whether it may not be possible so to transform the institution as to fit it for a prolongation of existence.  The interest centres about the character of a king who is profoundly convinced that the principle he embodies is an anachronism or a lie, and who seeks to do away with the whole structure of convention, and ceremonial, and hypocrisy, that the centuries have built about the throne and its occupants.  But his dearest hopes are frustrated by the forces of malice, and dull conservatism, and invincible stupidity; the burden proves too heavy for him, the fight too unequal, and he takes his own life in a moment of despair.  The terrible satirical power of certain scenes in this play would be difficult to match were our choice to range through the whole literature of Revolt.  Its production brought upon the author a storm of furious denunciation.  He had outraged both throne and altar, and his sacrilegious hand had not spared things the most sacrosanct.  But a less passionate judgment, while still deprecating something of the author’s violence, will recognize the fact that the core of the work is a noble idealism in both politics and religion, and will justify the hot indignation with which the author assails the shams that in modern society stifle the breath of free and generous souls.

During all these years of writing for the stage Bjoernson did not, however, forget that he was also a novelist; and it is in fiction that he has scored the greatest of his recent triumphs.  But the world of ‘Synnoeve’ and ‘Arne’ is now far behind him.  The transition from his earlier to his later manner as a novelist is marked by two or three stories delicate in conception but uncertain of utterance, and relatively unimportant.  These books are ‘Magnhild’ (1877), ’Kaptejn Mansana’ (1879), and ‘Stoev’ (Dust:  1882).  They were, however, significant of a new development of the author’s genius, for they were the precursors of two great novels soon thereafter to follow.  ’Det Flager i Byen og paa Havnen’ (Flags are Flying in Town and Harbor) appeared in 1884. (Paa Guds Veje) (In God’s Way) was published in 1889.  These books are experiments upon a larger scale than their author had previously attempted in fiction, and neither of them exhibits the perfect mastery that went to the simpler making of the early peasant tales.  They are somewhat confused and turbulent in style, and it is evident that their author is groping for adequate means of handling the unwieldy material brought to his workshop by so many currents of modern thought.  The central theme of ‘Det Flager’ (in its English translation called, by the way, ‘The Heritage of the Kurts’) is the influence of heredity upon the life of a family group.  The process of rehabilitation, resulting from the introduction of a healthy and vigorous strain into a stock weakened by the vices and passions of several generations, and aided by a scientific system of education, is carried on before our eyes, and the story of this process