and a sincere modesty." Thus it is obvious that Grieg is of the nervous, sensitive temperament, the temperament of Keats and of Stevenson, which is quick and ardent in feeling.

Following the modern, romantic school, Grieg has derived the suggestion or inspiration for many of his pieces from contemporary poets. Although by nature a direct contrast to Ibsen, he was inspired by him to the composition of perhaps his greatest work-the Peer Gynt Suite. Peer Gynt is the ne'er-do-weel of Ibsen's poem, a few of whose adventures Grieg has graphically pictured in his music. The suite begins with "The Morning Mood," a beautiful succession of chords which resembles Coleridge's "Hymn to Mount Blanc" in its vast serenity pervaded by a note of loneliness and melancholy. The second piece, "The Death of Ase," is a grief-laden funeral march. Ase, the poor mother of Peer Gynt, has been left desolate and alone to die in her cottage on the bleak mountain side. Then follows "Anitra's Dance"; Anitra in Ibsen's story is the fascinating minx of the desert who, while Peer Gynt is masquerading as a prophet, encounters him on his travels and beguiles from him one gift after another, his rings, spare apparel and finally his horse, and then capers off like the winds of the morning, leaving the pseudo-prophet to continue his sandy and inglorious way on foot. In this quick waltz or mazourka we have all the sparkling lightness and bewitching charm of Anitra which induced her victim so readily to yield the things he valued most. The fourth of these tone pictures is entitled "In the Hall of the Mountain King." It fairly froths over with the sprightly, queer, almost uncanny music, illustration of the humorous and prankish gnomes, dancing in the cavern castle of the Mountain King. Thus the suite ends; quaint and delightfully grotesque.

On the whole this work is very characteristic of Grieg. There is no grand treatment of a single motif sustained throughout and elaborated upon. It is a series of short, vivid pictures, adapted to Grieg's love of the miniature. Almost everything he writes has in it this essential smallness,

and reveals a temperament, a sense of the picturesque, a flow of melody, a love of the dainty and delicately perfect.

1

The most characteristic thing about Grieg is the skill with which he distills the essence of his national music and folk songs into his own music. There is not a bar of it that has not a distinctive Norwegian flavor-that Scandinavian flavouring which is ever fresh, pungent and communicative of a sense of the open air. As we listen to his "Autumn" the gloom of the Norwegian landscape glides before us, with its deep fjords, barren fields, roaring cascades, mysterious caverns, aurora borealis and all that makes up the Northern wonderland. We see the steep coast, where the sea-fog pitches its tent upon cliffs and billows, and inland the mountains rise black and sinister. Here is felt the horror of solitude, whilst misty forms hang wavering between sky and sea, and the chilly breeze sweeps along the heather. Then we hear his "Springtime," and lo! the scene changes. In the meadow ground and between the mountains there lies the happy village of fishermen's huts with its church, low and humble, but still reaching far above the other roofs. Here the fish-nets are spread over the smooth rocks or hang in picturesque folds across the long, light barks in the boathouses. From the distance comes the murmur of clear rivulets, babbling from one basin to another as they stream onward to the sea. There is a rush of confused vernal sounds and then the melody dies away as the landscape fades from view beneath the descending mists. With "Spring" we naturally associate "The Butterfly." How vividly he has brought out, by his sprightly measures and rapid cadences, the irregular, darting, hovering flight of the winged creature! Then again in his collection called "Sketches of Norwegian Life" there is a piece entitled "On the Mountain." After an opening of soft chords, it commences with a bass melody in unison, as if played by basses and 'cellos. The rhythm is that of a strongly marked peasant dance, with an emphatic half note at the end of each phrase as if here the peasant solidly put down his foot. And thus, we listen, and ruddy,

moving pictures with their swirl of intoxicating colors go kaleidoscopically on. We cannot help realizing how truly national Grieg is; how much of his fatherland he has put into his music.

