain.

Cicero was hailed as the Father of his Country by the grateful people of Rome. But after he had become a private citizen again, the fickle Romans forgot the great services that he had rendered to the state. He was accused by his enemies of having had Roman citizens put to death without a trial and he was forced into exile. For several years he remained in exile in Greece. When he returned to Rome, he bowed to the might of the three men who ruled Rome at that time— Caesar, Pompey and Crassus.

In 51 B.C. he had to leave Rome, much against his will, to become governor of the province of Cilicia, in Asia Minor. Unlike most Roman governors of foreign provinces, Cicero proved to be both honest and humane and he won the gratitude of the Cilicians. He was impatient to return to Rome, and as soon as his year of office was over, he left for the scene of his former triumphs.

Soon after Cicero’s return to Rome, civil war broke out between Caesar and Pompey ( B.c.). Cicero did not know which side to support at first. At last he decided tofollow Pompey into exile in Greece. After Pompey’s defeat in the battle of Pharsalia, Cicero went back to Italy and threw himself on the mercy of Caesar, who generously pardoned him. Cicero now retired from public life for a while. He remained in his villa at Tusculum and spent his time writing works on philosophy.

After the assassination of Caesar, Cicero attached himself to Octavian, Caesar’s heir, who had made an alliance with the Roman senate. Octavian was soon openly at war with Mark Antony, who had been Caesar’s friend and supporter. Cicero thought it was perfectly safe for him to turn the full force of his eloquence against Antony, and he attacked him in twelve bitter philippics. (A philippic is an oration full of personal attacks; the name comes from the orations against King Philip of Macedonia by Demosthenes, a famous Athenian orator).

When Octavian joined hands with Antony in 43 B.C., Cicero was doomed; for Octavian consented to Antony’s demand that the great orator should be put to death. Warned of his danger, Cicero was in despair. He fled from Italy in a boat and then returned to his Tusculan villa because the winds were unfavorable. Then he was persuaded to flee again, but this time he was caught by the soldiers sent in pursuit of him, Cicero’s devoted slaves prepared to defend their master to the death, but he forbade them to do so. Wearily he told his pursuers to strike. He was cut down in the sixty-third year of his life.

Cicero was one of the greatest figures in Roman literature. His orations, most of which have come down to us, are the finest example of Roman eloquence. He wrote many works on philosophy, discussing the great problems of life and death in wonderful prose. His letters gave a remarkable picture of one of the most interesting periods in the history of mankind.

AUGUSTUS (aw-gus’-tus)

Augustus (63 B.C.-14 An.), the founder and first ruler of the Roman Empire,was called Gaius Octavius as a boy. He was the grandnephew and the particular favorite of Julius Csar. Since Csar had no sons of his own, he made up his mind that some day his grandnephew would succeed him as ruler of Rome.

Young Octavius went to Spain in 45 B.C. in order to join Csar, who was campaigning against certain followers of his rival, Pornpey. It was at this time that Octavius was formally adopted by Csar. The lad took the name of his granduncle with the added name of Octavianus. So he was now Gaius Julius Csar Octavianus, or Octavian, as he is generally called by historians who write in English.

After Csar’s assassination in March, 44, Octavian came to Rome. In spite of his youth he soon became one of the most powerful men of the Roman state. In our two articles on the Story of Ancient Rome we have told you about Octavian’s career as a Roman leader—how he strove with Cassius and Brutus and, later, with Mark Antony, for the mastery of Rome; how he set up an empire which was to endure for centuries; what he accomplished as the emperor Augustus. (This name, meaning highly honored, was bestowed upon him by the Roman senate).

It has been said that the life of the first Roman emperor was really the life of two men - Octavian and Augustus. In the years when, as Octavian, he was fighting for the rule of the Roman world, he did many mean and treacherous things to bring about his ends. He thought nothing of sacrificing his friends in order to win over powerful enemies. We have told you, in our life of Cicero, how he gave up that famous orator to the vengeance of Mark Antony. In this period of his life he also won a reputation for great cruelty.

But after Octavian became the emperor Augustus, a ruler with no serious rivals, there was a great change for the better. In general he showed a kindness and a generosity that had been almost entirely lacking in former years.

He was sometimes merciful even to those who, like the conspirator Cornelius Cinna, had sought his death.

Though Augustus was the supreme ruler of the Roman state, he was too prudent to take the title of king - a title hated by the Romans. Nor did he assume the outer appearance of a king. He never wore a crown, nor did he ever have a king1y court. To the end of his life he lived like an ordinary Roman citizen. His friends never considered him as a master, but as an equal.

Augustus was not a good general, but he had the happy gift of choosing his officers well. In some of the battles in which he took part it was only the skill of others that won the day after his own bungling had almost lost it. After he became emperor, he left the fighting almost entirely to his generals, who were worthy of his trust.

There was only one serious defeat in his reign—the battle of the Teutoburger Forest, in which three Roman legions, led by Varus, were cut to pieces by the Germans. Augustus could not be consoled when he heard of this disaster. He let his hair and beard grow and often cried out in his grief: “Varus, Varus, give me back my legions!”
It is true that by setting up a government in which one man was all-powerful, Augustus paved the way for such wicked emperors as Caligula, Nero and Domitian. But his own reign was a prosperous and happy one, and he was proud of his achievements as emperor. On his deathbed, he turned to those who were standing about him and said: “If I have acted well my part in life’s drama, greet my departure with your applause!”

MAECENAS (meh-see’-nas)

When we speak of a patron of art—a man who helps artists and men of letters and musicians—we often say: “He is a Maecenas.” This Maecenas was a real person, who flourished at Rome in the last days of the Republic and the early days of the Empire.

