characters are not
individualized. Each is a type, smoothed out by sentimental handling into
something meant to be sympathetic. Moreover, the real difficulties of the
narrative are consistently, though I believe unconsciously, shirked. The
result, if speciously pretty, is not a bit convincing. But the gravest,
and the entirely fatal fault, is the painting of the English land system.
To read this story one could never guess that the English land system is
not absolutely ideal, that tenants and hereditary owners do not live
always in a delightful patriarchal relation, content. There are no shadows
whatever. The English land system is perfect, and no accusation could
possibly be breathed against it. And the worst is that for Kipling the
English land system probably _is_ perfect. He is incapable of perceiving
that it can be otherwise. He would not desire it to be otherwise. His
sentimentalization of it is gross--there is no other word--and at bottom
the story is as wildly untrue to life as the most arrant Sunday-school
prize ever published by the Religious Tract Society. Let it be admitted
that the romantic, fine side of the English land system is rendered with
distinction and effectiveness; and that the puzzled, unwilling admiration
of the Americans is well done, though less well than in a somewhat similar
earlier story, "An Error in the Fourth Dimension."

* * * * *

An example of another familiar aspect of Kipling is "With the Night Mail."
This is a story of 2000 A.D., and describes the crossing of the Atlantic
by the aerial mail. It is a glittering essay in the sham-technical; and
real imagination, together with a tremendous play of fancy, is shown in
the invention of illustrative detail. But the whole effort is centred on
the mechanics of the affair. Human evolution has stood stock-still save in
the department of engineering. The men are exactly the same semi-divine
civil service men that sit equal with British military and naval officers
on the highest throne in the kingdom of Kipling's esteem. Nothing
interests him but the mechanics and the bureaucratic organization and the
_esprit de corps_. Nor does he conceive that the current psychology of
ruling and managing the earth will ever be modified. His simplicity, his
naivete, his enthusiasms, his prejudices, his blindness, and his vanities
are those of Stalky. And, after all, even the effect he aims at is not
got. It is nearly got, but ne