The Nation 1908-02-13: Vol 86 Iss 2224
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| @a ag. &' °4 The Natid 7 : oC dy wo y 3 O11. M9] 2 VOL. LXXXVI—NO. 2224. THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 1908 PRICE TEN CENTS. An Unusual View of Victorian England AS SEEN BY A DIPLOMAT | SUPPOSE you could sit Rambling Recollections | by at your Club whilea | By the Rt. Hon. Sir Henry Drummond Wolff man of the inner circles of G. C. B., G. C. M. C., Late British Ambassador in Spain British diplomacy (a re 8 Two volumes full of good stories and of intimacy with people of tal story-teller) chatted ¥# political place and power. The author entered the Foreign Office formally of six'y years in 1846 and knew well nearly every man of political note in Eng- experiences? Would you land since that time. His recollections of people and places are de- lightful, he had an inside view of. every important event of the last sixty years, was one of the famous “ Fourth Party,” and was noted as a teller of good stories. He was Ambassador in Madrid at the as time of the Spanish-American War. SUPPOSE you could then Two volumes, cloth, gilt top, 8vo, $7.50 net dine with a charming lady (a cousin of your diplomat) AS SEEN BY A LADY OF HIGH SOCIAL RANK value the opportunity ? psadlpe peas. Sac. Leaves from the Notebooks of stor oO : these same years? Would Lady D orothy Nevill Edited by her son, Ralph Nevill. With photogravure portraits. The same years, and many of the same people live in these pages as figure in Drummond Wolff's Recollections, but the point of view is natur- ally different. Lady Dorothy is of the Walpole family, inheriting her full share of Walpole wit, and there is a delightful air of intimacy, SUPPOSE that you could good humor, candor, and a toleration born of wide observation and much experience. Nothing could be more full of a pleasant person- ality. Cloth, illustrated, 8vo, $3.75 net you throw over another engagement to meet her? then take one of those long strolls with the editor of Fraser's, in which Tenny- = ag SEEN BY AN EDITOR OF FRASER’S son and Carlyle delighted, . hearing him gossip of the William Allingham A Diary ‘a rich literary life of the The best letters D. G. Rossetti wrote were to Allingham; he was the one man whom Carlyle would have trusted to act as his Boswell, saying: “he is accurate enough”; he was a neighbor and _ intimate of Tennyson's; and was himself a poet, a quiet, lovable man whose notes are remarkably alive. The Standard (London) calls it “ pithy, same period? Would _ such insights racy, convincing . . . a diary is usually skippable, but this must into the life of the last sixty and will be carefully read, inasmuch as almost every line of it is in- years be worth having? teresting.” Svo, cloth, with portraits, $3.75 net THE ABOVE ARE NOW READY. IN PREPARATION ARE ;:— Modern Egypt In two volumes England In two volumes By the Earl of Cromer By A. Lawrence Lowell The author's remarkable personality, his ability as a A comprehensive survey of the English political modern political administrator, and the position he system, comparable in value only to the Hon. James held for so long as the most influential official in Bryce’s The American Commonwealth, and likely to Egypt, will unite to place this among the notable become equally indispensable in the study of popular books of the year. Ready shortly. government. Ready shortly. Published ~=THE MACMILLAN COMPANY “46 Fits Ave by
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—a ae The Nation.
[Vol. 86, No. 2224
The Nation. A WEEKLY JOURNAL. FOUNDED IN 1865. {Entered at the New York City Post Office as second-class mail matter.] The Nation 1s published and owned by the New York Evening Post Co. Oswald Garrison Villard, President; Philip Loring Allen Treasurer; Ham- mond Lamont, Editor; Paal Elmer More, Asso- ciate Editor. Three dollars per year in advance, postpaid, in any part of the United States or Mezico; to Can- ada $3.50, and to foreign countries comprised in the Poatal Union £4.00. Address THE NATION, Bow 794, New York. Publication Office, 20 Vesey Street. CONTENTS OF THIS NUMBER. WEE cccccccccccccccccccccccecece THE EDITORIAL ARTICLES: Using the Offices.......+-seseeeecceees 142 Socialism Under Debate Crime and the Reader...........-+++. 143 SPECIAL ARTICLES: Donald G. Mitchell.........-eeeeeeeee 144 CORRESPONDENCE: The Hilprecht Case Again..........-- 145 The Word “Bends”’.........«+seeeeee: 146 “Pierce Penniless” .......+eeeeeeeees 146 “Practical” Studies for Women....... 146 College Men in Elementary Schools... 146 NOTES cccccccccccccccccccccccscceccvcess 147 Book RsvIEWwS: A Life of Gilbert Burnet, Bishop of . BaMGWUry ..ccccccvccccccccccsccsccces 150 Robert BE. Lee on ccccccccccvccccccscess 151 Somehow GOOd .....cccccedaccececuee 152 The Ancient LAW. .....ccceeeeeceeeeees 1b2 TRAVOTS ccccccccccccccccccceccccscecese 153 English Poetry 1170-1892.—English fs POGUES cc cccccccccccccccccecesceceese 153 St. Stephen's in the Fifties............ 153 A Book of Saints and Wonders, Put Down Here by Lady Gregory, Ac- cording to the Old Writings and the Memory of the People of Ireland.. 154 Zur Kritik der kiinstlichen Welt- EDTACROR ccccccccccccccescecceccecese 155 Society in the Country House........ 155 The University of Toronto and Its Coblemes, 1GBT-1GSS ..cccccccccccccces 156 The Real Australia .........ceeeeeees 156 SCIENCE: Comparative Anatomy of Vertebrates. 156 DRAMA cccccccccscsccvccecccesocsceccccce 157 Music: A History of Music in England...... 157 ART: The International ......cccccccccesees 158 FINANCE: Books on the Steel Trust............ 159 BOOKS OF THE WEEK.......-.sseeeeee. 160
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Feb. 13, 1908] The Nation. | | | CLASSICAL AND MODERN PHILOLOGY Classical Philology A quarterly journal devoted to re- search in the languages, literatures, history, and life of classical antiquity, and to reviews of current publications in these fields. In addition to formal articles stating the results of investi- gations, especial attention is given to reviews of books and monographs. Hitherto American scholars have been obliged to look mainly to Europe for reviews of current philological liter- ature. It is the aim of the editors to supply a real need by the prompt pub- lication of critical notices of Ameri- can, as well as of European, work. Published Quarterly $2.50 a year, single copies 75 cents THE Classical Journal Published in the interests of classi- cal studies in schools and colleges. Its aim is to provide a medium through which classical teachers may be brought more closely in touch with one another’s work, and be made fa- miliar with all that is being done in the different departments of their field. In selecting articles and other material for publication the editors bear constantly in mind the needs of teachers, and endeavor to make the periodical of practical service in the work of the classroom. Published Monthly, except Jaly, August, September, and October $1.50 a year, single copies 25 cents Modern Philology A medium of publication for special studies in the field indicated by its title. It has thus a wide scope, but articles to be accepted are required to be scientific in purpose and meth- od. The journal was established in June, 1903. Back numbers can be sup- plied, with the exception of Volume I., No. 1. m Pablished Quarterly $3.00 a year, sing’e copies $1.00. RECENT BOOKS The Tragedies of Seneca Translated by FRANK JUSTUS MILLER This is a new translation of the ten tragedies whfch have come down under the name of Seneca, rendered into English blank verse, with appro- priate lyric metres for the choruses. The work is enriched and its value greatly enhanced both for classical and English students, as well as for the general reader, by an introduction on the influence of the tragedies of Seneca upon early English drama, contributed to the volume by Professor John M. Manly; also by a review of the Roman historical drama in con- nection with the Octavia, by comparative analyses of Seneca’s tragedies and the corresponding Greek dramas, and by a comprehensive mythological index and glossary. 548 pages, 8vo, cloth; net $3.00, postpaid $3.20. Ancient Italy: Historical and Geographical Investigations in Central Italy, Magna Graecia, Sicily, and Sardinia By ETTORE PAIS. Translated from the Italian by C- DENSMORE CURTIS Dr. Pais is well known to classical scholars. The articles in the pres- ent volume are the results of his studies in the ancient history of the Italian tribes. Every available source of information is drawn upon, and their breadth of view is masterly. They embrace the relations of these peoples with the surrounding nations, and incidentally throw light on the history of Greece. Their publication at this time will be welcomed by schol- ars, to whom they have never been generally accessible. Many of them were printed as detached papers with a limited circulation, and all were of course in Italian. 460 pages, 8vo, cloth; net $5.00, postpaid $5.24. English Poems—The Nineteenth Century Selected and Edited by WALTER C, BRONSON, Litt.D., Professor of English Literature in Brown University This new collection of English poems is in many respects an advance upon any yet produced. The aim has been to satisfy the needs of the student and reader of the present day, and to this end every effort has been made to supply in the commentary just the needed information and interpretation. 635 pages, 12mo, cloth; library edition, net $1.50, post- paid $1.68; school edition, net $1.00, postpaid $1.15. Old German Love Songs Translated from the Minnesingers of the 12th to the 14th Centuries by FRANK C. NICHOLSON In this volume an attempt has for the first time been made to present readers of English with a fairly large and typical selection from the Ger- man Minnesingers. The English versions keep in general the form of the original and preserve the spirit to a remarkable degree. There is also an essay on the Minnesong. 236 pages, 8vo, cloth; net $1.50, postpaid $1.61. The Interpretation of Italy During the Last Two Centuries: A Contribution to the Study of Goethe's Italienische Reise By CAMILLO VON KLENZE, Professor of German Literature in Brown University With a view primarily to throwing light on Goethe’s estimate of Italy, the author traces the development of foreign appreciation of the historic peninsula during two hundred years. The volume is rich in varied inter- est for the student of European culture. “The book is a work of research representing a vast amount of read- ing and labor, and will be of service to any one who desires to follow the story of modern culture and intellectual life.’—The Dial. 150 pages, 8vo, cloth; net $1.50, postpaid $1.62. ADDRESS DEPT. 21 THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS | _ CHICAGO NEW YORK and |
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lv The Nation. [Vol. 86, No. 2224 LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO.’S NEW BOOKS COTTON - SPINNING CALCULATIONS |) THE HOLY GHOST THE COMFORTER AND YARN CosTSs By the Rev. G. F. HOLDEN, M.A., Vicar of All Saints’, Margaret Street, London, W. With an Introduction by the Bishop of London. By JAMES WINTERBOTTOM, Lecturer on Spinning, Municipal School Crown 8vo. 180 pages. $0.90 net. of Technology, ‘Matchester. With diagrams. S8vo. pp. x-254. $3.00.+ . ***A practical and comprehensive manual of calculations, yarn costs, “It Fh nl Magy anf net eae Bi iy od and other data involved in adapting the machinery in all sections, and | yonten readi ng to the public and diocese. . . . It is my hope that this little book may help busy men and _women who have no time for dee for all grades, of spinning and doubling. and prolonged study to have clearer ideas on this matter and be le COMPARATIVE ELECTRO-PHYSIOLOGY on - xc Christian lite which is all the more spiritual because sacra- menta Ry JAGADIS CHUNDER BOSE, M.A.. D a. ‘ Professor, Presidency GLORIA CRUCIS College, Calcutta. 8vo. pp. xlvii.-70@0. 85.75. Addresses delivered in —— Cegegtent. Holy Week and Good ORGANIC CHEMISTRY FOR ADVANCED ‘| 3; tie J. BEIRITZ, M.A., Vice-Principal of the Theolog!- pages. . cal College, Lichae 1d. Crown 8yo. STUDENTS ; A CATHOLIC ATLAS By goraue B. COuBN, Pb.D., B.Se., Professor of i gr - mistry n the University of Leeds, and Associate of Owens ege, Man- chester. Demy Sve. pp. vill.-632. $7.00.+ . ° OR, DIGEST OF CATHOLIC THEOLOGY Comprehending Fundamentals of Religion, Summary of Catholic Doc- trine, Means of Grace, Perfection with Its Rules and A ww PD: Wor- RA N, TEXT-BOOK OF ORGANIC CHEMISTRY chip Di. Bishop ‘of n- A, 4 At - oR FOR MEDICAL STUDENTS Pb. xi+243. $2.50 net, By mail n 170. - : Oe ee ees Peed with kiditens te wet. “saes | THE MIND OF CHRIST JESUS IN THE CHURCH OF THE LIVING GOD Plimmer, D.Sc. (Lond.), Fellow of University College, London, 8vo. t Ppp. x.-260. $2.00, A CHARGE B the Right Rev. CHARLES H. BRENT. D.D., Bish f th A HISTORY OF CHEMISTRY ” philippine Islands. Crown Svo. Cloth. $0.50, net. By mail, $0.56. By Dr. H. BAUER, Royal Technical Institute, Stuttgart. Translated ; vi S32. $1.00, net CATHOLICISM AND INDEPENDENCE: by R. V. Stanford. Crown 8vo. pp. BEING STUDIES IN SPIRITUAL LIBERTY ELECTRICAL TRACTION By M. D. PETRE. Crown 8vo. Pp. xil-174, $1.20, net. | . " apo “ a . | The interest of these essays lies in their recognition of the twofold By E. WILSON. Whit. Sch.. M.I.E.E., Professor of Electrical Engineer- | principle of individual independence and codpera tive authority, both ing at King's College, London; and F. LYDALL, B.Se. In two vol-| haying their right place in the life of the soul. Every member of the umes, Svo, profusely Illustrated. Vol. I. Direct current, pp. _viil.- | Church has his own inalienable rights in the domain of conscience, but + 94.60, net. Vol. Il. Alternating current. pp. vill.-S28. $4.00, | has also his duties in regard to the visible Church. He is called at times to obey, at times to resist, the demands of religious authority. LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO., 91-93 Fifth Avenue, New York JUST PUBLISHED The Most Important Biography of the New Year THOMAS ALVA EDISON SIXTY YEARS OF AN INVENTOR’S LIFE By FRANCIS ARTHUR JONES HIS volume will at once commend itself as one of the few mecessary books to librarians and readers alike. Edison's name and fame are known around the world. His lif? story reads like a ‘omance, from the time he published a newspaper on board a train at fourteen, and later was an out-at- he-elbows ‘‘ tramp "’ tele- graph operator, till his electrical inventions caused the formation of a fifteen million dollar stock company. No recent life of Edison is in print, a fact which makes this book doubly valuable. It is the result of close acquaintance with, and study of the inventor, and is at once complete, authoritative, and intensely inter- It is a romance of truth which far exceeds fiction. esting. Profusely Illustrated, 370 pp., 12mo, cloth, gilt top, $2.09 net. Three New Volumes in the “First Folio” Edition of Shakespeare THE TEMPEST With Original Prolegomena THE TRAGEDIE OF OTHELLO THE WINTERS TALE Following the original text of 1623, with full notes and glossaries Edited by CHARLOTTE PORTER and HELEN A. CLARKE ‘* The most desirable edition of the plays which has yet been published.""—Dr. HIRAM CORSON. Pocket size, cloth, 75 cents each; limp leather, $1.00 each THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO., New York (Postage, 20 cents.)
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| The Nation. NEW YORK, THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 1908. The Week. Any one who thinks our American business men lack idealism and child- like faith should read the report of what the delegation from the American Manufacturers’ Association did when it went to Washington last week to talk tariff reform. Here are two of their formulated policies: (1.) The intelligent, thorough, and unpre- judiced study of facts; (4.) The adjustment of the tariff sched- ules so that they shall affect all interests favorably and equitably without excessive or needless protection to any. And to secure these objects they peti- tion, of all people in the world, the Speaker of a Republican House of Rep- resentatives and the chairman of a Re- publican Ways and Means Committee. Mr. Cannon spoke bluntly about the tariff commission plan. No one knows better than he that such commissions stand only the slightest chance of being any more useful than debating clubs, and that the historic commission of 1882 made a report “so voluminous that it was never even read.” When the Ways and Means Committee does act, it wants, and is entitled to have, first-hand testi- mony. But all these are only subsidiary questions. Does any one seriously sup- pose that our Republican Congresses have been merely waiting for informa- tion all these years they have refused to revise the tariff? Information is not hard for Congressional committees to get, least of all the kind which has gov- erned the making of former protective tariffs, namely, information as to how heavy the duties each special interest wants. The Republican party has let the tariff alone because it was paid to, and, as Mr. Cannon truly said, it is ex- clusively responsible for its legislative policy. Striking evidence of the “state of nerves” into which the country has got is furnished by the number of ordinar- ily calm and cool-headed men who are now going abcut filled with unconcealed apprehension. What they are afraid of is not hard times, but hard knocks. It is not bad business that they dread so much as crazy legislation. People say that these are critical times; there is great exciten:ent throughout the country; a Presidential election is im- pending; rival political leaders are bid- ding against each other for the votes of vis‘onaries and revolutionists. So, they infer, some dreadful thing is going to happen. The sounder inference would be that nothing whatever is going to hap- pen. Consider the present settled purpose of Congress to give no heed at all to the President’s message. Not a handful of Republicans in both houses could be got to say publicly that they approved of it. That the measures of legislation which it urged will receive no attention whatever, is conceded by all intelligent correspondents at Washington. Indeed, there is no certainty that the President himself either expects or desires Con- gress to do anything. Whatever his mes- sage was intended for, it was not plan- ned to result in immediate legislation. There are still courts in Washington. There is still a dominant number of steady and cautious men in Congress. Tl.ey will not be raided, and they re- fuse to be terrified. Nor is there any reason to believe that the mass of the people have a wish or purpose ex- cept for corrective and healing laws. Ail this being so, our apprehensive business men should pluck up their spir- its. It is for those. who have the seri- ous tasks of keeping the industry and transportation of the country going, to bear in mind the powerful forces which make for stability and sanity, and not to tremble at the thunder of the cap- tains and the shouting. Senator Culberson’s attack on Secre- tary Cortelyou’s measures of last Octo- ber and November contain several dis- tinct specifications. His charge of viola- tiou of the law by Mr. Cortelyou, in the sale of bonds and notes when the Treas- ury was not in need of money, and in the acceptance of the 3 per cent. notes as a basis for new bank circulation, is the same criticism which was made in these columns at the time. Mr. Cor- telyou’s recent answer to the Senate in- quiry plausibly defended the sale of Panama Canal bonds, on the ground that the entire proceeds have been ex- pended on the canal work. But his ar- gument for the 3 per cent. notes, when the law authorizes their use only in such sums “as, in his judgment, may be necessary to meet public expendi- ture,” and when the Treasury had, as a matter of fact, $230,000,000 on deposit in the’ banks, was not at all convincing. Furthermore, since the National Bank Act requires deposits of United States bonds as security against circulating banknotes, and since it further express- ly declares that “the term ‘United States bonds,’ as used throughout this chapter, shall be construed to mean registered bonds of the United States,” the use of one-year 3 per cent. certificates of in- debtedness was plainly illegal. When, however, Senator Culberson denounced Mr. Cortelyou’s deposit of public moneys in bank last October, he fell into a series of blunders. Dilating on the share of such de- posits allotted to New York banks, Mr. Culberson points out that accord- ing to the Comptroller’s reports, the amount owed by New York banks to all other national banks . decreas- ed, between August 22 and Decem- ber 3, only $10,820,511. This, he alleges, was all this city’s banks paid to outside national institutions, although the loans of the New York banks in the same pe- riod increased $63,000,000. But the fig- ures, as presented by the Senator, are misleading. The “amount due to other national banks,” referred to, does not rise or fall solely according to receipt or shipment of currency at New York. On the contrary, a Western bank which has been lending its money directly on the New York market and which calls in the loan—as hundreds of banks did at the panic timé—converts the pro ceeds into a deposit in a New York bank; thus, on the face of things, in- creasing the amount which this city’s banks owe to other institutions. Sena- tor Culberson’s decrease of $10,820,511 “due to other national banks” is, there- fore, no criterion whatever of the cur- rency shipments from New York to the interior. Explicit information on that point was given by the chairman of the Clearing House Committee to Mr. Cor- telyou, and was published in the Sec- retary’s reply to the Senate inquiry. It showed that, during the panic period from October 21 to December 7, the New York banks shipped to the interior $106,921,700 more currency than they received from it. These figures Sena- tor Culberson cannot honestly ignore. As for the $63,000,000 increase in New York bank loans on collateral, of which the Senator makes so much, he surely ought to know that when interior banks recall their own Wall Street loans with sudden violence; the burden of sustain- ing the credits involved is shifted neces- sarily to the New. York institutions. Mr. Bryan expounding as something entirely new a very old economic theory, which he himself has just discovered and imperfectly mastered, is not an un- familiar spectacle. Even before his un- lucky experiment with the idea of gov- ernment ownership of railways in 1906, his achievements in this regard had somehow, created the impression of a politician. hastily running over the pages of a politico-economic text-book, to see if something might not turn up which could be used as an “issue.” His remarks to the Civic Forum in this city last week, on the “ideal monetary sys- tem,” touch the foundation of things in the same light-hearted way. That sys-