Gaius Cilnius Maecenas (7o?-8 B.C.) was a member of a respectable old Roman family, which claimed descent from the old kings of Etruria, in central Italy. He was a wealthy man and a cultured one, with a deep knowledge of Latin and Greek literature. While still a young man he became an intimate friend of Octavian, the grandnephew and adopted son of Julius Cesar. After the assassination of Caesar in 44 B.C. Octavian became one of the most important men of Rome. Maecenas was his most trusted adviser.

It is said that Maecenas had a good deal to do with the establishment of the Roman Empire. After Octavian had crushed Mark Antony and had become the sole ruler over Rome, he did not know whether or not to restore the republican form of government. He summoned two of his oldest friends, Maecenas and Agrippa, and asked them what they advised.

Agrippa was all in favor of the republic. But Maecenas reminded Octavian of the evils that the republican form of government had brought to Rome. He claimed that Octavian could bring about peace by setting up a monarchy—a permanent form of government that would not be changed at the whim of the fickle Roman public. Octavian took the advice of Maecenas. He became the first emperor of Rome under the name of Augustus.

For a few years Maecenas continued to enjoy the favor of the Emperor, but then, for some unknown reason, the relations between the two men cooled. After 21 B.C. Maecenas took no further part in public life. He spent most of his time in his magnificent villa on the Esquiline Hill, in the city of Rome. This villa was a favorite meeting-place for all sorts of people—statesmen, men of letters, artists, musicians, actors and clowns.

Some of these guests were vulgar people, whose only merit was that they made their host laugh. But Maecenas did not permit them to become intimate with him. He reserved his friendship for men of talent. His particular favorites were Virgil and Horace, the greatest poets of that day.

Maecenas used his influence to help Virgil recover his farm, which had been taken from him by the government.

He showered even greater favors upon Horace. He got a pardon for him for having fought against Octavian at Philippi in 42 B.C. Later Maecenas gave Horace a farm in the Sabine district near Rome - a farm that was made immortal in Horace’s odes. Nor did Maecenas ever make any demands on the poet. The relationship between them was always that of two intimate friends of equal rank, though Mcenas was a man of distinguished family and Horace was the son of a freedman - a man who had once been a slave.

Maecenas wrote a good deal himself - both prose and poetry - but very little of what he wrote has come down to us. This is no great loss, to judge by the fragments which still exist. Like many other people, Mcenas was an excellent critic of other men’s writings, but could not write well himself.

MARCUS AURELIUS (oh-ree’-li-us)

The great Greek thinker Plato once wrote that men would enjoy a perfect form of government only when a philosopher became a king or when a king became a philosopher. For a philosopher is a man who is interested in the eternal problems of life and death; such a man would not care for personal glory and gain, but would seek only the happiness of his subjects. In the year 161 A.D. what Plato longed for actually came to pass; for a philosopher became the emperor of Rome. He was Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (12 i-8o), or Marcus Aurelius, as he is generally known.

His name as a boy was Marcus Annus Verus. From his early childhood he studied the works of Latin and Greek literature and philosophy with great enthusiasm. He was particularly inspired by the writings of the Greek Stoic (stoh’-ik) philosophers. The Stoic sect had been founded by the Greek Zeno in the third century B.C. The name Stoic came from a famous stoa, or porch, where the Stoics of Athens used to teach. A hundred years before Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, the wise old philosopher and writer who was tutor to Nero, was a famous Roman Stoic.

The Stoics held that a wise man should not allow himself to be influenced by either joy or grief; he should willingly accept all that was in store for him.

Furthermore, he should lead a frugal life, shunning all luxury in food and clothing. The Stoics had a very stern idea of duty, too. They thought that a man should do his assigned task without any thought of reward either in this world or in the world to come.

The Stoics, as you see, had a rather forbidding faith, which certainly would not attract most children. Yet as a mere boy of twelve Marcus became a Stoic and from that time he faithfully obeyed all the Stoic teachings. He continued his study of philosophy and attracted much attention at Rome as a lad of great promise.

The emperor Antoninus Pius adopted Marcus as his son, and he became known thereafter as Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. He was the Emperor’s trusted companion and adviser; and when Antoninus died, in 161, Marcus Aurelius followed him upon the throne.

In our article on the Roman Empire we tell you about his achievements as a ruler. He continued to be a Stoic to the end of his days. Even when he was the master of a great part of the civilized world, with all the
luxuries of the Orient his for the asking, he lived simply and dressed in plain garments. And he gave himself up with all his heart and soul to what he realized was his duty— watching over the interests of his millions of subjects.

In his spare time the Emperor wrote down in a diary the serious thoughts that came to him concerning the meaning of life and the way it should be lived. He so loved the Greek philosophers who had converted him to the Stoic belief that he wrote this diary in the Greek language. After a while it came to contain a fairly complete summing up of the Emperor’s Stoic faith.

The Emperor gave the name “To Himself” to this diary of his. There is no reason to believe that he ever meant it to be read by anybody but himself. But, under the name Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, it became one of the most widely read works of Greek literature, second only to the New Testament in popularity. It is perhaps the noblest monument of pagan thought.

It is sad to record that this great man was an enemy of the Christians. Some people think that he was influenced by the Stoic philosophers who were his constant companions and who were jealous of a faith that was robbing them of many followers. However that may be, Marcus Aurelius believed, as did many people in his day, that the Christians were secretly planning to overthrow the Empire. He thought, therefore, that his duty as emperor made it necessary for him to treat them with great severity.

