harmonious buildings, its colonnaded vista of the
great lake, its impressive fountain, its fairy-like out-
lining after dark by the gems of electricity, its
spacious and well-modulated proportions which
made the largest crowd in it but an unobtrusive
detail, its air of spontaneity and inevitableness
which suggested nature itself, rather than art? . . .
It will to all time remain impossibly ridiculous to
speak of a country or a city as wholly given over to
the worship of Mammon which almost involuntarily
gave birth to this ethereal emanation of pure and
uneconomic beauty.” It is still another of the au-
thor's “contrasts” which impels him, on the next
page, to speak of Chicago church architecture as
“a studied insult to religion,” a criticism which we
must admit to be only too true. One of Mr. Muir-
head's meatiest chapters is devoted to that calamity
of our civilization that is known as American jour-
nalism. The Sunday newspaper is pleasantly styled
a “hog-trough,” which it frequently is, and the
severest strictures are made upon the sensational-
ism, the vulgarity, the puerility, the flippant bru-
tality, and the general disregard of everything that
is true and lovely so characteristic of the “enter-
prise’ of our newspaper proprietors. All this, too,
we must admit is richly deserved, and we thank the
author for saying it. One more observation, timely
and well framed, must close these extracts. It was
made before the outbreak of the recent war, and is
even more apposite now than it was when the words
:


1899.] THE
DIAL 57
were written down. “The spectacle of a section
in the United States apparently ready to step down
from its pedestal of honorable neutrality, and run,
its head into the ignoble web of European compli-
cations, was indeed one to make both gods and
mortals weep.” Whereby we may see that edifica-
tion, as well as entertainment, is to be got from this
most readable book.
Readers of the last series of “Fors
Clavigera,” some fifteen years ago,
will perhaps remember that Mr. Rus-
kin had some words on Mungo Park. In writing
of Scott, Mr. Ruskin tells of some conversations
which Sir Walter had with the famous explorer, and
speaks severely of the man who was willing to quit
the devoted work of a country doctor by the Tweed
for the sake of tracing “the lonely brinks of useless
rivers.” Mungo Park was a loyal and unselfish man
in the performance of his duties among the hills of
Selkirkshire. Mr. Ruskin thought it was the desire
for personal gain that forced him into his fatal jour-
ney. Such an idea is by no means given in the sketch
of Mungo Park written by Mr. T. Banks Maclachan
for the “Famous Scots” series (imported by Scrib-
ner), and we are inclined to think that Mr. Ruskin
was in this one case mistaken. The fascination of
exploration and the curiosity of science, these were
the causes of Mungo Park's embarking on his second
expedition, these and the desire to carry out what he
had worthily begun. Mungo Park was the discoverer
of the Niger. When Mr. Ruskin calls the Niger
a useless river, he speaks as many Englishmen would
have spoken fifteen years ago. Last spring, however,
a different opinion was prevalent. This book, contain-
ing a good account of Mungo Park's explorations on
behalf of England a hundred years ago, is especially
pertinent now that England is beginning to be vexed
that the French are taking to themselves all the ad-
vantages of those discoveries. All the upper Niger,
the whole of the course that Mungo Park in 1805
sailed to his death, is now claimed and exploited by
the French. From St. Louis they went to the Niger,
from the Niger to Lake Chad and the Upper Congo,
from the Upper Congo to Fashoda. Even Timbuctu,
which Tennyson discovered for poetry, was discov-
ered for commerce by the French, – and perhaps
with equal advantage. However that may be, this
little book will be read just now, as much as a sort
of political pamphlet as for any other reason. But
although present affairs on the Niger are of instant
interest, Mungo Park should not be forgotten. He
journeyed from Gambia, almost alone, and discov-
ered the upper waters of the river that had been so
long a mystery. He went again ten years afterwards
with a company of forty-four, found the Niger again,
and sailed down it. From that expedition no one
ever returned, nor did any account of the death of
Mungo Park reach Europe for some years. One by
one his men had perished, till at the last there were
but three with him, when the remnant of the expe-
dition was swallowed up in the great river in a des-
The predecessor of
Major Marchand.
perate attempt to escape from unnumbered enemies.
It was a heroic end: nor shall we take it upon our-
selves to say that Mungo Park would have done
better to have lived and died a country doctor by the
Tweed. A man who is willing to die in pursuit of his
duty has some right to say what that duty is.
In a neat volume entitled “Bird
Gods” (A. S. Barnes & Co.), Mr.
Charles De Kay presents some at-
tractive essays discussing the ideas held in ancient
Europe regarding birds. The subject has been
strangely neglected by folk-lorists and anthropolo-
gists. Many of the heroes and gods of antiquity
are accompanied by or associated with bird compan-
ions, messengers, or servants. These birds share
more or less the divinity of their masters. Mr.
De Kay thinks that in many cases the birds are
themselves regarded as divine, and that the respect
and worship shown their masters or companions
were originally theirs alone. A number of cases
are cited where the god-character of the birds them-
selves is clearly shown. The birds most respected
by the ancients appear to be the dove, woodpecker,
cuckoo, peacock, owl, swan, and eagle. Their inde-
pendent attributes are usually well distinguished,
but considerable confusion of them exists both in
the popular ideas and in Mr. De Kay's treatment.
Some of the author's suggestions are striking and
original. Thus, he connects our vulgar expression
“I swan" with an ancient practice of “swearing
by the swan.” His effort to explain the couvade
by popular ideas concerning the brooding bird and
the cuckoo is ingenious. Unfortunately, however,
this chapter—“The Couvade in Ireland and Persia”
—is so lacking in clearness that it must be consid-
ered simply as a suggestion along a line which,
clearly developed, may prove important. While
admitting the great interest and value of the book,
we feel that the author somewhat overrates the
weight of his evidence regarding bird-worship,
although the previous neglect of so interesting a
field is some excuse for this over-estimate. It is
also interesting to see how easily ingenious authors
can use the same data to support extremely diver-
gent theories. What Mr. George Cox insists are
sun-myths are equally well interpreted as dawn-
stories by Professor Max Müller or as bird-god tales
by Mr. De Kay. The decorations of this book really
deserve the special mention they hold in the title.
They are original, quaint, and truly artistic. The
artist's ingenuity in his pictures is almost equal to
that of the author in his text. On the whole, “Bird
Gods” is distinctly interesting, alike to folk-lorists,
students of mythology, and general readers.
Birds and
bird-worship
in antiquity.
Another volume of folk-lore studies
is presented by Dr. Robert M. Law-
rence, under the title of the opening
chapter, “The Magic of the Horse-shoe” (Hough-
ton). Dr. Lawrence has chosen a popular subject
and treats it popularly. His book consists of a
Horse-shoe
magic and other
Jolk-lore.


58 THE DIAL
[Jan. 16,
number of essays covering a considerable range of
topics. In the first of them he traces the history
of the horse-shoe, states the superstitions connected
with it, and discusses the theories regarding their
origin. While always interesting, the argument
lacks definiteness and coherence. The other essays
are: “Fortune and Luck,” “Folk-lore of Common
Salt,” “Omens of Sneezing,” “Days of Good and
Evil Omen,” “Superstitious Dealings with Ani-
mals,” and “The Luck of Odd Numbers.” These
are uneven in interest and treatment, although all
of them show diligence in gathering data and some
originality in treatment. A rather tiresome feature
of Dr. Lawrence's work is the homily thrown into
most of his essays, in which he deplores the exist-
ence of the ideas and superstitions studied. This
seems an unnecessary regret. A streak of super-
stition is human : it will last while man lasts.
A nation which has delighted in
Dietrich Knickerbocker, and has
taken to its heart Sleepy Hollow and
Rip Van Winkle, rather owes it to itself to become
acquainted with Wondel and his “Lucifer.” Look-
ing back to the Dutch episode in our history, we
sometimes fail to estimate rightly that vigorous
people which produced Rembrandt, De Ruyter, Huy-
gens, and various other noteworthy persons, among
whom we might mention also Spinoza, since he was
cast out by his own people. These gained wide
fame largely because they did not have to trust to
the feeble powers of speech: pictures, sea-fights,
pendulums, philosophies, are all independent of lin-
guistic boundaries. Like Milton, Wondel had the
courage to write his great poem in his own tongue.
Mr. Leonard C. Van Noppen has just translated it
into ours (Wondel's Lucifer: Continental Publishing
Co.), in a book that deserves mention for a number
of reasons. It is excellently printed and bound,
interestingly illustrated, and enriched with an Intro-
duction by Professor W. H. Carpenter of Columbia,
an Essay by Dr. G. Kalff of Utrecht, a sketch of
Wondel's life and times by the author, and also an
Interpretation of the poem by him. There is, there-
fore, everything that one would ask for in such a
book. Or, rather — porro unum, we had almost
forgotten—everything that one could ask, provided
that the translation be good. There is always a
moment of suspense, in turning to a well-published
translation, in which we wonder whether it will be
readable. Mr. Van Noppen has in this matter been
singularly successful: his translation seems almost
like an original. We do not mean that it has pre-
cisely the poetic character of Wondel himself; that
would be a risky assertion. But it does have a
poetic character, it is not obviously a translation, it
will be read by many, we suspect, without that
frantic desire to know the original which accom-
panies the reading of some translations. There is
much more to say about this book. We would
gladly speak of the pictures, curious things like old
wood engravings, by John Aarts. We would gladly
Wondel's Lucifer
in English verse.
say a word on the position taken as to Milton's
poetic relations with Wondel, but the parallel pas-
sages cited give others a good opportunity to judge.
We regret also that we have not room for a few
words of comment on the poem itself, which might
show that it was just now worth reading. But the
exigencies of time and space must be our apology
for merely calling attention to a book that will come
into relation with a good many lines of reading.
