ld be placed in situations developing those
passions. A series of unrelated scenes and dialogues leading to nothing
is inadequate.

Mr. James's engaging epigram seems to me vulnerable at both ends--unlike
Achilles. "Plot is by no means character." Strictly speaking, it is
not. It appears to me, however, that plot approaches nearer to being
character than character does to being plot. Plot necessitates action,
and it is impossible to describe a man's actions' under whatever
conditions, without revealing something of his character, his way of
looking at things, his moral and mental pose. What a hero of fiction
_does_ paints him better than what he _says_, and vastly better than
anything his creator may say of him. Mr. James asserts that "we care
what happens to people only in proportion as we know what people are."
I think we care very little what people are (in fiction) when we do not
know what happens to them.

THE CRUELTY OF SCIENCE

IN the process of their experiments upon the bodies of living animals
some anatomists do not, I fear, sufficiently realize that

The poor beetle, that we tread upon,
In corporal sufferance, finds a pang as great
As when a giant dies.

I am not for a moment challenging the necessity of vivisection, though
distinguished surgeons have themselves challenged it; I merely contend
that science is apt to be cold-hearted, and does not seem always to
take into consideration the tortures she inflicts in her search for
knowledge.

Just now, in turning over the leaves of an old number of the "London
Lancet," I came upon the report of a lecture on experimental physiology
delivered by Professor William Rutherford before a learned association
in London. Though the type had become antiquated and the paper
yellowed in the lapse of years, the pathos of those pages was alive and
palpitating.

The following passages from the report will illustrate not unfairly the
point I am making. In the course of his remarks the lecturer exhibited
certain interesting experiments on living frogs. Intellectually I go
very strongly for Professor Rutherford, but I am bound to confess that
the weight of my sympathy rests with the frogs.

Observe this frog [said the professor], it is regarding our manoeuvres
with a somewhat lively air. Now and then it gives a jump. What the
precise object of its leaps may be I dare not pretend to say; but
probably it regards us with some apprehension, and desires t