The Romans mourned deeply at the death of Marcus Aurelius. Yet they could not think of him as a mortal man who had passed away. They thought rather that he had been sent down from heaven for a time in order to bless mankind and that he had now returned to Heaven. He was worshiped as a god after his death. For many years to come the image of the Emperor was to be found among the household gods of almost every Roman family that still remained faithful to the ancient pagan beliefs

There is no hard-and-fast line that can be drawn to mark the end of one geological period and the beginning of a new one. With a few exceptions, the various periods shade gradually into one another without any very abrupt change. However, the beginning of the Eocene period brought about such marked changes in the appearance of the world and its plant and animal life that it seems proper to regard this period as the beginning of a new era in the history of the earth.

Tremendous geological changes took place between the laying-down of the Cretaceous and the Eocene rocks. The Cretaceous rocks, during the greater part of the Cretaceous period, were beneath the water, some of them under the deep sea. In the Eocene, however, they, with all their lagoons, estuaries, lakes and seas, were generally forced up into dry land and mountain ranges. Not only were the chalky and clayey and sandy deposits of the Cretaceous raised above the level of the surrounding sea into such masses as the chalk cliffs of southern England and northern France, but even the floors of ancient seas were forced upwards, sometimes as high as 10,000 or 17,000 feet. It must have been a stupendous although gradual upheaval of the earth’s crust, for it took place all over the world.

When the Eocene deposits began to form, we find that not only was the face of the world completely changed, but its plant and animal life was unlike that of preceding periods. It is for this reason that the period has been called the Eocene, from the Greek word eos, meaning “dawn,” and it has been regarded as the beginning of a new system, which has been named the Tertiary. It was the dawn of the world as we know it to-day.

Eocene rocks are found all over the earth. In the Old World they are found chiefly in the Pyrenees, the Alps, the Carpathians, the Caucasus, Asia Minor, Northern Africa, Persia, Baluchistan, the Sulaiman Mountains, China and Japan. In eastern North America the Eocene rocks stretch along the Atlantic and all the way from New Jersey into Texas. In the interior of the continent there are large areas of Eocene rocks in Alberta, some in Saskatchewan, and in various parts of the central and western United States. There were shallow lakes and marshes and much volcanic activity in this region during the Eocene.

The vegetation of the period was very rich, and many of our common trees grew freely, as ashes, beeches, willows, poplars, elms and maples. Palms and bananas were also to be found. The climates of Alaska and Greenland were temperate, and luxuriant forests abounded in those regions.

The animal life of the period was varied. Mammals, birds, reptiles, fishes, insects and molluscs were well represented. Among the birds, snipes, seagulls, buzzards, hawks, ospreys, quails, pelicans, flamingoes and horn- bills were common. But the most striking feature of the Eocene animal life was the disappearance of the huge lizards of the Cretaceous period and the appearance of new and better developed mammals.

Just why the mighty race of dinosaurs died out is a mystery. The Eocene climate was cooler than that of the preceding period, and it may have been that these great reptiles could not stand the change in temperature. Perhaps the fact that the early mammals may have fed on dinosaur eggs had much to do with the reptiles’ rapid decrease in numbers and final and complete disappearance.

Two of the most extraordinary creatures living in the Eocene were the titanothere and the uintathere. The former appeared early in the Eocene as an animal no larger than a sheep, and gradually developed into a beast the size of a small elephant. The titanothere had a heavy body supported by thick legs. Two great bony lumps grew out of the front of the skull, and the brain was hardly as large as a man’s fist. For all their great size, the titanotheres must have been very stupid creatures.

The uintathere has been found only in America, where it was characteristic of the Eocene period. It also was as large as a small elephant, and was well armed with six stout horns, four above its nose and two above its ears. In the males the upper canines were developed into two long, sabre-like tusks. Like the titanothere, the uintathere had a ridiculously small brain within its bulky body.

Other mammals appearing in the Eocene were the ancestors of the horse, rhinoceros, tapir, pig, camel and monkey.

After the Eocene came the Oligocene, a period not very different from the Eocene. Oligocene rocks are not common east of the Mississippi except in the Gulf region. On the Pacific coast they are more common, however, and in the interior of the continent are large areas with many interesting fossils. In general the plants were like those of the Eocene, but the climate was cooler.

THE LARGEST MAMMAL THAT EVER WALKED THE EARTH

It was during the Oligocene that baluchitherium, the largest of land mammals, lived. The bones of this great beast were discovered in the hills of Baluchistan in southern Asia. It stood from twelve to thirteen feet high at the shoulder, and by lifting its head and stretching, it could eat leaves twenty feet above the ground. It was a distant relative of the modern rhinoceros with which we are all familiar.

The Miocene followed the Oligocene. Miocene rocks are found in France, Belgium, Switzerland and in many other countries, and show a gradual progression in all forms of life, together with the production of many new forms. In western North America Miocene rocks are widespread, but they are not very thick except on the Pacific coast.

The most remarkable of the new animals were the mastodon and the dinotherium, both huge beasts of the elephant family. The tusks of the mastodon were straight; those of the dinotherium turned downward. The first mastodon was discovered in 1613, and the history of its discovery is very curious, one of the rare examples of imposture in science.

THE SURGEON WHO DECEIVED THE WORLD OF SCIENCE

The skeleton was found by some workmen in a sand quarry at Dauphiny, in France. Such bones had never been found before, and a surgeon called Mazuyer saw a chance of making a great sensation. He purchased the bones and then pretended that he had found them in a tomb thirty feet long and fifteen feet broad, built of bricks, and bearing the inscription: “Teutobocchus Rex.” He also stated that he had found fifty medals of Marius in the tomb; and there seemed no reason to doubt his apparent good faith.

