TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 13901, 28 November 1910, Page 6

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

A writer in the "R.L.S." "Tramp -, magazine and describes how ho the Cevennes. once followed the footsteps of that master-tramp, R. L. Stevenson, "with bicycles and the high resolution of hero-worship,' , through the scenes of long ago travel with a donkey. It was tweuty-five years and more aftor Modeetine and her adventurous owner took the road, but here and there in the Covennes their eccentricities were remembered still. At one wayside inn, tho landlady was directly reminded of them by a question as to whether foreigners often called there. "Not often," she replied, "but once a foreigner called here travelling with a little dark she-donkey, and sleeping out of doors." On further examination she- recalled that her visitor had been very quiet, and that he did not seem to know

I much about donk"ys. And the invos- ! t.igators considered the first point wn* j well proved. "What chance had tho ! author v> be caught else but quiet? iln the bock you may see that -ho talked to iiim for 'near half an h>u:r on many subjects. When we called about a quarter of a century later, she was talking incessantly still."* Another landlady remembers how she laughed to see- the stranger ride oft on his as>. She did not, in fact, ever bsh.)!:l Ste.von.son mounte<l on Modestine's back, unless there are sins of omission in his narrative. It, is- a treak of pseudo memory, showing how tho local mind imagined no other ; reason for the animal's company. We j regret that the maid, "Clarlsso,"'

whose praise is written in an imperishable volume, has kept no better mental record than this. Madame Morel, at whose inn Stevenson spent ■'about a month of fine days," was most clear about the generous tips h>> gave on leaving. In the Trappist Monastery, of all tho inmates mentioned during his visit, only one suri vived. Father Ambrose, who asked the pathetic question, "M. Sievenson, il encore tie cc inonde!'"' It was a question often asked by any who reI tamed a memory of him at all, for "111 news flics not always apace, and the lament of tho Saiuoan tragedy has not [ yet echoed through to the byways of I Aavergnc." Tho latest honour paid, [however, to his Cevennrs pilgrimage, is a French translation of the 'Travels with n Donkey,"' brought out by the Ccvennl Club, of France. Tho only misfortune is that the French version often contradicts the English, and that an artist —who knew not Stevenson — represents him as the typical Briton of the French stage, ' witli Dundreary whiskers and hors.e teeth." Tho most distressing A picture of Portugal iinDistressing der the Monarchy that Picture. we have .seen, appears in tho "Westminster Gazette" from the pen of an Englishman living in a mining-ennm in the hills of the North. As he wrote, in camp he could sc o before him plainly tlie chief reasons for Portugal's downfall. One of them he could smell—tho national backwardness exemplified ill the dirt of Guarda, the odour of which spreads far over its mountains. Tho highest and dirtiest town in Europe, he calls this old place, which was a place of importance, in Roman times. There are several thousand people in Guarda, but there is no attempt at sanitation, and consumption and diphtheria "rage as s>. plague." His description of the prison system is simply horrible. The prison was a largo cell with one window, and into this place men, women, and children wero tlurown together. They walked over filth, for there were no sanitary arrangements, and the place wns apparently never cleaned out, and they breathed poisonous air. Tho Government did not feed its prisoners. If a man imprisoned in Guarda had friends near by who would bring him black bread and sausage he stood a chance of existing until the Judge arrived from Lisbon to try him, but if he was a traveller without friends he had to depend upon the charity of passers-by. If food from such was not forthcoming, lie soon dropped from weakness and was trampled to death by the fighting mob, struggling to get near the one aperture. "Ui>on tho Military Governor's statement it is not an uncommon occurrence for a soldier to unbar tho cell door at sunrise to find many of tho occupants dead and often trampled beyond recognition. They are buried in a hole three feet deep, without even a coffin or word of prayer." Few Britons can have had any idea that such a dreadful, state of tilings existed in any European country, except, perhaps, parts of Russia. Indeed this reads like a description of a Moorish gaol. Lot us hope that by this time these horrors have been mitigated The Portuguese have evidently great hopes of the Republic, but this writer thinks there, is very little hope for the country. Ha regards Portugal as a nation sick unto death from many diseases, making "a final frantic effort to clutch the last straw ere it passes entirely into oblivion.' . Sir Hubert yon An Artist's Horkomer has fallon Autobiography, into tho fashion of the time. Ho has ■written his memoirs; only in this case there is no need for excuse. His life story is of interest because the period his memory covers is that during which the English people awoke to a sense of the beautiful. Sixty years ago, he says, there was no carpet that was not outrageous or vulgar in pattern and garish in tone, nil wall paper •was hideous, tho mantelpiece was filled with foolish ornaments, and antimacassars were everywhere. But any mere account of changing times would bo uninteresting if it were not made individual, given character, so to speak. Character and temperament are the marks of his memoirs, "The Herkomers." The elder Herkomer, a Bavarian tradesman, had character that amounted almost to the genius of infinite application; his son, the artist, has temperament and uses it in showing the world what sort of man his fnther was. Not tho least beautiful of his pictures are those that he has mado lately with his pen. He is wonderfully graphic in his account of some of the early years of his life, whiefli were spent in a tenement house in Cleveland, America. He knew the long hot nights that 0. Heno , has made Xew Zealanders familiar with, and he describes them as well as he describes the winter evenings when the snow beat in through the ill-made window sashes .and sifted half across the floor. The finest sketch of all is one. of his father making a new altar for the church of his native village. "My father's altar was pure, if stern, in its Gothic, and it was his work from first to last: design, carving, gilding, and colouring."' Old Herkomer, he was young then, was still at work on his altar when his first son, the artist, was brought to the church for baptism. He listened to tho ceremony from his place on the scaffold. That was the starup of man the fnther was, with iron discipline for himself as well as others. The artist, whose school at Bushey has for some time been a dominant factor in British art. does not call himself a self-made man—he says that his father made him. Certainly the young Herkorner found remunerative work easily. The first application he made to an illustrated paper brought him a cheque. He was only twenty-six when he painted that famous picture. '"The Last Muster, ' which moved the Royal Academy Committee to loud applause, and was sold for a four-figure sum.