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incompatibility of their combination. In the first line quoted we are told that poetry is born of externals and in the last line external poetry falls short of being poetic. Truly language in the absence of psychological guide-posts seems created for bewilderment. And in all M. Maeterlinck's available writings there is not one line to indicate the moment of transmutation which might link his first interrogation to his final statement of regret! Is M. Maeterlinck's poetry in the soul of the poet or does it exist independently in his environment as a dryad inhabits a tree? The truth seems to be that in interesting himself in spiritism, as he has of late, M. Maeterlinck is not desiring to extend mystery but to destroy it; for by becoming further and further aware of an objective life he is locking out the reverse of it which is within him. To the inexact mind the extension of etherealized bodies into distant perspective connotes a profounder understanding of life than is inclided in a narrow radius. But if one examine the vocabulary of spiritism, or of spiritualism, and analyze the articulation of supernormal or supernatural experiences, one may realize that in the projection of bodies freed from the law of gravity farther and farther into space nothing unique is realized. Rather does our outlook become more and more extroverted to meet these extraneous demands and our more intimate knowledge grows less and less. A curtain that has been lowered raises itself without visible means and the dimensions of the accustomed stage are augmented. We feel very small and inadequate in the midst of such vast horizons, and perhaps that is what we desire to feel, for, from this greater accent on life as something continually beyond man's encompassing, there results a conviction of irresponsibility and a corresponding sense of freedom and exaltation. Reason is liberated and emotion reigns without conscience; for to discover that an end is impossible of realization relieves us from the obligation to accomplish it. Perhaps this is what M. Maeterlinck seeks without being aware of it, using these means to overawe himself and woo again the lost naivete of his soul.

"A drama is not really true until it is greater and finer than life," is another gem of paradox which, in The Measure of the Hours, springs from M. Maeterlinck's unconscious wit. Are we alive then only in the commonplaces of objective incident? Does M. Maeterlinck consider art as a representation of this truth which does not exist, and, being nothing, cannot be true, or is it an evocation of that