A barbarian king named Teutobocchus had actually invaded Gaul at the head of the Cimbri, had been defeated by the Roman Marius and led in triumph to Rome. According to tradition, Teutobocchus was so tall that he towered above all the trophies borne on the lances of the soldiers in the triumphal procession. Mazuyer’s story therefore fitted in perfectly with the legend and met with general acceptance. The giant formed out of the mastodon’s bones was twenty-five feet long, and the skeleton was exhibited throughout France and Germany. A great many people were rather skeptical, and a learned anatomist argued that the bones belonged to an elephant; but it was not until they were removed to the Museum of Natural History in Paris that the remains were actually identified as the skeleton of a creature like an elephant.

The dinotherium, found only in Europe and India, was larger than either the mastodon or the mammoth. It lived on herbage, and seems to have inhabited lakes.

In the Miocene, cats, and hogs and antelopes were also found. Wolves, panthers and sabre-tooth tigers were common.

The whole Tertiary period may be considered as the age of mammalian rise and domination, just as the Secondary period was the age of the rule of the great reptiles.

His use of chiaroscuro (values of light and shade) is peculiarly his. By it he produces the feeling of form, and of more than form; in the faces he has recorded we perceive more than features copied in color. We get a glimpse into the real being beneath the flesh and blood. “The heads are enveloped in darkness, out of which emerge the features, the eyes especially arresting the attention. Through the depth and poignancy of their gaze one seems to look into the very soul of the subject.”

The greatest art is never merely photographic. Genius sees a plain street of ordinary houses with one crooked chimney, perhaps, reaching toward the stars, and paints the scene so that this is the .road to El Dorado, and coming and going along it are beautiful fancies that touch us with golden finger-tips in passing.

This separate eye of genius is one of the world’s most precious possessions. Rembrandt was always conscious of his own secret vision. He had the clear insight of the artists of Holland into the beauty of everyday things and people, and if he had been just a Dutch master and not a world genius, he would have found an infinite satisfaction in painting faithfully scenes from his native land. As it was, the perfection which was the goal of the Dutch artists was his starting-point. He took for granted the things everyone else saw, and concerned himself with what they did not see his secret.

In the same way Michelangelo took the perfection of the human form for granted, and built up his own world of men and women as he saw them - humanity invested with something of the largeness and strangeness of divinity.

Rembrandt Harmensz Van Rijn could not conceive of working in any other way than his own. From the first he was very sure of his ability, and at eighteen - an age when most artists were still at the apprentice stage - he took a studio of his own and announced himself an artist. His father, a miller, had sent the boy, while he was still young, to a Latin school, to prepare for Leyden University. After a year of schooling there Rembrandt showed so plainly that art, and not letters, was his calling that his parents apprenticed him to a Leyden painter called Swanenborch.

There for three years Rembrandt studied drawing and painting; after that he went to Amsterdam to work with Last- man, a Dutch artist who had studied in Italy and was much influenced by Caravaggio, the realist. For six months the youth worked with this painter; then quite suddenly he threw down his brush and went home, saying he was going to work in his own way.

THE TIRELESS GENIUS WHO MADE NINE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES

This faith in himself was justified. In 1631, after three years of private study, Rembrandt, then about twenty-five years old, went to Amsterdam and there began a career of most amazing industry. He painted portraits and pictures for the wealthy, and made etchings for his poorer patrons. Apart from those which have been lost, and his earlier studies which he himself destroyed, this marvelous artist executed six hundred pictures and three hundred etchings. He seems never to have had an idle moment; in the earlier years of his profession he must have lived with an etcher’s needle in his hand and a copperplate before him; and to this passion for the engraved line, and Rembrandt’s determination to be himself and express that which he saw in his own way, the artist owes his place as the greatest etcher and one of the greatest painters the world has known. At the age of twenty-four he had “left himself no room for improvement” in the art of etching.

HOW REMBRANDT LEARNED TO PAINT THE THOUGHT BEHIND THE SMILE

In the course of his life Rembrandt painted and drew a variety of subjects, but all his interests really focused on the human face. His own eye was sensitive to the faintest shadow of change passing over a man’s countenance.

Knowing so much and seeing so much, he made haste to record it. His father and mother, who must have been patient souls, allowed themselves to be drawn a great many times in all the moods and tempers which either the accident of the moment or their son’s despotic will dictated. Or he would use himself as a model, sitting before his copperplate, needle in one hand, mirror in the other.

Thus he drew his own face repeatedly, serious or smiling, “the artist with frightened eyes,” “the artist with a scarf round his neck” and “the artist” in many other varieties of costume.

There were two far-reaching effects of this tireless industry: one was Rembrandt’s ability to render easily every conceivable expression of the face, the other was a supreme mastery of technique.

THE WONDERFUL ETCHING OF THE 1ST RAISING OF LAZARUS

If we look at his large etching The Raising of Lazarus we shall see there surprise, consternation and other natural emotions drawn on men’s faces in a way that is unrivaled in the story of art. It is not an easy or manufactured emotion that the artist shows: each man seems amazed or horrified in his own peculiar way, as his character dictates. We can almost follow the men home and hear them talk about the miracle to their friends.

A similar interest is attached to what is perhaps the most famous etching in the world - Christ Healing the Sick, known as The Hundred Guilder Piece. The artist never quite finished this etching, but as it stands it is a study we should not weary of looking at. On each of the faces Rembrandt has stamped the individual soul. The draftsmanship is superb; not a line is wasted. When, not long since, there came to light an old collection including a number of Rembrandt etchings, three of these, a fine impression of The Hundred Guilder Piece and two others, were sold at nearly $6,000 each.