There are not a few English ladies
who have married German husbands,
and we imagine that “Elizabeth" is
one of them. Further, we believe that Elizabeth
(rather bored with kaffeeklatches and other German
festivities) spent most of her time in her garden, and
there allowed herself to write down things about it
and herself. Then her friends in England, to whom on
visits she read select portions, kept saying “Oh, that
is so charming! Really, you must publish it”; and
the result was “Elizabeth and her German Garden”
(Macmillan). So much is our opinion—of course,
more or less doubtful: more like a fact is it that
Elizabeth (whoever she may be) had a genuine love
of flowers and gardens, and a keen appreciation of
the colors of nature. We are sure that all garden-
lovers will detect this in her. She may not have known
very much about flowers—probably she did not.—
but she appreciated them, and for a rambling sort
of garden-journal her book is very pleasant. So far
as the garden is concerned, the author may well
enough remain impersonal. But her opinions on
other matters, or rather her mental attitudes, are
such that it is of interest to know whether she is
really German or not. If we may judge from the
book, she is the wife of a man of good family, living
upon his estate in Pomerania. She speaks of herself
as a German. But we think it would be unlikely that
a German girl of fifteen should have the chance to
fall in love with the parish organist who wore a sur-
plice on Sundays and a frockcoat and “bowler.”
hat other days, or that a German mother should
call her children's mixture of German and English
“Justice tempered with Mercy,” or that any Ger-
man at all should speak of a “German ardening-
book,” a “German Sunday,” a “Germal-arose,” as
this lady does, or in general show the san" contempt
for Germany. As an Englishwoman exºd to Ger-
many, Elizabeth's ideas and ways of tºught and
life are not so very remarkable. But trey are not
uninteresting therefor; in fact, there '• enough in
German Elizabeth
and her garden.
them to induce a second reading. t
- 8.
A Scotch A really good life of Rºbert Louis
life of Stevenson will find mºly readers.
Stevenson.
We look forward to its ppearance,
that we may be able to go over the chances and
triumphs of that life with the help of omeone who
knows; that we may try to see just 19 way it was
that Stevenson's work took shape al was moulded
into form, to appreciate just the place he filled
among us, to estimate, it may be, his genius. We
ſ


1899.] THE
DIAL 59
turned to the volume on Stevenson by Margaret
Moyes Black in the “Famous Scots” series (im.
ported by Scribner), with the hope of finding some-
thing which should put us in the right direction.
A Life need not be long to be useful. A thorough
knowledge of the facts of your man's life, a keen
appreciation of his books if he be a man of letters, and
a matured estimate of his genius, will give motive
power and character for an interesting narrative,
which may be very short, as the plan of this series
requires. Miss Black hardly reaches the ideal of
such attainment, although she has written a not
uninteresting book. There are some minor annoy-
ances: she almost always speaks of “Mr. Steven-
son”; she describes his writings as if to people
quite unfamiliar with them; and so on. Nor does she
quite meet one's desire in ease of narration (not to
demand charm), or in critical power. One element,
however, her book does have which we in America
more than others, perhaps, should value: namely,
a familiarity with the Edinburgh life of which Stev-
enson made a part until his health sent him else-
where. We are apt not to appreciate enough the
Scottish temper of one whom we are rather inclined
to think of as a great writer in our own language.
But here is the intimate and almost unconscious
familiarity with Edinburgh that is needed to fill
out our remembrance of Stevenson. Had it noth-
ing more than this, Miss Black's book would not be
without interest to the many who love the greatest
of the romancers of our generation.
Among our lighter essayists who deal
with themes belonging to Nature,
few possess the gift of style to a
greater degree than Mr. Bradford Torrey. There
is a delicacy, a humor, a grace in expression, an
aptness in allusion, and a genial disposition appar-
ent in his writings which give them a distinctive
fascination. His latest volume, “A World of
Green Hills” (Houghton), is an itinerary, in sepa-
rate yet coherent sketches, of a series of rambles in
the Southern Alleghanies in quest of birds and
flowers and mountain scenery. “I sauntered along,”
he writes, “with frequent interruptions, of course
(that was part of the game), — here for a bird,
there for "flower, a tree, or a bit of landscape.”
The main ºbject which inspired him was the study
of the rave.; said to be common in the highlands of
North Car” ha. “But ravens or no ravens, I meant
to enjoy rº, self,” he declares; and he did enjoy
everything 'hat came to him with such zest, and
he tells the ory of it with such quiet feeling, that
the reader ecomes an active sharer in his experi-
ence. Unfo" anately, no ravens appeared to crown
the naturalit's satisfaction ; indeed, “as far as
ravens were oncerned" he carried home “a lean
bag—a braća of interrogation points” only. His
readers have ile occasion to lament this fact, how-
ever, so abun; , t are the subjects of his observation
and so magici.is the interest he manages to throw
around every incident in his adventures. “I relish
4 naturalist
in the Southern
Alleghanies.
natural country talk,” he says, and hence he accosts
every man and woman and child met on the lonely
highway, and calls from each by his friendly man-
ner the best that lay under the rustic exterior, gain-
ing thereby many a glimpse of a strong and pleasing
individuality. If Tolstoi's assertion be true, that
“infection is a sure sign of art,” then Mr. Torrey
is an artist of the finest type, for there is not a page
in his volume which fails to communicate the subtle
contagion of his cheerful, tranquil, serious spirit.
A marvellous The first edition of Gesenius's He-
perpetuation of a brew Grammar appeared in Germany
** in 1813. It soon took its position as a
standard work, and since the death of the original
editor has been kept abreast the times, first by Pro-
fessor Roediger, and afterwards by Professor Emil
Kautzsch of the University of Halle. This English
edition was translated by the late Rev. G. W. Collins,
M.A., from the twenty-fifth German edition, and
after his death was replenished by the new material
of the twenty-sixth German edition, by A. E. Cowley,
M.A., of Oxford. So that the book is now entitled
“Kautzsch's Gesenius's Hebrew Grammar” (Oxford
University Press), translated by Collins and Cowley.
As it now stands, this is the best up-to-date compre-
hensive Hebrew grammar in existence. The work
of translating the German into English, never an
easy task, seems to have been well done, though
there are some idioms upon which translators can
never agree. The type of the book is skilfully
arranged, the larger representing the statements of
principles, and the smaller the citations of examples
and their translations. We are somewhat amazed
to note that the Clarendon Press should not have
required and published a Hebrew index to a gram-
mar which it was desired to make as complete as
possible. This is a serious omission, and detracts
greatly from the usefulness of a book which the
student desires as a vade mecum in Hebrew work.
The seventh volume of the biograph-
ical edition of Thackeray (Harper)
includes “Henry Esmond,” “The
English Humourists,” “The Four Georges,” and
the brief essay on “Charity and Humour.” The
introduction, by Mrs. Ritchie, is rather longer than
usual, with many illustrations, and particularly
interesting to us because it deals, in part, with
Thackeray's American lecture tour. He liked Boston
society, and said that it was “like the society of a
rich Cathedral-town in England—grave and de-
corous, and very pleasant and well read.” He found
that a man might lecture in America without being
thought infra dig. He also had this experience:
“When I came here they told me it was usual for
lecturers (Mr. B. of London had done it) to call
upon all the editors of all the papers, hat in hand,
and ask them to puff my lectures. Says I, ‘I’ll
see them all ,’ here I used a strong expression,
which you will find in the Athanasian Creed. Well,
they were pleased rather than otherwise, and now
Thackeray
in America.


60 THE DIAL
[Jan. 16,
the papers are puffing me so as to make me blush.”
Finally, he got very tired of the business (although
he was to repeat it two years later), and wrote:
“The idleness of the life is dreary and demoralizing
all through, and the bore and humiliation of deliv-
ering these stale old lectures is growing intolerable.
Why, what a superior heroism is Albert Smith's
who has ascended Mont Blanc four hundred times 1’’
BRIEFER MENTION.
In one sense, there cannot be too many translations
of Homer, yet it is difficult to discover wherein Mr.
Samuel Butler, in his recent prose version of the “Iliad”
(Longmans), has improved upon the translation of
Messrs. Leaf, Lang, and Myers. But Mr. Butler has
his own ideas about translation, and had a right to give
them shape. His version is rather freer than others of
recent making, and he seeks to avoid hackneyed epi-
thets and phrases. At all events he is better employed
in this task than in his endeavor to prove that Nausicao
wrote the “Odyssey.”
The Open Court Publishing Co. has just issued a
gift-book as beautiful in execution as it is unusual in
character. It consists of a series of eight colored repro-
ductions of paintings representing “Scenes in the Life
of Buddha,” the work of Professor Keichyu Yamada of
Tokyo. These paintings are selected from a series
made by the artist to illustrate the Japanese translation
of “The Gospel of Buddha,” by Dr. Paul Carus, which
work is used as a text-book in some of the Buddhist
schools of Japan. The present reproduction is highly
successful as to the coloring, which is exceptionally deli-
cate. Mr. Frederick W. Gookin has designed an appro-
priate and artistic cover-stamp for this unique volume.
The collection of “Songs of Life and Nature” (Scott,
Foresman & Co.) which has been made by Eleanor
Smith for the use of schools for girls, is a work which
displays intelligence and good taste in unusual degree.
Classical selections and folk-songs are interspersed with
good modern compositions, and the selections are made
with reference, not only to their musical value, but also
with regard to the literary value of the texts, the eth-
ical inspiration to be derived from them, and their fit-
ºness to the general plan of educational work adopted in
progressive schools. The book is one to be heartily
commended.
Mr. M. E. Lowndes is the author of a biographical
study of “Michel de Montaigne,” which is published at
the Cambridge University Press (Macmillan). This
essay embodies the facts unearthed by the researches
of MM. Payen and Malvezin, and interprets them in the
light of the immortal “Essays” themselves. The author
is in full sympathy with his subject, and has produced
what is probably the most readable account existing in
English of the pleasant egotist whose name this study
bears. A considerable body of notes supplements the
text of this monograph.
Mr. Lorenzo Sears is the author of a treatise, running
to some three hundred and fifty pages, upon the “Prin-
ciples and Methods of Literary Criticism” (Putnam).