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140 ‘ The Nation. [Vol. 86, No. 2224 tem, he tells us, “would be one in which the purchasing power of the dollar re- mained the same yesterday, to-day, and forever.” He finds that his plan of 1896 for the sudden injection jnto our cur- rency system of the whole of our own silver product, and a good part of that of other nations, would have made for this stability of “purchasing power.” Following the same line of thought, he finds some amusement in the fact that people who objected to “my silver dol- lar” at that time, have ‘now adopted cashiers’ checks and clearing-house cer- tificates instead. We do not know whe- ther Mr. Bryan imagines that the panic expedients referred to were adopted as a permanent addition to the currency, to make good an insufficiency in gold production; but such a _ supposition would be necessary to his argument. The State Labor Department’s bulle- tin, which fixes with some approach to accuracy the real proportions of our much-discussed army of the unemploy- ed, shows, as might be expected, that more men were out of work at the end of December, 1907, than on the corre- sponding date of the years preceding. The 92 labor unions reporting in this city had 34.2 per cent. of members idle on December 31, while, with a slightly smaller number reporting, the percent- ages were 12.8 in 1906, 6.7 in 1905, and 17.8 in 1904. Relatively, twice as many men are out of work, then, as in the worst of these years, five times as many as in the best year. Bad as these fig- ures are, however, it is clear that New York city is to-day housing much more than its due proportion of the unem- ployed. Social workers report that many of the idle men here have drifted in from the smaller manufacturing cen- tres. The merit of the proposed labor- colony plan for the solution of the prob- lem of the unemployed in this State is that it offers a remedy that is perma- nent, and that involves coéperation on the part of the beneficiary. The obvi- ous defects of the plan are such as ap- peared in England during the distress- ing winter of three years ago, when a colcny for London’s unemployed was founded on land granted for the pur- pose by an American. The primary ob- ject of maintaining a comparatively small number of destitute workmen was, of course, attained, but at an expense, we believe, that did not make the experi- ment a success from the point of view of practical economics. In a recent un- dertaking of the borough of West Ham, for example, a product estimated at £7,397 cost £10,135. It was found that the lower-class city laborer and the workman chronically unemployed made a poor showing, though it is only fair to say that malnutrition and iIl- ness had done much to reduce the ca- pacity for work, even where the desire existed. How an agricultural colony can, in general, bring speedy relief to the urban workman in need of work, is not easy to see. Ray Stannard Baker, who contributed to the American Magazine several arti- cles on the negro in the South, has be- gun in the current number a new ser- ies dealing with the color line in the North. This bids fair to be of great service, for the negro problem is a na- tional one; and in some of its aspects, as in the matter of obtaining work, the North is harder upon the colored la- borer than the South, where labor unions are as yet of comparatively slight importance. Signs of militant prejudice have never been lacking in certain Northern States. The draft riots of 1863 in New York had, as will be re- membered, chiefly colored victims. Only three or four years ago the police of this city disgraced themselves by an outrageous assault upon inoffensive col- ored people because of the act of a negro criminal in shooting: a po liceman. That there was not a lynch- ing in our. streets at that time was merely a matter of luck. In all the large cities of the North, not- ably in Indianapolis and Philadeiphia, the problem daily forces itself more and more upon the attention of philan- thropists, charity workers, and police authorities. When indiscriminately herded together, negroes who are sud- denly placed amid all the temptations of the city, after being accustomed to rural life in the South, are easily led astray. The change in climate, the diffi- culty of obtaining decent quarters at the same rents asked of white tenants, the exploitation of the race by dema- gogic politicians, and by dive- and sa- loon-keepers tend, as Mr. Baker points out, to make the negro districts, or set- tlements, danger spots. Industrially, the chief difference, as Mr. Baker shows, is that in the South the complaint is of a lack of efficient negro labor; in the North the skilled negro finds it diffi- cult to get work on any terms. The places where the negroes are - best off, Mr. Baker finds, are the small- er cities of the North and ‘West, where they are still few in numbers. The negro people need to-day a strong inccrporated national committee for the furtherance of the welfare of the whole race. Such a committee would be able to receive gifts. It could buy land for negro settlers, and in improving the health of the race open new channels of industry, develop schools and churches, agitate for the restoration of civii rights where they are denied, and furnish the best legal skill for the test- ing of unjust laws. It has been alleged that too much athletics in college tends to dwarf the reasoning powers of ingenuous youth. This may have been in the minds of the Williams trustees when they voted to cut down the schedule of intercollegiate contests. But it is all a mistake. If any frank man will consider the follow- ing passage from the Williams Record, in an article on “The Anti-Athletic Pol- icy,” he will be forced to admit that it is a magnificent display of the imag- inative faculty as applied to logic: Followed to the letter, this policy will mean the isolation of Williams. With, at best, only semi-occasional visits of repre- sentatives of other colleges, and with a very infrequent Williams representation at other colleges, the broadening effect of contact with other college men will have ceased almost entirely to operate. The benefits of intercollege mingling will thus be forfeited to the ideals of high scholar- ship. Williamstown may, indeed, be an ideal place for concentrated study, but it lacks the qualifications of a place adapted to the combating of a narrowness which will be apparent when there is only very infrequent association with other institu- tions. This keen observer, who has noted the “broadening effect” of being one of the cheering crowds at football matches, with the benefit to “the ideals of high scholarship” to be had from joining the reistering throngs after the game, de- serves high place among the discoverers of the age. The debate between Lord Curzon and Lord Cromer on the recently concluded Anglo-Russian convention with regard to Central Asia, shows how treaties may be taken by the spirit or the letter. To Lord Curzon the agreement was a fail- ure, because its results for Great Bri- tain were “doubtful in respect to Afghanistan, bad in respect to Tibet, and worse in respect to Persia.’’ That was a weighing of clause against clause and article against article, which may be made to show anything. The ques- tion is whether Great Britain and Rus- sia, in coming to terms, wished to let their differences in Central Asia rest for a little while, or not. It does not matter what the distant aims of either party to the contract may have been. Possibly, within fifteen or twenty years, Russia may feel herself prepared to re- sume her advance on India, and Great Britain may have found another part- ner. Nevertheless, for an appreciabie number of years, the recent agreement will hold, if, for no other reason, be- cause it took years to prepare for it and years to bring it about. It is al! very well to speak of treaties as not be- ing worth the paper they are written on, but, after all, nations outside of Central America do not change their minds in a day. British opinion prob- ably now finds the Japanese alliance irksome; as Lord Cromer said, the An- glo-Russian convention may have been
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1 ® ®@ rh aT} OFS yy | we, Feb. 13, 1908] The Nation. 141 a preparatory step towards loosening Britain’s connection with Japan. Yet admitting all that, it will take years before the Anglo-Japanese treaty can be quite dissolved. The interests which made it desirable cannot all disappear in a day; the forces opposed to it can- not all develop in a day. And that is why we take with mitigated seriousness the rapid political combinations and re- combinations that the cable brings us. Talk of war between Russia and Tur- key over the Persian boundary dispute is taken in some quarters seriously. The quarrel is of nearly a year’s standing. Difference of opinion between Turkey and Persia as to the frontier line in the north was followed by what Persia has designated as invasion of her territory by Turkish troops. The Porte, on the other hand, asserts that its soldiers have not crossed the true boundary line. That line was established, after long years of dispute, by the intervention of Russia and Great Britain. Hence Rus- sia’s present activity as the champion of Persian rights and the guarantor of peace in the Caucasus. Great Britain’s silence in the matter may be taken as the result of the recent agreement with Russia by which northern Persia was as- signed to Russia as a particular sphere of influence. History shows few exam- ples of national altruism comparable with Russia’s unselfish interposition in behalf of Persia, whose internal condi- tion would make her an easy antagon- ist of Turkey. At the very moment when Russia’s Manchurian generals are on trial for their lives, charged with cowardice and incapacity, when internal discontent is by no means suppressed, when famine rages among the peas- antry, the Czar would intervene to save the Persian lamb from the ferocious Turkish tiger. Or has the old policy of distracting attention from domestic troubles by seeking foreign adventures once more asserted itself at St. Peters- burg? The recall of the French Ambassador at St. Petersburg on the request of the Russian government, was necessitated, so it is reported, by a letter of the diplo- mat, which fell into the hands of the Russian police, and which it would be mild to call indiscreet. The famous Sackville-West letter contained nothing approaching in frankness M. Bompard’s remarks on the Russian court and rul- ing circles: The bureaucracy, court, and clergy are leading a prodigal and debauched life. The exvenses of the court of the Czar Nicholas and his grand dukes are twice as much as the Russian Government provides for the education of the people. St. Petersburg’s conservative circles have been calling the French Ambassa- dor a Jacobin and a mannerless par- venu, and the fact that he was appoint- ed to his present position under the Premiership of M. Combes, the Pope of Free-Masonry, as the French conserva- tives call him, might be taken to ac- count for his Radical sympathies. At the same time, the incident shows under what difficult conditions an alliance like that between France and Russia may exist, and even be vigorously de- fended as it was by André Tardieu, an unquestioned authority, the other day at Harvard. In France to-day republican- ism and secularism are all-powerful, and so radical a gospel as Socialism is an important factor in political life. Paris is still the city of cosmopolitanism and advanced modernity. What Russia and St. Petersburg of the present day are, needs no re-statement. Yet a common fear holds the most advanced and the most backward nations of Europe to- gether. The expatriation bill now before the Prussian House of Lords confesses the inability of the Prussian government to assimilate, after more than a century of effort, its Polish subjects; it admits the total failure of the effort to crowd them out by colonizing Prussian Po- land with the pure German stock; it re- veals the Chancellor as grasping as a last resort at forcible expulsion. Poles have been deeply rooted in these Prus- sian provinces for centuries. When the Prussian government undertook to buy these lands as opportunity offered, it thought that $25,000,000 would suffice to carry the scheme of colonization well towards fruition; but another $25,000,- 000 was soon called for, and then $62,- 500,000. But despite the expenditure of this treasure, despite the construction of whole villages with churches, schools, inns, public buildings, the re- sult is as nothing. Wherever Germans have been settled they have found com- petition with the frugality and thrift of the Poles difficult if not impossible. This practical failure naturally stirred the Prussian government to fresh ef- forts. It began making war on individu- als. A German major of cavalry who sold his estate to some Poles had to leave the service; officials who showed any favor to the Poles were compelled to accept a transfer or resign. Then came the war upon the Polish school children, who struck rather than say their prayers in German; and later there was introduced a bill which, under the guise of giving greater freedom of as- sembly to all Germans, struck another blow at the Poles by requiring that within the empire all speeches should be made in German. And now comes the final wrong. To parallel it, the United States would have to ex- patriate all the Mexican landown- ers in Arizona, Texas, and New Mex- ico; or to drive out of New England the French Canadians. Canada, to do a similar wrong, would have forcibly to separate from their farms all whose ancestors followed the star of Montcalm and his predecessors. They, too, have clung to their language, their national traits, and have refused to be assimilat- ed by their conquerors. Yet rare politi- cal wisdom has allowed them to rest undisturbed, has granted them full suf- frage rights, and allowed them the use of their tongue even in Parliament. Were the guardians of Prussia’s pol- icy equally astute, they would have cher- ished the Poles, won their confidence and friendship, and conceded them both language and customs, But the Prussian Imperialism of to-day has grown more strident, though at the same time less efficient, Conscienceless though Bismarck often was, he yet knew how to use the pride of the several states to weld them into an Empire. The withdrawal of the Congo annexa- tion treaty for further consideration by the crown is taken as an augury of vic- tory for the opponents of Leopold II. The Belgian Parliament had worked out a satisfactory bill for the government of the colony that the nation was about to acquire, when the terms of the treaty of annexation submitted by the King made the speedy acquisition of the col- ony once more an uncertainty. The bone of contention was the so-called foundation of the Crown, the revenues of which, it was stipulated, should con- tinue to be applied to the uses for which the King had hitherto employed them. Such uses were described as “absolute- ly disinterested and patriotic,” consist- ing chiefly in the creation of imposing public orks in various Belgian cities and the support of charitable and edu- cational labors in the Congo. For him- self. the King asked “neither indemnity nor repayment,” though liberal pensions for various members of the royal family were demanded. It was also required that Belgium should continue the work- ing of the forests in the Foundation; this would mean the maintenance in some form or other of the system of forced labor. The majority in the Bel- gian Parliament might possibly have been driven by the party lash to accept the treaty, but the approaching general elections would have brought condign punishment, In this situation, the death of the Premier, M. Trooz, and the suc- cession of M. Schollaert, who accepted office free from conditions, have helped to hasten what promises to be an ac- ceptable compromise. That Sir Edward Grey’s recent forcible declarations in the House of Commons have also aided, we may readily assume. The struggle has been largely one of principle. Of the Congo’s 20,000,000 inhabitants, the Foundation of the Crown holds about 2,500,000, so that, at the worst, Belgium was getting control over fully seven- eighths of the region.
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142 The Nation. [Vol. 86, No. 2224 USING THE OFFICES. President Roosevelt has at last declar- ed himself against the use of Federal offices to control political committees and pack political conventions. He cites his own rule against such official med- dling, and writes, in his letter to Mr. Fouike, that “no officer will be permit- ted to violate the above injunction, with my knowledge.” It was not, however, until the proceedings of the Florida Re- publican Convention were telegraphed over the country, and peopte discovered that Government employees were neg- lecting their duties in order to go to St. Augustine and dictate the choice of of- ficeholders as delegates to the Chicago was not till then that thought it necessary to Convention—it the President act. His explanations on the subject of ap- | pointments in Mr. Taft's interest take up only a small part of his leiter. The real issue never lay in them. It was not asserted that they amounted to more than a handful. There were four Ohio postmasters. Senator Foraker asserted that they were named to promote Mr. Taft's candidacy; the President replies that they were duly recommended by Representatives. That is, obviously, not a logical contradiction. They m‘ght have been urged by Congressmen, and still intended to help Taft in his fight against the Ohio Senators. This matter we must leave for Senator Foraker to elucidate. As for the Wanmaker appointment in this city, the President defends it on the ground that it was recommended by the three Republican Congressmen from New York County. That, again, is not inconsistent with the fact that Wanmaker was made appraiser in or- der to aid Taft in New York. That this was the understanding of Taft's friends in Washington at the time, is indicated by a special dispatch to one of our zood Republican newspapers, stating in so many words that “his selection is looked on as intended to assist the Taft movement jin New York.” The President does not deny that Fed- eral officials have been working for Taft, or even that pressure may have been put upon them to that end; he merely says that “if In any such case the accusation is found true, it will have occurred without my knowledge.” Nothing is more probable than that over-zealous subordinates of the Presi- dent’s did what they thought would please him, though they did not tell him of it. The charges made by the Boston Herald in reference to the orders given Massachusetts postmasters to get delegates for Taft, were very explicit The orders may have been issued with- out the knowledge of the President; and if the matter is pressed to public de bate in the Senate, we may possibly get more details than Mr. Roosevelt was aware of. Past occurrences, however, are of less importance than future policy. Is the President really determined to put an end to the gross impropriety of office- holders controlling party conventions and choosing delegates? His answer to the charge that the Florida convent-:on was run by officeholders is singularly lame. The charge was made, he says, by “persons who wish to be put in of- fice.” Grant it; but what has that to do with the conduct of those who have been put in office? The rolls of the Flor- ida convention will show how many officeholders were present. It is known that three out of the four delegates elected were Federal officials. In v-ew of that fact, it is of no avail to point out the bad character of those who cb- ject to th's political use of the offices. The offices were unquestionably so used in Florida. As for Secretary Taft himself, he must look upon all this activity of South- ern officeholders with much repugnance. We know what he thought of its bale- ful political effects, from one of kis ut- terances before he was an active can- didate for the Presidency. Speaking in Greensboro, North Carolina, on Ju'y 9, 1906, he displayed, in dealing with the evil of a Republican party in the South run by officeholders, a frankness almost as great as in his arra‘gnment of Boss Cox, the previous year. Mr. Taft referred to the charge that there was no real Republican party in the South—nothing but “a little coterie of politic'ans who devote themselves sole- ly to the selection of delegates to the national convention, and whose whoe object is the securing of the Federal pationage’—and declared that it had “much force and truth.” He then went on to say to Southern Republicans: You can have no prospe*t of success and do not deserve success unless you show in the nominees of your conventions and in the men whom you put forward to lead you that you fully recognize the obligation that you are under as a party. You must convince the voters at the polls that you are not merely an office-seeking party. .. . I do not wish to seem ungracious, but |! must be candid. In my judgment, the Re- publican party of North Carolina would be much stronger as a voting party if all the Federal offices were filled by Demo- crats. The struggle for Federal p»- litical office, producing, as it does, jeal- ousies and and disappointments, paralyzes united effort to make the party strong at the polls and worthy of success. As long as the Republican party in the Southern States shall represent lit- tle save a factional chase for Federal of- fices, we may expect the present political conditions of the South to continue. strifes The man who spoke those pointed and honest words less than two years ago, cannot be entirely happy to see himself now made the beneficiary of the “fac- tional chase for Federal offices.” No one can suppose that Mr. Taft desires to be nominated for the Presidency by @ mercenary army of Southern office- holders, supported by delegates from a few Western States and the Territor‘es, while the great body of States that cast Republican electoral votes is against tim. For our part, we can conceive of no way in which he would more strengthen himself with the country than by coming out blunt y against the interference of Federal officeholders in politics, whether they be for him or against him. The whole thing is abhor- rent, and Mr. Taft ought to side with those who would exclude it utterly from our political life. SOCIALISM UNDER DEBATE. It is not necessary to connect the cap- ture of the English Labor party by the Socia ists with the rioting of the workmen in Berlin or the unrest among the masses in Portugal. The event, tak- en by itself, is of sufficient significance. At the conference of the party at Hull a resolution that the organization de- clare as its “ultimate object” the “over- throw of the present system” was first voted down by 951,000 votes to 91,000 (each delegate’s votes are proportioned to the membership of the society he rep- resents). The very next day, by a vote of 510,000 to 469,000, the conference adopted this resolution: That the time has arrived when the La- bor party should have as a definite object the socialization of the means of produc- tion and distributien and exchange, to be controlled by a democratic state in the in- terest of the entire community, and the complete emancipation of labor from the domination of capitalism and landlordism, with the establishment of social and eco- nomic equality between the sexes. If this be not radical enough to satisfy extremists, it is at any rate a pretty complete surrender to the Collectivists. Yet this step, which has excited so much comment in England and on the Continent, is in the direct path which the Labor party has long been tread- ing; for, though English workmen have lagged behind the Germans and the French in the movement toward Socia!- ism, they have kept well ahead of the Americans. Indeed, to many of the pol- ic‘es which were formerly denounced as socialistic, both of the old parties in England are more or less committed. With municipal lighting plants, for in- stance, which in this country are gen- erally regarded with disfavor, or at least with doubt, the English cities are experimenting freely. Government in- tervention between employers and em- ployed in settling disputes—as in the recent threatened railway strike—is ap- plauded by Conservative and Liberal politicians alike. Then, too, the leaders on both sides are bidding for the work- ingman’s vote by offering old-age pen- sions—something that in America would be looked upon as wildly socialistic. In fine, Englishmen of all political creeds
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Feb. 13, 1908] The Nation. have gone farther than Americans both in those socialistic projects in which the difficulty or impossibility of competi- tion offers an alternative between pri- vate and public monopoly, and in those which are largely supported by humani- tarian sentiment. Tre mere word So- cialbsm is ceasing to be a bugbear. Par- ty chieftains admit frankly that they are no longer afraid of the naked prin- ciple of Socialism. The only thing they ask is whether any particu’ar undertak- ing seems practicable and desirable in itself. The fear that it may be the sma!l end of the wedge seems less dis- turbing than on this side of the Atlan- tic. This attitude is, on the whole, typi- cal of the Eng-ish temper, with its con- tempt for abstract notions, doctrinaire views, and paper theory—the practical temper which Burke exhibited when he declared: It is a very great mistake to imagine that mankind follow up practically any specula- tive principle, either of government or of freedom, as far as it will go in argument or logical illation. We Englishmen stop very short of the principles upon which we support any given part of our Constitution or even the whole of it together. This temper of the English renders it doubtful whether the formal adoption of a resolution by the Labor conference will have at present any striking re- suit. The most ardent Socialist must see that the “socialization of the means of production and distribution and ex- change” is as far off as ever. The agi- taters for that end may be somewhat stimulated and encouraged, socialistic proposals may receive somewhat more attention in the public press; but for the great minority of the workmen— perhaps even a majority—old-age pen- sions seem likely to remain the goal for a long time to come. We are bound to admit, however, that a quickening of the socialist propaganda in England may also be reflected, even if faintly, in America; that lively discussion of so- cialistic ideas by English-speaking peo- ple on one side of the ocean may find some echo here—especially in a period of business depression. In the next dec- ade we shall probably hear a good deal about the beauties and benefits of a régime under which nobody is to be overworked and everybody is to be rich and happy. Convinced though we are that the reasoning of the socialists is fallacious, we incline to the belief that a socialist agitation may in the long run prove beneficial to this country. We were op- posed to the free coinage of silver, and yet we are convinced that the two great political campaigns in which that sub- ject was treated so fully in the press and on the platform were extremely valiable in their educational effect. Thousands, nay, millions, of men and women who had grown up without the slightest notion of economics in gener- al and finance in particular, became fairly well versed in the topic; they were made more intelligent and better citizens; and in the end they sustained the principle of sound money. In like manner €oc'a ism may be the means of widening intellectual horizons; it may lay before Americans a new view of some of the larger questions of life—far larger than the petty tenets of trades- unicnism. It may set us to thinking; and the salvation of a republic depends upen the efforts of its cit'zens to think seriously about its affairs. For one thing, Socialism is eminently a peace movement; it is steadi:y opposed te militarism; and it will thus help us to see more clearly the silliness cf the huge naval and military expenditure in which we seem bound to rival the groaun- ing nations of Europe. And as for oth- er cuestions—we cannot believe that er- ror will permanently prevail over truth. We are confident that individualism, in its main features, is the policy which has formed and which must preserve our institutions. But if we conserva- tives are m‘staken, we cannot but wel- come a discussion which shall open our eyes and set us right. Our attitude to- ward this topic, as toward any other which touches the vitals of our nation, must be that of readiness to defend our faith in open forum, to meet and con- quer reason with reason. CRIME AND THE READER. The popularity of police reports and detective fiction does not seem to be always understood. It has, however, a natural explanation. A saleslady sup- ping upon the horrors of the yellow press, and a FitzGerald regaling him self upon the Newgate Calendar, are satisfying the same normal appetite. For in the book of crime we all have the satisfaction of beholding our free and primitive selves in action. There is nothing to be said for vice; but kill- ing and stealing are robust acts which man has always condemned and men have always exulted in. So far as action is concerned, we have sold our birth- right, or rather we have come to a convenient agreement not to exercise it as individuals. Except in time of war, the killing of our neighbor and the ap- propriation of his goods are achieve- ments we deny ourselves for the tedious good of the greater number. But we are all potential sleuths, hard upon the trail of the individual offender, as well as potential jurymen, ready to find him guilty in view of all the evidence. Tom, Tom, the Piper’s son, stole a pig and away he run. Ten years at hard labor! Who killed Cock Robin? To the gal- lows with him, the dastard! So goes cheerfully up to heaven the chorus of husbands, fathers, and fellow-citizens. Yet every man-Jack of us has a sneak- ing sympathy for Tom, and a more or 143 less critical admiration for the mur- derer of that somewhat tiresome b'rd. Who is really insensib’e to the charm of this vicaricus activity?—every man in fancy his own murderer (or shall we say blood-avenger?), every man in his dreams net robbing a till, but heroical- ly bagging a Kohinoor. No wonder the fiction of crime is popular. Sensible persons, consequently, do not sneer at the detective story as an insti- tution any more than they sneer at mel- cdrama. These are, of course, special and highly developed forms of literary and dramatic expression. The candid mind has only to perceive what their function is, and how well they perform it, to clear itself of false shame in the enjoyment of them. They are equally conventional forms, but the laws which govern them are quite unlike. From the melodramatic point of view, crime is a monster of deadly mien, which to be hated needs but to be seen. It is held before the disapproving eyes of the spec- tator only that he may be properly pre- pared to gloat over its eventual payment of the price. Virtue is supposed to be the real mistress of our thoughts; it is our joyful duty to guard her honor from the lightest stain, and to concede to vice no single lineament of her. A heroine with a cigarette is as unthinkable as an adventuress without one. The villain cannot help wearing his hat over his eyes, and the hero could not do it if he tried. But if melodrama gratifies the jury- man in us, detective fiction appeals pri- marily to the old Adam. Or, rather, we are doubly involved in the affair. Moral- ly the criminal, intellectually we are the master mind which runs him down. It is an exciting game. We do not demand extraordinary novelty or ingenuity of ourselves in either réle. So far as the crime is concerned, the fact, the mode, can hardly be too simple. Recent prac- titioners have exercised a good deal of needless ingenuity in the matter. One huthor uses a snake, another a malarial mosquito, another a subtle gas caused to emanate from the stolid foliage of the harmless, necessary rubber-plant. All this is to paint the rose. The spoonful of rough-on-rats, the obtuse brick, or the bare bodkin serves perfectly well. And the fact of crime needs no particularly subtle garnishing of mystery to lure us on. A little confusion of clues and scents is all we require. Even the great Sherlock’s famous “deductive” method is mainly wonderful as we see it mirror- ed in the round eyes of the solemn ass Watson, and contrasted with the clumsy maneuvres of the idiots of Scotland Yard. His method, with all its pomp is the ageless method of keeping one’s eye peeled and adding two and two. The test is a test of common sense applied to uncommon data. One recalls the be- wildering multiplication of possible clues in “The Murders in the Rue Ae ne te ere ot eee ene Mae teen. Nera Dee ry SF ll Nan Sill STINE Pe Se ee ae