THE MASTER’S TOUCH THAT MAKES A PICTURE SEEM TO LIVE

Rembrandt’s technique was a separate gift. At first his line was a little tight and hard, as in the early etching of himself about the age of twenty-one. Presently it became loose and vibrating, very gentle and very strong at the same time, as in the incomparable etchings of his mother. As his line loosened, his brush work loosened also; at times he has the freedom of Velasquez, that supreme genius of technique.

Technique in drawing and painting, as we know, is the craft of art; that is to say, a person without any vision of beautiful things may be able to draw a perfect line. With some artists technique is the beginning and end of their peculiar gift. Very often too much attention to the technique will kill the freedom and spontaneity of the artist’s thought. Technique is concerned mainly with two problems: outline and shade masses. An outline is really false to nature; faces can no more be truly represented by an outline than an orange can be represented by a circle.

The only true rendering of solid objects is in modeling or sculpture. But there are degrees by which the outline can attain to the qualities of sculpture. That is to say, a great master can, by a single outline, give the illusion of a rounded form. Generally speaking, the tighter a line is, the farther it is from representing a solid object. Michelangelo’s cartoons or sketches, Goya’s drawings and Rembrandt’s etchings will show us what. a loose, vibrating line is.

THE GREAT GIFT AND DEEPEST SECRET OF REMBRANDT

The dealing with masses, showing light and shade, is another and stouter problem. If you look at a person’s face, particularly in lamp-light or candle-light, you will see that part of the features, the nose or the cheek bones or the chin, are very clearly in high light; other parts of the face are very clearly in shadow. If a face were made like a solid cube there would be an end of the matter. Anyone who can draw at all can draw or paint the high lights or the strong shadows on a face; that which artists spend years in trying to render is the part where high light slips into dark shadow; the tiny planes on the rounded flesh that join up the two extremes of white and black.

Here Rembrandt’s technique was superb. A few lines, a little work of the brush, and he was across that terrible no man’s land which many artists never cover at all. Leonardo da Vinci was another genius who had mastered this most difficult problem in portraiture.

But when we think of Rembrandt’s art from the point of view of characterization, great as it is, or of its marvelous technique, we have not touched his outstanding genius. Rembrandt got into his work a luminosity - very different from actual light-and-shade treatment - which has never been found either in etchings or paintings before or since. In etching “no other master ever made white paper radiate as he did.” This luminous atmosphere in his etching and in his painting—was Rembrandt’s secret, his genius, his gift to the world.

Anyone can make light, light and darkness dark. Rembrandt made his darks glow with light, his lights hold a peculiar soft gloom. “He surrounded centres of light with waves of darkness. The darkness itself in his pictures is transparent; you can peer into it and discover half- concealed forms; everything provokes curiosity; there is mystery; and it acts upon the mind so that the real and the imaginary become mingled. It is at once a reality and a dream!’ A secret that can be told is no longer a secret. To attempt to explain Rembrandt’s supreme genius is as difficult as it is to copy it. In some moods he seems to have tried to use light as actual material with which to build form; he seems to have composed in light.

The Venetians got light into their pictures, and often a gentle suavity; but they were painters willfully making beautiful things a little more beautiful painters dealing with subjects of religious or classic story that were already full of ‘interest in men’s minds and only needed to be painted to become adored.

HOW REMBRANDT LOVED TO PAINT THE PEOPLE OF HOLLAND

When Rembrandt painted a religious subject he often gave it a genre feeling. For instance, in a Holy Family, now in Munich, he represents the father and mother in a Dutch home, bending over a familiar Dutch cradle in which lies the Babe. And instead of gods and princes, queens and nymphs, this artist chose for the figures in most of his pictures humbler folk, sometimes the ragged and poor. Yet there is nothing commonplace in these creatures, for the man who put them on canvas or paper saw human beings in a broad, sympathetic way, and gave character and dignity to their forms and faces when he drew or painted them. A gesture or a turn of the head might have the force of presenting some universal truth.

Not only the number of Rembrandt’s works but the wide variety of subjects and kinds is astonishing. Of them all, as we have said, the portraits are of most importance and interest. True as likenesses, expressing the characteristics of each individual, they are interesting as pictures, too. Some of his portraits of old women are unequaled in the way they embody the calm dignity and courage of age, and record the traces of experience - the fruit of living. Stiffness and firmness may still be there, but sharpness has been smoothed away by the touch of time. Into just the folded, quiet hands of an old woman Rembrandt could put such beauty and meaning that the sight of them almost brings tears of tenderness. A transparent delicacy or a sturdy capableness gives them distinction and suggests what part they have played in a long lifetime. No other has been so sympathetic a painter of old age. It is the impression made upon the painter himself that comes to us through the picture he made. We see his beloved young wife Saskia, or his good friend Jan Six, or his son Titus, as he saw them.

REMBRANDT AND HALS AS PORTRAIT- PAINTERS COMPARED

If Hals and Rembrandt are put side by side as portrait-painters, certain differences can be clearly noted. Hals is like one who can tell a tale quickly and brilliantly. His easy strokes play over the surfaces with ready skill, which can be understood and followed. Rembrandt’s portraits, on the other hand, are built up, “constructed” with solid strength, giving evidence of bone and muscle beneath the surfaces. His is an art that cannot be expressed in a formula and imitated.

