Catherine, as against Isabella Thorpe; and the trouble about 'Sense and Sensibility' is that, while Marianne and Elinor are similarly set against Lucy, Elinor, hypothetically the minor note to Marianne, is also, by the current and intention of the tale, raised to an equal if not more prominent position,* thus jangling the required chord, so faultlessly struck in 'Northanger Abbey,' and in Emma' only marred by the fact that Jane Fairfax's real part is larger than her actual sound-value can be permitted to be.

Sentimentality has busied itself over the mellowing influences of approaching death, evident in 'Persuasion.' The only such evidences are to be found in its wearinesses and unevennesses, and in the reappearance of that bed-rock hardness which only in 'Lady Susan' stands out so naked. Jane Austen herself felt its faults more strongly than subsequent generations have done. She was depressed about the whole book. And what she meant, however much one may disagree, is plain. 'Persuasion' has its uncertainties; the touch is sometimes vague, too heavy here, too feeble there-Mrs Smith is introduced with too much elaboration, Anne Elliot with too little; balance is lost, and the even, assured sweep of 'Emma' changes to a fitful wayward beauty. This is at once the warmest and the coldest of Jane Austen's works, the softest and the hardest. It is inspired, on the one hand, by a quite new note of glacial contempt for the characters she doesn't like, and, on the other, by an intensified tenderness for those she does. The veil of her impersonality wears thin; 'Persuasion' is no Comedy, like 'Emma,' and contains no woven pattern of Austenian irony. The author allows herself to tell her tale almost openly, and, in her strait treatment of Lady Russell and the Dowager Viscountess, shows very plainly her own characteristic attitude towards the artificial claims of rank-with such decision, indeed, that one wonders why, with 'Persuasion' to his hand, Mr Goldwin Smith should have been at pains to note a mere flash of 'radical sympathy' in 'poor Miss Taylor' (where, in point of fact, there is no trace of it).

* The first version of the book was called Elinor and Marianne'; which quite clearly, coming from Jane Austen, shows that Elinor was meant to be the dominant figure.

As for Mrs Clay, she is introduced with so much more emphasis than her ultimate place in the story warrants, that it looks as if she had originally been meant to play a much larger part in it. And worst of all is the violent and ill-contrived exposure of William Elliot, which is also wholly unnecessary, since we are expressly told that not even for Kellynch could Anne have brought herself to marry the man associated with it. In fact, the whole Clay-Elliot imbroglio that cuts the non-existent knot at the end of the book is perhaps the clumsiest of Jane Austen's coups de théâtre, though not deliberately false as that of Mansfield Park.

And yet, when everything is said and done in criticism, those who love 'Persuasion' best of all Jane Austen's books have no poor case to put forward. For 'Persuasion' is primarily Anne Elliot. And Anne Elliot is a puzzling figure in our literature. She is not a jeune fille, she is not gay or happy, brilliant or conspicuous; she is languidly, if not awkwardly brought on the stage, unemphasised, unemphatic. And yet Anne Elliot is one of fiction's greatest heroines. Gradually her greatness dawns. The more you know of her, the more you realise how perfectly she incarnates the absolute lady, the very counterpart, in her sex, of the кaλokȧyalòs among men. And yet there is so little that is obvious to show for all this. For the book is purely a cry of feeling; and, if you miss the feeling, you miss all. It sweeps through the whole story in a vibrating flood of loveliness; yet nothing very much is ever said. Jane Austen has here reached the culminating point in her art of conveying emotion without expression. Though 'Persuasion Though 'Persuasion' moves very quietly, without sobs or screams, in drawing-rooms and country lanes, it is yet among the most emotional novels in our literature.

Anne Elliot suffers tensely, hopelessly, hopefully; she never violates the decencies of silence, she is never expounded or exposed. And the result is that, for such as can feel at all, there is more intensity of emotion in Anne's calm (at the opposite pole to Marianne's 'sensibility') than in the wildest passion-tatterings of Maggie Tulliver or Lucy Snowe; and that culminating little heartbreaking scene between Harville and Anne (quite apart from the amazing technical skill of its contrivance)

towers to such a poignancy of beauty that it takes rank with the last dialogue of mother and daughter in the 'Iphigeneia,' as one of the very sacred things of literature that one dares not trust oneself to read aloud. And any other ending would be unbearable. So completely, in fact, do Anne and her feelings consume the book that the object of them becomes negligible. Wentworth, delightful jolly fellow that he is (with his jolly set of sailor-friends, whom Anne so wanted for hers), quite fades out of our interest, and almost out of our sight.