The work has grown, we are told, out of “an attempt
to guide a class in literature in making critical estimates
of their reading.” The subject is dealt with in a care-
fully classified and logically grouped series of chapters,
characterized by admirable good sense, but by no strik-
ing literary excellence. The work is a plain and not
particularly attractive statement of obvious truths and
commonplace judgments. It will probably be useful to
students who are beginning the study of literature.
Mr. Joseph Shaylor is the compiler of a small book,
for which Mr. Andrew Lang has penned an introduction,
which gives a selection of extracts pertinent to the sub-
ject of “The Pleasures of Literature and the Solace of
Books” (Truslove & Comba). The work is like Mr. Ire-
land’s “Enchiridion,” but planned on a smaller scale, and
including extracts from many writers too recent to be
found in that compendium.
Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons are the importers of
“Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece,” by John
Addington Symonds. The work is to occupy three vol-
umes, of which two are now at hand, and will include the
contents of the three separate works entitled “Sketches
in Italy and Greece,” “Sketches and Studies in Italy,”
and “Italian Byways.” Readers of Symonds know
that these collections comprise much of his most fascin-
ating and suggestive writing, and will be glad to have
their contents topographically arranged, as they are now
to be.
Long experience in the popular exposition of the
principles of political economy has given Dr. Edward
Thomas Devine peculiar qualifications for the prepara-
tion of a text-book upon this subject, and his recently
published “Economics” (Macmillan) is an excellent
book of its sort. While not perhaps the best kind of a
book for daily use in the schools, it would serve admir-
ably to supplement some more formal text-book, and
for this purpose, as well as for the use of the general
reader, it may be warmly recommended. It is, in the
main, a treatise readable, lucid, and sound in doctrine.
Mr. Stopford A. Brooke's “English Literature from
the Beginning to the Norman Conquest” (Macmillan)
is essentially a recast of the author's previous work on
“Early English Literature up to the Days of Alfred.”
The original text has been shortened, rewritten, and
rearranged, besides being supplemented for the present
volume by a long chapter on Alfred, and four other
chapters on the subsequent period. There are many
translated passages in the text, and a number of others
in the appendix, where we find “The Wanderer” and
“The Battle of Maldon.” A bibliography is appended.
Mr. Paul Leicester Ford's edition of “The Writings
of Thomas Jefferson” (Putnam) has reached its ninth
volume, and already draws near the close of the great
President's life. The correspondence for the years
1807–1815 is given in this volume, and we should sup-
pose that one more volume ought to complete the col-
lection. Mr. Ford's services to American historical
scholarship are so many and varied that we hardly need
to characterize them with every new book that bears
his name. Possessors of the set now in question will be
glad to learn that it will soon stand complete upon
their shelves.
A revised edition of Professor Edward Channing's
“Students' History of the United States” (Macmillan),
with additions taking in the war with Spain, has re-
cently come to us, and we are once more impressed with
the admirable character of the book. The recent ten-
dency to include in the last year of secondary school
work a serious study of American history cannot fail to
receive new impetus from the mere fact that such a
volume as this of Mr. Channing, so suitable for the
purpose, is to be had.


1899.] THE
DIAL 61
LITERARY NOTES.
“Some Notes of a Struggling Genius,” by Mr. G. S.
Street, and “Stories Toto Told Me,” by Baron Corvo,
are two new “Bodley Booklets,” published by Mr. John
Lane.
Mr. Charles Morris adds a “Spanish” volume to his
series of “Historical Tales,” of which nine volumes have
previously appeared. The tales are brief, and told in a
way to be interesting to young people. The Lippincott
Co. are the publishers.
Macaulay's essays on Addison and Milton, and Shake-
speare’s “Macbeth,” all edited by Mr. Charles W.
French, form three volumes in a new series of annotated
English texts published by the Macmillan Co. in a form
at once tasteful and inexpensive. Tennyson's “Prin-
cess,” edited by Mr. Wilson Farrand, is a fourth volume
of the same series.
The American Unitarian Association (25 Beacon
Street, Boston) has printed for free distribution a pam-
phlet of twenty-eight pages entitled “A Plea for Sin-
cerity in Religious Thought,” by Rev. Joseph Henry
Crooker, the author of “Jesus Brought Back,” and
“Problems in American Society.”
“Asheville Pictures and Pencillings” is the title of an
attractive and novellittle booklet published in the famous
Southern winter resort by Mr. A. H. McQuilkin, editor
of “The Inland Printer.” It is prettily illustrated and
contains much interesting information, and we hope Mr.
McQuilkin's intention to issue such a pamphlet fort-
nightly will be fulfilled.
“Cuba and Other Verse” is a reprint of a volume
published pseudonymously several years ago. The au-
thorship is now acknowledged by Mr. Robert Manners,
who puts forth this new edition through the press of
Messrs. Way & Williams in a tasteful book. The con-
tents, while not in any way remarkable, are not unde-
serving of attention from readers of poetry.
Messrs. Ginn & Co. publish Goethe’s “Egmont,”
edited by Dr. Max Winkler; “Deutsche Gedichte for
High Schools,” selected by Mr. Hermann Mueller, and
“The Easiest German Reading for Learners Young or
Old,” prepared by Dr. George Hempl. “Auf der Son-
nenseite,” a selection of stories and sketches from mod-
ern authors, edited by Dr. Wilhelm Bernhardt, is pub-
lished by Messrs. D. C. Heath & Co.
The Macmillan Company announces the publication
in February, under the editorship of Mr. Frank M.
Chapman, of the first number of a popular bi-monthly
magazine of ornithology to be known as “Bird Lore.”
The magazine will be the official organ of the Audubon
Societies for the protection of birds and a department
devoted to their work will be under the charge of Mrs.
Mabel Osgood Wright.
Messrs. Henry Holt & Co. expect to issue at once the
American edition of “Eighteenth Century Letters,”
under the general editorship of Mr. R. Brimley Johnson.
The letters of Swift, Addison, and Steele are selected
and edited with an introduction by Mr. Stanley Lane
Poole, in one volume, and Mr. George Birkbeck Hill has
performed the same offices for those of Johnson and
Lord Chesterfield in another volume.
“War Poems, 1898,” compiled by the California
Club, comes to us from the Murdock Press of San Fran-
cisco. There are respectable names in the table of
contents, – Messrs. Clinton Scollard, Marrion Wilcox,
Robert Burns Wilson, and Theodore C. Williams, Misses
Ina D. Coolbrith and Edith M. Thomas — but the aver-
age quality of the work is low, to say nothing of the
average quality of the ideals by which it is inspired.
There is a rapidly growing literature of protest
against the expansion madness that has seized upon
so many normally sane Americans. One by one the
sober opinions of our really serious thinkers are finding
voice, and a movement of thought has begun which we
trust will soon acquire volume enough to save the Re-
public from the threatened repudiation of its own best
ideals. Among the recently published utterances of
conservative scholars upon this all-important subject, we
note the magnificent address called “American Impe-
rialism,” made early this month by Mr. Carl Schurz
before the University of Chicago in quarterly Convo-
cation, and now printed in the “University Record”;
the fine and scholarly paper of Mr. Charles Francis
Adams, read on last Forefathers' Day before the Lex-
ington Historical Society, and now published in pam-
phlet form by Messrs. Dana Estes & Co.; and the
acute and effective argument of Mr. Edwin Burritt
Smith, upon the subject of “National Expansion under
the Constitution,” published by the R. R. Donnelly &
Sons Co. Armed with these three documents, and a
copy of Senator Hoar's recent speech, the opponent of
expansion would find himself well equipped for dis-
cussion.
LIST OF NEW BOOKS.
[The following list, containing 103 titles, includes books
received by THE DIAL since its last issue.]
BIOGRAPHY AND MEMOIRS.
Alphonse Daudet. By Léon Daudet. To which is added
“The Daudet Family,” by Ernest Daudet. Trans. from
the French by Charles de Kay. With portrait, 12mo, gilt
top, pp. 466. Little, Brown, & Co. $1.50.
The Life of Charles Stewart Parnell, 1846–1891. By R.
Barry O'Brien. With portrait, 8vo, gilt top, uncut, pp. 775.
Harper & Brothers. $2.50.
The Life of Henry Drummond. By George Adam Smith.
With portrait, large 8vo, gilt top, uncut, pp. 541. Double-
day & McClure Co. $3. net.
Newman Hall: An Autobiography. With portrait, 8vo,
gilt top, uncut, pp. 383. T. Y. Crowell & Co. $3.
Historic Nuns. By Bessie R. Belloc. 12mo, gilt top, uncut,
pp. 223. London: Duckworth & Co.
HISTORY.
The Companions of Pickle. A Sequel to “Pickle the
Spy.” By Andrew Lang. With portraits, large 8vo, gilt
top, uncut, pp. 308. Longmans, Green, & Co. $5.
Our Navy in the War with Spain. By John R. Spears.
Illus., 12mo, pp. 406. Charles Scribner's Sons. $2.
The Sepoy Mutiny, as Seen by a Subaltern, from Delhi to
Lucknow. By Colonel Edward Wibart. Illus., 12mo,
uncut, pp. 308. Charles Scribner's Sons. $2.50.
The Dreyfus Case. By Fred. C. Conybeare, M.A. Illus.,
12mo, pp. 318. Dodd, Mead & Co. $1.50.
History of the World. By Edgar Sanderson, M.A. With
maps, 8vo, pp. 790. “Concise Knowledge Library.”
D. Appleton & Co. $2.
The Great Campaigns of Nelson. By William O'Connor
Morris. Illus., 12mo, pp. 160. Charles Scribner's Sons. $1.25.
Spanish Historical Tales: The Romance of Reality. By
Charles Morris. Illus., 12mo, gilt top, pp. 331. J. B. Lip-
pincott Co. $1.25.
GENERAL LITERATURE.
