had only chosen to open the eyes of their minds and
look. This singular process of conversion which
Ibsen describes as coming to Bernick comes also to
Dr. Stockmann in An Enemy (yf' Society. There Dr.
Stockmann is medical officer of the Baths, while his
brother Peter is burgomaster. The doctor dis-
covers that the water, which at great cost had been
brouaht from a distance for the use of the baths,
which were the chief cause of prosperity of the
town, was not a source of health but a source of
disease, that in short they must close the baths
and expend great sums in securing a supply else-
where, or perhaps even close them altogether. No
one knows the true state of matters but the doctor
himself. He discloses his secret to his brother
Peter, who conjures him to conceal it for the sake
of the town. The doctor attempts to get liis report
inserted in the newspaper. He calls a public
meeting to tell the people of the danger hanging
over them. He is hooted, the windows of his house
are broken, he is cursed by the whole town as an
enemy of society. He is deprived of his means of
livelihood, and is left at the close of the play setting
up a school to teach children from the beginning
the irrationality of that great engine, so uncertain
in the direction of its action, so fatally certain in
the weight of its mass — public opinion.
If one were inclined to be querulous, it might be
asked whether there is not a dramatic lapse now
and again in the speeches of some of the characters.
Sometimes one is a little apt to feel that Ibsen is
speaking, and not Mrs. Alving or Dr. Stockmann.
Yet on the whole it would be hard to make out a
case in which Ibsen could be proved to be wrong,
since, in Mrs. Alving, for example, passion, impul-
siveness, enthusiasm, and integrity may well be
found side by side with a frigid and almost ineffemi-
nate cynicism.
As regards Ghosis, although it would not have so powerfully affected the imagination, it might have been more really suggestive had Ibsen treated the working out of the principle of heredity in a less demonstrative case. If he had taken, for example, the transmission, not of gross qualities, but of those more subtle traits of character which are perhaps more frequently transmitted than the violent passions, we would have had a classical study in a new genre.
Ibsen's leading ideas, his conception of the need of every man and woman to undergo a birth of the intellect into clear vision of the meaning of life, and his idea that it is the duty of every person to accept the immense personal responsibilities thus imposed, form an integral part of the movement towards a higher intellectual and social plane, which in many forms is making itself felt throughout the civilised world. The claim for the emancipation of women, which lias been made in a political sense by J. S. Mill and the advocates of Women's Rights, in a social sense by recent writers on the institution of marriage, and in an industrial sense by Bebel and others, finds in Ibsen the most strenuous support. Whether one agrees with Ibsen in liis standpoint or not, whether one is disposed to abandon one's-self to his guidance or not, no one can possibly read him intelli- gently without feeling an immense moral and in- tellectual stimulus. In these days when we are ' into the crucible casting pliilosophies, facts, con- victions,' it is essential that we see the contents of the crucible, confusing as at first sight they may appear, with as clear a vision and as steady a mind as may be ; and the reader of Ibsen need never do otherwise than possess himself with firmness. The facts of Ibsen's life may be briefly noted. He was born at Skein, in the south of Norway, on 20th March 1828. His father was a Norwegian, his mother was a German. At the age of sixteen he became an apothecary's apprentice at Grimstad, at twenty- two he went to school at Christiania. At twenty- three he became director of the National Theatre at Bergen. At thirty-six he began to travel, and during the twenty-four years which have elapsed since then, he has lived in Italy, in Germany, and in Austria. He is now in Munich. His portrait is that of an alert man of sixty years of age. ' He has a peculiarly broad and high forehead, with small, keen, blue-grey eyes, which seem to penetrate to the hearts of things.' James Mavor.
NOTES.
The summaries for the past year, which it is now the excellent custom for the daily newspapers to supply each 31st of December, furnish an interesting and instructive means of estimating the proportion occupied by poUiics, by manufactures, trade, and finance, by accidents and personalities, in the public mind, with the share of attention allotted to art, science, literature, and education. Selecting, therefore, the Scotsman as our most widely representative newspaper, we were resigned to expect this proportion of interest to be small, but hardly as infinitely nothing. After a full yard of trade statistics, six dreary columns of Salisbury and Glad- stone, Parnell and Balfour, Boulanger and Morell Mackenzie, in fact everybody of recognised importance down or up to the Whitechapel murderer, one single line suffices to dispose of the Glasgow Exhibition, with the profound criticism that it was 'one of the most successful that has been seen out of London.' And of extra-political interests, except for obituary notices, not one word more. The question can hardly help arising, has the Scotsman not heard of any progress in art, science, and literature during the past year? Or if so, does it not think them worth mention? Or does it sup- pose its readers do not care to read about any of these subjects? It is not for us to say.
Passing to the summary of its young Edinburgh rival, the Scottish Leader, we are glad to find a column allotted to each of these three great human interests. In our own Glasgow Herald the chief summary was exclusively political; this, however, is largely atoned for by an article a few days later on British Art in 1S88. From