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144 The Nation. [Vol. 86, No. 2224 Morgue” by the various depositions at the coroner’s inquest. The man who gets to the bottom of the matter is the man who refuses to let his imagination lead him away from the few undisputed facts. The story, as it happens, is a little compromised-by the eventual dis- covery that there has been no crime at all. There is a certain pathos in hunt- ing down our man and finding him a monkey. After all, we have been de- frauded of our murder; it is not pleas- ant to have wasted the sympathy due to a fellow-being upon a mere brute. The true formula does not vary: the thing has been done, and the main questions are, Who did it? and, How do we know he did it? How he did it is a matter of secondary importance; and why he did it is a question the answer to which may be found in the bosom of any nat- ural man. DONALD G. MITCHELL. I. There was a time not so long ago when the “Reveries of a Bachelor,” and perhaps “Dream-Life,” stood on the shelf of every college sophomore, the gift of some gentle friend. "Twas a pretty custom, as if the donor with furtive fingers were knocking for admission into these mysterious mas- culine quarters, and would hint with sly bashfulness that a young bachelor’s idle thoughts should properly turn to matri- mony. Well, the sophomore and his maid, I am told, have grown a little ashamed of this peculiar form of sentimentality; yet the writer of the ““Reveries” may take confidence in denying, as he did in a re- cent Preface to his book, “that the boister- ous and scathing and rollicking humor of our time has blown all of pathos and all of the more delicate human sympathies into limbo.” I do not know certainly what author now acts as go-between for the tender approximations of youth—Dr. Henry van Dyke, I dare say, or some other li- censed caterer virginibus puerisque; the fashion of taste changes, and old favorites are discarded, but there remains the au- dience, “forever panting and forever young.” The real danger is that the name of “Ik Marvel,” the dreamer, should quite eclipse the more substantial author, for it is true that Mr. Mitchell, as he says rather plaintively, has “written very much better books, every way, since that time,” though the world of book-buyers will not hear it. Perhaps the handsome new edition of his works* will bring that fickle world to its senses. I hope so, for Mr. Mitchell represents that rare figure in American letters, the gentleman amateur, whom it is good to honor. Yet it must be confess- ed that a full half of his volumes are but tenuous things to stand against the trade-winds of oblivion. One cannot feel easy, for instance, about those six vol- umes of light talk on English and Ameri- can literature. One might recommend them as pleasant schooling for the young, were it not that Mr. Mitchell shows the ama- *The Works of Donald G. Mitchell. Edgewood Edition, in fifteen aon New York: rles 1907. Scribner's Sons. teur’s dread of stating simple facts. They presuppose too much knowledge for the be- ginner, and they are not solid enough crit- ically for the mature. Nor can one be quite sure of his fiction. I profess my- self able to read “Dr. Johns,” at least the greater part of it, with a kind of pious delight, but I am doubtful of its power over those who have not been baptized in the clear, cool springs of New Eng‘and tradition. Too many readers, I fear, will be like the sinner of the story, who wrote to the saintly minister from his wander- ings: I shall never forget the cheery joyous- ness of that little family scene at your fireside, the winning modesty and woman- liness of your lost Rachel, and the seren- ity and peace that lay about your house- hold. It was to me, fresh from the vices of Europe, like some charming Christian idyl, in whose atmosphere I felt myself not only an alien, but a profane intruder. The first half of the book is indeed a charming Christian idyl, belonging to that little backwater from the world’s current where frail plants open and send out their aroma and fade away in the still shade. It requires more intellectual abstinence than most of us possess to relish fully the savor of this old idealized New England. The passions of life have no place in this shel- tered retreat, and when in the course of events these break upon the scene the tale loses its amulet of reticence and becomes only futile. F II. It is by his more personal works Mr. Mitchell will be remembered for a while, by his chapters of European travel and his pictures of country life at Edgewood. He himse!f has told us how, when little more than a boy, he was called from working an old Connecticut farm to travel abroad. That was in the forties, when Longfellow’s “Hyperion” had set a new model for senti- mental reminiscences, and it was inevitable that the traveller on his return should shake out his note-books, kept religiously in shorthand, and give the world a volume of “Gleanings.” And the book is well worth reading to-day. France and Austria and Holland were still a land of discovery; it was still possible to wonder at the gay wicked life of the Parisians who had no knowledge of “our glorious Saxon home- spirit’; the roads of Illyria led even fur- ther into the kingdom of romance than they do now; and the Dutchman was always placid and steeped in tobacco. Your travel- ler was not ashamed to muse over a bunch of flowers given him by a pretty waiting- maid, as he was bold enough to confess that he had often “drained a good tankard of home-brewed, and felt [himself]—not a whit the worse for it” (only a dash could prepare the reader for the enormity of such a confession). Well, innocence for innocence, sentiment for sentiment, I prefer the sunay romance of Latin and Italian col- oring Mr. Mitchell’s memoirs to the neb- ulous fog of Teutonism that drifts through the pages of “Hyperion.” That is my foible, if you will, but the companion who can beguile me through Europe with scraps of the classical poets we learned at school, has made me his humble servant forever after. “The clouds thickened grad- ually into darkness,” says Mr. Mitchell at the beginning of his book, “for the sun was down;—ponto nov ineubat atra—black night brooded on the waters; the very half line came to me, as I sat hugging the low bulwarks, and gasping between the gusts.” With so Virgilian a comrade I protest I can cross even the Channel without bicker- ing. And how shall I quarrel with a friend who quotes Tacitus and Juvenal to me at Lyons; or at Vaucluse reminds me of “some heart-killing Laura in his Home- land” in the language of Petrarch—‘nelle medesime dolenti parole’; or excuses his surrender of alms to a pretty beggar-maid with the old tag, “Semper causa est, cur €go semper amem"’? We have lost this trick of easy, high-bred quotation, and the world is a shabbier place thereby. To go about with Virgil and Horace in one’s mind is to travel as a gentleman, and justifies a little contempt for the contemporaneity of the intellectual upstart. III. At the age of thirty-three, having travel- led extensively, and seen something of con- sular service, having, in orthodox fashion, jilted the law for literature, Mr. Mitchell bought an estate outside of New Haven and settled down for the rest of his life as a gentleman farmer. The result of this ex- perience we have in three slender volumes “Wet Days at Edgewood,” “My Farm at Edgewood,” and “‘Out-of-Town Places’’—by all odds his most successful literary work, because here the strain of amateurishness is the very pith and marrow of the theme, And the best of these is the first. One may cavil at his language sometimes, at his “ruralities’ and “ruralisms’—horrid words; one may wish that he showed more respect for our ignorance, and dealt more liberally with elementary facts, but, after all, what a delight it is to have so genial an exponent of this long line of farm and garden writers from Hesiod down to the authority of yesterday: In that corner of my library which im- mediately flanks the east window is bestow- ed a motley array of farm-books; there are fat ones in yellow vellum; there are pon- derous folios and stately dedications to some great man we never heard of; there are th.n tractates in ambitious type, which promised, fifty years and more ago [a hun- dred and more, now] to overset all the established methods of farming; there is Jethro Tull, in his irate way, thrashing all down his columns the effete Virgilian hus- bandry; there is the sententious talk of Cato, the latinity of Columella, and some little musty duodecimo, hunted down upon the quays of Paris, with such title as “Comes Rusticus”; there is the first thin quarto of Judge Buel’s “‘Cultivator’’—since expanded into the well-ordered stateli- ness of the “Country Gentleman”; there are black-letter volumes of Barnaby Googe, and books compiled by the distinguished “Captain Garvase Markhame”’; and there is Xenophon flanked by a Hesiod, and the heavy Greek squadron of the “Geoponics.” I delight immensely in taking an occasional wet-day talk with these old worthies. What names and what memories! How Barnaby Googe and Jethro Tull smack of the fat English soil; how deep a furrow of the mind has been left by the effete Virgilian husbandry! And there are other names that take their proper place in the papers that follow—Horace and all the poets who have retired from the city to their modus agri non ita magnus, even Boileau, who, according to his gardener, had no eyes for growing trees though he would have been keen enough for the crop if St. Augustine and St. Chrysostom had been planted; Italians of the Renaissance
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Feb. 13, 1908] The Nation. 145 who joined the arts of ploughing and of living; philosophers and exiled princes, and all who have gained the world by losing it. “To be a husbandman,” says Cowley, for whom Mr. Mitchell might have found a niche in his long gallery of honor—‘‘to be a husbandman is but a retreat from the city; to be a philosopher, from the world, or, rather, a retreat from the world as it is man’s into the world as it is God’s. But, since nature denies to most men the ca- pacity or appetite, and fortune allows but to a very few the opportunities or possi- bility of applying themselves wholly to philosophy, the best mixture of human af- fairs that we can make are the employ- ments of a country life. It is, as Colu- mella calls it, ‘Res sine dubitatione proxi- ma et quasi consanguinea sapientie—the nearest neighbor, or rather next in kin- dred, to philosophy.’ ” IV. It is not Mr. Mitchell’s literary cunning we admire so much, although he has shown considerable art in weaving together his own farm experiences with these studies of his forebears, and has weighted the whole with allusions to the civil war that, while he wrote, was calling our young men from the plough as it had taken them in the days of Virgil: Ne pueril, ne tanta animis assuescite bella, Neu partrie validas in viscera vertite vires. Yet it is not his art we admire so much as the life he describes. ‘‘Nature,” he says, summing up the profit of his labors, “has solemnized the marriage of the beautiful with the practical,” and inevitably we com- pare this union of practice and contempla- tion with the saunterings of Thoreau and Emeison and others, who desired the ro- manti. alone in nature and scorned la- borious days. The comparison of their books may be misleading, for the Concord men were far above our gentleman farmer in the persuasive use of words; to make the point clear we should turn rather to more authoritative names, such as Words- worth and Virgil. What, after all, is the lesson of the “Excursion,”” and how does it stand in naked veracity beside the “Georgics’”? How does that “virgin pas- sion of a soul, Communing with the glor- ious universe’’ measure against the Ro- man’s sober sense of toilsome duty? Words- worth has compressed his reading of life into one melodious stanza: One impulse from a vernal wood May teach you more of man, Of moral evil and of good, Than all the sages can— which, be it said with due respect, is good verse but literal folly. Nor does it yet appear a fact that idle wandering in the fields is better for a man’s soul than the discipline of Plato and Jesus. Certainly such is not the teaching of Virgil: Labor omnia vicit Im probus, et duris urgens in rebus egestas. . Omnia quae muito ante memor provisa repones, Si te digna manet divini gloria ruris. We are but durum genus, sprung from the soil, and only through harsh labor and faithful hoarding of experience shall we make our own the glory of the divine coun- try. Vv. And so I return to our lesser philosophers o: New England and say boldly that more of the true wisdom of nature is to be found in Mr. Mitchell's story of Edgewood than in “Walden.” I know the canniness of Emerson’s “Apology”: Think me not unkind and rude That I walk alone in grove and glen; I go to the god of the wood To fetch his word to men. One harvest from thy field Homeward brought the oxen strong; A second crop thine acres yield, Which I gather in a song. But is the implication really sound? Nay. I doubt that the honest ploughman may carry back from the fields, buried deep in his heart and unexpressed, a masculine acquaintance with natural law such as the gazing rhapsodist shall never possess. Per- haps, as a child of the city, I may be barred out from judging these high matr- ters. Yet I too have had my share of Thorellian vagabondage—who has not ip these days?—and have even relived in humbler fashion the experiment of Walden. I know how easy it is to wander by the river’s brink, meditating on the eternities, or to discover gospels in the chalice of a flower. Doubtless these solitary commun- ings with nature are a desirable antidote to the fever of the world; they have their incalculable reward, but their very facility is a warning not to trust them too far. For my part, I shall suspect always that, failing the initiation of plough and harrow, I have still come short of the greater mys- teries. It is something to observe idly the miracles of spring, but I read the opening of the “Georgics’” and know how far this is from the joy of feeling one’s self a part- ner in the great task of renovation. It is something to watch with unconcern the tempestuous glory of the clouds, but again I remember the storm in Virgil and know how different are the emotions of one who spells his prosperity or ruin in the por- tents of the sky. Alas, labor improbus! it is not facile enthusiasm alone, bui the curse-born sweat of the brow that shall at last bring a man into barmony with the stern realities of nature. And even where unremitting toil benumbs the fancy to the dulness of the day, there is left the whole- some instinct of the earth. Mr. Mitchell himself reduces this virtue to the lowest point: Rural life offers charming objects of study; but to most minds it does not offer the promptings for large intellectual exer- tion. It ripens healthfully all the receptive faculties; it disposes to that judicial calm- ness of mind which is essential to clear- ness and directness of vision; but it does not kindle the heat of large and ambitious endeavor. Hence we often find that a man who has passed the first half of his life in comparative isolation, cultivating his re- sources quietly, unmoved by the disturb- ances and the broils of civic life, will, on transfer to public scenes, and stirred by that emulation which comes of contact with the world, feel all his faculties lighted with a new glow, and accomplish results which are as much a wonder to himself as to oth- ers. We go out, poor children of the city, to scamper up the mountain paths or loiter on the seashore, or mayhap, being country- bred, we make a profession of studying and discoursing nature. But never in this way, I believe, shall we possess the strength and silent instinct of the soil that are nur- tured by working with the forces of earth and air, or the deeper yet still unuttered understanding that rewards such labor when crowned by observation and reading. I do not know the full story of Mr. Mitch- ell’s own life, or how far he has shared the common lot of evil and disappointment in his eighty-five years; I should not care to knock at the door of Edgewood and beg his acquaintance, for, gentle to all the rest of the world, he bristles with irascibility at the mere mention of editor or critic; but it is impossible to think of him otherwise than as rich in content, enjoying the har- vest of a well-ploughed mind, sitting at this moment, it may be, amid his many books of husbandry, by the window that looks out over his farm, over the spires and belfries of New Haven, to the gleaming line of water and the lighthouse yonder upon the point. May we not once more, in tak- ing leave of Mr. Mitchell, make use of the poet he has himself so often quoted, and liken his state to that of Virgil’s old man of Tarentum who, in the possession of a few acres of exacting land, equalled in spir- it the wealth of kings. P. E. M. [— Correspondence. THE HILPRECHT CASE AGAIN. To THE EpITOR OF THE NATION: Sir: Your editorial of January 23, on the Hilprecht case, is much to the point, but, if you will permit me to say so, it is in one respect beside the point as far as the “signers” are concerned. As one of those who signed the memorial to Professor Hil- precht, and also as an officer of the Ameri- can Oriental Society, I should like to em- phasize the following facts before supple- menting your editorial with a suggestion which would, if carried out, settle the whole “Hilprecht case’ in a week. The first fact is that the American Oriental Society has taken no action whatever in regard to the controversy or investigation. Whatever has been said and written by members has been said or written by them as individuals, unofficially united in a group for the pur- pose of writing to Professor Hilprecht, but at no time as representatives speaking in the name of the society or of its directors. The second fact is, to the signers of the letter, also one of importance. You say in your editorial that “the report of the trus- tees exonerating Professor Hilprecht has generally been regarded as a mere piece of whitewashing.”” However the report may be regarded by others, the signers of the letter to Professor Hilprecht have no quar- rel with the University of Pennsylvania, or any wish to imply that the trustees there- of did not do their moral duty as they saw it. They neither have made nor do make any charges against any member of the trustees or against the trustees as a body. Their matter is with Professor Hilprecht alone. From him they still desire satisfac- tory answers to their queries. Professor Hilprecht now purposes to pub- lish a volume upon the subject. But, as your editorial very truly says, “the easier and more direct way would be for Professor Hilprecht to prepare an explicit answer to the specific questions covering the main is- sues.”” You do not formulate the questions that have been asked; the public has doubt- less forgotten them. But they are short + emer, Se ee ae Ce “eve on = ES etn
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The Nation. [Vol. 86, No. 2224 and easy questions to answer, and it is to be feared that, in publishing a great mass of extraneous matter on the history of the case, Professor Hilprecht may lose sight of the main and that the voluminous material may of itself blind the eyes of the publi« fact that all that is required of Professor Hilprecht is to answer to the best of these and easy issues, to the his ability short questions: (1.) Were pur? 2.) Were they not purchased or found elsewhere, and at a time prior to 1900? (3.) Were they not published by Professor Hilprecht as Nippur finds of 1900? (4.) Were not the boxes of finds at Nip- pur boxed up prior to the arrival of Pro- fessor Hilprecht as director in 1900? (5.) If boxed up prior to Professor Hil- precht's arrival, in March, 1900, why has Professor Hilprecht published accounts im- plying that he had previously seen them, and that he was present when they were found? the tablets, etc., found at Nip- It is not a question of the evristence of a library at Nippur. The question is only in regard to Professor Hilprecht’s method in establishing such a library's existence, and in regard to his own part in the dis-, covery. He has used as matter illustrative of the contents of the Nippur library cer- tain tablets, not one of which came from the site of the What did Professor Hilprecht mean exactly, when he declared that he purchased at Nippur the “letter to which was really purchased else at Bagdad? Professor Hilprecht must see that he stands under a very dark cloud of suspicion, and that equivocation and evasion are not the means to lighten it. This is no local issue. There has been no combination of scholars to at- tack of their number. The signers of the letter to Professor Hilprecht represent American scholarship. The scholars of both Europe and America would rejoice to have definite answers to the definite questions addressed to him; they do not want to be- that an able Oriental scholar has rep- found at one represented library Lushtamar,”’ by some one one liev things which were place as found at another; things as found at Nippur which had been The publication of stout volume will not do nor will it do Professor Hilprecht any good. A brief reply to each of the specific ques- resented bought before. irreley years ant matter in a these scholars any good, speci fic tions asked would not take long to prepare. To the ago no There is no need of many words. asked satisfactory to two Oriental nearly any questions years reply scholar has ever been given. E. WASHBURN HOPKINS. Yale Un'versity, February 1 THE WORD “BENDS.” To THe Epiror or THE NATION: Sir: I think I can answer the inquiry of your correspondent in your issue of January 30, regarding the origin of the word “bends,” as applied to caisson dis- ease In 1869-72 the three pliers of the famous Bads (now called St. Louis) bridge were sunk Though not the first, they were at that time the deepest sunk on the pneu- matic principle, and the caisson disease was then first closely observed and in- telligently treated. The physiological ef- fects of the air pressure in the caisson manifested themselves only when the men I was then the gen- and reached the open air. eral manager of the bridge company, had amp'’e opportunity to notice the mer so affected As they came up they would. with a suffering expression in their faces hold their hands against their stomach bend over, and, in a curved attitude,- walk siowly and painfully to shore. At that period there was a fashion among the women to walk with a bend, heads and shoulders thrown forward, and to empha- size this attitude by a tightening of the skirts across the knees and by wearing 4 wire cushion, stuffed and covered with va- rious materials, called a “bustle.” This fashion of walking was derisivelv called the “Grecian Bend.” Our workmen those who were well, when they saw one of their comrades coming up with the de- scribed symptoms of caisson disease, would laughingly exclaim: “He has got the Gre- cian Bend!” amd, for years, so long as the sinking of the piers lasted, the disease re- tained its popular designation as “Grecian Bend.” As these expert workmen migrat- ed and went to other bridges, tunnels, and submarine work, they carried that name along with them, only, in the course of time, dropping the “Grecian” and retaining only the “bend.” Prof. C. M. Woodwar’. the engineer historian of the Eads bridge speaks, in the caisson chapters, of this disease, its origin, and treatment, as “com monly called the Grecian Bend.” = = St. Louis, February 1. “PIERCE PENNILESS.” To THE EpiTror oF THE NATION: Sir: An English proverb, one of many in John Lydgate’s “Order of Fools,” fur- nishes a possible clue to the name of Pierce Penniless in Thomas Nash’s satire (1592), entitled, “Pierce Penniless, His Supplication to the Divell” (printed by Col- lier, Grosart, and in the recent Oxford edi- tion 1902-5). The proverb runs (line 104): Purs penylees in plees may never thee. The “purse penniless” of the proverb may have Penniless,”” on the analogy of “Piers Plowman.” It should be remembered that the old pronunciation of Pierce is identical with purse, as Is the New England family name, still pronounced like purse. HENRY NOBLE beccme “Pierce shown in MACCRACKEN. Oxford, January 28 “PRACTICAL” STUDIES FOR WOMEN. To THE EpIToR or THE NATION: Str: Mer I revert once more to the question of women's education, in order to illustrate the utterance cf a sage by the remark of a babe and suckling? At a recent convention in Boston, Presi- dent Eliot, while courteously admitting that women faint no more men in pursuing the same college studies, prophe- sied that in the future they are rather to direct their attention to courses which will nurture and to their own or than properly to either enable them admonish children, those of other people. I have recently been making a visit in a small town in Maine. There I met a wo- man whose father was a day laborer, whose husband is a carpenter, and who has four very young children. She belongs to a club, which studies with genuine diligence, and at present is devoting two winters to French history. I said to her that I thought it was wonderful that, with her family of babies, she could find time to write papers and to read so many books. Her sur- prised answer put me to shame: “But it is just because of my children that I must read. I am determined that they shall not have to look for such pleasures outside of their home as I have had to.” In this country most fathers are forced by their occupations to spend the greater part of each dey away from their homes, leaving to mothers the more intimate com- panionship with their children. The re- sults of such companionship must be men- tal as well as physical, if the American home is to become the cradle of American citizenship. Precisely because many of us agree with President Eliot that to women chiefly is entrusted the care of the rising generation, we should deplore the entrance into their colleges of child study, and die- tary courses, to the exclusion of Greek and astronomy, of history and literature. Man does not live by bread and milk alone. ANNE C. E. ALLINSON. Providence, R. 1., January 3. COLLEGE MEN IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS. To THE EpItoR OF THE NATION: Str: Your correspondent “Elres,” in the Nation of January 9, has set forth among other things the usual doctrine concerning the preparation of teachers for the public schoois. It is quite true, as he says, that in the elementary school the child recites in all subjects to one teacher, usually a woman, and that the youth in the high school recites in each subject to a dif- ferent teacher, who is a college graduate and, more and more commonly, a man. At least this is the goal toward which the bet- ter public schecols seem to have been for a long time striving. Now it seems to me extremely important that this doctrine that only college grad- uates should be permitted to give instruc- tion in the last four grades of a public school while anybody may teach in the eight grades below should never be urged in such fashion as to make a college man consider himself out of place in elemen- tary work if he feels a call to it and the community is willing to retain such super- ior service. Formerly many college-bred men (always meaning men and women) were found in the rural and elemeatary schools, from which they are deplorably absent now. In my youth I attended a district school in which, in addition to the “three’ R's,” geometry and Latin were taught, and usually by a college graduate. In a neighboring city there were at that time more teachers of college training in the elementary schools than there are to- day, although population and wealth have increased nearly eight-fold. I refer dis- tinctly to teaching and not to school ad- ministration. The late lamented Prof. William Harold Payne, in his “Contributions to Education” (Harpers, 1886), was one of the earlier writers in this country to urge a speciali- zation of function among public school teachers. His discussion of this question had a curious practical result in the West,