Exotics and Retrospectives. By Lafcadio Hearn. 12mo,
gilt top, uncut, pp. 299. Little, Brown, & Co. $2.
The Adventure of the Lady Ursula: A Comedy in Four
Acts. By Anthony Hope. Illus. in photogravure, large
8vo, gilt top, uncut, pp. 125. R. H. Russell. $1.50.


62 THE
DIAL [Jan. 16,
A Critical Study of “In Memoriam.” By the Rev. John
M. King, M.A. 16mo, gilt top, uncut, pp. 253. Toronto:
George N. Morang.
The More Excellent Way: Words of the Wise on the Life
of Love. Compiled by the Hon. Mrs. Lyttelton Gell.
16mo, pp. 325. Oxford University Press.
The Queen's Garland: Chosen Lyrics of the Reign of
Queen Elizabeth. Selected and arranged by FitzRoy Car-
rington. With portraits, 16mo, gilt top, uncut, pp. 105.
R. H. Russell. 75 cts.
Fantastic Fables. By Ambrose Bierce.
G. P. Putnam's Sons. $1.
War Poems of 1898. Compiled by the California Club.
Illus., 8vo, pp. 147. San Francisco: Murdock Press.
16mo, pp. 194.
NEW EDITIONS OF STANDARD LITERATURE.
Idylls of the King. By Alfred Tennyson; with 60 original
decorations by George_Wooliscroft Rhead and Louis
Rhead, 4to, gilt top. R. H. Russell. $3.75.
Thackeray's Christmas Books, “Biographical '' edition.
With Introduction by Anne Thackeray Ritchie. Illus.,
8vo, gilt top, uncut, pp. 400. Harper & Brothers. $1.75.
BOOKS OF VERSE.
The Song of the Wave, and Other Poems. By George
Qabot Lodge. 12mo, gilt top, uncut, pp. 135. Charles
Scribner's Sons. $1.50.
The Golden Person in the Heart. By Claude Fayette
Bragdon. 18mo, uncut, pp. 42. Gouverneur, N. Y.:
Brothers of the Book.
Phil-o-rum's Canoe, and Madeleine Vercheres. By William
Henry Drummond. Illus. in photogravure, 12mo, pp. 12.
G. P. Putnam's Sons. 75 cts.
The Seven Voices. By J. Hooker Hamersley. Illus., 8vo,
gilt edges, pp. 143. §. P. Putnam's Sons. $1.75.
When Cupid Calls. By Tom Hall; with decorations by
Blanche McManus. 16mo, gilt top, uncut, pp. 119. E. R.
Herrick & Co. $1.50.
Ashes of Roses. By Paul Shivell. 18mo, gilt top, uncut,
. 192. Dayton, O.: Press of United Brethren Pub'g
ouse,
Songs from Puget Sea. By Herbert Bashford. 12mo, gilt
top, ºut. pp. 100. San Francisco: Whitaker & Ray
Co.
For Truth and Freedom: Poems of Commemoration. By
Armistead C. Gordon. 16mo, uncut, pp. 48. Staunton,
Wa.: Albert Shultz. Paper, 50cts.
FICTION.
Bismillah. By A. J. Dawson. 12mo, pp. 327. Macmillan
Co. $1.25.
The Journalist. C. F. Keary.
12mo, uncut, pp. 307.
New Amsterdam Book Co. $1.50.
A Yankee from the West. By Opie Read. 12mo, pp. 277.
Rand, McNally & Co. $1.
The Adventures of Cyrano de Bergerac. By Louis
Gallet; trans. from the French by Hettie E. Miller. With
frontispiece, 12mo, pp. 460. R. F. Fenno & Co. $1.25.
The Secret of Fougereuse: A Romance of the Fifteenth
Qentury. ... Trans, from the French by Louise Imogen
Guiney. Illus., 12mo, pp.347. Boston: Marlier, Callanan
& Co. $1.25.
An Experimental Wooing. By Tom Hall." 12mo, uncut,
pp. 180. E. R. Herrick & Co. $1.25.
The Little Lady, Some Other People, and Myself. B
Tom Hall. Illus., 12mo, uncut, pp. 222. E. R. Herric
& Co. $1.25.
Belinda—and Some Others. 12mo, pp. 236. D. Appleton
& Co. $1.; paper, 50 cts.
Houses of Glass: A Philosophical Romance. By Wallace
Fº M. D. 12mo, pp. 398, G. W. Dillingham Co.
Bound by the Law. By Kate Thyson Marr. 12mo, pp. 362.
G. W. Dillingham Co. $1.50.
His Neighbor's Wife. By Gilson Willets.
F. Tennyson Neely. $1.25.
Red, White, and Blue Days. By Ruth Louise Sheldon.
12mo, gilt top, uncut, pp. 230. New York: H. Ingalls
#Aft
Anita, the Cuban Spy. By Gilson Willets.
pp. 405. F. Tennyson Neely. 50cts.
12mo, pp. 320.
Illus., 12mo,
TRAVEL AND DESCRIPTION.
With Peary Near the Pole. By Eivind Astrup; trans.
from the Norwegian by H. J. Bull. Illus., 8vo, gilt top,
uncut, pp. 362. J. B. Lippincott Co. $3.50.
A Cruise under the Crescent: From Suez to San Marco.
By Charles Warren Stoddard. Illus., 12mo, gilt top, uncut,
pp. 358. Rand, McNally & Co. $1.50.
With Kitchener to Khartum. By G. W. Steevens. With
maps and plans, 12mo, pp. 326. Dodd, Mead & Co. $1.50.
Historic Homes of the South-West Mountains, Vir-
ginia. By Edward C. Mead. Illus., 8vo, gilt top, uncut,
pp. 275. #. B. Lippincott Co. $3.50 net.
Neely's Panorama of Cuba, and Marching through Cuba.
Each oblong 12mo. F. Tennyson Neely. Paper, each 10c.
RELIGION.
The Great Affirmations of Religion: An Introduction to
Real Religion. By Thomas R. Slicer. 12mo, gilt top,
pp. 273. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. $1.50.
Men and Movements in the English Church. By Arthur
Rogers. With photogravure portraits, 12mo, gilt top,
pp. 375. Longmans, Green, & Co. $1.50.
Lights and Shadows of American Life. By Rev. A. C.
Dixon, D.D. 12mo, pp. 197. F. H. Revell Co. $1.
The Pledge of Endeavor: A Study. By Rev. William M.
Campbell, Ph.D. 12mo, pp. 63. F. H. Revell Co. 35c. net.
SOCIAL AND FINANCIAL STUDIES.
The City Wilderness: A Settlement Study. By Residents
and Associates of the South End House, Boston. Edited
by Robert A. Woods. 12mo, pp. 319. Houghton, Mifflin
& Co. $1.50.
Money and Bimetallism. By Henry A. Miller. 12mo,
pp. 308. G. P. Putnam's Sons. $1.25.
SCIENCE.
Degeneracy: Its Causes, Signs, and Results. By Eugene S.
Talbot, M.D. Illus., 12mo, pp. 372. “Contemporary
Science Series.” Charles Scribner's Sons. $1.50.
The Study and Difficulties of Mathematics. By Augustus
De Morgan. With portrait, 12mo, pp. 288. Open Court
Pub'g Co. $1.25.
MUSIC AND ART.
How Music Developed: A Critical and Explanatory
Account of the Growth of Modern Music. B . J. Hen-
derson. 12mo, gilt top, pp. 413. F. A. Stokes Co. $1.25 net.
Voice and Violin: Sketches, Anecdotes, and Reminiscences.
By Dr. T. L. Phipson. 12mo, gilt top, uncut, pp. 226.
J. B. Lippincott Co. $1.75.
Book-Plates—Old and New. By John A. Gade. Illus.,
16mo, gilt top, uncut, pp. 52. M. F. Mansfield & Co. $1.25.
Scenes from the Life of Buddha. Reproduced from paint-
ings by Keichyu Yamada. Large 8vo, gilt edges. Open
Court Pub'g Co.
REFERENCE.
A Dictionary of the Bible. By John D. Davis, Ph.D.
|. 8vo, pp. 802. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press.
2. net.
The Daily News Almanac and Political Register for 1899.
Compiled by George E. Plumbe, A.B. 12mo, pp. 484.
Chicago Daily News Co. 50 cts.; paper, 25 cts.
BOOKS FOR THE YOUNG.
The Boys of '98. By James Otis. Illus., 8vo, pp. 386. Dana
Estes & Co. $1.50.
The Modern Traveller. By H. B. and B. T. B. Illus.,
8vo, pp. 80. Macmillan Co. $1.
Little Bertha. By W. J. Stillman.
London: Grant Richards.
Bible Stories in Bible Language. By Edward Tuckerman
Potter; with Introduction by the Right Rev. Henry C.
Potter, D.D. New edition; illus., 12mo, pp. 197. D. Apple-
ton & Co. $1.
How Polly and Ned Found Santa Claus. By Anna Chapin
Ray. Illus., 8vo. Privately Printed.
Cis Martin; or, The Furriners in the Tennessee Mountains.
By Louise R. Baker. Illus., 12mo, pp. 270. Eaton &
Mains. $1.
24mo, uncut, pp. 111.


1898.] THE
DIAL - 68
i
Starlight Sterling, and Other Stories and Poems for Boys
and Girls. By Effie Kline Merwine. With frontispiece,
large §: uncut, pp. 56, Columbus: Champlin Printing
cts.
The Time O'Day. By Prescott Bailey Bull; illus. by Eleanor
Withey Willard. Oblong 8yo, pp. 32. Grand Rapids:
Michigan Trust Co. Paper.
EDUCATION.—BOOKS FOR SCHOOL AND
COLLEGE,
A History of Rugby School. By W. H. D. Rouse, M.A.
Illus., 12mo, uncut, pp.420. Charles Scribner's Sons. $1.50.
The Educational Systems of Great Britain and Ireland.
By Graham Balfour, M.A. 12mo, pp. 320. Oxford Uni-
versity Press.
