M. Sarolea is a Belgian, hence pro-Ally and anti-German, hence unreservedly Russophil, hence not wholly impartial. It is a poor service to Russia, the unqualified praise of all her institutions and traits on the part of her friends. Exaggerated eulogy is apt to arouse suspicion. If M. Sarolea had interchanged his Mercurian sprightliness for Professor Veblen’s solidity, both would have gained considerably. Mr. Veblen takes us as far back as the pre-historic Baltic tribes in order to prove his point of the peculiar aptitude of the Prussians for borrowing. He certainly succeeds in his attempt, but at the expense of the reader’s patience and eye-sight which is subjected to the perusal of endless pages of miniature type. His scientific style is surcharged with profound sarcasm, and if you are fond of delicate subtleties the book will afford you “great sport.” Schevill, historian; Sarolea, publicist; Veblen, economist—the common feature of the three, particularly of the first and of the last, is respect for the reader who is treated with facts and not with phantoms for the sake of argument. K. The Reader Critic “SPIRITUAL ADVENTURES” _Anonymous_: At your suggestion I have begun to read Arthur Symons’s “Spiritual Adventures.” “Christian Trevelga” strikes me, as you predicted, most strongly so far. Symons is one of the subtlest of minds; everything he writes is worth reading. This is of his best certainly. What is one to make of him? I don’t know. I don’t know whether his kind of subtlety is of any earthly value, or whether it is as valuable as Shelley’s. I can never give up faith in the human race quite as completely as he does, nor adopt his attitude of autocratic detachment; yet I never seem to have any real faith, either.—_Vae victis!_ He is removed from all sense of human values, and lost, always, in abstract patterns. This particular story is an extraordinary expression of him—of the prizes and peril of such a state. Oh, hell! what an insult is put upon us when we are invited to live, and to make such a choice. Perhaps one makes it: then he is not happy until he has lost himself in an art that is “something more than an audible dramatization of human life.” Perhaps he is right. But— But—but— Sometimes I _know_ that for the greatest artist there would be no chasm between what the heart desires and what the mind constructs. Tell me how to do that in poetry and I’ll give you a dollar. Perhaps it can be done in music—I don’t know. But in poetry the human heart and the mathematical soul are always fighting—and so far as I know they have not yet come to an agreement—not in English poetry, at least. The artist and the human being never get to be bedfellows. It’s either sickening humanitarianism or stark designing—the second is the less painful. Well!—I loathe the world, including Symons and all the arts.