or to die. They followed me swimming, Ainnle and Ardan (the brothers of Naoise); they turned me back. Naoise gave me his true word he would vex me no more until he would go from me to the hosts of the dead. Och! if she knew to-night Naoise to be under the clay, it is she would cry her fill, it is I would cry along with her.

Long is the day without the sons of Usnach. Three lions were they of the hill, three darlings of the women of Britain, three heroes not good at homage. Their three shields and their spears made a bed for me how often? O young man digging the new grave, put their three swords close over them. Till the making of this grave I was never one day alone, though it is often that myself, with yourselves, was in loneliness.

The High King of Ulster, my first betrothed, I forsook him for the love of Naoise; I left the delight of Ulster for the three heroes that were its bravest. It was Naoise that would kiss my lips, my first man, my first sweetheart. It was Ainnle would pour out my drink. It was Ardan would lay my pillow. Their dear grey eyes that were loved by women! Many looked on them as they went. Their steps were pleasant on the dark mountain.

I am Deirdre, without gladness, and I at the end of my days. Since it is grief to be without them, I myself will not tarry long.

Deirdre dies on his
Ulster clan and war
The war, called 'the

Conchubar tries in vain to console her. hand, and Fergus in anger secedes from the follows, and ruin and the death of thousands. war of the bull of Cuailgne,' is too long here to tell. In spite of the valour of Cuchulin, Ulster is harried and burnt by Fergus and the Queen of Connaught, and, though these are eventually driven back, there is never peace again in Ireland, and Conchubar goes down to his grave in the undying trouble roused by him for Deirdre's beauty.

Last of all Cuchulin, overwhelmed by numbers and betrayed by the spells of the daughters of Calatin, is slain by a magic spear, and with him Laeg his charioteer, and his war horse, the grey of Macha, by the King of Leinster, Lugaid. Wounded to the death, Cuchulin drags himself on foot to the shore of a lake, like King Arthur in the romance of Malory. He binds himself there to a stone pillar that he may die standing, while his enemies, afraid of him, look on from afar. At last a raven settles on his shoulder and they know that he

is dead.

Then Lugaid came and lifted up Cuchulin's hair from his shoulders and struck off his head. And the men of Ireland gave three great heavy shouts, and the sword fell from Cuchulin's hand, and the light faded away from about his head and left it pale as the snow of a single night. But the three times fifty queens that loved Cuchulin saw him appear in his Druid chariot, going through Emain Macha; and they could hear him singing the music of the Sidhe.

....

Mr.

Such in outline is the great Irish Epic. Of its English rendering by Lady Gregory it is impossible to speak too highly. Yeats, in his preface to the volume, calls it 'the best book that has ever come out of Ireland,' and the praise seems to me hardly too great. Its immense merit as literature is that, without tampering

with the text, or rather the many texts, of the manuscripts it has followed, it has succeeded in giving to a series of disconnected episodes a single romantic form, building them into a single tragic story, precisely as five hundred years ago Malory constructed out of the Arthurian legends his eternal monument, The Life and Death of King Arthur. The language chosen by the translator, also, is new in literature, and so has the charm of being entirely original. It is the Anglo-Irish speech of the Galway peasantry, to whom Lady Gregory dedicates it, with its inversions of the 'woulds' and 'shoulds,' its peculiar grammatical forms and its idiomatic phrases. These perhaps for an instant may shock the English ear, but it is impossible to read many pages of it without recognising the absolute fitness of the medium for the text translated. Thus we are startled at such phrases as these: 'Now just at that time peace was after being broken'; 'and he saw a beautiful young girl, and she sitting there alone'; 'Is it taking arms this young boy is?' And he had on his back a black-bristled pig, and it squealing'; 'It is beautiful you were up to this, proud and tall, going out with your young hounds to the hunting; it is spoiled your body is now; it is pale your hands are now.' 'It is a pity you to say that, and they only just after joining us.' It must be remembered, however, that, though published by John Murray in London, Lady Gregory's translation is primarily intended for home consumption among those who, without being anglicised in heart or mind, have yet lost their true Irish language. To such the Anglo-Irish, a distinct dialect in use for quite two hundred years, is their living form of speech no less than Lowland Scotch is for the peasantry north of the Tweed. To have captured this for literary purposes is a very notable triumph.

Hardly less commendable is the skill with which Lady Gregory has steered her course between the rocks and shoals of taste in sexual matters which beset the translators of most ancient stories. These are admirably evaded, and as it stands the volume is one in which even the sensitive Irish soul will find no cause of offence. Some day, perhaps, when Cuchulain has taken rank, as it is sure to do, with its literary compeers, the sagas and romances of Norway, France, and Germany, it may be necessary to have a hardier translation, but I doubt if for general reading there will be ever one more acceptable, more brilliant, and more popular than Lady Gregory's.

WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT.

NEWTON HALL

ON Whitsunday (the 18th of May) there is to be unveiled in Paris, by a Minister of the Republic, a monument erected to the memory of Auguste Comte, who died in 1857. The site given by the Municipal Council in the Place de la Sorbonne, in the precincts of the University of Paris and in the heart of the academic, literary, and scientific world of old Paris, is close to the house in which Comte lived and died, the house which has ever since been the seat of the Positivist body, and is surrounded by the buildings and memorials beside which his whole life was passed. The Prime Minister of the Republic, the Minister of War, and many of the most eminent men in the official and academic world of France are members of the memorial committee and subscribers to the fund.