An Educational Experiment. By “Erato,” 12mo, pp. 139.
Chicago: Orville Brewer.
Physical Geography. By William Morris Davis and Will-
#. Henry Snyder. us., 12mo, pp. 428. Ginn & Co.
1.40.
Studies in Advanced Physiology. By Louis J. Rettger,
A.M. Illus., large 8vo, pp. 592. Terre Haute: Inland
Pub’g Co.
Songs of Life and Nature, for the Use of Schools. Com-
d and selected by Eleanor Smith. Large 8vo, pp. 208.
g: Foresman & 8. $1.25.
Memoirs of Edward Gibbon. Edited by Oliver Farrar
Emerson, A.M. 12mo, pp. 279. “Athenaeum PressSeries.”
Ginn & Co. #130.
The Poems of William Collins. Edited by Walter C.
Bronson, A.M. With frontispiece, 12mo, pp. 135. “Athe-
naeum Press Series.” Ginn & Co. $1.
First Lessons in Modern Geology. By the late A. H.
Green, M.A.; edited by J. F. Blake, Mº. 12mo, pp. 212.
Oxford University Press.
Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans. Edited by John B.
Dunbar, Ph.D. 12mo, pp. 512. Ginn & Co. 75 cts.
Bird World: A Bird Book for Children. By J. H. Stickney
and Ralph Hoffman. Illus, in colors, etc., 12mo, pp. 214.
Ginn & Co. 70 cts.
First Steps in the History of our Country. By William
A. Mowry, Ph.D., and Arthur May Mowry, A.M. Illus.,
12mo, pp. 315. Silver, Burdett & Co. 60 cts.
French Heroes of the Middle West. By Mary Hartwell
Catherwood. Illus., 16mo, pp. 141. Ginn & Co. 60 cts.
Laboratory Exercises in Anatomy and Physiology. By
James Edward Peabody, A.M. '12mo, pp. 79. Henry
Holt & Co. 60 cts.
Poetry of the Seasons. ‘....". by Mary I. Lovejoy.
Illus., 12mo, pp. 336, Silver, Burdett & Co. 60 cts.
Historic Boston and its Neighborhood. By Edward Everett
Hale. Illus., 12mo, pp. 186. “Home Reading Books.”
D. Appleton & Co. 50 cts. net.
Conjugaison des Verbes Français. Par Paul Bercy, B.L.
12mo, pp. 84. William R. Jenkins. Paper, 50 cts.
Deutsche Gedichte for High Schools. Selected and ar-
* by Hermann Mueller, L.M. 12mo, pp. 71. Ginn
& Co. 45 cts.
Braided Straws. By Elizabeth E. Foulke. Illus., 12mo,
pp. 135. Silver, Burdett & Co. 40 cts.
Auf der Sonnenseite. Von Heinrich Seidel, Hermann
Sudermann, Emil Frommel, and Nataly von Eschstruth;
selected and edited by Dr. Wilhelm Bernhardt. With
portrait, 12mo, pp. 146. D. C. Heath & Co. 35 cts.
The Easiest German Reading for Learners, Young or Old.
By George Hempl, Ph.D. 12mo, pp.82. Ginn & Co. 45cts.
Sarcey's Le Siege de Paris. Edited by I. H. B. Spiers.
With portrait, 12mo, pp. 188. D. C. Heath & Co. 35 cts.
Macaulay's Essays on Milton and Addison. Edited by
Charles Wallace French. Each in 1 vol., with portrait,
18mo. Macmillan Co. Per vol., 25 cts.
Tennyson's The Princess. Edited by Wilson Farrand, A.M.
With portrait, 18mo, pp. 173. Macmillan Co. 25 cts.
Lessons for Beginners in Reading. By Florence Bass.
#. in colors, etc., 18mo, pp. 110. D. C. Heath & Co.
Cts.
Shakespeare's Macbeth. Edited by Charles W. French.
With portrait, 24mo, pp. 185. Macmillan Co. 25 cts.
MISCELLANEOUS.
Diet in Illness and Convalescence. By Alice Worthington
Mººr. Illus., 12mo, pp. 287. arper & Brothers.
The Depew Story Book. Edited by Will M. Clemens.
Illus., 12mo, pp. 207. F. Tennyson Neely. $1.
Our Children in Old Scotland and Nova Scotia. B
Emma M. Stirling. 12mo, pp. 184. Coatesville, Pa.: C. §.
Speakman.
Church Sociables and Entertainments. Illus., 24mo,
gilt top, uncut, pp. 168. Doubleday & McClure Co. 50cts.
The Purple Cow. Written and illus., by Gelett Burgess.
8vo, uncut. San Francisco: William Doxey. Paper, 50cts.
The Lark Almanac for 1899. Illus., 8vo. San Francisco:
William Doxey. Paper, 50 cts.
What Good Does Wishing Do? By Anna Robertson
É.". Lindsay, Ph.D. 12mo, pp. 32. T. Y. Crowell &
cts.
Auld Lang Syne. By Robert Burns. 16mo. M. F. Mans-
field & Co. Paper, 25 cts.
The Gawktown Revival Club. By J. Walter Davis.
16mo, pp. 89. Minneapolis: Gleaner Pub'g Co. Paper, 50c.
AMERICAN SHAKESPEAREAN MAGAZINE. –$1.50 per Year;
single numbers, 15 cts. ANNA RANDALL-DIEHL, Editor,
251 Fifth Avenue, New York City.
- and other Newspaper Clippings for Authors.
B00k Reviews One Dollar a Month, or Four Dollars per 100.
AUTHORS LEAGUE, P. O. Box 1716, New York.
O YOU WISH COLLABORATION, author's revision, dramatiza-
tion, or aid in it. publication of your books, stories, and
magazine articles? If so, address
ROYAL MANUSCRIPT SOCIETY, 63 Fifth Ave., New York.
A CARD sent to CHARLES P. EVERITT, 18 East Twenty-third
Street, New York, will bring by return mail a catalogue
of old books-Americana, Drama, Biography, Art, Fine Editions and
First Editions, etc., etc.
DWIGHT H. PERKINS,
Architect,
Steinway Hall, Chicago.
Telephone, Harrison 783.
STORY-WRITERS, Biographers, Historians, Poets—Do
- y
ou desire the honest criticism of your
book, or its skilled revision and correction, or advice as to º: on?
Such work, said George William Curtis, is “done as it should be by The
Easy Chair's friend and fellow laborer in letters, Dr. Titus M. Coan.”
Terms by agreement. Send for circular D, or forward your book or M8.
to the New York Bureau of Revision, 70 Fifth Ave., New York.
FIRST EDITIONS OF MODERN AUTHORS,
Including Dickens, Thackeray, Lever, Ainsworth, Stevenson,
Jefferies, Hardy. Books illustrated by G. and R. Cruikshank,
Phiz, Rowlandson, Leech, etc. The Largest and Choicest Col-
lection offered for Sale in the World. Catalogues issued and
sent post free on application. Books bought.—WALTER T.
SPENCER, 27 New Oxford St., London, W. C., England.
To PUBLISHERS.–Young man of 32, capable, energetic, and of
clean record, wishes to connect himself with a good publishing
house or literary periodical, preferably one operating its own mechan-
ical plant. Has good knowledge of books and printing, and is experi-
enced as executive and buyer; is now employed, but wants to get into
publishing as affording field for best development of natural qualifica-
tions. Invites closest scrutiny of character and record.
Address C. H., care The Dial, Chicago.
L’ECHO DE LA SEMAINE.
Revue Littéraire et Mondaine, Paraissant le Samedi.
Abonnement, $2.00 par an. 175 Tremont Street, Boston, MAss.
Numéro specimen envoyé sur demande.
Sºy AND PRACTICE OF FRENCH IN SCHOOL. In three
Parts. By L. C. BONAME, 258 S. 16th St., Philadelphia, Pa. A care-
fully graded course, meeting requirements for entrance examination at
college. Practice in conversation and thorough drill in Pronunciation
and Grammar.—From Education (Boston): "A well made series.”
FRENCH BOOKS.
Readers of French desiring good literature will take pleas-
ure in reading our ROMANS CHOISIS SERIES, 60 cts. per
vol. in paper and 85 cents in cloth; and CONTES CHOISIS
SERIES, 25 cents per vol. Each a masterpiece and by a well-
known author. Lists sent on application. Also complete cata-
logue of all French and other Foreign books when desired.
WILLIAM R. JENKINS,
Nos. 851 and 853 Sixth Ave. (cor. 48th St.), NEw York.


64 . -
[Jan. 16, 1899.
THE DIAL
THE OPEN Court PUBLISHING Co.
MATHEMATICAL BOOKS.
Lectures on Elementary Mathematics.
By Joseph Louis LAGRANGE. Being the Course of Lectures delivered at
the Ecole Normale, Paris, 1795. Translated from the French by
Thomas J. McCormack. A Masterpiece of Mathematical Exposition.
First Separate Edition in English or French. With a fine photogravure
portrait of the great mathematician, notes, bibliographical sketch of
Lagrange, marginal analyses, index, etc.; handsomely bound in red
cloth, pp. 172. $1.00 net.
“The book ought to be in the hands of every high-school teacher of
mathematics in America, for the sake of getting range's point of
view.”—Prof. HENRY CREw, Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill.
On the Study and Difficulties of Mathematics.
By Augustus De MoRGAN. New corrected and annotated edition, with
references to date, of the work published in 1831, by the Society for
the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. The original is now scarce.
With a fine portrait of the great mathematical teacher, complete
index, and bibliographies of modern works on algebra. The Philos-
ophy of Mathematics, Pangeometry, etc.; pp. viii.-H288, cloth, $1.25.
“A valuable essay.”—Prof. Jevons, in the Encyclopedia Brittannica.
“The mathematical writings of De Morgan can be commended unre-
servedly.”—Prof. W. W. BEMAN, University of Michigan.
Mathematical Essays and Recreations.