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Feb. 13, 1908] The Nation. 14:7 not, I am sure, anticipated or desired by him. It had, of course, little effect upon the high school corps, which had always, and properly, been recruited from the col- leges, but it made college men feel out of place in the rural or the elementary schools where they had previously been found in considerable numbers. I kept for a time a large bundle of letters from col- lege-bred people who were bewildered and offended by this attitude toward ele- mentary instruction which they had pre- viously thought honorable and had found remunerative and congenial. Abundant Statistics go to show that about this time college men began to withdraw from this field, with a consequent relative decline in the consideration and salary accorded to elementary teaching. It is true that the ease would be greatly improved if, with “Elres,”’ we could divide the twelve grades of a public school into two departments instead of the three at present generally recognized. We need college men in the high school not so much on account of their superior information, though this is important, as for their broader views, higher ideals, and finer temper. And the lower schools need the same kind of men—at least enough to set the pace—for the same reason. Our elementary schools have many excellences, but are wanting in tone. The teachers are devoted but often need the authority and social acceptance, such as a residence at college would give. Even if we take up that great unsolved problem of the public school as a preparatory school we but em- phasize the same view. For it is the pub- lic school as a whole and not the high school alone which prepares for college. The main objections made against the pub- lic school as a preparatory school have reference to the elementary work. Men- tion is made of poor English, low ideals, bad habits of study, and general slovenli- ness of work which are intolerable to an educated man and which only educated men can drive out. A concerted effort to im- prove the tone of all grades of our public schools is in order if they are to hold thelr place as preparatory schools. E. A. STRONG. Ypsilanti, Mich., January 28, Notes. Little, Brown & Co. announce for this spring the second and concluding volume of “The Victorian Chancellors,” by J. B. Atlay. From the same house will come “In Greece with the Classics,” by W. A. Gard- ner. “A Good Shepherd and Other Sermons,” by the Rev. W. R. Huntington, D.D., rector of Grace Church, New York, is to be reis- sued by Thomas Whittaker in a cheap and popular form. The official life of the seventh Duke of Rutland, the Lord John Manners of politi- cal annals, is to be written by Charles Whibley. This promises to be a work of con- siderable interest, as Mr. Whibley writes with a light hand. Another biography un- der way is of Alexander Pope by Miss E. M. Symonds (“‘George Paston’’), whose last work was a life of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Both writers ask permission to copy any unpublished documents pertaining te their themes. M. Sturge Henderson’s study of “George Meredith: Novelist, Poct, Reformer” (Scribner’s) offers further evidence of what every reader with his nose to the wind must have felt for some time, that Mere- dith is rapidly displacing Browning as the advanced prophet of literature. And the large amount of space given by Mr. Hen- derson to Meredith’s poetry adds cogency to such an estimation of the running of the two rates. ‘‘Meredith, however,’ says our critic, “twenty, thirty, and forty years ago, sought to give poetical express'on to ideas which are only now dawning upon the general consciousness, and which will! only be common property twenty, thirty, forty years to come.”” Such a statement, one must admit, is a little discomfiting to meet in a book of criticism. It raises ex- pectations of some recondite philosophy which, when mastered, will throw a burst of light on the dark tangle of human fate. Naturally disappointment ensues when this esotoric doctrine is found to be only our old friend—or perhaps in things spiritual, enemy—evolution. Earth, in Meredith's scheme, is a mystic symbol for the union of man and nature, man rising by grades of progress from his animal instincts to the dominion of mind, yet, on peril of los- ing health and strength, carrying with him the source from which he springs. It should really seem to need no Daniel to unravel such a metaphysic. Yet the insistence on this philosophy tends, against the desire of the critic, to exaggerate the weak side of Meredith—and of Browning—as a writer. His novels, and to an even greater degree his poems, lose in artistic effect becaust their intellectual intention, whether pro found or superficial, predominates over in stinctive perception and imagination. To dwell overmuch on this aspect of his work is thus to lead the reader to ask why he should have chosen the forms of art for his medium. For those, however, who feel no inhibition to their spontaneous pleasure in such an analysis, Mr. Henderson's study may be heartily recommended. It is thor- oughly informed and cleverly executed. Nor with all his admiration does he fail to ob- serve and note the deficiencies in Meredith as an artist. Thus, he concludes: It argues no lack of appreciation of this rich intellectual endowment to say that, when Meredith's achievement is estimated as a whole, it occupies a secondary place. His inspiration appears to lie in his poetic grasp, the intensity of realization witn which he holds to the main issue and keeps it living, in defiance of the tangles of com- plexity he is for ever weaving every side of it, and which might have been expected to prove fatal to the life within. Two doctoral theses of the English de- partment of Columbia University (publish- ed by The Macmillan Co.) deserve notice both for the value of the material brought together and, to a certain extent, for their quatities of judgment. One is a study of “Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Litera- ture,”” by Margaret Ball, a thorough ex- amination of that writer’s work from a point of view commonly neglected. Her chapter showing the position of Scott mid- way between the school of Jeffrey and Gif- ford and that of the new romanticists is judicious, if not very illuminating. The other study, by Lillie Deming Loshe, turns to “The Early American Novel,”’ and dis- cusses the fiction produced in this country from 1789 (the date of Sarah Wentworth Morton’s “Power of Sympathy’’) to 1830, when Cooper was in full swing. Apart from Cooper the most notable figure in this period is Charles Brockden Brown, whose novels are here analyzed and appraised with candor and discrimination. Kent, as one of the ancient gateways into England, is sufficiently rich in historic as- sociations, but there needs only a glance through Walter Jerrold’s “Highways and Byways in Kent” (The Macmillan Co.), with its names of famous authors on every page and its innumerable verse quotations, to see how the literary interest dominates over everything in this respect. No county of England is richer. At the very begin- ning is the Canterbury of Chaucer and Dickens. Allington Castle is famous for the Wyatts, one of whom, Sir Thomas, introduced the Italian manner into Eng- land, and is thus the father of the English literature which we are read- ing to-day. Gadshill brings up Shake- speare and Dickens; Penshurst _ still preserves the glorious memories of the Sid- neys; Boughton Malherbe was the birth- place and always the spot beloved of that diplomat and scholar, Sir Henry Wotton; Deal was the home of Elizabeth Carter; Tunbridge Wells introduces us to half the society and wit of the eighteenth century; Tappington is the country of the “Ingolds- by Legends’”—such names might be multi- plied indefinitely. Nor are quaint tradi- tions of the soil and the pageantry of kings and tragic queens lacking to fill out the picture. All this Mr. Jerrold has treat- ed with the fulness and fine reminiscent flavor that have made the Highways and Byways series unique among books of travel and description. The illustrations, from drawings by Hugh Thomson, if they have not the topographical exactness of the usual photographic reproductions, possess in themselves a value for the eye, and fit in as a real part of the text. We have praised volumes of this series before, and take pleasure in announcing each new one that appears. There is large diversity of interest in Scotland’s western river as it wanders a clear stream among the hills, flows by the polluted banks of Glasgow, and broadens into the firth. Of this diversity Neil Munro has taken advantage in writing “The Clyde” (The Macmillan Co.), to make a book in which descriptions of nature, re- miniscences of old castles, and glimpses of modern industry follow in quick suc- cession. The colored illustrations are from paintings by Mary Y. and J. Young Hunter. They are of the character to which we have become so well accustomed in these picture books—at times clear and almost beautiful, at times a mere daub of crude colors. The series of Calendars of the Letter Books of the City of London, which Dr. Reginald R. Sharpe has been editing since 1885. has recently been increased by the publication of a new volume, “Letter Book H, Temp. Richard II.” The original vol- umes, thus in process of calendaring, are preserved to-day in the records depart- ment of the Town Clerk’s Office in the Guildhall, and consist of more than fifty manuscript letter books, A to ZZ, 1275-1688. O80 oe rer sg Rene
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148 The Nation. [Vol. 86, No. 2224 Their chief value rests on the fact that they begin about 140 years before the Jour- nals of the Common Council and about 220 years before the Repertories of the Court of Aldermen, and contain almost the only remaining records of these courts prior to the commencement of such journals and re- pertories. They are written on vellum in Latin, Norman-French, and English, and consist of entries of a miscellaneous char- acter, chiefly relating to the City and com- panies. Extracts from the first nine letter books were published in 1868 by Riley in his “Memorials of London and London Life in the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Centuries,” a publication of value, but man- ifestly incomplete. The present series is definitive in that it calendars all the entries without omission. We understand, however, that it is to be discontinued as soon as the period of the Journals and Repertories is reached. The volumes as a whole relate chiefly to the history of the City of London in the Middle Ages, but at times throw light on the history of the kingdom. Letter Book H covers a period of twenty-four years, 1275 to 1399, and furnishes important evi- dence for the policy of London during the reign of Richard II. and the struggle of the factions supporting Richard and John of Gaunt respectively. In fact, the volume becomes almost an indispensable aid to an understanding of certain phases of the his- tory of the Good Parliament, the condem- ration of Lyons and other aldermen, the rise of Nicholas Brembre, and the move- ment which cost Richard the support of the City. On the other hand, it is provok- ingly silent on many important matters that should have found mention in the orig- inal texts. Such omissions are manifestly due to intention as well as to silence, for in these volumes are traces of mutilation which are clearly the work of hostile fac- tions. Blank leaves seem to indicate also that further entries were planned, but never made Dr. Sharpe’s introduction, which deals solely with the contents of this volume, is a notable contribution to the history of Richard’s reign. The “History of the Society of Jesus in North America, Colonial and Federal,” by Thomas Hughes (Cleveland: Burrows Bros.), forms a section of the great series undertaken by Catholic authority and hav- ing for its object a complete history of early Jesuit activity throughout the world. This will account for the fact that Father Hughes's volumes, of which two have ap- peared, are more limited in scope than the title would indicate. For they are confined to English-speaking North America, ex- cluding the Spanish and French Jesuits, and including Canada only since the Eng- lish occupation. Thus narrowed in com- pass, the story of the first volume concerns only Maryland, and is related only to the year 1645. In the second volume are “Documents,” from 1605 to 1838, applying to the early history of the missions and to the Jesuit property and its uses in the Maryland and Pennsylvania missions. The materials are drawn almost wholly from Jesuit sources, and the author confesses that a history of the English Jesuit pro- since should first have been published, to which these volumes would have made a fitting continuation. Technically, the most interesting chapters are those which are based on the Jesuit archives, hitherto so little known or used. These archives are imperfect; for the policy of silence adopt- ed by the society has prevented publica- tion, and the persecutions endured have involved extensive losses. It must be ad- mitted that the author has added compara- tively little to what was already known of the first years of Maryland’s settle- ment; and the many controversies involv- ed in the purpose and methods of that ven- ture have frequently led him off the main track. Hume, Paley, Blackstone, and Hal- lam he criticises with some show of feel- ing, and a few modern writers on Mary- land he severely condemns. In a history intended to be “authentic” such animad- versions are misplaced. To Cecil Balti- more no commendation is given. He in- vited the priests to go to the settlement, but made no provision for them; he com- pelled the Indians, for whom he did no- thing, to contribute to his chapel; and he was tricky in his treatment of the fathers and the church property—an “intense feu- dalist for his own benefit.” The charter and acts of the first assemblies are ex- amined minutely to show how hostile Bal- timore and his secretary, Lewger, were to the Jesuit interests. The charge that negro slavery was first introduced into Maryland by the Jesuits is stoutly com- bated. From E. P. Dutton & Co. we have Robin- son Smith’s “English Quotations,” arrang- ed by authors chronologically. It is most- ly verse, only a few prose quotations be- ing included from Bacon, Carlyle, and one or two others. Nor is it quite in the style of the ordinary quotation book, being rather a collection of “elegant extracts.” The poetical value of a passage has more weight with the editor than proverbial portability. As such the pages of the vol- ume may be turned over with unflagging interest. The latest edition of Burke’s “Peerage, Paronetcy, and Knightage’’—published by Harrison & Sons, London, and distribut- ed here by G. P. Putnam’s Sons—is a vol- ume of bulk and weight duly suggestive uf the vast accumulation of more or less solid tonors, of which it furnishes, on the whole, the most authentic record. With its various prefaces, all packed with information use- ful to the student of artificial social grada- tions, it contains more than 2,800 pages, filled with double columns of small and close type. Therein may be found the ful- lest particulars of the family and standing of every British subject distinguished from his fellows by any sort of title, prefix, or addition. Inasmuch as all the pedigre2s printed have been compared with all avail- able public and private records, and have been submitted to the persons most con- cerned, there is no reason to doubt the:r substantial accuracy. “The Peerage,” in- deed, of Sir Bernard Burke has been ac- cepted for many years as a final authority or such matters, and is invaluable, of course, not only to the mere worshippers otf rank and fashion, but often to the historical student It is a monument of patient research and skilful arrangement, as well as of human vanity. It is a pity that Horace Bleackley, in writing his “Story of a Beautiful Duchess” (E. P. Dutton & Co.) did not display as much taste as industry. Nothing is more extraordinary in the anecdotal history of the eighteenth century than the sudden burst upon English society of the two beau- tiful Gunnings, Irish girls of no particular extraction, of whom one, the sprightly and eapricious Maria, became Countess of Coventry, and the other, the stately and pensive Elizabeth, became successively Duchess of Hamilton and of Argyle, andjust missed by the turn of a lawsuit being the mother of a Duke of Douglas as well. Mr. Bleackley has undertaken to follow Eliza- beth through her whole career, and to this end he has caught all the epistolary gossip of the age in his net. And he has gone further than that: in examining the files of the newspapers which lived on the dis- semination of scandal, he has opened a practically unexplored field for this kind of biography so much affected at present. Scme of the information thus obtained may seem too trivial for repetition, yet, granting the genre, one cannot well blame the writer for carrying out its motive to the logical end. If we are to have a description of the masquerade given at the Pantheon, Feb- ruary 18, 1773, and of the meeting there of the Duchess’s daughter and the “squat round-faced Lord Stanley” (whence an Iliad of woes), it is well to have that description fortified by details from the Town and Country Magazine of the day. And again if we are to read about the rupture that broke the marriage of that ill-assorted couple, we may as well have the scandalous rumors spread by the Morning Post, the Rambler's Magazine, and the Town and Country. At least these details make the society of the day a living, if not always a decorous, reality. Our quarrel is rather with Mr. Bleackley’s literary art. He can never mention one of the Gunnings but she is “lovely,” “fair,” or “beautiful”; his own comments on the life of the times are too often flat and sentimental; he is capable of “sinking” in bathos so far as to say: “The shining cloudland, wreathed by fable around the creatures of the past, invests them with an immortality which the charm of mystery must always allow.” It is a pity, we repeat, that honest industry should be marred by such ill taste. So many arecdotal memoirs of the eighteenth cen- tury are turned out these days upon the most superficial preparation that we should be glad to commend more heartily a book that is at least thoroughly documented, and, in its substance, not without human value, “The Life of George Matheson, D.D.,” by D. Macmillan (New York: A. C. Arm- strong & Son), is a most stimulating book. While it is full of lessons for every one, it appeals especially to the young men or women who, laboring under some great rhysical infirmity, feel that for them an actively useful life is an impossibility. It ie the story of a Scotchman who became practically blind at eighteen, yet when he died in 1906, at the age of sixty-four, was the most distinguished man in the Scotch pulpit, and had received the highest acade- mic honors his countrymen could confer on him. For thirty-one years, thirteen of them in one of the largest parishes in Edinburgh, he discharged all the duties of a minister, pulpit and pastoral. He also wrote twenty-two books on de- votional, theological, and philosophica}) subjects, besides being a constant con- tributor to the magazines. His publish-
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Feb. 13, 1908] The Nation. 149 ed works have had a world-wide circula- tion, one of them, “The Spiritual Develop- ment of St. Paul,” having been translated into Chinese. To his brilliant qualities as a preacher and writer he added those of a poet. In almost every hymnal in the Eng- lish language is to be_ found the hymn which he said “came to me spontaneously, without conscious effort,” after most severe mental suffering, “O Love, that wilt not let me go.” His biographer gives a charm- ing picture of the man who bore his bur- den lightly, gallantly, to the end; a man whose life is perhaps best described in his own words when taking leave of his con- gregation: I think that next to the strength of God, and next again to your kind coéperation, I was indebted to my own weakness. .. . My life has been level with your own—an cbstructed life, a circumscribed life, but a life of boundless sanguineness, a life of quenchless hopefulness, a life which has beat persistently against the cage of cir- cumstance. Treatises on homiletics are often of no great depth or value, but an exception must be made in favor of “The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul: His Ministerial Ideas,” by the Rev. W. Edward Chadwick, an Anglican clergyman of Northampton, England, (imported by Charles Scribner’s Sons). The principles, methods, and spirit of the evangelizating endeavors of the great Apostle are submitted to careful ex- amination with a view to securing counsel for ministerial activity in the present day. The temptation in this sort of essay is to let one’s feeling for present needs domin- ate his research into the work of the ex- emplar, but Dr. Chadwick has evidently studied Paul first, and subsequently appli- ed conscientiously to present needs the principles discovered. The treatise is none the less practical because it is in the first instance a careful piece of Christ- ian biography. Students of the New Testament will re- member a treatise of singular fascination and ability entitled “Silanus the Christian,” by Edwin A. Abbott, in which imaginary characters of the second century discuss the problems presented by early Christian life and literature. A sequel to that volume now appears, “Apologia: an Explanation and Defence” (The Macmillan Co.), in which Dr. Abbott replies to his critics, both friendly and hostile, and endeavors to clear away misunderstandings which have arisen in regard to his position. His answers are straightforward and plain, but doubtless many will still be unable to comprehend how he can retain his faith in ‘“‘the eternal unity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and in the supernatural but non- miraculous incarnation of Jesus as the Son of God,” while refusing credence in the miraculous element of the Bible. Further volumes, “Notes on New Testament Criti- cism” and “Indices to Diatessarica,” are promised for the near future. In February, 1906, at the close of the third Babylonian expedition of the Univer- sity of Pennsylvania, Dr. John Henry Haynes dug up at Nippur, within the tem- ple area on the northwest side of the ziggurat, or step pyramid of the temple, a fine kudurru, or boundary stone, of Nebu- chadnezzar I., dating from about the mid- dle of the twelfth century B. c., and re- cording a grant of land to a certain priest connected with the worship of the god Nusku. This stone appears not to have been set originally upon the land granted, as was the ordinary use, but to have been deposited in the temple at Nippur, where the grantee was a high official. In addi- tion to the ordinary contents of a kudurru stone—namely, the divine symbols, an ac- count of the circumstances under which the land was granted, a description of the land, a warning against appropriation of the land by any other than the owner, or any interference with the privileges of the owner, an invocation of the gods to mete out punishment to offenders against the warning, curses upon any one removing or destroying the stone itself,and the names of witnesses and date of grant—this stone has two interesting and peculiar features: a map of the land granted and