ommon cause with a crack-brained visionary. The kind of
explosive radicalism which Nietschke betrays in his cynical questions
and explanations is no evidence of profundity or sagacity, but is the
equivalent of the dynamiter's activity, transferred to the world of
thought. His pretended re-investigation of the foundations of the moral
sentiments reminds one of the mud geysers of the Yellowstone, which
break out periodically and envelop everything within reach in an
indeterminate shower of mud. To me there is more of vanity than of
philosophic acumen in his onslaught on well-nigh all human institutions.
He would, like Ibsen, no doubt,

"Place 'neath the ark the torpedo most cheerfully;"

but torpedoes of his making would scarcely do the ark much harm. They
have not the explosive power of Ibsen's. There are in every age men who,
unable to achieve the fame of Dinocrates, who built the temple of the
Ephesian Diana, aspire to that of Herostratos, who destroyed it. To
admire these men is as compromising as to be admired by them.

In the essay on "Martin Luther on Celibacy and Marriage" Dr. Brandes
derides with a satyr-like leer all traditional ideas of chastity,
conjugal fidelity, and marital honor.

Though he pretends to fight behind Luther's shield the deftest thrusts
are not the reformer's, but the essayist's own. Fundamentally, I fancy,
this is an outbreak of that artistic paganism which is so prevalent
among the so-called "advanced" Hebrews. The idea that obedience to law
is degrading; that conformity to traditional morals is soul-crippling
and unworthy of a free spirit; that only by giving sway to passion will
the individual attain that joy which is his right, and that
self-development which should be his highest aim, has found one of its
ablest and most dangerous advocates in Georg Brandes.

ESAIAS TEGNER

The genius of the Scandinavian north has never found a more complete and
brilliant incarnation than the Swedish poet Esaias Tegner. Strong,
cheerful, thoroughly wholesome, with a boyish delight in prowess,
adventure, and daring deeds, he presents a most agreeable contrast to
the moonshine singers and graveyard bards of the phosphoristic school,
who were his contemporaries. To Tegner, in his prime, life was a brisk
and exhilarating sail, with a fresh breeze, over sunny waters; and he
had no patience with those who described it as a painful and troublous
groping through the valley of the shadow of deat