By HERMANN SCHUBERT; from the German by Thomas J. McCormack.
A collection of six articles bearing the following titles: (1) “The Defi-
nition and Notion of Number”; (2) “Monism in Arithmetic”; (3) “On
the Nature of Mathematical Knowledge”; (4) “Magic Squares”;
(5) “The Fourth Dimension”; (6) “The History of the Squaring of the
Circle.” The first three articles are concerned with the construction of
arithmetic as a monistic science, all the consequences of which flow as
a matter of pure logic from a few simple principles. The article on the
“Fourth Dimension” is popular and shows clearly what is meant by
“dimension” in science and what the legitimate function of a “fourth
di ion” is in 4-1- ics; of the clai of spiritualism to this
beautiful and convenient concept, it disposes definitely. The article on
“Magic Squares” is a pleasing recreation. That on the “Squaring of
the Circle” gives the history of one of the most instructive and inter-
esting episodes in the history of human thought. Both these essays are
very plete popul ts of their subjects, more complete per-
haps than any generally accessible accounts in English.
RECENT PUBLICATIONS.
Truth and Error;
Or, The Science of Intellection. By J.W. Powell. A new book by the
Director of the United States Bureau of American Ethnology and
sometime Director of the United States Geological Survey. Pp. 423,
cloth, $1.75.
History of the People of Israel.
From the Beginning to the Destruction of Jerusalem. By Prof. C. H.
Cornmill, of the University of Koenigsberg, Germany. Translated by
W. H. CARRUTH, Professor of German in the University of Kansas.
Pp. 325, $1.50 (7s.6d).
“Its brevity and clear style make it very readable.”— Outlook.
“It is concise and graphic.”— Congregationalist.
“Many attempts have been made since Old Testament criticism set-
tled down into a science, to write the history of Israel popularly. And
some of these attempts are highly meritorious, especially Kittel's and
Kent's. But Cornill has been most successful. His book is smallest
and it is easiest to read. He has the master faculty of seizing the es-
sential and passing º the accidental. His style (especially as freely
translated into English by Professor Carruth of Kansas) is pleasing and
restful. Nor is he excessively radical. If Isaac and Ishmael are races,
Abraham is an individual still. And above all, he has a distinct heroic
faith in the Divine mission of Israel.”—The Expository Times (London).
The Prohibited Land.
The Travels in Tartary, Thibet, and China of MM. Huc and GABET.
New Edition. From the French. Handsomely bound in Oriental
style. A classic work of Travels. One of the most popular books of
all times. 2 vols. 100 illustrations, pp. 688, cloth, $2.00 (10s.).
“To all readers of Mr. Landor's new book who wish to supplement
the information concerning the Forbidden Land there given, we can
recommend the work of M. Huc. Time cannot mar the interest of his
and M. Gabet's daring and successful enterprise.”—Academy (London).
OTHER ORIENTAL BOOKS,
AND Boors ON compara TIVE rel, IGION.
BUDDHISMAND ITS CHRISTIAN CRITICS. By Dr. Paul Casus.
Pp. 311, $1.25 (6s. 6d.).
THE GOSPEL OF BUDDHA. By Dr. Paul CARus. Fifth Edition.
Cloth, $1.00 (5s.); paper, 35 cents (2s.).
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ANCIENT INDIA. By Prof. Richard
GARBE. Pp. 89, cloth, 50 cents (2s. 6d.); paper, 25 cents (1s. 6d.)
ANCIENT INDIA: ITs LANGUAGE AND RELIGIONS. By
Prof. H. OLDENBURG. Pp. ix.--110, cloth, 50 cents (2s. 6d.); paper,
25 cents (1s. 6d.).
CHINESE FICTION. By Rev. George T. CANDLIN. Paper, 15 cents:
CHINESE PHILOSOPHY. By Dr. PAUL CARus. Paper, 25 cents.
LAO-TZE'S TA0-TEH-KING. Chinese-English. With Introduc-
tion, Transliteration, and Notes. By Dr. PAUL CARU’s. With a pho-
togravure frontispiece of the traditional picture of Lao-tze, specially
drawn for the work by an eminent Japanese artist. Appropriately
bound in yellow and blue, with gilt top. Pp. 345, $3.00.
“It goes without saying that the task of obtaining sufficient ac-
quaint with the Chi language to tr , under the condi-
tions named, a book like that of Lao-tze is a gigantic one. Dr. Carus's
success is little short of marvelous. He frequently cites the versions
of others, none of which happen to be at hand for comparison, but in
the extracts given it seems clear that Dr. Carus has succeeded better
than Dr. Legge or Dr. Chalmers in the passages where we are able to
compare them—a very remarkable fact indeed.”— Extract from
Review in North China Daily News.
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THE
DIAL
% $tmi-ſāonthlg 3ournal of 3Literarg Criticism, HBigtuggion, amb Information.
THE DIAL (founded in 1880) is published on the 1st and 16th of
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THE DIAL, 315 Wabash Ave., Chicago.
No. 303. FEBRUARY 1, 1899. Vol. XXVI.
CONTENTS.
Pag-
NEW PEIASES OF THE ROMANCE. James O.
Pierce . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
SHAKESPEARE (Sonnet). Edith C. Banfield . . . 72
COMMUNICATIONS . . - - 72
The Notes to the Cambridge Tennyson. W. J. Rolfe.
Is Poe “Rejected” in America? John L. Hervey.
Thackeray and the American Newpapers. Emily
Huntington Miller.
PARNELL, IRISH PATRIOT AND NATIONALIST.
E. G. J. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
A TIMELY POLITICAL TONIC. Edward E.
Hale, Jr. . . . . . . . - - . . . 76
THE SUCCESSORS OF HOMER. Paul Shorey . . 78
A DISTINGUISHED WORKER FOR THE INSANE.
Richard Dewey . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
BOOKS ABOUT DANTE. William Morton Payne .. 81
Toynbee's Dante Dictionary. – Gardner's Dante's
Ten Heavens.—Miss Phillimore's Dante at Ravenna.
–Witte's Essays on Dante.
PRESENT TENDENCIES IN ECONOMIC
THOUGHT. Arthur B. Woodford . . . . . 83
Gronlund's The New Economy.—Mrs. Stetson's W
men and Economics.-Henderson's Social Elements.
— Hammond's The Cotton Industry.— Crook's Ger-
man Wage Theories.
BRIEFS ON NEW BOOKS . . . . . . . . . . . 86
An English handbook of Spanish literature.—The
Historical Development of Modern Europe.—Historie
homes in the mountains of Virginia.-Two belated
holiday books,—Marriage markets and Corellian logic.
—Enchanted islands of the Atlantic.- A pleasant
history of Philadelphia. —“Sartor Resartus” illus-
trated.— More of the biographical Thackeray.-
Book-plate lore and fancies.-Three great campaigns
of Nelson.—The economics of transportation.-The
Fourteenth Amendment.
BRIEFER MENTION . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
LITERARY NOTES. . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
TOPICS IN LEADING PERIODICALS . . . . . 91
LIST OF NEW BOOKS . . . . . . . . . . . 91
NEW PHASES OF THE ROMANCE.
When the Wizard of the North laid aside
his pen and closed his series of romantic fiction,
the reading world had already accorded him a
unique place in modern literature. He had
done for letters a work unequalled in value by
that of any writer since Shakespeare; he had
advanced the historical romance to eminence,
and shown it to be worthy of discriminating
criticism. Romance was no longer to be repre-
sented by “The Castle of Otranto.” Scott had
re-created Romance.
Nor was current opinion satisfied with con-
ferring this meed of praise; there were those
who felt that so brilliant a genius must have
exhausted the resources of Romance, and that
Scott could have no successor.
This record of Romantic tales began with a
novel. It was in the life of an era then only
sixty years past that Scott found the mate-
rial for his “Waverley.” Does it seem incon-
gruous that his entire series of fiction should
have come to bear the title of the “Waverley
Novels”? It will be remembered that the
genius for Romance which made him illustrious
had shown itself in that initial novel. It was
the romantic element in “Waverley” which
convinced the reading world that a new era in
fiction had opened.
Sixty years have passed since the close of
that series of romances, and the belief that
Scott is to have no rival seems to be more and
more confirmed. Dumas has surpassed and
others have emulated him in fertility of produc-
tion. Nevertheless, there is no real rivalry;
the charm of the Wizard's style remains his
own. But Romance does not die; and though
Scott stands alone in his chosen field, new op-
portunities are revealed for the work of the
romancer, and new achievements crown his
fertile imagination. Great as was Scott's
departure from the earlier canons of romantic
fiction, the romance of the present time exhibits
even greater departure from the Waverley
pattern.
In the old Romance, realism had no proper
place. The more unreal the events chronicled,
and the farther removed from the actualities of
life, the greater the credit to the imagination of


70 THE DIAL
[Feb. 1,
the romancer. Tried by this standard, “The
Castle of Otranto” was awarded place and
fame. As Dr. Johnson said: “In the romance
formerly written, every transaction and senti-
ment was so remote from all that passes among
men, that the reader was in little danger of
making any application to himself.”
But there is no necessity which compels the
Imagination to bear false witness in order that
it may be honored. The modern historical
romance, by its faithful representations of the
characters and motives and deeds of past eras,
has shown the imagination at work in con-
formity to realistic standards. Scott's followers
have sedulously observed this essential of their
art, and truthfulness has become an accepted
canon of the historical romance. Bulwer's
“Last Days of Pompeii” and “Last of the
Barons,” and Thackeray's “Henry Esmond”
and “The Virginians,” attest its admitted au-
thority.
Hawthorne came, and an avenue was opened
to new fields for the work of the Romancer.
