conception than the other two; it adds to their lyricism
an epic sweep inherent in the subject and very soon felt
in the treatment. It is, in fact, a novel difficult to clas-
sify, impregnated as it is with a noble, Tolstoian ideal-
ism, yet just as undoubtedly streaked with an unrelent-
ing realism so often coupled with the name of Zola. Yet
one does not perceive too plainly an inept mingling
of genres; the style is a mirror of the vast theme--that
moment at which the native and the immigrant strains
begin to merge in the land of the future--the promised
land that the protagonists are destined never to enter,
even as Moses himself, upon Mount Nebo in the land of
Moab, beheld Canaan and died in the thrall of the great
vision.

Aranha seems truly to have been called to this task
rather than to have chosen it. He is cosmopolitan by
culture as well as training. Himself a descendant of an
old family, he has not been hampered by the false aris-
tocracy of the family, else how could he have composed
the epic of Brazil's melting-pot? He has served his
nation at home and abroad, having been secretary to
Joaquim Nabuco when that diplomat went to Italy to
settle before the king the boundary dispute between
Brazil and Great Britian in the matter of British Guiana;
he was Brazilian minister at Christiania, and later Pleni-
potentiary for Brazil at The Hague. He is philosophi-
cally, critically inclined; he knows not only the Latin
element of his nation, but the Teutonic as well; his native
exuberance has been tempered by a serenity that is the
product of European influence, in which may be reckoned
a tithe of English.
Chanaan is of those novels that centre about an en-

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