a hymn to Ellil, the Bel, or chief god of Nippur, pre- sumably taken from the liturgical collec- tions of hymns in use at the Nippur tem ple. This stone has been published by tne Rev. Dr. William J. Hinke, assistant pro- fessor in Auburn Theological Seminary, and made by him the basis of a discussion of Babylonian boundary stones in general, in Vol. IV., Series D, of the Publications of the Babylonian Expedition of the Uni- versity of Pennsylvania, under the title “A New Boundary Stone of Nebuchadnezzar I. from Nippur.” It is the fullest discussion up to date of this peculiar class of monu- ment, which seems to have originated with the Cassite dynasty of Babylonia, and to have been almost confined to the Cassite period. The volume contains fifty-one il- lustrations of boundary stones, the sym- bols on those stones, inscriptions, and the like. Somewhat more than one-third of the entire volume is devoted to a concord- ance of names, persons, places, rivers, de- ities, and symbols contained in the boun- dary stones heretofore published, and a glossary of the kudurru inscriptions in gen- eral. Only ten years have elapsed since Prof. Morris Jastrow of the University of Penn- sylvania published his “Religion of Baby- lonia and Assyria,” but in the interval so much has been added to our knowledge in this field that the author already regards his work as antiquated. Accordingly, when a German publisher proposed a translation, Professor Jastrow found himself obliged to rewrite the book, with the exception of the introductory chapters. The German ver- sion, “Die Religion Babyloniens und As- syriens” (Giessen: Alfred Tépelmann), has in the process of revision been much en- larged, principally by more specimens of the religious literature, especially the prayers, lamentations, oracles, hymns, and magical formule. The original English work was contained in a single thick vol- ume, of almost 800 pages. The German translation is to consist of three volumes, of which the first, 552 pages (the work has been published in parts), was completed more than a year ago, while of the second volume considerably more than half is in the hands of subscribers. In Part xi., just delivered, the author describes his aim tobe not to give a history of the Babylonian-As- syrian religion, but ‘“‘a picture of our pres- ent knowledge of that religion.”” This part continues the treatment of oracles and omens, begun in Part x. These were mat- ters of prime importance in the religious practice of both Babylonians and Assyrians, aud the larger part of the library of Ashur- banipal, which is still our chief and almost only source of information, deals with those themes. Many of these texts have been published, but comparatively little has heretofore been done in interpretation. Professor Jastrow, who has subjected them to a new and more thorough study, believes that he has found the key to at least one important subdivision, in the fact that in the inspection of the sacrificial victim to prognosticate the future, only the liver was examined, because this organ was regarded as the seat of life and of the soul. The next two parts, which are to complete the second volume, will deal with the other branches of the omen literature—observa- tions of the heavens, cup magic, treatment of the sick, dreams, and forecasts of the future based on various events and phe- nomena. A third, supplemental volume, dealing with the mythology, the temples, and the ritual, covering the same field as the last seven chapters of Professor Jas- trow’s original work, will be published later as one whole, and not in separate parts. J. C. B. Mohr of Tiibingen announces as immediately forthcoming from the pen of ‘Prof. Adolf Deissmann of the University of Heidelberg, but now called to Berlin, “Das Neue Testament und die neuentdeckten Texte der griechisch-rémischen Welt.” The series of conservative discussions of Biblical and religious problems known as Beitrage zur Férderung christlicher Theo- legie, edited by Prof. A. Schlatter of Tiibin- gen and Prof. W. Liitgert of Halle, appears in its volume for 1907 in four parts, each cf which is sold separately. The most note- worthy features are the late Prof. Fr. Blass’s examination of the recent works of Prof. A. Harnack on the Lukean writings and Professor Schlatter’s examination of modern doubts on the Messianic character of Jesus. The series is published by C. Bertelsmann, Giitersloh. An appeal has been published, signed by Pastor Gustav Tschirn of Breslau, chairman of the Association of Liberal Churches in Germany, as also of the Free Thinkers’ Union, by Dr. Heinrich Schmidt of Jena, the general secretary of the Monistenbund, and by Dr. Rudolf Penzig of Charlottenburg, the general sec- retary of the German Society for Ethical Culture, calling a convention of represen- tatives of all organizations advocating radical religious thought, to meet in Wei- mar for the purpose of effecting a Zusam- menschluss der freien Geister. The purpose is advocacy of advanced religious thought. “Menschen, die den Pfad verloren” is the title of a contribution to modern social Froblems (Stuttgart: Max Kliemann). It is the report of Sister Henriette Arendt on her work among the fallen women of Stutt- gart, where she has been codéperating with the authorities as the first woman police assistant in Germany. The report covers five years, and is accompanied by pro- posals of reform that have grown out of actual experience. The introduction is written by Pastor Friedrich Naumann. “Per Aspera ad Astra: Lebenskampf” is the title of a new and readable importa- tion of G. E. Stechert & Company. As the subtitle, ‘“‘Schicksale eines ehemaligen Of- fiziers in America,” indicates, it presents the experience of a German gentleman, 2 re nme nee aes
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The Nation. [ Vol. 86, No. 2224 formerly an officer in the Prussian army. who came to America in 1893 to seek his fortune, and who was scarcely able, for a long time, to keep body and soul together. The narrative is given in letters to near rel- atives, dated chiefly from Milwaukee, Cleveland, and Harrisburg, in each of which places the writer contested for ex- istence, suffering intensely from hunger and cold; slaving as iron-moulder, coach- man, picture-vender, life insurance agent, and farina packer; and slowly making his way up to be an associate-editor (of an anti-Kaiser Sccialist sheet), Herr Pro- fessor in a language school, and finally instructor of German in a young ladies’ seminary. The volume is attractive for its evident truthfulness and the moderate and friendly tone in which the author dis- institutions and contem- cusses American porary events. Not that the Auswanderer lost his affection for the associa- tions of home and the Fatherland: his letters are full of longing for friends and scenes left behind, of intelligent interest in social and political movements in Ger- many. Every such book is sure of a wide welcome, particularly in America, for its story is but the echo of an Odyssey famil- thousands of immigrants who have desirable citizens. iar to become known to the friends of Auerbach that this popular pcet intended to write his auto- and after his death there were papers many miscellan- containing recollections of his ind records of his early childhood, none of which, however, were form suitable for publication. Even material had been put into proper so as to furnish a consecutive nar- result would have given no in- concerning that portion of his career in which the public were interested. The disappointment then so keenly felt will alleviated by the appearance of Anton Bet- Berthold Auerbach,"’ just pub- Stuttgart. The author is known for his bio- contemporaries, It was well Berthold and novelist biography ; found among his eous notes grandparents in a if the shape rative, formation life chiefly the and now be somewhat telheim’'s lished by Cotta, an Austrian favorably graphical sketches of his Ludwig Anzengruber and Marie von Ebner- critical survey of and product- shows a fine appreciation of the of “Schwarzwilder Dorf- geschichten,”’ in which the peasants of the Black Forest are The biography presents a remarkable fulness of detail without lapsing into undue diffuse- and Bettelheim’s strong admiration prevent him from being impartial Auerbach's In his literary activity Eschenbach. Auerbach's ivity he eight volumes Germen described. ness; does not deems in expressing what he weak points both as a man and as a writer Statistics compiled by the State Educa- tion Department, show that of villages in this State having from 1,000 to 2,000 popu- lation, forty-three maintain free libraries. The total population of these villages is 62,169, their total stock of books 150,432 volumes, their circulation 350,852 volumes. The annual cost of maintenance is $23,- 130, of which only $7,710 is received from local taxation, the balance from invested funds, State grants, or proceeds from en- tertainments, private gifts, or membership fees. A comparison of the showing made by the whole group with that of city libraries ministering to equal populations, indicates that, in spite of scanty support and insig- nificant salaries these village libraries are far in the lead of those operating in cities, both in their per capita supply of books and in the number of volumes issued. Thus, the population of the group is almost ex- actly that of Utica. For building, equip- ment, quality of staff, and public support the Utica Public Library is among the first of its class in the United States; yet these village libraries, with only a quarter as much tax support, and no trained librar- ians, have accumulated a stock of books three times as large as that of Utica and issue about two and a half times as many books a year. In April last Henry Sotheran & Co.. the London booksellers, issued a catalogue of an important collection of English litera- ture, but the name of the former owner was not made public. The list included a set of the four folios of Shakespeare (priced at £7,000), several quartos, and other important items. Many of these books are now turning up for sale at auction at Sotheby's, March 20 and 21, as the library of the late Rt. Rev. John Gott. sold by order of the executors. Only one of the Shakespeare quartos (“The Merchant of Venice,”’ Roberts, 1600) is in the sale cata- logue, but the four folios will be offered. The first is a perfect copy, but small (12% by 7% inches), the leaf of verses preceding the title page is extended on the inner margin, the last leaf is remargined with four letters in facsimile, and a few other leaves are mended. The third folio is the 1663 issue, without the portrait on title, and without the seven spurious plays at the end. The second and fourth folios are good copies with the common imprints. Among other notable volumes are Painter's ‘‘Pal- ace of Pleasure,”’ 1566-67, large paper, de- scribed as unique; Spenser's “Faerie Queene,”’ 1590-96, earliest issue of the first edition; Spenser's “‘Complaints,”’ 1591, large paper, and his “Colin Clouts Come Home Againe,”’ 1595; ‘“‘Paradise Lost,”” both is- sues of 1667; Halle’s “Chronicles.” first edition, 1548; the Coverdale Bible, 1535 (the first Bible in English); two editions of the “Great” Bible, 1539 and 1541; a long series of editions of the Book of Common Prayer; Hakluyt’s “Divers Voyages,” 1582 (lacking the maps); and Caxton’s first edition of “The Golden Legend.” Dr. Albert Harrison Mixer, professor emeritus of modern languages at the Uni- versity of Rochester, died at his home last Friday at the age of eighty-five. He was a member of the original faculty of the uni- versity in 1850, and taught there forty-two years. He the author of a “Manual of French Poetry” and a “Manual of French Pronunciation.” The death is announced from Weimar of Julius von Eckardt at the age of seven- ty-one. Dr. Eckardt, a Livonian by birth, came to Germany in 1867 as an assistant of Freytag in editing the Grenzboten. In 1882 he entered the state service of Prussia under Bismarck, and was consul at Tunis, Marseilles, Stockholm, and elsewhere. He was the author of several works on Russia and Livonia, and he is supposed to have written “Berlin-Wien-Rom,” 1892, which caused something of a sensation. was Dr. Heinrich Hiibschmann, professor of comparative philology at the University of Strasburg, has died at the age of fifty- nine. His works include “Die Umschreibung der Iranischen Sprachen und der Armen- ischen,” “Das indogermanische Vokalsys- tem,”’ and other studies of the kind. Auguste Lepage, historian and journalist, has died at the age of seventy-two. Among his works are “Histoire de la Commune,” Recits sur l'histoire d’Alsace et de Lor- raine,”’ and “Les Siéges héroiques.”’ STUDIES IN BIOGRAPHY. A Life of Gilbert Burnet, Bishop of Salis- bury. By T. E. 8S, Clarke and H. C. Foxcroft. With an Introduction by C. H. Firth. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. A recent life of peace-ingeminating Falk- land called attention to the fate of a mode- rate caught between the furious extremes of royalists and parliamentarians in the civil war; the present volume is the study of one who in like manner attempted to steer between the party passions of Tory and Whig in the succeeding period. We may say, “im like manner,” though noth- ing could be more diverse than the temper of the two men and the results of their “trimming.”” Falkland, sensitive in nature, loving peace and the quiet fruits of study, leaning, when forced to take part, toward the weaker side, ending his life despair- ingly at Newbury, has been lifted up as a martyr to reasonableness by such writers as Matthew Arnold and his late biogra- pher; whereas Burnet, boisterously active yet with strange passing whims for as- cetic seclusion, the most impudent of men, yet struck at times by moods of self- debasing modesty, a non-partisan in the- ory, yet ending as a violent Whig, a be- liever in celibacy, yet thrice married (al- ways to an heiress), has passed into his- tory as the buffoon of the Revolution. It is the contrast of tragedy and comedy. Taking as subject a fire that occurred in Burnet’s study in 1713, Parnell hit off his character in a couplet: Then roars the prophet of the Northern Nation, Scorched by a flaming speech on moderation. Burnet, through his histories and other innumerable writings, is one of the best- known men of his age, but the very bulk of the material, and his impulsive self- contradictions make such a biography as the present difficult and desirable. It may be said that the joint authors have ac- complished their task admirably; they have produced a book that is at once document- ed at every step, and thoroughly interest- ing. They have both faced the weaknesses of Burnet’s eharacter without flinching, yet have avoided party prejudice. Mr. Clarke is the minister of Saltoun, where Burnet officiated as a young man from 1665 to 1669; he has written the life down to Burnet’s appointment in London in 1674. If any comparison is to be made, this first section is the more entertaining of the two. With marked skill Mr. Clarke has set forth the disturbed state of the Scotch church in those days; the divers family influences that moulded Burnet’s character, thrown between a father of pa- cific temper and episcopal leanings, and a mother who belonged to the uncompromis- ing Presbyterian Johnstons of Annandale; the education and travels of the son Gilbert during the troubled years before and just after the restoration; his activity at Sal- toun, and his still more prodigious activ-
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Feb. 13, 1908] The Nation. 151 ity for four and a half years as professor of theology at Glasgow. The larger part of his life, including his ministry in London, his episcopacy at Salisbury, and political career fall to Miss Foxcroft, who is particularly qualified for the task. Her biography of the first Marquis of Halifax, while somewhat heavy-paced, showed how judiciously she could follow the path of a “trimmer” through the laby- rinth of restoration and revolution poli- tics; her edition of ‘““A Supplement to Bur- net’s History of His Own Times” still fur- ther prepared her for this other “trim- mer” of the age. Like her “Halifax,”’ the present work moves at times, especially toward the close, a little slowly, and lacks. when the author departs from quotation. the faculty of nimble, telling portraiture. It is deficient on the human side, and one is surprised, for example, that not a word is said of Burnet’s friendship for Lady Mary Wortley, who made her trans- lation of Epictetus under the guidance of the great Whig bishop. Other touches of this kind are omitted which might lighten Miss Foxcroft’s chapters. On the other hand, her political sense is almost unerr- ing, and her characterization, while never brilliant, is remarkably clear and just. It is not a little thing for an Englishman or woman to deal thus impartially with these fountainheads of English politics. And if she makes no pretensions to the brilliance of Macaulay or Lecky, she at least offers all the materials for the por- trait of one of the oddest and most inter- esting characters in English history. The mainsprings of that character are open to view—an invincible egotism and a no less invincible vitality, which together made the impression of himself upon others a peremptory need of his nature. Never lived a man who gave more advice. He could not meet king, priest, or peasant, but forthwith he began to admonish. When the meetings with Charles II. in the backstair apartments of Chif- finch—sandwiched between less reputable assignations, we fear—were not sufficient, he sent a letter to that long-suffering mon- arch, warning him that only a change of his own heart and of his course of life could avert impending troubles. King Charles, it is said, read the letter twice, and then, without a word, threw it into the fire. William suffered no less than Charles; Mary endured his interminable lectures even graciously, but the young Duke of Gloucester, who was delivered over to the prelate for instruction, was talked and lessoned into an early grave. When im Paris Burnet was summoned by the unsus- pecting grand monarque to _ Versailles, where, says a horrified Frenchman, al- though he “spoke the French tongue very ill . . . his confidence and assurance bore him fully out, and he talked for ever and as much before the king as in his own room.” The distressed courtier remon- strated; but “Burnet did not amend, and the king bore all.’”” One can forgive him all for his blundering bon mot to the Duchess of Marlborough, who was asking him the reason of Belisarius’s—and by im- plication her husband’s—disgrace. Madame, replied the innocent bishop, he had “a brimstone of a wife.” In the pulpit his egotism and activity, with the resulting proneness for admonish- ing, had full swing, and as a preacher Bur- net was a real power. How carefully he prepared for this office he has himself told —as he has told everything else: I read the Scripture with great applica- tion to get a great deal of it by heart, and accustomed myself as I was riding or walking to repeat parcels of it. I went through the Bible to consider all the texts proper to be preached on, and studied to understand the literal meaning of the words. I accustomed myself on all occasions to form my meditations into dis- course, and spoke aloud what occurred to my thoughts. I went over the body of Divinity frequently and found a way of explaining every part of it in the easiest and clearest way I could, and I spent a great part of every day in talking over to myself [he thus suffered equally with Charles and William and Louis XIV.] my thoughts of these matters. But that which helped me most was that I studied to live in frequent recollection, observing my- self, and the chain of thoughts that fol- lowed a!l good or bad inclinations, and thus by a course of meditation and prayer I arrived at a great readiness in preaching that has continued ever with me from that time. No wonder that once at the Rolls Chapel, in London, when he had preached out the hour-glass and turned it over for another hour, the audience “‘set up almost a shout for joy.”” That was not the modern preach- er or the modern audience. Politically, Burnet’s ardent temper was a traitor to his judgment. In theory he was an avowed Erastian and believer in non-resistance, but when the policy of James II. brought him the choice of muz- zled compliance or rebellion, his temper won the day, and by slow degrees brought him to a stanch maintainer of church independence and political revolt—when circumstances brought religion and state into jeopardy. The inconsistency may be excused, perhaps, as more a matter of de- gree than of substance. But it brought up- on Burnet not only the odium thatalwaysat- tends the middle course in times of heated prejudices, but also laid him open, unjustly, to charges of self-seeking apostacy. It is not a light matter to be accused at once of ‘“‘trimming” and time-serving. ‘“‘He strode a bespattered pilgrim through the miry ways of this sublunary world,” impulsive, hot-headed, outwardly inconsistent, vain, presumptuous, sometimes ridiculous, yet he never quite lost sight of his youthful ideal of straightforward patriotism and zealous religion. And as a preacher of the via media he held the future in fee; the tumults of the hour have died away, and what was once despised by both parties is now the ruling common sense of the world. Robert E. Lee. By Philip Alexander Bruce. Philadelphia: G. W. Jacobs & Co. To make one of a new series of lives (American Crisis Biographies), is the sole and insufficient reason for this book, which discloses no new facts and lacks an allur- ing style. Lee proved the rule that ade- quate heredity and surroundings should culminate in the gentleman; and this fact the author elaborates, none contradicting. Without doubt Lee’s course was determined for him by his progenitors, because of the sentimental and material associations born of descent and environment. It is set forth (p. 66) “as the Southern view” that “the people were citizens of their respective States [and] the individual citizen bore no relation to the United States, [so that] dis- solution of the compact between the State and the United States served instantly to release from the obligations of their oaths all citizens of each State who were employ- ed in the civil or military departments of the central government,” and it is implied that therefore and in that way Lee be- came a Confederate. By such a doctrine, had Buchanan been a South Carolinian the Presidency would have been automatically vacated in December, 1860. The truth is that, great as Lee was, he could not with- stand those closest ties of the well-born, the claims of blood, and he formally resign- ed his commission. However his views may have shifted later, while Virginia still held with the Union he admitted neither that there was an abstract right of seces- sion nor that there was adequate reason for its exercise if the right existed. That he saw no imperative obligation, no ques- tion of conscience, which detached him from the defenders of the national integrity, is clear from his refusal to advise the resig- nation of his son under identical conditions. He states his own case thus: With all my feelings of loyalty and duty as an American citizen [and therein his principles are displayed] I have not been able to make up my mind to raise my hand against my relatives, my children, my home. In so pure a man the struggle, which none in the Border States could avoid, was frightful; but in the end Lee participated in the revolution which he denounced and dreaded. We may protest, then, against the implication, not the open assertion, that in that crisis all honorable Virginians flocked as a matter of course to the stand- ard of their State. Scott, Thomas, Robert Williams, Sykes of the fliercely-fighting regulars, St. George Cooke, Baylor, come without effort to the mind as among those patriots who did not reckon a part to be greater than the whole. A wholly irrelevant and illogical dis- cussion of the potential relation of slavery, culminating in the inquiry “‘Had the North foreseen all this [expenditure of blood and treasure] would she have undertaken the conquest of the South?” which is injected into this Life, is referred to here merely to deprecate so one-sided a view in a volume which may color the opinions of many readers. Slavery with Toombs and Davis replaced the tariff of the earlier South Carolinians as an occasion, not a cause, for dissolution. The effort of the Confederacy to secure its independence by arms and the determination of the Union- ists to preserve the whole country, are con- stantly obscured. There is substituted a sectional war of subjugation with the view of abolishing slavery, for the essential motive of all the non-seceding States, includ- ing western [now West] Virginia, which was that of preserving the Union at any cost. The portrayal of Lee’s military career by a sympathetic but unqualified hand, re- quires no extended comment; and as there are no battle-field maps, the details of the engagements are not clear to readers un- familiar with the terrain. Lee was for- ty years old when with Scott in Mexico, but he is persistently called “the young engineer”; his unsuccessful campaign against Rosecrans in West Virginia, to draw that mountainous section within the military bonds of the Confederacy, is con-