The imagination now found its required mate-
rial in the social life of a new world, a world
with no history, in which there were no ruins,
no venerable traditions. The ancient, the un-
known, the mysterious, the startling, were the
elements theretofore conceded to be essential to
romantic fiction. Hawthorne found, in the
simple life of New England, sufficient of these
elements to constitute real Romance. Even
with his exuberant imagination, this was no
light task, as his own words declare. “No
author, without a trial, can conceive of the
difficulty of writing a romance about a country
where there is no shadow, no antiquity, no
mystery, no picturesque and gloomy wrong,
nor anything but a commonplace prosperity,
in broad and simple daylight, as is happily
the case with my dear native land.” This
inevitable difficulty, once conquered by Haw-
thorne, has seemed less formidable to later
romancers.
But Hawthorne did even a greater service to
romantic fiction. In the New England life
not only of the past, but of to-day, he found the
elements of romance latent, and brought them
into play. His quick imagination had flashed
upon the romantic elements in his own life at
Brook Farm; and he employed these and sim-
ilar features in other personal episodes, in
weaving for us a tale of modern life, the
“Blithedale Romance,” which has opened up
for the present age a new phase of romantic
literature.
Doubtless some will say that the Romance of
Real Life is a contradiction in terms, and that
the Romantic and the Realistic are not only anti-
thetic but antagonistic. Realism has been well
exploited in late years, and its disciples seem
disposed to conquer, and by conquering to con-
vert the world. The recent novel has been
almost uniformly realistic, and this is usually
claimed as its chief merit. George Eliot's
novels of real life have won her the highest
rank as a novelist, and the leadership of an
army of admiring followers; and “Marcella”
is pronounced the greatest novel of the realistic
school since “Middlemarch,” entitling its au-
thor to succeed to George Eliot's honors.
But even realism as thus expounded fails to
satisfy some honest critics. A new school
charges the realists with giving too loose rein
to fancy, and advocates a fiction so faithfully
true to actual life that it is to be properly called
veritism. The imagination is so dangerous a
steed that it must be effectually curbed and
bridled; the truth, the very truth only, must be
told; and the realist must confess his failure to
be exact, and must abandon the field of fiction
to the veritist. Gradgrind reappears, and again
insists upon the inestimable value and the prime
importance of facts.
At the very time of this exaltation of Real-
ism, there comes a revival of the Romance.
We observe not only a renewed feeling among
authors that this form of fiction has still a
career before it, and a revived interest in it
among readers of fiction, but indications also of
new worlds to be opened to its conquests.
It should be noted first, that the novelists
themselves, even the realists, do not despise the
Romance. George Eliot was not wholly satis-
fied with depicting real life, and she went back
to the romantic period in Florentine history for
her “Romola,” a romance which well contends
with her novels for high place. The romances
of Thackeray and Bulwer were children of their
affection, and still find appreciative readers no
less than their novels. Novelists like Black,
Hardy, and Besant turn aside from the attrac-
tions of real life to revel in romance. Charles
Reade wins more fame by “The Cloister and
the Hearth” than by any other of his novels,
and the industrious Mr. Crawford begins his
career by introducing “Mr. Isaacs,” a tale well
suiting the old definition of romance.
Again, a new school of writers has appeared,
who have adopted the historical romance as their
field, and seek to assure us of its renewed claims
to our attention. In England, Mr. Stanley


1899.] THE
DIAL 71-
Weyman presents a series of romantic tales,
founded upon some of the remarkable episodes
in French history, which improve upon earlier
efforts in the same class, in illustrating the de-
velopment of high traits of character under the
stress of adverse circumstances. In America,
Mrs. Mary Hartwell Catherwood has felt the
inspiration of strange episodes in the early
French occupation of our northern frontier, and
in her historical sketches has well reinforced
Hawthorne's testimony to the romantic features
of the settlement epoch in this country. In the
conflicts between the English and French civ-
ilizations on this and another continent, Mr.
Gilbert Parker has found the materials for more
extended romances, in relating which he has
caught the secret of that picturesque presenta-
tion of situations which suggests more than it
expresses. Helen Hunt Jackson’s “Ramona”
is, on its literary side, an enthusiastic outburst
of appreciation of the essentially romantic inci-
dents attending the American dispossession of
the Indian holdings in California. Mr. Arthur
Sherburne Hardy, in his “Passe Rose,” takes
his readers back to the era of Charlemagne,
amid the adventurous phases of a state of so-
ciety in which civilization was struggling with
barbarism. Gen. Lew Wallace found in Mex-
ican history the material for his “Fair God,”
and in the advent of Christ the inspiration for
his “Ben Hur.” Later, he has felt the fasci-
nation of the old myth of the Wandering Jew,
a subject essentially romantic, and one which
has allured so many romancers; and in his
“Prince of India” he has invested this myth-
ical character with new and engaging attri-
butes, and has made him an actor in the
intricacies of that most romantic epoch, the fall
of Constantinople.
We have still another school, who aim to show
us the romantic features of the everyday life
around us; who find the romantic in the midst
of the real; in a word, who transmute the Novel
into the Romance. Their tales may or may not
be labelled romantic, but such is their character.
Those elements of the adventurous, the marvel-
lous, or the mysterious, which the romancer is
accustomed to seek afar off, among groups of
people little known, or in past epochs, these
writers find in their own time and among their
own acquaintance. The marvels of the pre-
sent day in science, in the arts, in psychology,
and in occult learning and the dreams of the
mystic, the ambitions of the philosopher, and
the schemes of the social reformer, — all these
are proved to have their romantic phases,
which are illustrated for the reading world of
to-day.
Thus, Dr. Holmes, in his “Elsie Wenner,”
has pressed medical science into the service of
the romance. Jules Werne has made free with
not only the achievements, but also the aims
and the ambitions, of modern skill in mechan
ics and engineering. Dr. Conan Doyle's detec-
tive stories are, in an eminent degree, what
Poe's similar efforts already were in a small
way, studies in the recent accomplishments of
psychology. Mr. W. H. Mallock has found
romantic characteristics in the manner in which,
at this very hour, “The Old Order Changes”
and a new social fabric takes its place. Charles
Egbert Craddock's tales of life in the Tennes-
see mountains would be tiresome indeed, but
for the subtle manner in which those heights
breed romantic feelings and sentiments in their
mountain-dwellers. Mr. Crawford’s “Children
of the King” picturesquely exhibits the essen-
tially romantic characteristics and experiences
of life in southern Italy, in our own time. Miss
Anna Fuller's group of sketches, “Peak and
Prairie,” each but a little dash of color upon a
bit of canvas, are of similar character, and show
the romantic features inherent in the ranch and
mining camp life of Colorado.
In this new tendency of Romance, we find
it competing with Realism in its own field.
The realists, to champion the superiority of the
Novel, argue that “truth is stranger than fic-
tion.” But it is the truth that is stranger than
fiction, in modern life, which furnishes the mate-
rial for these new exploits in Romance. The ex-
traordinary, the marvellous, the startling, which
always distinguished the romantic, were never
found in chivalric strife, in feudal contests, or
in internecine warfare, in greater abundance
or more ready to the cunning hand of the story-
teller, than they are now in the everyday inci-
dents of this wonderful era. Now comes Ro-
mance and says to this age, “I find at your very
doors, and in your very homes, the warp and
woof for my web, which I once went so far to
seek.”
The Possible disputing ground with the Im-
probable, and pushing it to the rear, this is
always the basis of the marvellous, this is always
involved in the romantic as its fundamental
characteristic. The romancer is an explorer, a
skirmisher; he is always on the farther verge
of neutral ground, always apparently in peril.
As Hawthorne said of his own work, while
writing “The House of the Seven Gables”:
“In writing a romance, a man is always, or


72 THE DIAL [Feb. 1,
always ought to be, careering on the utmost
verge of a precipitous absurdity, and the skill comMUNICATIONS.
lies in coming as close as possible without actu- || THE NOTES TO THE CAMBRIDGE TENNYSON.
ally tumbling over.” (To the Editor of THE DIAL.)
The present age does not cease to startle us
with new developments, crowding close, one
upon another, in all fields open to the investi-
gations of the human intellect. Every day we
see new territory wrested from the Improbable
and occupied by the Possible. The Imagina-
tion does not sleep while the Intellect is at work;
and the precipitous absurdity of the romancer
is daily a step further removed.
This new field of the romancer's work is that
upon which Hawthorne ventured in the “Blithe-
dale Romance.” Psychology, with its myste-
ries so little appreciated, so slightly explored,
so often quite undiscovered, furnished the basis
for those elements of the marvellous which
made that tale a Romance. So wonderful are
the recent developments in psychology that it
is but natural that much of the work of the
modern romancer should take him into the same
field. It will be remembered that Hawthorne
in that story anticipated many of the recent
disclosures in hypnotism.
So the Romantic has left the realm of tradi-
tion and myth, and has come to sit down with
us by the firesides of the Nineteenth Century.
Distinctions between Realism and Romanti-
cism are now but definitions; the old antag-
onism vanishes. While the Real occupies one
chimney-corner in our libraries, the Romantic
is at home in the other. Literature is still One,
and the Imagination is to remain one of its
high-priests. It may, doubtless will, have new
work for Romance to do, such as has never
before been attempted.
JAMES OSCAR PIERCE.
SHAKESPEARE.
Glad have I drunk of Chaucer's living spring,
And I have followed Spenser's silver stream
Through new-awakened meadows; traced the gleam
Of many fertile rivers issuing:
In sterner regions I have heard the roll
Of Milton's torrent harmonies, that sweep
Reverberating chords through chasms deep;
And in pure waters I have seen the soul
Of gentle Keats. But Shakespeare Ah, the sea,
With its great pulses throbbing mightily,
Bears all the commerce of our human-kind,
And touches every shore in friendliness.
A trackless thoroughfare, and measureless
As the eternal ocean, is that mind.
EDITH C. BANFIELD.
