Welsh Journals

Waste is another simply-conceived story-that of a young statesman, Henry Trebell, a genius who has the originality to conceive great schemes of reform, the talent necessary to organise them, and the tenacity required for achievement. His ruin, and the wreck of all his glorious plans, comes through a moment s madness in which he becomes entangled with a married woman, a passionately egotistical but other- wise entirely null personage. The result of this THE PROPHETS OF EVIL ALL times and all nations have had their prophets of evil-men of a two-fold func- tion. Those of old, like the unfortunate Cas- sandra, were compelled to foretell disaster to those who refused their warnings, men and women of deep spiritual vision with powers mis- called supernatural, saw further and deeper than their fellows. The need of such predictions has passed away with the ages of faith, and men have now evolved a science of probabilities, and have little credence in any foretelling save that of meteoro- logists. and in that not much. But the deep spiritual insight is still given to one man here and there in the centuries, to be used now in the study of human conduct, to detect the weeds that mar the beauty of the garden of the soul, and the sources and trend of hidden tendencies upon human life. We can say cf them as Matthew Arnold said of Goethe He took the suffering human race, He read each wound, each weakness clear And struck his finger on the place, And said Thou ailest here, and here I The prophets of evil are seldom welcomed by the nations to whom they are sent. It is an unflattering mirror that they hold up to a human nature. Their reward may be between the extremes of indifference and execration, but the bread of affliction and the water of affliction" are likely to be the diet of their earthly lives. And as long as men cannot bear the truth and love flattery, so long will they say of the prophets of evil, as Ahab did of the only prophet who would not lie to him, I hate him, for he doth not prophesy good concerning me, but evil." Sometimes they are sent to a people hurrying, deaf and blind to the brink of a precipice, as did the nobles and philosophers of France before the Revolution. Then comes Rousseau, half-madman, half-prophet, a mixture of meanness, vanity and wisdom crammed with ideas to be materialised later in blood and anguish liaison is depicted with unflinching candour. The woman, unknown to Trebell, undergoes an illegal operation, which kills her. The facts become known, and his colleagues find it necessary to throw Trebell over. The tragic fact, that a pretty shell of a woman can ruin real work and genuine hopes, is here depicted with splendid skill and verisimilitude. [To be concluded.] unspeakable. For the prophets of evil come to destroy, and nothing less than the Terror could have have expiated the wrongs of the peasants of France, the wrongs of centuries. Not only the Contrat Social which swept away the veil which hid the iniquities of the old monarchial system, or "Emile" which set up new ideals of education, make up the message of Rousseau. Most of all in his' 'Confessions," with their motto Intus in cute," is he a prophet of evil. Such autobiography as this-such unsparing revelation of littleness, meanness, and vanities, which most of us would fain hide out of sight for ever, scorches us in our very soul. As he dives deeper and deeper into his past, dragging up shameful memories, we must acknowledge the courage with which Rousseau could search into the very dregs of life and record what he found there, as an image of what is possible for every human creature. Perverse as he was, those Confessions were written for the most part with his heart's blood. They are not pleasant reading, and one wonders why Jean Jacques, the idol of the court, the spoilt child of ladies, wits and philosophers, chose to brave his world with such a picture of his inner self. Did he mean to say, Look at me See, I uncover all my hidden shame. Are ye not such as I ? Search and see." Russia, whose terror still endures, has had her prophet of evil, and it is not long since he passed from her. Russia groans still under the weight of a corrupt and despotic government. She is, like Gulliver, pinned to the ground by countless threads which hamper every movement. The fettered giant struggles to wrench free his mighty limbs, but he cannot yet stand upright. Count Leo Tolstoi came of the class which had abused its power; the evils he attacked were those of his own people and his father's house. The blood of the oppressors ran in his own veins. He too looked in his own heart and wrote. In Resurrection he traces step by step, the point of view reached by a young noble, "Nek-