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152 The Nation. [Vol. 86, No. 2224 doned, because had he won a victory “he would have been compelled to fall back to his base of communications.”’ Dr. Bruce further says: “After Cold Harbor Grant was saved from a counterstroke only by the rapidity with which he effected a change of base,” whereas in fact Grant re- mained in Lee’s front more than a week and then disappeared, as a_ strategical measure, with a secrecy and celerity that completely mystified his opponent. It was on almost that very ground that McClellan performed a similar feat in Lee’s front two year’s earlier. Following Grant and certain independ- ent observers, Dr. Bruce places Mr. Davis’s character and opinions as Union assets, wherein we cordially agree. And from the beginning to the end every possible military sin of omission and commission, except that of not fighting vigorously when once engaged, is laid upon Long- street, Lee’s brave, persistent war-horse “Peter.” Jackson seems overrated; Long- street not appreciated. Lee's civil career was one of peculiar service to the united country, and we gratefully adopt the biographer’s estimate: The moderation, foresight, and wisdom displayed by him after the close of hostilities swell his figure to the propor- tions of a hero common to North and South. President Lee not only set the exam- ple to his studious youth, and to his impoverished and disheartened ex-Confede- rates as well, but he inculcated national patriotism and unreserved allegiance to the general government. He made his col- lege a centre of intelligent acquiescence in the result of the war, and on account of his own dignified resumption of Federal citi- zenship and the influence thus exerted, his memory will not only be beloved as that of a soldier of the South, but will be revered by both sections as an ultimate conserva- tor of our domestic peace. CURRENT FICTION. Somehow Good. By William De New York: Henry Holt & Co. The industrious traveller is bound to find pleasant things here and there along the beaten path of contemporary fiction, but for the most part in the way of suggestion o1 promise rather than firm achievement. What a relief, once in a decade, to come upon a real story, not a mere fiction, but an epos, a living, intelligible word. Away with our rule of thumb, down with that anxious yardstick with which we are fain to gauge the ordinary commodity known as the latest novel: are we not coming into our own? “Somehow Good” confirms the testimony (if it needed confirmation) of “Joseph Vance” and “Alice-for-Short,” that one of the true tellers is among us. “Is still among us,”” we had almost said, so strong is our impression of Mr. De Morgan as a conservative force, as one who has kept alive, and now brings forward, fresh and lusty, a something beloved which in our faintheartedness we had almost agreed tc lament as dead. More obviously, of course, we are speaking of that Victorian fiction for the body of which embalmer and stone-cutter had done their worst when “Joseph Vance" appeared to confound them and set their offices at naught. For this Morgan. was obviously not an exploit of the “resur- rectionist,”” but an authentic survival. Peo- ple had stopped imitating Dickens and Thackeray and the rest a quarter-century before Mr. De Morgan quietly took his place among those worthies. It would have been impossible for any young man to do this, impossible, indeed, for any professional writer whatever. Mr. De Morgan began to write out of a rounded experience to which books had made their moderate, let us say their normal, contribution. One hardly imagines that he had read much modern fic- tion; so that when, in his westering years, the mouth was moved to speak out of the full heart, his fancy was not troubled by the fashion of the hour. His natural speech was that of the masters whom in his boy- hood no one dreamed of remanding to a past régime. Here and there, as in the opening chapters of “Joseph Vance,” there is distinct, though probably unconscious, imitativeness; where it is most marked, Dickens is the obvious, and in these days loathéd, model. Minor “character” parts and their attendant faceti# unabashedly re- call the traditions of Boz. But, after all, what really arrests us in these stories, what really gives us the delightful sense of recognition of which we are conscious, is a manner, a true style, not a mannerism. This writer’s inconsecutiveness, his appar- ent casualness, is seen in the end to have been never unconsidered or irrelevant. He is in no manner of doubt as to what his story is or as to how he wishes to tell it. From his point of view, that of creative humor, he sees his theme steadily and sees it whole. All these delays, digressions, hints, repetitions, these hundred obstacles to hasty reading, serve to acquaint us as life acquaints us, gradually, and as it were by stealth, with the persons and events which concern us. Such a method may safely deal with any theme. “Somehow Good,” in which it is employed at its perfection, is built upon as ugly a fact as human experience can produce. Let us put it baldly: A young English girl, innocent and high-spirited, quarrels with her mother on a question of persistent remarriage, and sets off for India to marry an English boy who is at her de- voted service. Before joining her boy at his station she is obliged to spend a month in the hands of a precious couple who con- spire for her ruin. At least the married woman is complaisant, and the married man has his way. In due time and yet too late, the girl goes on to her lover. She lacks the courage to tell him what has happened, and they are married. Very soon she per- ceives that her horrible experience is to bear fruit; she tells her husband everything. He leaves her, and after an unsuccessful attempt at divorce, disappears altogether. The girl is rescued by an uncle, a major in the Indian army, and brought back to Eng- land. He retires, and lives quietly in Lon- don with the forsaken wife and her mis- gotten daughter. Twenty years pass. The husband has been a wanderer, in Australia, America, Canada, and has finally made a fortune in the Yukon. He returns to Lon- don, and one day is disabled by an electric shock, and is taken home by the daughter. The wife recognizes him at once, but the accident has destroyed his memory. To put it as shortly as possible, they are married again, and eventually he regains full re- membrance of the past. In the end he is able to see that whatever has happened may have been “somehow good”; he, like his wife, adores the child of the wretch whose memory is a horror to them. What had happened remained vile in itself; in its result, who could say? It is easy to imagine what morbidness— what repulsiveness or what sentimentality —would belong to the treatment of this theme by the ordinary novelist. Let the reader ask himself what would happen to it in the hands even of a Hardy, a James, or a Meredith. The fact we have to record is that on this theme Mr. De Morgan has written a book as sound, as sweet, as wholesome, as wise, as any in the range of fiction. The Ancient Law. By Ellen Glasgow, New York: Doubleday, Page & Co. Miss Glasgow writes, as always, with fluency, gravity, and a species of empresse- ment which may go a long way toward achieving the effects of depth and subtle- ty. Her books are, we gather from the triumphant bulletins of her publishers, widely read, in the main we must sup- pose, by a class which does not read very much, and is guided to its few choices by the conversational clue. Her work is planned upon a generous scale. There are four books and forty chapters in “The An- cient Law,” and they cover some five hun- dred pages—quite the old _ three-decker plan. After going over it all, one may find oneself speculating as to whether the cargo is worth the carriage. Superficial- ly the book is of the right kind. The theme is older than Jean Valjean: What shall the convict do with himself when, with the best will in the world, he finds him- self outside the bars? One Richard Ord- way goes wrong on the stock exchange, and, after five years’ imprisonment, is to face the world again. He seeks refuge from it in a Southern village, and there, under the name Smith, carves out an honest and not inglorious career for himself. He be- comes, in fact, the local reformer and oracle, and the time arrives when, though they know nothing of his past, his fell- low-townsmen are ready to give him the greatest public honor in their power. As an ex-convict, he is legally ineligible for this honor; but he regards himself as hav- ing sufficiently atoned, in any but the crude legal sense, for his past, and is prepared te accept what is offered in good faith. His past, however, has followed him, to confront him brutally in the hour of his mild triumph. He therefore determines to set out again upon his quest of service. Up to this point—the end of the second book—the narrative does not lack interest. Ordway himself, to be sure, with all the author’s deliberateness of portraiture, isa person commented upon rather than present- ed. Our first impression of him is promising. but after the opening scene it wanes stead- ily in distinctness. We do not live with him through his experiences; we do not feel the charm and power in the man which are said to work such wonders in that stubborn rural community. But some of the minor scenes and characters have life; above all the gracious and strong figure of Emily Brooke, the beautiful cirl who falls innocently in love with our jail bird. As he has a wife who has fail- ed and repudiated him in his need, this, according to the code, should not have
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Feb. 43, 1908] The Nation. 158 been allowed to happen; but the relation which develops between them keeps itself within the prescribed bounds. One would like to have parted with them both at the moment when, after the full revelation of his past, she professes her unalterable faith in him. But here begins the anti- climax, and the story sinks through chap- ters of crude melodrama whither we shall not follow it. Travers. By Sara Dean. New “York. Frederick A. Stokes Co. If the spectacular and the melodramatic are ever to be looked for in real life, it is in such a setting as the San Francisco dis- aster afforded. The conditions described in “Travers” are probably not overdrawn and the adventures of the pair in question might find parallel, if not confirmation, in the records. Possibly these two havemore than their share of narrow escapes, since one building is tumbled inoffensively about their heads by the earthquake. and another is subsequently burned to a shell with the exception of the floor upon which they are imprisoned. The unmasking by the catas- trophe of forces both for good and for ill is effectively suggested, and the momentary abeyance of social convention makes plaus- ible the sudden intimacy between Travers and his charge. Some of the minor figures —the harridan who berates all the women in the hill-side camp and slaves for all the men, and little ““Montana,” the nurse—are vivid and typical. The relation of the man and the girl, however fancifully brought about, is a sound and credible one. In short, though the tale is not of power, it is of interest both as a story and a docu- ment. 1170-1892. Selected by Boston: Ginn & English Poetry, John Matthews Manly. Co. $1.70. English Poems. The Nineteenth Century. Selected and edited, with illustrative and explanatory notes and bibliographies, by Walter C. Bronson. The University of Chicago Press. $1.50 net. These two anthologies, though prepared primarily for the use of college classes, will prove serviceable to students of liter- ature in general, and to lovers of poetry in particular. Professor Manly’s book is com- plete in itself, but Professor Bronson pro- jects three more volumes; one to include Old English poems in translation, Middle English poems, a few specimens of the pre- Elizabethan drama, and old ballads; one to cover the Elizabethan and Caroline peri- ods; and one for the Restoration and the eighteenth century. Professor Manly explains in his Preface that the plan of his volume originated ten years ago, when he and Professor Bronson and Prof. R. E. N. Dodge (now of the Uni- versity of Wisconsin) were giving an in- troductory course in English literature to a class of 140 freshmen and sophomores in Brown University. The object was to have the students read as widely as their time permitted; but since no one volume was sufficiently comprehensive, and since the ex- pense of numerous cheap reprints was too great, Professor Manly determined to “‘col- lect into a single volume all the pieces of non-dramatic poetry that any teacher would likely care to have at hand from which to make his own selection.”” In this under- taking Professor Manly has had the help of other teachers, and the result of their joint labors is a volume of uncommon util- ity: His 563 pages of text are printed in double columns, giving 112 lines to the page; and, allowing for titles, spaces be- tween stanzas, and overrunning, there must be between forty and fifty thousand lines of the best English poetry. The first eighty pages carry us through Middle English, Chaucer and his followers, Skelton, the early Tudor lyrics, and the ballads. All these poems are sufficiently elucidated by a copious glossary in the footnotes. But from Wyatt and Surrey on, the language offers few obstacles and the notes are correspondingly rare. Explana- tions of difficulties of thought or allusion Professor Manly has avoided altogether, on the ground that they can best be supplied by the teacher. In the Introduction, how- ever, he has offered a few comments in- tended to supplement the ordinary text- books. As regards Middle English, Chau- cer, and the early Tudor period, this com- mentary is particularly full. His obiter dicta on later poets who for one reason or another have attained no wide popu- larity are brief but keen. For example, after speaking of George Meredith’s depth of insight and subtle apprehension of life and its problems, he adds: But the gods gave him also the fatal gift of excessive intellectual ingenuity and a delight in the exercise of it; while the sole gift they denied him was self-re- straint. But the critical apparatus is less impor- tant than the text itself; for the main thing is that the student shall have access to the poet. In a volume ranging from the “Poema Morale” to Swinburne there is im- mense room for choice. No man who has read even discursively can go through any anthology without noting in every section the absence of poems which appeal strong- ly to his personal taste. But Professor Manly’s book contains no poem that is not plainly entitled to admission, either be- cause of its importance in the history of English verse or because of its “clear title to intrinsic beauty and value”’—for these are the two tests which the compiler has applied. Moreover, the selection from writers of the second and third rank, who form the background for leading spirits of an age, is exceedingly judicious. We are glad, for instance, to see Watts’s “Cradle Hymn,” beginning, Hush, my dear, lie still and slumber. Holy angels guard thy bed! and Charles Wesley's Gentle Jesus, meek and mild. The minor poets of the nineteenth century, whose modernity gives them special interest, are well represented. Professor Bronson’s selections are drawn from Bowles, Rogers, Wordsworth, Cole- ridge, Southey, Campbell, Scott, Byron, Moore, Shelley, Hunt, Keats, Landor, Ten- nyson, both Brownings, Clough, Matthew Ar- nold, Dante Gabriel Rossetti. and Chris- tina Rossetti, William Morris, and Swin- burne. Manly omits Bowles, but he gives us Lamb, Charles Wolfe, John Keble, Mrs. Hemans, Hood, Praed, Beddoes, FitzGerald, P. J. Bailey, Locker-Lampson, Coventry Patmore, Sidney Dobell, George Meredith, “Owen Meredith,” Sir Edwin Arnold, Sir Lewis Morris, James Thomson, and Alfred Austin. Professor Bronson’s book is better print- ed, a single column to the page, larger type, and thicker naner. The feature of it is the critical apparatus. The notes, in fine type at the end, include “the poet’s theory of poetry and his philosophy of life when these can be given in his own words”; statements by the author or his friends which throw light on the meaning of a poem or illustrate his method of work; ex- planations of words or allusions which may be obscure to the average student; a few variant readings of special significance; quotations from sources or parallel pass- ages; specimens of contemporary criti- cisms; and a selected bibliography. We have, for example, extracts from Words- worth’s prefaces, from Coleridge’s ‘‘Bi- ographia Literaria,” and Shelley’s “‘Defence of Poetry.’”” The contemporary criticisms are a “cooling card” for the book-reviewer of to-day: Jeffrey’s onslaughts on Words- worth; the Monthly Review's declaration that “Christabel” is “rude, unfashioned stuff,”” and that “Kubla Khan” is “below criticism”; the “‘memorable and ferocious blasphemy” of Shelley’s “‘Adonais,” as the Literary Gazette viewed it; and Black- wood’s advice te Keats, “So back to the shop, Mr. John, back to plasters, pills, and ointment boxes.” The ultimate value of such volumes as these depends upon whether English litera- ture can be “‘taught’”—a subject much de- bated in the columns of the Nation. In this discussion there has been some confu- sion both as to terms and as to the class of students for whom courses in literature may be intended. No one can deny that mental discipline may be derived from the study of English philology and also from the study of the history of literature. That branch of history, as well as politics, the development of industries, or art, has its legitimate place in the college curriculum. The doubt arises in regard to courses in appreciation of literature. Too often, we must confess, they are sentimental and sloppy—‘‘chatter about Shelley.” But a few teachers actually succeed—to use Pro- fessor Manly’s words—in awakening “a love of literature and the habit of reading.” This is worth doing; and in the present state of culture in America it must, for many persons, be done in college or be left undone. If a student has already, through happy influences at home or in preparatory schools, a well-formed taste and the habit of reading, he does not need courses in appreciation. He will probably find far better discipline in other studies and in wide miscellaneous reading out of hours. But under existing conditions and traditions, courses in appreciation meet a genuine need. St. Stephen's in the Fifties: The Session, 1852-3, a Parliamentary Retrospect. By Edward Michael Whitty, with an Intro- duction by Justin McCarthy, and Notes by H. M. W. Pp. xl, 316. New York: A. Wessels Co. $3 net. Well edited, the late Edward Michael Whitty’s “St. Stephen’s in the Fifties” would have been a valuable addition to the permanent literature of the British Par- liament; for Whitty was a journalist of
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154 The Nation. [ Vol. 86, No 2224 more than ordinary ability and insight; he possessed strong political convictions, and in the Leader, the now forgotten Lon- don Radical weekly in which these studies of 1852-3 first appeared, he had larger free- dom of expression than any writer of Par- liamentary studies for a serious journal has since enjoyed. But H. M. W. has taken little trouble with the editing. If ever there was a book to which copious foot- notes were essential, it was this, because many of the men of whom Whitty wrote have either had scant notice, or have been altogether, in the “Dictionary of Biography,” many of the politi- have long ago passed out of mind, and many allusions are now meaningless except to the few who are well ignored National cal questions acquainted with social life in the London of that period. Mr. McCarthy has con- tributed a helpful Introduction of thirty pages; but H. M. W. seems to have con- cluded that. McCalmont's “Parliamentary Poll Book, 1832-1895," was the only source that he need draw upon for foot-notes. Some readers may possibly recall Paxton’s con- nection with the building of Crystal Pal- ace; but how many will understand, for example, Whitty’s allusion to “Mr. Slo- man of Chancery Lane’? H. M. W. has not taken the trouble to inform them that Sloman’s in the old days of Whitecross and the Bench Prisons—in the days of imprison- ment for debt—was a sponging house, at which men might stay for a day or two awaiting a settlement with their creditors. Again, on page 140, Whitty writes of No. 32, Chesham Place, as “our British Temple and H. M. W. has not thought it necessary to explain that No. 32 was the town house of Lord John Russell. Whitty was of the Press Gallery about the of Janus"; middle of the Parliamentary epoch that lies between the Reform Act of 1832 and that of 1867. This was the period of a comparatively narrow franchise; of nume- rous nomination and corrupt boroughs, which the Whigs had been careful should survive when they reformed the old system in 1832. It was the period of Sunbury, Ox- ford, and Canterbury, where political cor- ruption was general and deep-seated; and the influence of these boroughs on the morale of the House of Commons is de- scribed with the utmost freedom. It was also the period during which members from Ireland were largely of the needy and of- fice-seeking class. Whitty was an Irish- man—and an Irishman from Cork—but no- where in the literature of the House of Commons are there more caustic descrip- tions of the men who represented or mis- represented Ireland than those he wrote. In these papers, also better than in any history of political parties in England, and much better than in any general history, are given the reasons why Radicalism was so feeble a force in Parliament between 1832 and 1867. There were not wanting large constituencies such as Bath and Sheffield willing to elect Radicals. But most of the Radicals in the House were intent on their own political hobbies. They had no rec- ognized leader, no organization such as that of the Independent Labor party of the present day. There was, in a word, no team work; nothing to inspire either the Tories or the Whigs with any real fear. Social conditions in the House were not much different from those that had pre- vailed up to 1832. The House was still re- garded as a club; and late in the evening members were not afraid to appear tnere in a condition that to-day would warrant their being put into a cab by the attend- ants and sent home; and if a member, when drunk, made a fool of himself, Whitty did not hesitate to describe the scene. His disgust with what he described as the “Celtic gentlemen who make a ‘holy show’ of themselves after the manner of their race in the Imperial Senate’’ was deep. The Home Rule movement, as organized by Par- nell, rid Ireland of the school of Parlia- mentarians who provoked such loathing in Whitty—of the race of members whose haunting of the Treasury on the hunt for patronage aroused such strong feelings otf contempt in Bright. For this great reform in Irish politics the Home Rule movement seldom gets credit; and one incidental val- ue of Whitty’s sketches is that they snow how necessary such an extra-Parliamentary reform had become by the t.me of the Aberdeen Coalition Ministry. One of the best pieces of purely descrip- tive writing is Whitty’s account of Gilad- stone’s great Budget speech of April 23, 1853. Taken in conjunction with the late Duke of Argyll’s description of Gladstone’s preliminary exposition of his fiscal propos- als to the Aberdeen Cabinet, assembled at No. 10, Downing Street, it constitutes a new chapter in the life of Gladstone, and admirably supplements Mr. Morley’s ac- count of Gladstone’s great triumph. A Book of Sawts and Wonders, Put Down Here by Lady Gregory, According to the Old Writings and the Memory of the Peo- ple of New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. In this volume, which is of the same type as her “Poets and Dreamers,”’ 1903, Lady Gregory continues her task of translating Irish texts, and recording legends still cur- rent among the aged Irish. The stories of Ireland. the saints and the personal anecdotes of minor miracles collected here, reveal ready imaginations, ready tongues, and intelli- gences weighted and saddened by supersti- tion of the childish sort. For ex- ample: Brennain came to Brigit one time to ask why was it the beasts of the sea gave honor to her more than to the rest of the saints. Then they made their confession to each other, and Brennain said after that, “In my opinion, girl, it is right the beasts are when they honor you above ourselves.” most Page after page of this collection is devoted to this sort of testimony, and contains nothing of the vitality and color of the Irish heroic saga, not a gleam of the true genius of the Gael. The friends of Ireland, like those who ransack the literary remains of great men, are too apt to drag into the light what was never meant by its author to stand the test of print. More welcome to the lover of Gaelic tra- dition are the translations of the “Voyage of Maeldune” and the “Voyage of Brendan.” Maeldune is the Odysseus of Ireland. But his saga lacks the fine Homeric reserve of the “Odyssey,” in which the fairy element is never allowed to degenerate into a mere recital of a string of marvels. The adven- tures of Maeldune on his quest to slay the murderer of his father have no sort of se- quence, and the quest itself drops out of the reader’s mind as he drifts with the hero and his crew from one island to another, landing on very few, and constantly warned off by the sight of some monster or by mysterious doings that are to have no in- fluence on any man’s future fate. But in spite of frequent lack of shape and savor in this tale, a du.l page is often redeemed and dignified by a sudden expression of sorrow: Then he turned his face to the wall of the house the way it would be darker for him, and he raised his wild song, and it was the sweetest of all the music’ on the whole ridge of the world. And all the men of Leinster were crying and lamenting, with the sorrow and the softness of that song. So Menelaus, in his regret for the lost Odysseus, moved Helen and all that heard him to weeping. The joy of battle often sits awkwardly on these minor heroes of Irish legend, but you will find them ac- quainted with all the tones of grief. The “Voyage of Brendan,” hitherto ac- cessible in modern English only in O’Rior- dan’s version, is also the story of a quest. Brendan se‘s out for the Land of Promise, Brendan’s Isle, and finds it only after long wanderings very simijar to Maeldune’s. This island was long believed by the Span- ish and Portuguese to lie in the direction of the Canaries, and was even mentioned in international treaties witn the saving clause, ‘“‘when found.”” The Isles of Sheep and Birds visited by the saint were known te Arabian wonder-books; and the great fish, like an island, on which his party landed, figures in Sinbad’s story as well as in most medizwval bestiaries. The “Voyage of Brendan” is the locus classicus far the legend of the annual day of mercy for Ju- das— Once a year I go To cool me on the floe— whom Brendan protects for a few hours from the fiends who come to drag back the tortured ghost. The precise influence of classic myths on Irish tradition is hard to determine. But even the few legends collected here contain several parallels with the classics. The devoted queen with whom, in spite of impatient crew, Maeldune lingers for six months, and whom at last he leaves weeping on the shore, is the Irish Dido. In the story of Columcille, an old, spent white horse, a humble counterpart of the horses of Achilles, “‘cried tears into his breast until his clothes were wet.” And Diarmid, his servant, would have driven the old horse away, but Columcille said: “‘Leave him till he cries his fill, keening for me. For you are a man having reason,” he said, “and you know nothing of the time of my death but what I myself have told you. But as to this beast that is without reason, God himself has made known to it in some way that its master is going to leave it.” Among the stories about St. Patrick is a curious echo of the Tithonus legend. A man and his wife are granted eternal youth, but not so their children, and while, like the dawn, they bloom without fading, they have to watch the painful decrepitude of their children’s children. Lady Gregory's style has this great ad- vantage to Irish readers that it carefully preserves the un-English, curiously invert- ed forms of speech of the Irish country- people, from whom she received many of the legends: The justice of God threw a mist about him the way he would not be known. his