Yet when these two artists were engaged to make large group pictures for corporations, the method of Hals gave the greater satisfaction to the patrons. In his groups each solid citizen was unmistakably represented by an excellent portrait, whereas in Rembrandt’s the portrait quality might be made second to the picture composition. This is particularly true of the Sortie of the Banning Cock Company, in Amsterdam, where the figures emerge from such deep shadow that the picture was long called, by mistake, The Night Watch. One whole figure and a few heads furnish “some focal spots of brilliance,” but most of the personages are indistinguishable in the shadowy gloom, which has grown deeper with time. Instead of being ranged in neat rows, the members of the company are shown rushing out of their club-house - coming forward from the dim background. The Banning Cock Company were disappointed, but their picture stands as a record of Rembrandt’s struggle between the impulse to give a detailed representation of outside appearances and the desire to express inner impressions of his own mind.

An early group picture, The Lesson in Anatomy, however, had made Rembrandt famous because of its clear characterization. And The Syndics of the Clothworkers’ Guild, in the Rijks Museum, Amsterdam, painted near the end of his life, brings together at last the two efforts in a most successful result. It is “a work of imagination and yet of real life.”

HAPPINESS AND PROSPERITY FOLLOWED BY DARKER YEARS

For ten years after he painted The Lesson in Anatomy, Rembrandt lived in prosperity and comfort, busy with pupils and at work on the portraits of patrons. At this time he was happy in his home life with his wife, Saskia van Uylenborch, whose portrait he painted many times. Reveling in the beauty of sumptuous materials, he bought freely and lived generously. In these years of vigor and youth Rembrandt dipped his brush into many colors; as he grew older his tone was quieter, his color more restrained.

In 1642 Saskia died, and in the same year his Banning Cock Company picture gave dissatisfaction, injuring his popularity. The rest of his life was darkened by money troubles, although he painted with extraordinary industry and was faithfully helped by his son Titus and by Hendrickje Stoffels, a devoted servant, until she died, in 1656. There is a fine portrait of Hendrickje in Berlin.

As in the case of Michelangelo, Rembrandt’s last years were lonely and sorrowful, though there was in his temperament none of the moroseness and sourness which kept from the great Florentine the joys of friendship. Rembrandt’s failing, rather, was that he had been spendthrift - too generous, too trusting and too sure of the world’s kindliness. But he would have been the last person to think his case over-sad. The thing that mattered most to him was his work, and this he had brought, in evil report and good, to a triumphant end. Born about 1606, he died in the year 1669.

While London, Paris, Dresden, Berlin, Petrograd and other European cities have notable paintings by the Dutch master, the great mass of his work is in Amsterdam and The Hague. In America, New York is especially rich in paintings by Rembrandt, and there are examples of his work in Chicago, Philadelphia and other cities of the United States.

The Cretaceous period receives its name from the great deposits of chalk which are exposed on either side of the English Channel. It was here in southern England and northern France that these formations were first studied. However, it must be understood that chalk is the exception and not the rule in this period.

The Cretaceous was a long period and is divided into an Upper, or Later, and a Lower Cretaceous. During some of the period, a great part of North America was under water. The Gulf of Mexico overflowed and covered most of the southern United States, Cuba and Mexico. Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Wyoming gradually sank, and the waters crept across Canada and Alaska to join the Arctic Ocean. This great inland waterway known as the Colorado Sea, was more than a thousand miles across at its widest point, between Idaho and Wisconsin. Eastern Canada and the northeastern United States remained above sea level.

During the Cretaceous period, most of Europe was under water, and in the water the rocks were being deposited either as sandstone, clay or chalk, so that we find Cretaceous rocks in detached areas over most .f the continent, giving a record of the seas, lakes and rivers of the period. A map of Europe at that time would show the greater part of Spain, Italy, and the whole of Belgium, Holland, Prussia, Hungary, Switzerland, Rumania and north Russia as an almost continuous sheet of water. According to archeologists this flooding of the land during the Cretaceous was probably the most marked spreading of the oceans that has ever occurred.

Cretaceous rocks are found not only in Europe but all over the world - in the Arctic oceans, India, Japan, North America, South America, Australia and New Zealand. In California there are strata of Cretaceous rock as thick as thirty thousand feet. During parts of the period,, the seas were very shallow, and some of them became fresh. The rich coal beds of Alberta were laid down during this period.

The chalk rocks, like most other limy rocks, are composed of the limy shells of myriads of microscopic sea creatures. If a little chalk is ground up with water, it will be found to be full 0f these tiny shells (foraminifera), so small that about two thousand placed end to end stretch only about an inch. A cubic inch of this chalk will contain thousands of millions of shells. The seas of the period must have been swarming with these tiny sea creatures, and in the course of ages they accumulated on the floor of the sea and formed the white cliffs of Dover and all the other chalky rocks that we see now in the Cretaceous System. Because chalk beds formed during any period other than the Cretaceous are seldom found, this period is often known as the Age of Chalk.

The vegetation of the Cretaceous period is of special interest, for it was in the middle of this period that the first flowering plants appeared. These plants quickly spread throughout the world and took the place of the horsetails, ferns and cycads as rulers of the plant kingdom. The Cretaceous forests must have been very much like the forests we know to-day, although much richer and more luxuriant. Magnolias, myrtles, tulip trees, sassafras, oaks, beeches, elms, willows, palms and many other modern trees flourished in the warm, moist climate. When they died, they left impressions in the deposits of the Cretaceous period so that we have a record of them to-day. The Cretaceous rocks of northern Greenland have yielded up nearly two hundred species of plants, among them the breadfruit tree, which now grows only in tropical regions. More than a thousand Cretaceous plants have been discovered in North America. Because the flowering plants spread over the world so rapidly, the plants of Europe during this period were about the same as those growing in Greenland and North America.

The Cretaceous seas swarmed with life. In addition to the foraminifera, sponges, star-fish, sea-urchins, corals, polyzoa and crustaceans abounded. Sharks were quite common. Probably the largest fish was portheus, who reached a length of from eighteen to twenty feet and had a jaw a yard long, every inch of which was lined with long, sharp teeth.