It is not so with the rest of the people, however. I have had curious testimony to their singular actuality. A great friend of mine, a man who never opens a book by any chance, if a newspaper be to hand, finding himself shut up for weeks in a tiny Chinese town on the borders of Tibet, was driven at last, in sheer desperation of dulness, to Jane Austen. I watched the experiment with awe and anguish. I might have spared myself. 'Emma ’ baffled him indeed, but Pride and Prejudice' took him by storm. And then, to my terror, he took up 'Persuasion'; for surely of all her works, the appeal of 'Persuasion' is the most delicate and elusive. But again I might have spared my fears. 'Persuasion' had the greatest success of all; for days, if not weeks, my friend went mouthing its phrases, and chewing the cud of its felicities. That Sir Walter,' he would never weary of repeating, 'he's a nib!' And when I tried to find out what had so specially delighted him in 'Persuasion,' he suddenly and finally summed up the whole of Jane Austen and her work:- Why, all those people, they're -they're real!'

REGINALD FARRER.

Art. 2.-THE PROBLEM OF DEGENERACY.

1. The Laws of Heredity. By G. Archdall Reid. Methuen, 1910.

2. Eugenics. By Edgar Schuster. Cambridge: University Press, 1911.

3. Heredity in relation to Eugenics. By C. B. Davenport. Williams & Norgate, 1913.

4. Mental Deficiency. By A. F. Tredgold. 2nd Edition. Baillière, 1914.

5. Publications of the Carnegie Institute, Washington; of the Eugenics Record Office, New York, and other Scientific Periodicals.

By the term 'degeneracy' is usually understood any marked falling away, either morally, mentally, or physically, from the average condition of the nation or race. Thus, among civilised peoples, the habitual criminal and the morally perverse, the mentally unstable and insane, the physically weak and ill-developed, are often spoken of as 'degenerates.' But these various conditions may be dependent upon widely different causes; and in the endeavour to make this clear, and to attach, if possible, a more precise meaning to the word, it will be well to refer to some points regarding individual development.

In a previous article in this Review (Oct. 1913) it was stated that the development of the individual is dependent upon two factors, namely, the seed from which he is derived and the soil in which that seed is grown. These are commonly spoken of as heredity and environment, or nature and nurture; perhaps they are more accurately defined as intrinsic potentiality and extrinsic stimulation. It was shown that the highest degree of development necessitates the presence of a maximum developmental potentiality plus an optimum environment. It follows that defective development, of sufficient severity to come within the usual meaning of the word degeneracy, may be caused by a defect in either, or both, of these contributory factors. As examples of such inferiority due to defects in the environment, I may refer to the intellectual poverty and the immorality or moral obliquity which result from inadequate or improper training and instruction during youth and

adolescence; also to the stunted growth and poor physique, often the actual disease and deformity, which follow insanitary surroundings, deprivation of suitable food and exercise, and general neglect or mismanagement, during the early months and years of development. These are conditions with which most of us are only too familiar; and probably no one would deny that under such adverse surroundings the individual must fail to attain that degree of development of which he is innately capable.

On the other hand, we are equally familiar with instances in which, in spite of the most hygienic surroundings, the best education and the most careful upbringing, the individual never reaches the average developmental plane. Many children of this type die within a few months of birth, not so much from actual disease as simply because they have not strength to live. Others survive, but are physically, mentally or morally deficient. Doubtless in some cases there may be obscure faults in the environment, but there are very many in which this is not so, and in which there are clear indications of an innate defect of potentiality; in other words, of the fault being in the seed and not in the soil. The great bulk of the mentally deficient belongs to this group.

The difference between these two types of so-called degeneracy, however, lies not only in their mode of causation, but in their ultimate results. That which is due to an inadequate or adverse environment acting upon the embryo, that is, after fertilisation of the germcell has taken place, is, in most instances, an affection of the cells of the body only. These are incapable of attaining their full development, because some of the necessary external stimuli to that development are lacking. If the want is supplied before the period of growth is past, the arrears may be made up; if not, some degree of permanent defect results. In some cases it is probable that the germ-plasm which is stored within the individual, to give rise, in due time, to another generation, may also be affected; but in most instances this is not so. What is produced is a somatic modification only, the germinal potentiality of the seed being unimpaired. The case is entirely different with regard to