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Feb. 13, 1908] The Nation. 155 I have my fill of riches if I thought it enough, wanting ireland, in the strange country where I have chanced and I tired. It is a pity the journey that was put upon me it is bad to me the way it is. And it is what happened, I was a cook in Toraig, and it is a bad cook I was. the way the country-people in today, giving one the im- pression that they are translating Irish d'oms, as, indeed, many of them are. These are the turns of speech that are sel- dom correctly caught by those who try to write the Irish dialect. That is Ireland speak Zur Kritik der kiinstlichen Weltsprachen. Von Karl Brugmann und August Leskien. New York: G. E. Stechert & Co. In the light of the recent Esperanto Con- gress in England, this little volume of the well-known Leipzig professors will prove full of interest. Particularly should it chal- lenge the attention of language students generally, for it is sweeping and specific in its condemnation of the whole enterprise as worthy neither of the scholar nor the practical man. Under the title of “Die neusten Weltsprachprojekte,” Professor rugmann reviews the various circum- stances in which a second language may come into competition with an older one, end notes that a plan suggesting itself paturally to many is to select the most adaptable of the competing tongues as the international medium of communication. Na- tional pride and jealousy prevent any such solution, however, and in their perplexity men rush to the making of new languages. As a result, there are already “many dozen” of these, none of which is quite free and independent of the language it is expected to drive out. The dictionaries of artificial languages show the greatest variety of vo- cabulary, and in only one thing do they~ seem ahead of old-time forms of speech. end that is in their simplicity. As a matter of fact, however, a really practical result has never been achieved by any of these made-up tongues. Twenty years ago wit- nessed a high-tide in artificial language, when Volapiik came from the hand of the Catholic priest Schleyer. Everywhere there courses and lectures about the new tongue, and according to “Schleyer’s Welt- sprachkalender” for 1890, there were two and a half million students of Volapiik, 290 Volapiik clubs, and 23 Volapiik journals. \n international congress of Volapiikists assembled at the Paris Exposition of 1889, and then, suddenly—the bubble burst. The grounds for this failure are many. There were few who really knew much about languages who either advocated Vola- pik or took the trouble to oppose it, and Volapiikists had all along pinned their faith to such men as professors of zo- ology or astronomy. The chief reason, however, was the conviction forced on wany that Volapiik needed revision and further adaptation; and Schleyer refused to admit weakness and consent to a change. then, as Professor Brugmann .might have shown in detail, there was split after split in the ranks, and new and competing lan- guage clubs were formed. To-day we have another high-tide, for Schleyer had no patent on Volapiik, and soon came “Esperanto’’ (1887), “Kosmos” (1888), “Spelin’ (1888), “Myrana” (1889), and the “Lingua internazional’’ (1890). The were advocates of each of these artificial lan- guages wish it to be declared by academy and government the best adapted to sci- ence, industry, and and the means taken to secure recognition are al- ways the same—clubs, lectures, congresses, and language journals. Once the geog- rapher Kirchhoff worked hard for Volapiik, and now the Esperantists, who certainly seem to lead the modern procession, have captured the enthusiastic chemist, Wilhelm Ostwald. But even in the world of learned men it is necessary to distinguish between the specialist and the amateur. Linguists only should be competent to judge, yet ev- ery one who has studied a language or two in a high school believes himself capable of passing opinion, and thus justifies Goethe’s sharp remark: “Ein Jeder, weil er spricht, glaubt auch tiber die Sprache sprechen zu kénnen.”’ As to the majority of scholars, it is probably true that they are neither for nor against the movement, un- willing to devote their time or energy either way. Max Miiller was an exception, but his desire to shine before the world, Professor Brugmann thinks, led the Oxford professor to seek the cheap ap- plause of the Volapiik arena. In consider- ing the question as to whom an artificial language will chiefly benefit, Brugmann derides the idea that the scholar will add another strange language to his equipment, or that he will labor with unprecedented zeal in order that grandchild and great- grandchild may have it. Brugmann is equally lustig at the thought that all the scientific literature of the world will soon be translated into Esperanto, “even with the help of those women who have nothing else to do”! Professor ._Leskien contributes a_ schol- arly discussion “Zur Kritik des Esperanto.” He says that a world-language should be easily learned, simple in construction, and easy to pronounce. Esperanto, he admits, may be rather easy to learn to read; but for a language designed to be spoken by Europeans of al! classes, it is astounding how many difficulties it presents. Esperanto, according to his view, uses the sound fsch. dsch too frequently; it is overloaded with au, eu, ai, ei, oi, ui, which French avoids; *t includes such combinations as kn, so un- welcome to the English, and bristles with kiu, kia, kie, tiu, tio, and tschia, which Germans, English and Americans, Italians, French, and Slavs must pronounce ac- cording to their peculiar linguistic bias. In short, Professor Leskien contends that the inventor of Esperanto put together on paper his outfit, gathered from school- grammars, without any attention to phonetics or any actual experience in the real world of language, without finding out from others (who might have known better), what was difficult or easy, necessary or unnecessary, rational or irrational. His work, therefore, as an effort to solve the problem of a world language, is quite un- successful. In conclusion, Professor Leskien maintains that Esperanto is difficult, stating that he himself has studied and mastered so many languages that he feels competent to make a comparison, and that he has fcund the new tongue of Zamenhof hard, if Lot impossible, to master. Those who know Professor Leskien’s fluency in _ Slavic tengues will find this judgment of peculiar interest. commerce; Society in the Country House. By T. H. 8. Escott. Philadelphia: George W. Jacobs *‘& Co. $4 net. The evolution in England of the country house, its social and political influence, is an inviting subject, to be handled, of course, only by one who has had the entrée to sev- eral of the leading sets of English so- ciety, and as a looker-on could judge of the game better than the actual players. Mr. Escott, who succeeded John Morley as editor of the Fortnightly Review, and who has been for many years a leader writer for the London Standard, has watched rather than shared the strife of social cliques and political parties. A great part of that strife has been planned at “week-end” par- ties, for the salon of the English country house has seldom been what Horace Wal- pole made Strawberry Hill, a centre of dis- interested social activity. Mr. Escott traces the rise of country house entertaining from the days of Chaucer's fourteenth-century franklin, in whdse house “it snowéd of meat and drink,’ down to the “‘week-ends’’ of a Rosebery. It was prosperity in foreign commerce that made the rural homes of Chaucer's England cen- tres of hospitality; for with the great landowners money was rather scarce. They were the true barbarians, as Disraeli de- scribed them in “Lothair,” leading an out- door life, never opening a book, knowing no language but their own, while the men with more money and less land entertained all comers and encouraged political discus- sions. So it is that nowadays it is en- tertainers like the Wilsons of Tranby Croft or the Rothschilds who are maintaining the old tradition. From his historical sketch Mr. Escott passes to descriptions of cer- tain houses which for generations have played their part in English politics. Not that their influence has been merely politi- cal, More than one prosperous watering place owes its existence to the near neigh- borhood of a great country house. So Stanmer, the Sussex home of the Pelhams, created Brighton, which might never have had its vogue had not George IV. chanced to visit Stanmer and fix his fancy on the little fishing village of Brighthelmstone. So the Allens of Prior Park made the for- tune of Bath by bringing it to the notice of the children of George III., and Heron Court, the home of the Malmesbury earls, made Bournemouth the fashion. The political activity of the country house has long been an English tradition. Says Mr. Escott: The English Revolution of the seven- teenth century originated in the confer- ences at each other's rural homes of coun- try gentlemen. The doctrines of royal ab- solutism were first framed by a Kentish squire, Sir Robert Filmer of East Sut- ton, when, as a Hertfordshire squire, entertaining James I. at Gorhambury. From the home and birthplace of John Pym, Brymore, proceeded the first notes of a counterblast to the pretensions of pre- rogative. Lord Randolph Churchill’s Manchester speech in 1886 announcing the formation of the Union party, was the fruit of a visit to Compton Place, Sussex, where the Caven- dishes and the Churchills agreed to sink their earlier differences and unite against the Home Rule policy of Gladstone. So, on almost every page, Mr. Escott points out the association of some country house with political schemes. There are few neutral
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156 The Nation. [Vol. 86, No. 2224 country houses. But Killerton Park and Holnicote, the homes of the great Devon and Somerset family of Aclands, saw the beginning of an experiment designed to bring together in their social life politi- cians of both parties. Here, in the favorite haunt of William Wilberforce, the Aboli- tionist, was first formed the idea of Gril- lion’s Club, whose weekly dinners have for many years brought to the same table the fiercest political foes. Such a book, teeming with information and anecdotes, could not fail to be interest- ing, but every reader will regret that the author took such pains to be unintelligible. It is as though one who had so long been obliged to write lucidly for mere journal- ism had decided to indulge in the luxury of an involved “literary” style. Mr. Escott is so allusive that often only the instructed reader knows whom he is talking about. This is the nearest that he gets to naming Lord Milner: Another of the then Mr. Goschen’s guests, exactly Dawkins’s contemporary, was that descendant of the General Ready of Goodwood associations, as accomplished a Balliol scholar as the future Lord Chancel- lor himself, and whose name in later years was to become a controversial synonym for a particular school of South African and Imperial statesmanship generally, Mr. Chamberlain’s High Commissioner. Mr. Escott always prefers a definition to a mere name. Balliol is regularly called “the College of Jowett,” Byron is “the object of the Countess Guiccioli’s passion,” Disraeli is “the Asiatic statesman,” Hever Castle is “the natal stronghold of Queen Elizabeth’s mother.” But in spite of his ir- ritating allusiveness, his tortuous style, and his really shocking French—he writes more than once pied de terre for pied a terre, and other phrases that betray unfamiliar- ity with the language—Mr. Escott’s book is entertaining, a mine of information for some more accomplished writer on the same theme. The frontispiece is a charm- ing reproduction of the picture by Desanges of Lady Waldegrave’s salon at Strawberry Hill in 1865. The University of Toronto and Its Colleges, 1827-1906. Published by the Librarian of the University. Following so closely upon the heels of the Report of the Royal Commission on the University of Toronto, this volume is of more than ordinary interest and im- portance, not merely to the alumni of the university, but to all interested in higher education. It is a fact not without signifi- cance, that in educational matters the in- ternational boundary is fast becoming ob- literated. Not only is a wholesome reci- procity practised in appointments to the faculties of American and Canadian col- leges, but to an ever increasing extent the young men of the two countries are seek- ing the best university for their individual needs, irrespective of its geographical po- sition north or south of the boundary. The present volume is the outcome of a decision of the senate of the university, as long ago as January, 1903, that in con- sideration of the fact “that the present year (1903) is the sixtieth anniversary of the opening of King’s College, and the fif- tieth anniversary of the organization of the university on its present line,”’ a volume should be prepared, giving an account of its past history and its actual condition. The long series of delays in publication has enabled the editors to bring the his- torical survey down to the close of the la- bors of the commission in the passing of the University act of 1906. In the opening chapter, President N. Burwash of Victoria College sketches the early history of the university, from the granting of a charter to King’s College, in March, 1827, down to the organization of the university in 1853; and in the two following chapters, Dr. Burwash brings his survey down to 1904, discussing in an eminently clear and im- partial manner the once burning problems of state control and endowments, rivalry between University College and the affili- ated institutions, the relative status of their degrees, central versus local examinations, etc. Chapter iv. is devoted to financial history, by the present bursar. Four chap- ters are given to the arts faculty and col- leges; that on the arts faculty, by Dean Ramsay Wright and Prof. W. J. Alexander, being of exceptional interest. The facul- ties of law, medicine, applied science, the theological colleges, and the affiliated in- stitutions, are dealt with in separate chap- ters, and the eminently practical subject of buildings and equipment occupies the final chapter. Appendices contain lists of members of the governing bodies, publica- tions by members of the staff, studies pub- lished by the university, theses, benefac- tions, graduates, candidates examined, at- tendance, the university acts, and the re- port of the Commission, 1905-6. The whole work is under the general editorship of Professor Alexander. The Real Australia. By Alfred Buchanan. Philadelphia: George W. Jacobs & Co. $1.50 net. The author of this book is an experienced journalist. He has recorded his observa- tions on the dominant features of Aus- tralian life—politics, amusements, jour- nalism and literature, the tone of so- ciety, moral reform and the conditions with which it contends; and the result is a wel- come offset to the books which have dealt with the subject in detached phases, more particularly with the political history of the country and the socialistic experiments made there. Hitherto we have had many optimistic forecasts and generous apprecia- tions, which assumed Australian stability and success. Mr. Buchanan is rather doubt- ful as to the outcome. At least he thinks that the national spirit is in urgent need of a Spartan bracing. It is discouraging, though perhaps not astonishing, to learn that after half a century or more of un- hindered political experimenting the pre- vailing phase of Australian character is its irresponsibility. Moreover, as there has been little in the history of the country to awaken strong sentiment, unless it be disgust at the way in which the aborigines were treated, there is no vital faith of any kind nor even any vital fanaticism. It may be that the ease of Australian life accounts in part for this lack of tone. There have been few soul-testing troubles, and no armed conflict, if we except the work of the contingents in South Africa during the Boer war. The calm of unforced develop- ment has been the lot of Australia, the spoiled child of Britain. It is difficult to see why he has not dis- cussed this doubtful result in the light of socialistic theories and legislation, which have been so hopefully applied in Australia. The lack of any such attempt is the chief defect of his book. Conditions are better described than explained. An American reader naturally asks whether there is any connection between a socialistic régime and the easy going, work-shirking habits which Mr. Buchanan charges against his country- men. Is it true that reliance upon govern- ment for work, land, and shelter has caused a lapse from energy to ineptitude? Not only have trades unions been protect- ed, but women have been given the suffrage in some of the states, and their vote is in- fluential. Advanced theories have had their chance. Yet the social fabric, according to Mr. Buchanan, lacks a strong leaven of individual responsibility, initiative, and self-control. It is easy to believe that too much coddling by the government and too great trust in mere legislation are largely accountable for this condition. Some of the Australian types described are too interesting to pass by. It appears that the Australian larrikin is the crown and summit of moral irresponsibility. Mr. Buchanan will not allow that all the hooli- gans of London, all the gamins of Paris, all the lazzaroni of Naples, even all the un- speakable ruffians of Cairo and Port Said can eclipse, or even approach, the reputa- tion acquired by the larrikin in a few de- cades. Mr. Buchanan ought to be a capable judge of a native product. Science. Comparative Anatomy of Vertebrates. Adapted from the German of Dr. Robert Wiedersheim, by W. N. Parker. New York: The Macmillan Co. $3.75 net. This book, written by a professor of an- atomy in Freiburg and translated by a professor of zoélogy in the University of Wales, is now issued in a third edition, founded on the sixth German. The orig- inal contains 800 pages and 416 figures; the second English edition, 488 pages and 3°7 figures; and the present, 576 pages and 372 figures. That a technical work of this size should reach a sixth edition in the original language and a third in another is ample proof of its general excellence. It is likewise warrant for what, under other conditions, might constitute hyper- criticism. In the present instance there is no excuse for lack of clearness; and for inaccuracy the only justification is the ad- vance of knowledge since the volume went to press. As indicated in the preface and upon the title-page, this is not a literal translation, but a reduced “adaptation,” a task which throws upon the undertaker greater responsibility for errors, omissions, and infelicities of expression. The preface states that this edition “has been almost entirely rewritten.”” That the changes have not always been for the better may be seen by comparing with corresponding passages ir the previous edition the statements as to, e. g., the cerebellum of sharks and rays (p. 210), and the brain-cavity of Amphioxus (p. 204). In this last case, the omission of the phrase “in the larva’ (p. 157 of the previous edition) conveys an error as radi-
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Feb. 13, 1908] The Nation. 157 cal as would be embodied in the declara- tion, “man has a short triangular tail” without the qualification, “at a certain stage of development.” In the original the dis- cussion of the nature and origin of the limbs opens with a paragraph in which the problem is said to have been “seit einer Reihe im Vordergrund.” In the second ’ English edition this phrase was rendered “attacked vigorously during the last thirty years.”” In the present edition, ten years later, the entire paragraph is reproduced, verbatim. There is, of course, room for a legiti- mate difference of opinion as to the se- lection of subjects and the extent of their treatment, but the reviewer believes most anatomists will regret the omission, for instance, of the observations of Charles Hill upon the primary segments of the brain. Among errors are the ascription of the middle commissure to mammals only (p. 201), the description of the cerebellum of Teleosts as always bent backward (p. 214), the designation of the olfactory tracts of Reptiles as “nerves” (Figs. 166, 167), anda the misrepresentation of the pons In Fig. 170, B. The extensive and weli-arranged Biblio- graphy of the previous edition has evidently been augmented, and proba- bly now embraces the six hundred addition- al titles of the last German edition; but there are signs of carelessness in, e. g., the inclusion in the literature of the brain of mammals (p. 528, fifth from foot) of a title referring exclusively to the amphibian brain. The index lacks at least a score of important entries, including the entire ser- ies of compounds (mesocoele, etc.), by which are designated (p. 203) the cavities of the several brain-segments. Notwithstanding the defects above enumerated, this is the best English treatise upon _ vertebrate anatomy as the original is the best Ger- man. The pupils ef Prof. Ernst Haeckel and the friends of monistic philosophy, of which he is the leading protagonist, have furnished him with the funds to establish a Phyletic Museum in Jena. For this struc- ture the cornerstone was laid on the last anniversary of Goethe’s birth; and the museum and its collections will probably be ready for students during the coming summer. In the Blatter des deutschen Monistenbundes, Professor Haeckel has de- scribed in detail the character of the new institution. The purpose in all of its de- partments, anthropological, biological, and other is to furnish as complete collections as possible illustrative of the principle of evolution. Haeckel will contribute his specimens secured during his three scien- tific journeys: that of 1873 to the Red Sea, that of 1881 to Ceylon, and that of 1901 to Java and Sumatra. He also gives his en- tire correspondence with the naturalists of the world, extending through fifty years. Sir Thomas McCall Anderson, regius pro- fessor of medicine in Glasgow University since 1900, has died suddenly at the age of seventy-two. Dr. Anderson had a dis- tinguished career as practitioner and edu- cator, and was member of various learned societies of England, Austria, France, and America. He was the author of “Treat- ment of Diseases of the Skin, with an Analysis of 11,000 Consecutive Cases,” and of various other works in that department of medicine. The death is reported from Paris of Al- fred Jolibois, who was for twelve years at ghe head of the Department of Bridges in Paris before becoming municipal council- lor. He devoted himself with enthusiasm to the work of beautifying Paris and im- proving all the works connected with the Seine, especially the bridges. He also gave much attention to popular scientific educa- tion, acting in turn as one of the profes- sors of the Association Philotechnique, and superintending the formation of popular schools to train skilled workmen. His “Bibliothéque du Conducteur des Travaux Publics” is one of the largest engineering compilations ever undertaken. Fifty-three volumes out of the seventy-three contem- plated have already been published. Drama. The English version of Paul Hervieu’s “Le Réveil,”” which Miss Olga Nethersole presented in Daly’s Theatre on Monday evening, is a curious medley of social com- edy, historical romance, lurid melodrama, and raw emotionalism, but it supplies in- ternal evidence of the ingenious construc- tion and strong dramatic and romantic in- terest v:ich won public and critical suc- cess for » original in Paris. That cosmo- politan scalawag, Milan of Servia, and his son, the degenerate Alexander, are sup- posed, with sufficient plausibility, to have been the models of the two exiled princes, who play such prominent parts, but the historical groundwork of the plot is too slight to be of the least consequence. In dealing with such characters, fiction is, in- deed, likely to be preferable to fact. Ac- tually Prince Grégoire, with all his cheap cynicism and unscrupulous audacity, ex- hibits a degree of virility and kingly spirit perfectly inconceivable in his alleged proto- type. But the true value of the piece— which is, of course, different from.the the- atrical—does not consist in the conflict be- tween father and son, or in the series of striking and well-devised melodramatic ex- pedients by which the former succeeds in breaking the spell of the passion which blinds the latter to allprinciples of dutyand honor, but in the finely imagined scene of the “‘awakening” itself, where the innocent pleadings of her daughter, rendered elo- quent by virgin love, rouse the conscience of the erring mother and recall her from the edge of the moral precipice upon which she is tottering. Here is a really dramatic situation, brought about in a perfectly logi- cal and legitimate way, and of poignant in- terest. It is worth all the rest of the play put together, and upon it the fate of the representation will largely depend. “Kaiser Karls Geisel: ein Legendenspiel,”’ by Gerhart Hauptmann, is imported by Lemcke & Buechner. Whatever may have been the disappointment at Hauptmann’s “Und Pippa tanzt!” with its mysticism and riddles so strangely different from the spirit of “Die Weber’ or even “Die versunkene Glocke,” this latest dramatic venture is likely to provoke enthusiasm, at least in Germany. Hauptmann now returns to verse, the form in which he presented his most successful composition, “Die versunkene Glocke.” He has taken a paragraph from Sebastiano Erizzo’s “Le sei giornate,”’ which states that King Charles fell so deeply in love with a young gir) that he abandoned all thought of the government of his kingdom. In a series of dissolving pic- tures, the dramatist has drawn contrasts between winter and spring, the frosts of old age, and the flowers of youth. In the end Karl is saved from downfall and made to appear triumphant, with upraised sword, before the acclaiming multitude. The story gives the poet an admirable chance to de- pict the virility of the aged Frankish king and the voluptuousness of the village maid- en. The language, we may add, though po- etic, is very frank. Music. A History of*Music in England. By Er- nest Walker. New York: Henry Frowde. $2.50. When Sterndale Bennett, who was born three years after Wagner, went to Leipzig he was greeted, as Schumann wrote, by the remark: “An English composer? no com- poser at all!” Throughout Germany and elsewhere, until recently, the opinion pre- vailed that from the beginning to the pres- ent day England has been an out-and-out unmusical country. As late as 1885 Nau- mann issued the last volume of a “Musik- geschichte,” in which four pages out of 1,200 were devoted to England; and even Nagel, who wrote two scholarly volumes on music in England, seemed to be con- vineed that artistic life in that -country came to an end about the year 1700. The injustice of such an attitude is made abun- Cantly apparent in Dr. Walker’s volume. He modestly calls it “a” history of music in England, but it is really “the’’ history ot music in that country. His avowal that this book has been “designed from the standpoint of a musician rather than from that of an antiquarian; and even then more for the general music-lover than for the technically erudite,’’ must not be construed as a confession of superficiality; for, as a matter of fact, the best and most useful results of research are embodied; and, what is more, opportunity is afforded the reader, by means of copious musical illustrations printed in the text, to form his own con- clusions. It would have been too much to expect- the author to resist the temptation to boast that whereas musical Italy can bare- ly show four centuries of creative work, and Germany and France half a century less, England gave to the world nearly 700 years ago “the finest artistic work it ever had.”’ The reference is to the famous four- part canon “Summer is i-cumen in,” of the thirteenth century, which Dr. Walker, after carefully weighing the conflicting opinions, accepts as an early specimen—and a superb one—of English folk music. His statement that “few musicians have been found to question the assertion that Irish folk-music is, on the whole, the finest that exists,” would not escape challenge in Germany and Kussia; but this is certainly an aspect— the only one—in which the music of the United Kingdom does not suffer by com- parison with that of the Continent. Ire- lend has also produced three composers of