SOME STRANGE REPTILES OF THE CRETACEOUS SEAS

Like the Jurassic, the Cretaceous period was an age of great lizards. One of the most interesting of these was the mosasaurus, which, when first discovered at Maestricht in Holland in 1780, was a great puzzle to the naturalists. At various times it was considered a fish, a whale and a crocodile. It was left for the genius of Cuvier to identify it as a reptile. The mosasaurus first found was only twenty-four feet long, but specimens have since been discovered about fifty feet long. These great creatures had fin-like paddles with which they propelled themselves through the sea. Like snakes, they had sharp teeth on the tops of their mouths, while their enormous jaws were jointed in such a way as to allow them to gape horribly and to swallow tremendous morsels. They must have been very formidable creatures. At the close of the Cretaceous they completely disappeared.

An amazing creature, too, was the elasmosaurus, which has been found in the chalk deposits of Kansas. It was sometimes fifty feet long, and twenty of this was a slender neck. It has been said that it probably often swam many feet below the surface “raising the head to the distant air for a breath, then withdrawing it and exploring the depths forty feet below without altering the position of its body.”

Another sea-dweller of the Cretaceous period, the turtle, has left a great number of descendants. The largest Cretaceous turtle is called archelon. It was twelve feet long and almost as wide. It swam by means of large flippers half as long as the body.

The iguanodon may perhaps be considered one of the most characteristic land reptiles of the period. It was first discovered in the Cretaceous rocks of Sussex; but no less than twenty-nine of them were found in a Belgian coal-mine. It was a herbivorous, or plant-eating animal, thirty or more feet long from nose to tip of tail, had a duck-like bill, and walked on its hind legs like a kangaroo. In the Royal Museum in Brussels nine skeletons of these strange creatures are mounted in one room. A North American relative of the iguarodon was the trachodon, a reptile that was as common during the Cretaceous period as deer were a few years ago. There is on exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History in New York the mumified remains of a trachodon. When he died millions of years ago, this animal must have lain exposed to the hot sun in a dry climate until his body was completely dried out and mummified. Then it was covered over by wind-blown sand which eventually became solidified into rock and preserved this unusual specimen. The trachodon skin was not so very different from the skin of some of our modern lizards.

THE MOST TERRIBLE CREATURE THAT EVER WALXED THE EARTH

Another Cretaceous dinosaur, tyrannosaurus rex, “King of the Tyrant Reptiles,” has been described as the most destructive life engine that ever lived. He roamed the ancient plains of Montana and Wyoming. His head towered from eighteen to twenty feet above the ground and his entire body was almost fifty feet long. His jaws were armed with curved, pointed, and double- edged teeth, the longest of which was six inches. Great claws enabled him to rend the flesh of his victims.

One of the most curious dinosaurs of the Cretaceous was the triceratops, a creature with a skull eight feet long and armed with three horns. Two of these horns were above his eyes and another grew from the middle of his snout. His skull projected backward over his neck to form a great bony collar that must have furnished an excellent protection against the attacks of such fierce animals as tyrannosaurus.

Besides the pterodactyls of the Cretaceous, there were a few true birds, some with teeth. Mammals were not yet plentiful.

The League of Nations was an association of countries intended to bring about world peace and co-operation. It was formed in 1920, following the first World War.

Although the United States did not belong to the League, the plan for it was originated by President Wilson, who thought the world was civilized enough to find some other method of settling disputes besides war. When the League was finally established the United States preferred not to join, fearing that to do so might involve the country in the affairs of foreign nations.

Beginning with forty-two nations, the membership reached its peak in 1935, with sixty. After that time membership in the League steadily declined. World War II dealt it a staggering blow; it has now become practically a dead letter. One League organization - the International Labor Office, or ILO - still carries on.

Although the League of Nations is now, so to speak, a relic of the past, it did many good things. When a dispute between Finland and Sweden threatened to destroy the peace of Europe, the League intervened. It made peace in a disagreement between Italy and Greece, and later between Bulgaria and Greece, and between Great Britain and Turkey who were quarreling about Mosul and Iraq. When the murder of King Alexander of Yugoslavia nearly provoked war between that country and Hungary, the League prevented hostilities.

It did much toward the suppression of the sale of opium; fostered better health laws; improved labor conditions, and helped rebuild the finances of various poverty-stricken countries.

Some of the most valuable work of the League before 1939 was in collecting and telling the world facts on plagues and epidemics. If customs officials knew that a certain plague was spreading in a district, they could take steps to see that the disease was not carried across the borders.

The United Nations Organization, formed at the close of World War II hopes to succeed where the League failed’, and to build a peace that will last.

The Jurassic period, the second great division of the Mesozoic era, receives its name from the Jura Mountains lying between France and Switzerland, a locality rich in rock formations of the period. Jurassic rocks are widely distributed throughout much of Europe, extending from the extreme north of Scotland, across England and France, to the Alps and Apennines, to Spain and northern Germany, and to central and eastern Russia. They are also found in Tibet, Kashmir, Nepal and in South Africa, New Zealand, Australia and South America.

In North America there are few Jurassic rocks. During the period most of the land in America was high above the water. In the East there are no rocks which were formed during the period, but in parts of the West where the land sank we find Jurassic rocks.

Alaska was the first land to disappear beneath the waters, and then Vancouver Island and much of California and Oregon. Later an inland sea covered most of British Columbia and much of Alberta, and extended over Montana, Idaho, Nevada, Utah and Wyoming, and a part of Colorado. This has been named the Logan Sea. In Wyoming the rocks are 3,500 feet thick. The rocks of the Jurassic in America are sandstones, shales, limestones and mans.

