THE NEWER ROMANCE.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1431, 4 May 1912, Page 9

THE NEWER ROMANCE.

Rusliin 'professed to believe in war because it was picturesque, Gothic, romantic Its pomp he had in mind, but als», we suspect, its removal from ordinary, supposedly prosaic, life and its connectien with the more elementary past. Of eueh, in the popular estimation, has long dmb the cs'enee of romance; it blushed nnscea of most men because they had a»t the leisure to pursue it. Way off somewhere it dwelt, on sunny, otherworld meadow with Don Juan and Haidee, in southern sea with Paul nnd Virginia, or beside, a lonely cataract with Rousseau, daliin, dahiu! At- the very least it eame to man after he, hail plunged into new surroundings, and was compensation to tho victim of Wanderlust. Romance was decidedly an exotic which throve on a man's introspections, and these could bo best practiced in regions where time and place were flexible. Put the control of human fact upon it ind it vanished in midair, or was seen to bo a beautiful unreality. For Shelley »nd for Koals romance had this nature, and even the more modern Tennyson and Meredith tended to place their romantic letting.*; conveniently opart. The former never put quite, the same spirit, in other poems which he bestowed upon the remote Arthurian traditions. And in Meredith's novels'we turn for what passes as "pure romance" to the little island, sufficient unto itself, in "Richard Fcverel" and to the extraordinary'swimming scene in "Lord Oi'mont nnd His Aniintn." We do not mean to imply that the older romance always involved a love affair, though it was apt to do so. It might be several sorts of heroism, but in anj case it got its being from some imagined excess. Youth climbing mountains, physically exulting and fancying no obstacle insurmountable and no mere law binding, believed itself heroic and different from other earth-dweller. Such was lhe romance of the old order. It was a minority report; premising broadly to set the whole world right ■ while in reality attempting to legislate for the few. Little wonder it held sessions aloof where half-thinking rebelliousness might easily wear tho dignity of cxtremo individualism. Now, (he question we would ask is whether modern progress is not bound to change this earlier idea of romance. Switzerland is still mountainous; but with tourists on every hand, we doubt if Rousseau, could to-day find there a crevasse over which to bo dizzy and selfrlorifving all alone, or even a deu. - :. Tho contemporary novel has felt Hie preslute and has pushed farther and farther

afield, until desert'and jmiglo arid cannibal isle are commonplaces for author and reader alike. Formerly tho rhetoric of Childe Harold was swallowed as thrilling truth, for few had passed along his trail. Bat such conviction is harder both to achieve and to convey nowadays. The many who have since stood "like stout Cortez" cause even tlie original adventure to fade somewhat. Whether wo Kko it cr not, marvellous progress in travel and communication is spcedily doing to death remoteness and eeli-con-ceitcd individualism. Where the beo sucks, there and vastly above, below, and beyond one might easily run into one's next-door neighbour. If this means that romance, to live at all, will bo forced to come and dwell among us, so much the better, we are tempted to say, for romance.! Browning, wo recall, tried to force it into the conconrso of men, and Thackeray and Dickens, too. But whatever else they accomplished, sheer romance continued to be associated with other names; nor did tliej attack the notion that this quality was dependent upon an almost unrooted individuality. Tolstoy saw, however, and mndo other's see its existence in the crowd. Despite tho realism of his novels, his religion of brotherhood exhales from His works something over and above the hard facte, and may rightly be called the newer romance. It has not trnnstormed the quality of the older sort, but simply its direction. I'ov romance always grew out of a love for one's fellow-beings, only that j'lovo was formerly employed to bcnetic exclusively tho person who felt it: now many purifying tears did not the Homanticiscs weep over the ills of society! With Tolstoy it both purified and scattered aid broadcast. His method, we take it, is in line with modern development. It is becoming pretty clear that tho fact of man s. being brought with tho years more and more closely into touch with others makes as thrilling a situation as the older desire to get away from others. A message sent round tho world in less than half an hour; a ship crying for help by wireless; tho unison of a marching regiment; the feeling of employees for tho' nice articulation of individual efforts necessary to keep a huge railway system running smoothly, are all instances in which delight is created by law and order and brotherhood. It has, of course, long been known that life was full of romance, yet it has scarcely been so well understood before that, vice versa, romance is full of life, reasoned, well-ordered life, lu a hundred different wavs it is being brought home to men today that the salvation of tho present and future lies in system. -.Socialists and even Anarchist are beginning to see that crying out for reform from the housetops or mountain-passes must give way to., a manipulation of the machinery of life from within and to a recognition of its interworking parts. Tho great store which Byron set by individual, detached moments has had its day, and quite as intenso romance attaches to the understanding that our existence on this earth is a continuous chain. Thero is matter here for tho contemplation of those who are complaining that with the changing of tho old order romance is dying out.—New York "Nation."