Between one and two thousand subscriptions were received (many of these being from collective bodies) from France, England, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Bohemia, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Russia, Holland, Spain, the British Colonies, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Switzerland, Turkey, the United States, Brazil, Mexico, the West Indies, the Argentine Republic, and Chili. The trans-Atlantic subscribers exceed in number those of Europe; the German exceed the British. The monument itself is the work of Injalbert, the sculptor of the friezes of the Petit Palais; it consists of a bust of Comte, after that executed by Etex in 1852, and a stele carved in relief with allegorical figures of Humanity, and of the part taken by women and by labour in the progress of civilisation. M. Waldeck-Rousseau himself was to have presided at the inauguration about Easter; but his accident and the elections caused the ceremony to be adjourned to Whitsunday. General André, the Minister of War, will represent the Government, and delegates from England and many European countries will take part in the proceedings.

Though the memorial has been largely supported by the official world of France, ministers, senators, deputies, judges, and directors of public institutions, it has also been subscribed to in a great degree by the academic, scientific, and literary notables of various countries. There is hardly a university of distinction in Europe from which members of the committee fail to be represented.

When the memorial scheme was formally launched in September 1900 by an international Conference and a series of addresses in various languages, the delegates who spoke came from England, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Russia, Portugal, Turkey, Brazil, and Mexico. At the same time the philosophical press of France has been issuing a series of works upon the writings and theories of Comte, the books of Professor Lévy-Bruhl, of the University of Paris, being the most friendly as well as the most important. All this does not look as if Comte was so completely forgotten as some specialists try to make out. He is recognised in liberal France, and in some of the centres of thought outside France, to be what Gambetta called him, 'the greatest thinker of the nineteenth century.' Bodies of his followers exist in most civilised countries, and periodicals devoted to his ideas are published in English, French, German, Swedish, Spanish, and Portuguese.

I take occasion of this commemoration to say a few words about the very unpretending body which for twenty-one years has had its home in Newton Hall. The Royal Scottish Corporation, which has owned the property since 1782, now requires it for their own gatherings, and at the close of their lease the Positivist Society has been forced to leave it. The spot was originally the garden attached to the house of Dr. Barbone, a grandson of the notorious Praise-God Barebone of Cromwell's Parliament. In 1710 Sir Isaac Newton, then President of the Royal Society, in conjunction with Sir Christopher Wren, purchased the house and garden between Fetter Lane and Crane Court for their society, and about the middle of the century the existing Hall was built in the garden from a good design of the school of Wren. Down to 1782, when the Royal Society moved to Somerset House, the Hall served as a museum and meeting-room, until the collections made by Captain Cook and Dr. Banks were removed to Montagu House and became the nucleus of the British Museum. It may be taken that the eminent men, foreign and British, who were admitted to the meetings of the Royal Society during this period, have been present in the existing Hall. The old house was burnt down in 1877, but the Hall was fortunately preserved. When the Royal Society quitted the City in 1782, the Hall was used and let off for various purposes. At one time it was rented by the London Philosophical Society, and in 1818 Samuel Taylor Coleridge gave a course of lectures there on 'Language, Education, Social and Moral Questions.' In 1819 he delivered there his famous twelve lectures on 'Shakespeare,' the last lectures he ever gave in public. At other times the Hall has been used as a concert-room, for which it is peculiarly adapted by its acoustic qualities. Hobbes of Malmesbury once lived close by, and Dryden is said to have occupied the house in Fetter Lane abutting on the Hall, and Otway was his neighbour. The inscription to the memory of Dryden on the walls of the old house was removed a few

years ago. Richard Baxter, Tom Payne, and Dr. Johnson all lived a few yards off. It was in 1881 that the Positivist Society took a lease of the Hall, decorated it with mottoes and legends, a large copy of the Sistine Madonna and busts of the great men of all ages from Moses to Bichat, whose names are in the New Calendar. The Positivist Library of 270 standard works, ancient and modern, stood in the centre. On each side of the Madonna and the platform and desk were the organ and a grand piano, once the property of Charles Darwin.

As sundry foolish myths have from time to time been hatched about Newton Hall and what was done there, I will take leave to state a few very plain facts about its history and uses in the last twentyone years. It is curious that any kind of myth could have grown up, inasmuch as everything about the place and the body meeting there has been always open to all comers, according to the Positivist maxim inscribed on the wall, Live without concealment. The very thought of any secret society, or private discussion, or even an anonymous publication, is abhorrent to their sense of social duty. And, besides this, thousands of men and women known to the world of literature, politics, science, or society have freely taken advantage of the policy of the open door,' which always stood wide to all men in Fetter Lane. Those who differ from the majority in these days must expect opposition and odium; but this is hardly an excuse for preposterous misstatements of facts and wild travesties of natural and reasonable conduct.

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Auguste Comte was an idealist, who, like all the social and religious reformers of every age, had visions of a Utopian future, a new heaven and a new earth. We at Newton Hall have treated these visions with reverence; but we have never dreamed of witnessing in our age any such Apocalypse, and assuredly we have never presumed to attempt any crude model of a society which after ages will have to work out in reality and which must follow and not precede an entire re-organisation of life and of thought. We have not presumed to use the sacred name of a church for our tentative group. We have had no priest, no ritual, no adoration, no ceremonial. We have not assumed to speak of services,' or 'worship,' or 'religion,' excepting in so far as the Service of Man' may mean the fulfilment of human duties, or as worship' may mean manifest honour and reverence for whatsoever things are true, whatsoever are honest, whatsoever are just, whatsoever are pure, whatsoever are lovely. If there be any virtue, if there be any praise, we think on these things, and that is worship. And as to 'religion,' we extend that most ancient and most grand of all names to all belief in solid truths, whether physical or spiritual, cosmical or human, which inspire right action and sincere enthusiasm for the fulfilment of personal and social duty. As a form of worship, Positivism is

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