But it is nature rather than men that his music portrays. He held "communion with her visible forms" as he found them in Norway and he spoke her various language as his fatherland taught him to speak. There is not the blare of trumpets, the tramp of horses, the flash of swords nor the glamour of great gatherings of knights, dames, lords and ladies as are found in the polonaises of Chopin. There is instead the roar of the sea, the moan of the wind, the mysterious, spirit voices of the forest, the silence of the glens, the rising and setting of the sun. He makes us feel the tremendous forces of nature with the same vigor and awfulness as we do when reading Poe's "Descent into the Maelstrom.” Often he is bizarre, often morbid, sometimes boisterously gay, full of wild grace, taunting yet plaintive and brooding; always singular, forceful and brilliant. Nowhere are the rocks so rugged. Nowhere does the wind sing so mournfully yet so sweetly. Cadence on cadence rise and fallloud, then soft, like the gently turning crest of the fierce, oncoming wave. The black, beetling cliff stands out gaunt, bold, rugged, its base lashed by the white foam. The emerald sea glimmers in the light of the sun just sinking below the horizon. It is a weird light, neither that of day nor that of evening, but a strange blending of both. The sun sinks. One by one the cold, gleaming stars begin to stud the bare heavens, while among them the Northern Lights flash forth their fleeting striae in a glorious arch. This is the Land of the Midnight Sun, this is Norway,—this Grieg. Sydney J. Frank.

NOTABILIA.

The difficulties attending the perfecting of any just system of "Cuts and Marks" are conceivable only by those who are in intimate touch with the Dean's Office. The way we can assist is in patiently coöperating, and in our willingness to see the good points rather than the weak features of such a system. Success alone endures, while failure sinks below the surface and is forgotten. To be adequate, however, a system must have, first of all, a fair and firm basis. our present and new system seems to lack. Leaving all ideas of seniority, juniority, sophomority, and freshmanity out of consideration, it is manifestly an injustice that a man who takes as much as eighteen hours of work each week should receive as his share the same number of cuts as another man whose week's work adds up to only thirteen hours!

This

In behalf of the Board of 1906, we take great pleasure in announcing the elections to Chi Delta Theta of Wedworth W. Clarke and Ralph W. Wescott, both of the Academic Senior Class.

At the request of the author we desire to state that by error of the copyist quotation marks were omitted from certain quotations on pages 189 and 190.

W.

ONE KIND
OF LIFE.

PORTFOLIO.

A man and a woman strolled along a marble terrace crowning a velvet green knoll which sloped toward rough rocks at the edge of the sea on one side and rolled gracefully to the verge of a carefully trimmed wood on the other. The woman's white lace gown swept a spotless promenade laid in heavy mosaic or serpentine and porphyry. Now and then the man carelessly flickered a head from a stately larkspur bordering a great mass of plants ascending bank after bank in a flowery mound. At the apex of the mound a graceful Nereid rose in glistening purity and held aloft a conch shell which scattered a jewelled veil of delicate spray about her white limbs. At the end of the terrace a cool, vine-clad pergola led to an open Japanese tea-room, built after a temple to Shinto, and enriched with many a gorgeous treasure of Eastern art.

The pair wandered under the pergola and into the tea-room looking over the sea. As they entered, a thin childish voice. was hushed abruptly, and a black-and-white clad nurse with a tiny ruffled cap above her smooth black hair rose respectfully. Her immobile olive face and sphinx-like black eyes proclaimed her the ideal servant. Clinging to her skirt, more in doubt than in love, was a thin, large-eyed child. He gazed in admiring wonder at the delicate pink face of the woman who had just entered.

"C'est ma maman," he half whispered.

The man leaned against a carved pillar, and watched the woman with cynical questioning eyes. He had seen her in the rôle of hostess, comrade, coquette, wife, and in many another, but in that of mother, never. There was a shade of annoyance in her face as she saw her son, but it passed into a look of interest. A woman who is graceful and sweet with children fascinates any man. She dropped her parasol and offered slender, rounded arms, whose delicate tint shone through the thin lace sleeve.

"Come to mother, Rolleston," she whispered.

The nurse urged the boy forward and he went reluctantly. Then the invitation of the outstretched arms and the bright