Towards the close of the Jurassic period parts of the world which had been under the sea began to rise. Volcanic disturbances occurred in North and South America. In North America the Pacific Mountain system was formed. Mountain ranges rose from Alaska to Mexico, among them the Sierra Nevadas.

As far as animal and plant life are concerned, there was no great gap between the Triassic and Jurassic periods. In each the plants and animals were of the same general character, although in the Jurassic there were many more species of animals. The reptiles increased so much in size and numbers that the period is often called the Age of Reptiles.

The vegetation of the Jurassic period was probably luxuriant, but not greatly varied in character. It greatly resembled that of the Triassic. Cycads and cone-bearing trees, ferns and horsetails were the most common types. The Ginkgo, or maiden-hair tree, also flourished and was the first broad-leaved tree. It still exists to-day in China and Japan, having undergone no changes for more than a hundred million years.

The animal life of the period varied greatly and is full of interest. Both land and water forms abounded; many strange forms appeared. The ammonites were the most characteristic shell-fishes of the Jurassic, although they showed signs of dying out. The belemnites, ancestors of the squids, more than held their own. There is no lack of sponges among the fossils of this period, and the remains of starfishes and molluscs are plentiful. Crinoids were common, the largest form reaching a height of fifty feet with a crown a yard long. The ancestors of the modern crab and lobster appeared. Corals were particularly abundant, and during this period most of Europe seems to have been submerged under a sea full of coral islands and coral reefs. These reefs can be traced in parts of England and from Normandy in France to the Mediterranean. They are found, too, over the east of France along the Jura Mountains and in parts of the Alps. A very different Europe it must have been, with coral reefs in England and on the mountains.

As many as a thousand species of Jurassic insects are known, including beetles, dragonflies, grasshoppers, crickets, earwigs, walking-sticks, cockroaches and termites. The social ants made their appearance in the early years of the Jurassic period. Fishes were also numerous, and sharks and rays were well represented in the seas. Most of the Paleozoic fishes about which we have already read had disappeared.

In the Triassic rocks the first mammals appeared, and in the Jurassic rocks a few more have been found. Mammals, however, were still an unimportant-seeming form of animal life. Both the European and American mammals of this early day were very much alike.

A COUNTRY GIRL DISCOVERS A THIRTY-FOOT MONSTER

The most interesting animals of the time were undoubtedly the great lizards. One of the most amazing of these was the ichthyosaurus, or fish-lizard, which originated in the Triassic and continued to develop during the Jurassic period. Certain localities in England and Germany have furnished great numbers of their remains. In a quarry at Lyme Regis, England, the first fossil ichthyosaurus was found by a country girl, Mary Anning, who made a living by collecting and selling fossils. She was hammering away at the rock one day when she noticed some big bones sticking out. When she had cleared away the rubbish and rubble round about, she found the skeleton of a huge animal and hired workmen to dig out the whole block of stone. It proved to be a monster thirty feet long, with six-foot jaws and huge eyes like saucers.

The plesiosaurus, another lizard having its origin in Triassic times, was still abundant in the Jurassic seas. However, the plesiosaurus of the Jurassic period did not reach as great a length as did his Triassic ancestor.

Crocodiles resembling the modern gavial of India swarmed in the seas and rivers. They probably spent less of their lives in the water than do their modern descendants.

PTERODACTYLS, REPTILES WITH THE POWER OF FLIGHT

Stranger in some ways, though not so monstrous, were the pterodactyls, or flying reptiles. Judging from their remains, they must have been quite common and of many different kinds. Some were as large as an albatross, and others grew no bigger than a sparrow. In appearance they were more or less bird-like. The head was usually fairly long and thin and had slender jaws equipped with curved teeth well suited for holding and tearing their prey. The bones of the forelegs, or arms, were very long and supported the leathery wing membrane. Upon the ground the pterodactyls walked about readily on their hind legs. In flight they either glided or flapped their wings just as do our modern birds.

THE FIRST TRUE BIRD MAKES ITS APPEARANCE

In the Jurassic rocks of Germany the first true bird was discovered—the Archaeopteryx. The name is Greek for “ancient wing.” Archaeopteryx was rather smaller than a modern crow. He had no beak; his jaws were lined with small, sharp teeth. His tail was longer than the rest of his body and was set with feathers on either side, giving it a fern-like appearance. In modern birds the tail is merely a stump, and the feathers spread from it like a fan. The wings of Archaeopteryx were equipped with three wing fingers. These early birds were probably better at gliding than at true flying.

Big as were the Jurassic sea lizards, there were still larger reptiles on the land. The dinosaurs which appeared in the Triassic period now attained gigantic proportions. The brontosaurus was fully sixty-five feet long and weighed about thirty-seven tons. He had a barrel-like body, at one end of which was a long, snake-like neck and at the other a slender, tapering tail. Each of his foot-prints covered about a yard. The diplodocus was still larger, reaching a length of eighty feet. The gigantosaurus, the largest land animal known, was eighty feet long, thirty-six feet of which was neck. He weighed something like forty tons.

STEGOSAURUS, A DINOSAUR CLAD IN BONY ARMOR

Not all Jurassic dinosaurs attained the tremendous proportions of the diplodocus and the gigantosaurus. Some of the most curious of them were the smaller armored reptiles which appeared quite late in the period. The strangest of these was stegosaurus. His name means “covered lizard.” Along his back ran a double row of great bony plates, which reached a height of more than two feet over his hips. Near the tip of his tail were several long spines