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158 The Nation. [Vol. 86, No 2224 exceptional gifts—Balfe, Stanford, and Field. Of Stanford’s opera “Shamus O’Brien,” the author says justly that it is “one of the most deliciously ‘open-air’ works in all British music,” being ‘“‘cram- med full of tunes which, without any sus- picion of plagiarism, seem to suggest that their composer has lived in the wilds of Ireland all his life.” Field occupies a place of honor in musical history as the origi- nator of the nocturne, which Chopin imi- tated and perfected. But this, as the author frankly acknowledges, is the only case of the work of a composer on these isles hav- ing had any germinating force outside his own country. Even Handel, when he made England his home, sacrificed all chance of guiding the course of Continental music. “There has never been a composer of more than the merest second-class rank who owes him anything really vital.” We know of no chapter on Handel so lu- minous and unbiassed as Dr, Walker's. He claims Handel as an English composer, because Handel lived in London over forty- five years and wrote exclusively for Eng- lish audiences, his early works, written for Germans and Italians, being now known to hardly any one. This chapter cannot be too highly commended to practical musi- cians, as it will help to correct the im- pression that nearly all of Handel's best work is contained in his oratorios. His operas are obsolete because they lack dra- matic characterization, and because many of their airs are written in an ornate style no longer cultivated by singers. Neverthe- less, there is in these Anglo-Italian operas —thirty-six in number—an almost unwork- ed mine which singers of an enterprising turn of mind would do well to examine. A list of the best of these airs is given on page 194; the author should have added that Robert Franz selected. edited, and published the best of these in several vol- umes. Though it originated in Italy, no form of music is so English as the madrigal, and this receives full attention. In the chapter “Later Victorian Music” no living English composer who was born later than 1860 is included, the list being thus limited to five Mackenzie, Parry, Cowen, Stanford, and Elgar. We specially commend Dr. Walk- er’s remarks on the last-named. In the concluding section an attempt is made, not very successfully, to determine what is the English element in music. Oscar Hammerstein has proved that it pays, after all, to produce operatic novel- ties in New York. Beside reviving Offen- bach’s “Les Contes d’Hoffmann” he has al- ready this season staged three novel- ties—Massenet’s “Thais,” Charpentier’s “Louise,” and Giordano’s “Siberia’”—and on February 19 he intends to try Debussy’s extraordinary “Pelléas et Mélisande.” When he announced “Siberia” the knowing ones shook their heads. The same composer's “Fedora” had failed lamentably at the Met- Topol.tan, although the cast included Ca- ruso; how could “Siberia” succeed at the Manhattan without even the aid of a great star’? But “Siberia” did succeed; its re- ception by the audience was enthusiastic. In writing his “Fedora” the composer ex- pected that the popularity of the play of that name would help him, but it did not; the play is not suited for musical treat- ment and Giordano’s musical setting of it proved so surprisingly weak that it seemed impossible that the same pen could ever write an interesting gcore. But “Siberia” is decidedly interesting, both musically and as a spectacle. It pictures life on the deso- late and snowy steppes. For killing a prince who entertains the girl he loves, a soldier is sentenced to penal servitude for life. The girl follows him, joining the liv- ing chain of prisoners. A chance for es- cape presents itself to the lovers, and they flee; but a miscreant gives the alarm and the girl is shot. It cannot be said that Giordano’s melodic fount flows much more freely in the music with which he illus- trates these scenes than in “Fedora”; but he was so wise as to introduce several beautiful Russian folksongs appropriate to the situation (as Humperdinck introduced German folksongs in “Hansel und Gretel’’), and that makes all the difference in the world. At the same time it must be admit- ted that Giordano’s skill in the treatment of the orchestra and in creating “at- mosphere” and working up a climax has greatly increased. He may yet become a serious rival of Puccini. The Italian publisher Ricordi three years ago offered a prize of $2,500 for the best English opera. It has now been awarded to Dr. E. W. Naylor for a score entitled “The Angelus.” Dr. Naylor is instructor and organist at Emmanuel College, Cam- bridge. The number of manuscripts sub- mitted to Ricordi was 191. Art. THE INTERNATIONAL. LONDON, January 22. The eighth exhibition of the International Society of Sculptors, Painters, and Grav- ers, now open in the New Gallery, does not, as a whole, reach the high level of the past. This is evident, especially in the paint- ings. I have looked in vain for the great pictures that stand out with the distinction there is no escaping. Much of the interest of the collection still comes from painters of an earlier generation. Again there is a chance to see Renoir’s extraordinary Portrait de Madame M., the woman stand- ing by a bird cage, extraordinary because of the beauty that fine drawing and tone can lend to costume and detail hideous as the fashions of the early seventies could make them. Monet is at his best in the three pictures here, Vue de Hollande, Prin. temps, and Fruits, a wonderful still-life; all three show the regard for composition, for the placing of a subject, to which Monet of late years has paid less and less atten- tion. Another of the more notable pictures is Carriére’s large ThéAtre de Belleville, that huge dim interior, lost im the fog of Carriére’s mannerisms, and yet with beauty looming through in the great swinging curve of the principal lines, and tragedy in the intent faces peering through the shadows. Among contemporary painters are groups of, more or less, independents in France and England, whose one point in common is the inclination to find inspiration and motives in the past. The contrast in results is cu- rious. From France comes Maurice Denis, deliberately, self-consciously primitive and naive. He paints Sainte-Cécile and La Danse, according to his idea of how early painters, Flemish or Italian, should have painted these subjects. They were Primi- tive, as we call it, not because they aimed at Primitiveness, but because they were doing as well as they could with the knowl- edge and means at their disposal. That is precisely where M. Denis differs from them. He is Primitive because he uses the knowledge of to-day to affect ignorance, because he does his best to take over lim itations that do not belong to him or to his age. Never were the draperies of saints and dancers expressed by such elementary lines, never were meadows powdered over with blossoms of quite such naive growth, never were the faces of saintly men and women so expressive of vacuity. The color too is reduced to the last degree of sim- plicity, empty white set against flat spaces of immature green. This is the Frenchman. But the game of the Englishman I would contrast with him, Charles Ricketts, is an- other matter. He, too, goes back to an earlier generation for his models, but he takes not the men who were feeling their way like children, but the giants who had found it. He would pit himself, apparent- ly, against no less a master than Michael Angelo, he would build up from the nude a tremendous composition in the manner of the great Florentine. Mr. Ricketts has two pictures at the International: The Resur- rection and Don Juan in Hell. In the first, a column of naked figures rises from top to bottom of the canvas; dark, murky fig- ures, stretched and distorted, in the midst of blue space. In the d, a hor n, naked, with drapery of Titian crimson fly- ing behind, tramples on a mass of nudities, the note of the same crimson repeated in a bit of drapery emerging from somewhere in the chaos of vague forms. Subjects both for Michael Angelo, if you will; subjects, however, which he would ghave left, not dimly conceived, but vigorously executed. Mr. Ricketts has, apparently, neither the vigor nor the drawing to pursue them fur. ther than in these two small canvases, which are no more than tentative sketches. If M. Denis does thoroughly what he un- dertakes, Mr. Ricketts stops short with the note, the suggestion, of what he would like to do. In just this respect the difference be- tween the French and English painters is very marked. The French prove that they have the knowledge to achieve the aim they set themselves, while the English always seem to bungie and blunder through some- how. M. Vuillard, for instance, paints, on a small canvas, a prostrate figure, Sur le Sofa, in a commonplace room, but gives you pleasure by the perfect tones. M. Vallotton takes a subject as simple, L’Armoire a Linge, a woman, with a lamp, on her knees in front of an open linen closet, but with an effect of light that gives it in- terest at once; though, to be honest, M. Vallotton was more individual and amus- ing in his wood-blocks of a few years ago. And the fine drawing makes up for the un- pleasant color in M. Forain’s Scénes d’Op- éra and Danseuse, though M. Forain, too, is stronger in black-and-white. To turn to the English is to find them wrestling with much more ambitious schemes, which they
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Feb. 13, 1908] The Nation. 159 have not the ability to carry out. Charles Shannon again shows a group of nudes, on a smaller scale than his big picture of last year, this time a stretch of blue, foam-flecked sea for background: Children of the Sea. Again, he seems oppressed with memories of Watts, and again his drawings suggest the hesitation fatal to beauty of the nude. Mr. Strang continues heroically and strives to unite the senti- ment of Millet with the color and methods of the Old Masters, and make of the com- bination something entirely his own, but with such indifferent success that this year a Vintage by Victor Reynolds is a complete Strang, suggesting the ease with which the new convention can be borrowed, as personality in paint never can be. Except from France comparatively little work comes frem abroad. Germany is rep- resented by G. Sauter, who lives in Eng- land. He does not build up elaborate com- positions found only in the studio, he does not look through the eyes of the masters of other days and other lands; he is con- tent to paint the things he sees for him- self under existing conditions, the Frost and Mist, in the London streets, or the bunch of flowers in a glass; and with these, be sends one portrait, Joseph Pennell, Esq., full of character, enveloped in atmosphere, the best portrait in the exhibition. Spain is not so sensational as in the past. There is nothing by Anglada or Zuloaga. The Dutch make a poor showing, the Ameri- cans a very small one in the painting section. In the graving section the internation- al element is far more in evidence, a high- er level of accomplishment is reached, there is greater vitality in individual ex- amples. Technically, too, there is variety. As a consequence, you do not feel here, as you must nowadays in Paris, the decline of interest in the various forms of en- graving. A few years ago, everybody was experimenting, often with the most re- markable results. The revival of litho- graphy was full of promise. Illustration was at the height not only of popularity, but of accomplishment. Wonderful things were to be seen at the Champ-de-Mars. Dull or commonplace work was the excep- tion. But the present is a -bad moment for black and white. Illustration verges towards photography—in England, is all but swallowed up in it. The public is afraid of lithography; the collector, miss- ing the plate-mark of the etching, sus- pects an inferior form of art; and when artists keep on working in this medium, it is largely for their own amusement. Yet a good exhibition of prints and drawings is as delightful and stimulating as_ ever. Here are wood engravings after Whistler, Vermeer, Da Vinci, and Irving Wiles by Henry Wolf. Here are lithographs by M. Belleroche, M. Veber, E. J. Sullivan, Mr. Hartrich, Mr. Jackson, all so different in method that they prove triumphantly the scope and possibilities of the stone. Here are etchings of French cathedrals by Joseph Pennell, and a series after Fé- licien Rops, printed in color, by M. Ber- trand. And hung with all these prints are the pastels of M. Degas, M. Legrand, Mr. Muhrman, and M. Léandre; the water-col- ors of Anning Bell and M. Storm van s’Gravesande; and the illustrations in color of Miss Elizabeth Shippen Green. In the sculpture, a special feature is made of the work of Dalou (the master of many sculptures, now at work in England) lent chiefly by South Kensington Museum end private owners. There are bronzes, marbles, terra-cottas, interesting, but too well known to be now described in detail. M. Rodin’s Homme qui Marche dominates the central hall, large, full of life, and movement. It is seen for the first time in London, though Paris already knows it. He also sends his portrait bust, in marble, of George Bernard Shaw, shown last winter in tronze. The bronze was amusing, and full of character. It is not so successful in marbjJe. But that great figure of The Man Who Walks seems to stride across the lit- tieness of some of the other work—work of smaller men who have the courage to vie with Rodin, only to prove how ill-equipped they are for the contest. However, other good things are included: another part of M. Bartholomé’s monument at Pére-La- chaise; the portraits and studies of animals by Prince Troubetzkoy; little bronzes by Harry Wilson, who sends besides jewelry distinguished by unusual feeling for color and design; a casket and some silver fruit dishes come from Paul Cooper, another man with a sense of form and proportion, and the beauty of finish. I have said enough to explain that the exhibition remains far the most interesting of contemporary work given in London. Whistler set the members on the right rath, always, in his concern for the society, disinterested and practical, though he was always supposed to be the most egotistical and least practical of men. To avoid the parochial in art, that was his leading prin- ciple. Now that the English, or British, element grows stronger and the interna- tional weaker, one watches the fortunes of the international with more anxiety than in the years of its first triumphs. N. °N. In the Beilagé zur Allgemeinen Zeitung of January 21 is an interesting article by the late Prof. A. Furtwiingler on the Arndt Col- lection of Antiquities, which has recently been presented to the Bavarian govern- ment. This article is of special interest as the last literary contribution of that great archeologist. The collection of Greek and Roman antiquities, which he describes, has been brought together with knowledge and taste by Dr. Paul Arndt. It consists of bronzes (both statuettes and utensils, such as fibule, cups, handles, etc.); vases (chiefly of Mycenwan and geometric fabrics, also a valuable lot of ancient Apulian or Mes- sapian examples); gold work, colored glass, painted stuccos, and terra-cotta. The terra- cottas form the most valuable ‘portion. Dr. Arndt has also made a valuable collection of forgeries, which are very instructive for the appreciation of the originals; they have not at present been exhibited, since no room could be found for them. An interesting new theory has been ad- vanced by Dr. Valerios Stais of the Na- tional Museum at Athens, concerning the small gold plaques which have been found in such numbers in the shaft graves at My- cenz. It has generally been assumed that these gold ornaments were sewed on the garments of the dead. Dr. Stais, on the other hand, thinks that the dead were buried in wooden coffins, which have, of course, now totally disappeared; and that these coffins were covered with this gold. This would explain the fact that not only have a large number of small gold nails been found, with which these ornaments would be fastened to the coffin, but that in some of the plaques gold nails were still attached to the holes. According to this new theory the gold masks and diadems were similarly placed on the coffin. In connection with this idea it is interesting to compare the sarcophagi recently ac- quired by the Berlin Museum, on which the face of the deceased is represented as a mask which is frequently gilded. In the series known as Kiinstler-Mono- graphien, edited by H. Knackfuss (Leipzig: Velhagen & Klasing), Nos. 85 to 88 inclu- sive are now issued. The.account of Ange- lico da Fiesole, with 124 pages and 109 il- lustrations, is by M. Wingenroth; Gesel- schap, 86 pages, 92 illustrations, by M. Jor- dan; Perugino, 134 pages, 110 illustrations, by Fr. Knapp; and William Holman Hunt, 148 pages, 141 illustrations, by O. von Schleinitz. In the Denkmiiler der Malerei des Alter- tums (Bruckmannsche Verlag), the editor, Paul Herrmann, is furnishing a fine series of reproductions of ancient paintings. The set has now progressed to the fifth Liefer- ung. The last three contain reproduc- tions of the paintings of the Casa dei Vet- tii, in Pompeii. Among the exhibitions at the dealers’ galleries in this city are paintings by “The Eight,” at Macbeth’s, till February 15; and prints and drawings by Diirer and Rem- brandt, from the collection of Marsden J. Perry of Providence, at Keppel & Co.’s, February 20. Joseph Grego, an English authority on prints, has died at the age of sixty-four. Among his books are “Thomas Rowland. son,”’ “James Gilray,” “A History of Danc- ing,” and “A History of Parliamentary Elections.” Finance. BOOKS ON THE STEEL TRUST. The American steel industry and the United States Steel Corporation continue to attract the attention of both popular writ- ers and serious students of economics. ‘‘The Uniied States Steel Corporation,” by Abra- ham Berglund (The Columbia University Press; the Macmillan Co., agent), considers the history and present position of the “Steel Trust.” It is the sort of detailed study that should be made of each of the great industrial combinations—study that should have preceded much of the general- izing in which economists have indulged. Mr. Berglund’s important conclusions are: that the company has never had—and is not likely to have—more than a qualified mo- nopoly of the steel trade; that its policy in respect to prices has been one of moder- ation, but would probably not remain so moderate if monopoly were ever assured; and that such control over markets as the organization may wield in the future will probably be exercised “in association with independent producers” through such agen- cies as‘pools or price agreements. He con- siders it doubtful if “the competitive
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160_ _The Nation. [Vol. 86, No, 2224 strength of such a combination as the Steel Corporation is greater by virtue of mere size than that of some of the more im- portant independewt™ companies with only a fraction of its capital.” Dr. Julius Gutmann’s monograph, “Ueber den amerikanischen Stahltrust” (Essen: G. D. Baedeker), covers the same ground as Mr. Berglund’s study, but somewhat more briefly. The German investigator, like many of his kind, finds it easier to throw his raw materials—statistics, citations from documents, etc.—at his reader’s head, than to digest them and present the results in something approaching tolerable literary form. He treats of some topics, such as the administrative organization of the Steel Corporation and its policy toward employ- ees, which Mr. Berglund does not seriously consider; but his monograph has little to interest American students, except, per- haps, the concluding chapter, which com- pares the company with the German Steel Syndicate. Dr. Gutmann considers it doubt- ful whether, in point of economy and tech- nical efficiency, the American organization enjoys any real superiority over the Ger- man; and shows that, however this may be, the condition of monopoly is more nearly reached in the German steel industry than in the American. Herbert N. Casson’s “Romance of Steel’ (A. 8. Barnes & Co.) is designed to be “a popular history of our greatest American industry.” It may be of interest to the public, but is more likely to be highly val- ued by the various steel magnates for whose greater glory it seems to have been writ- ten. Mr. Casson dedicates the volume to the men “who have made the United States the foremost steel-making nation in the world”; expresses, in the preface, his per- sonal obligation to some two score captains of industry and finance “for their courtesy ,Confessio Medici. BOOKS OF THE WEEK. Archer, William, and Granville Barker. Scheme and i for a National Theatre. Duffield. Bald James. hasthas Fairy Reader. * American Book Co. 35 cents. Bigelow, John. The Panama Canal and the Daughters of Danaus. The Baker & Taylor Co. 50 cents net. Brown, Dr. John, Letters of. Edited by his son and D. W. Forrest. Macmillan Co. Burnet, Margaretta. A Laboratory Manual of Zoélogy. American Book Co. 50 cents. Carnegie Institution of Washington. Year Book, 1907. Published by the Institution. Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria. Edited by J. Shawcross. 2 vols. Henry Frowde. Macmillan. $1.25 net. Cook, Albert S., and Chauncey B. Tinker. Select Translations from Old English Prose. Boston: Ginn & Co. $1.25. Delitzsch, Friedrich. Zur Weiterbildung. Lemcke & Buechner. Dodd, Anna Bowman. On the Knees of the Gods. Dodd, Mead & Co. $1.50. Dumas, Alexandre. My Memoirs.—The Crimes of the Marquise de Brinvilliers and others.—The Crimes of Ali Pacha and others. Macmillan Co. $1.75 each. Eddy, Charles. A Hole in the Coat. Cas- sell & Co. Eltzbacher, Paul. Anarchism. Translated Benj. R. Tucker. In Pursuit of Henry Altemus by Steven T. Byington. Field, Edward Salisbury. Priscilla. Philadelphia: Co. 50 cents. Gauss, H. C. The American Government. L. R. Hamersly & Co. Gerhard, Wm. Paul. Modern Baths and Bath Houses. John Wiley & Sons. Goss, William F. M. High Steam-Pressure in Locomotive Service. Washington: Carnegie Institution. Hartley, Percy J. My Lady of Cleeve. Dodd, Mead & Co. $1.50. Hawthorne, Hildegarde. Women and Other Duffield & Co. $1.20. , Frank Sargent. The Sphere of Religion. Putnams. $1.75 net. Hungarian Question, The. Translated by Tlona and C. Arthur Ginevar. London: Kegan Paul. Jacob, Violet. ing. Dutton. Jacoby, Harold. versity Press. The History of Aythan War- $1.25 net. Astronomy. Columbia Uni- Seraphica. Har- St. McCarthy, Justin Huntly. pers. 50. Palmer’s Business Meeting Manual. Paul, Minn.: C. A. Palmer. Parkin, George R. Sir John A. Macdonald. Toronto: Morang & Co. Perry, Frances M. An Introductory Course in Exposition. American Book Co. $1. Persona. A New Gospel. Privately printed. 75 cents. Phillpotts, Eden. The Mother of the Man. Dodd, Mead & Co. $1.50. Pierce, Franklin. Federal Usurpation. Ap- pleton. $1.50 net. Poor, Charles Lane. Putnams. $2 net. Guackenbos, John Duncan. Hypnotic Thera- peutics in Theory and Practice. Harpers. $2 net. Randall, D. T. The Burning of Coal with- out Smoke in Boiler Plants. Washington: Government Printing Office. Repsold, John A. Zur Geschichte der As- tronomischen Messwerkzeuge von Purbach bis Reichenbach, 1450 bis 1830. G. Stechert & Co. Ridgeway, William. Who Were the Rom- ans? Henry Frowde. Roman Catholic and Protestant Bibles Com- pared. The Gould Prize Essays. Edited by Melancthon W. Jacobus. Scribners. $1.25 net. Sargent, Charles Shrubs. Vol. II., Part I. ton, Mifflin & Co. $5 net. Schauffler, Robert Haven. Through Italy with the Poets. Moffat, Yard & Co. $2 net. Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew. Old Spelling Edition. Duffield. Shakespeare, The Bankide-Restoration. Hamlet. 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A series of reproductions by pho- tography printed in color. Endorsed | by the art critics everywhere—and enjoying the patronage of the Muse- um of Fine Arts, Boston, the Boston Public Library, and many of the Universities, Colleges, and Libraries throughout the United States and Europe. Illustrated Prospectus on request FOSTER BROTHERS 4 Park Square, Boston Sole Agents for CHATTO & WINDUS'S MEDICI PRINTS Professor of Astronomy in Columbia University. 8vo, Illustrated, $2.00 net No. 17 in the Science Series This volume is based upon a series of lectures at Columbia University. The subject is presented in untechnical lan- guage and without the use of mathe- matics. Professor Poor shows by what steps the precise knowledge of to-day has been reached and explains the mar- vellous results of modern methods and modern observations. G. P, Putnam’s Sons, Nc7.tstt. “A sound achievement in biography. ” “a thenaum, THE TRUE EORGE MONG HENRY By G Tilustrated. clot .00 net. Phliadeiph J. B. 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