I have delayed asking permission to comment on the
criticism of the “Cambridge Tennyson,” in THE DIAL
of December 16, partly that I might correspond with
the writer, and partly that I might reëxamine my work
on the book and find out how far it deserved the un-
qualified condemnation it had received. One might infer
from the tone of the criticism that I was a literary
charlatan whom the writer felt it his duty to show up;
but he assures me that this was not the case. He says: “I
was confident all the time, as will all be who know your
work, that you were the victim of misplaced confidence
in assistants.” It happens that this is true of the poems
(with one exception) referred to in the criticism; and
I may add that it is the only instance in which I have
ever had such assistance in the collation of texts, or,
indeed, in any work I have done as an editor.
In collating Tennyson's volumes of 1830 and 1833 at
the British Museum some years ago, as I had not time
(to say nothing of the strain upon my eyes in the poor
light of the reading-room in average English weather)
to examine all the poems thoroughly, I worked chiefly
on the longer ones (“The Lady of Shalott,” “The Mil-
ler's Daughter,” “The Palace of Art,” the “Dream of
Fair Women,” etc.) in which I was most interested, and
which had been most altered by the author. After I
came home I had the collation of the remaining poems
done by a person recommended for the purpose by the
Museum authorities. Suspecting some errors in the
work, I returned it for revision, and, as I remember,
ten or twelve corrections were made. It appears now
that there were other errors or omissions which I did
not suspect, and did not detect when, later, I had the
loan of copies of the original volumes for a short time;
but then, as at the Museum, I gave my attention almost
exclusively to the longer poems; and these, which he
“had not noted before,” Professor Jack tells me he finds
“substantially correct.” I find, after carefully verify-
ing my notes, that this is also true of “The Princess."
and “In Memoriam,” and I do not doubt that I shall
find it true of the “Idylls of the King” and the other
ms that I have studied somewhat thoroughly.
It should be understood, however, that the bookmakes
no pretensions to being a complete “variorum” edition.
The “Publishers' Note” (which I did not write) states
that the collation of texts has been limited to the edi-
tions “accessible” to me, and these (English editions I
mean) except the very earliest and the latest (from
1884 to 1898) have been comparatively few. For
instance, I have never been able to get hold of the edi-
tion of 1851, in which the lines “To the Queen.” first
appeared. For the reading of the “Crystal Palace”
stanza I had to depend on quotations in criticisms and
commentaries, and four of these (Shepherd's “Tenny-
soniana,” second edition, 1879; Wace's “Alfred Tenny-
son,” 1881; Luce's “Handbook to Tennyson,” 1895;
and Miss E. L. Cary’s “Tennyson,” 1898, - the only
authorities accessible to me) give “did meet as friends”;
and Luce remarks: “The stanza has defects, the exple-
tive did meet, for example.” No authority refers to the
subsequent insertion of the fourth stanza; and Luce
distinctly says that the stanzas were “one more in num-
ber” in 1851 than subsequently, on account of the
“Crystal Palace” one.


1899.] THE
DIAL 78
I have found and corrected many errors in Luce,
Shepherd, and the rest, but this one I did not suspect
and had no means of correcting. It is a curious ques-
tion, by the by, how this error originated, since the
stanza appeared only in the edition of 1851. There is
no such stanza in the first manuscript version of the
poem printed by Professor Jones in his “Growth of the
Idylls,” 1895.
That no complete “variorum” edition was attempted
by me ought to be clear to any reader of the notes from
such carefully qualified statements as that on “Mari-
ana,” quoted in the criticism (“The line was changed in
the printed poem at least as early as 1875.”) Professor
Jack says it is “not correct” for me to assert that “the
original “sung i' the pane” was retained in all the editions
I have seen down to 1875”; but I include American
editions (the “authorized” Boston ones only), and one
now in my possession dated 1856 has that reading, and
I feel quite sure that it must have been in the edition of
1875, which has somehow disappeared from my library.
His statement that it is in “none of the editions be-
tween 1850 and 1875” is doubtless true of the English
editions.
I was rash in saying, in a number of instances besides
those pointed out by Professor Jack, that “the only
changes” in the text are those I mentioned. Having
found Shepherd and others so often wrong in statements
of this kind, I ought to have verified them, if possible,
in every instance. Thus far, however, in my reëxam-
ination of my notes on the minor poems, I have found
only two or three various readings that seem to me
worth recording in an edition not intended to be com-
plete in this respect. These, and any others like them
which I may detect hereafter, will be duly incor-
porated in the notes, together with corrections of the
occasional misprints and other little errors inevitable
in a first edition. If any reader of THE DIAL dis-
covers such errors, I shall be grateful for a memoran-
dum of them. For myself, I have always felt it a duty
to send authors or publishers information of this kind
concerning books that I read or use for reference. In
the last forty years or more I must have sent them
several thousand such corrections — sometimes from
fifty to a hundred in a single work involving many minute
details. In my own books I have detected and corrected
many more misprints and mistakes than have been
kindly pointed out to me by others; and finding that
my literary work, though faithfully done as well as I
know how, is far from perfect, I learn, in printed re-
views (of which I write many) to be charitable in crit-
icising the little shortcomings of others, preferring often
to call attention to these in a private letter rather than
in a public journal. W. J. Rolf E.
Cambridge, Mass., Jan. 16, 1899.
IS POE “REJECTED " IN AMERICAP
(To the Editor of THE DIAL.)
Mr. Charles Leonard Moore, in his very well-put
article on “The American Rejection of Poe” in your
last issue, has, I believe, somewhat overstated his case
in his eagerness to state it strongly. That Poe is at the
present day “to a great extent ignored or repudiated”
by the American public seems to me very questionable,
instead of unquestionable, as Mr. Moore thinks. In
proof of this I need only cite the innumerable editions
of his poems and tales, in every conceivable shape, from
those in paper covers at five cents a copy to €ditions de
luze at fancy or fabulous prices. If Mr. Moore would
attempt a collection of even the cheaper editions of Poe,
I think he would at least modify his point of view.
Nor have I ever yet examined any reputable volume of
specimen selections of American prose or verse in which
he was unrepresented. And is not “The Raven” as
inevitable in every school “reader” or “speaker” as
the “Psalm of Life” or “Charge of the Light Bri-
gade”? There can also be small doubt that “The
Raven” and “The Bells” have been recited more dif-
ferent times by more different “elocutionists” in these
United States than any other two poems by any other
American poet. As for the popularity of Poe's prose,
it may be recalled that not long since a literary period-
ical offered a prize for the best list of ten short stories
by American authors, the ten to be selected from those
receiving the highest number of votes; and in the prize
list there were two of Poe's tales.
Mr. Moore is undoubtedly correct in his complaint
that Poe has never been taken into the heart of his
native public as, for instance, Longfellow was. But the
man who “never had an intimate friend,” who seemed
to have a positive genius for alienating friendship, could
hardly be expected to pose as the intimate of his public
— which has, nevertheless, both critically and popularly
stamped him a classic and quite sui generis. If the
acceptance of Poe is in any way doubtful, it is not
because of the antique Poe legends, not because his
mastery of technic or imaginative power ever fails of
appreciation, but because of the apotheosis of the “gro-
tesque and arabesque,” miasmas of the pit and the
charnel-house, the ghastly light of the baleful planets
from which the work of Poe —the name of Poe — may
never be disassociated. Poe's metier was his of delib-
erate choice; his atmosphere is of his own creation;
there is not a breath of plain air in it. The “fascina-
tion of corruption” was strong upon him,-his work
reeks of it; and it would be strange indeed if Poe the
man were ever to escape from the atmosphere of Poe
the artist. The “seeds scattered broadcast” by him
have brought forth — the fleurs du mal whose blossom
is not the dew-drenched rose with head lifted to the
sunshine in the garden of the world.
- John L. HERVEY.
Chicago, Jan. 21, 1899.
THACKERAY AND THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPERS.
(To the Editor of THE DIAL.)
Apropos of Thackeray's confession, as quoted in a
current periodical, that the American papers were puff-
ing him so as to make him blush, in spite of his neglect
to throw a sop to Cerberus, it may be amusing to re-
member that the “Boston Courier” in 1853 advised
its readers that these American lectures of Thackeray's
were “a mere retailing of old anecdotes, fragments
without originality or any sense of judgment, containing
nothing which anybody with a file of old newspapers
and magazines might not have said.”
Which shows that Cerberus preserves the tradition
of being many-headed.
EMILY HUNTINGTON MILLER.
Evanston, Ill., Jan. 20, 1899.
THE rapidly increasing literature of “anti-expansion
is being systematically collected and issued for general
circulation by the Anti-Imperialist League, whose Secre-
tary, at Washington, D. C., will supply the same on
application.


74 THE DIAL
|Feb. 1,
Čbe #tto $ochs.
PARNELL, IRISH PATRIOT AND
NATIONALIST.”
In one respect Mr. R. Barry O'Brien's inter-
esting Life of Parnell recalls Dr. Busch's
“Bismarck”: it leaves with the reader a dis-
agreeable impression of the man its author
means to eulogize. We have always thought
that Mr. Parnell was a patriot in the higher
and correcter sense of the term, and that his
extraordinary public career, his “really great
career,” as Mr. Gladstone expressed it, was
inspired primarily by love of his country and
the desire to advance what he conceived to be
her interests; nor are we yet prepared to sur-
render that opinion. But the hero of Mr.
O’Brien's pages, if we have read them aright,
so far from being actuated mainly by the gen-
erous emotions which the world rightly asso-
ciates with patriotism, was spurred primarily
by a mere fanatical hatred of England, partly
inherited from his mother and partly grounded
in his foolish early notion that people “despised
him because he was an Irishman,” and which
did not have even a rudimentary knowledge of
Irish history to justify it—for, be it said, the
story of English rule in Ireland, from Strong-
bow's day down to the Smith O'Brien fiasco in
the famous cabbage garden at Ballingarry, was
a sealed book to this man who came within an
ace of putting an end to it. If hatred for an
entire nation was ever incarnate in a man, that
man was Parnell, as our present author por-
trays him; nor does Mr. O'Brien, so far as we
can discern, furnish any evidence of Parnell's
actually loving anything or anyone—barring,
of course, a notorious and fatal exception in
the case of the wife of his political associate,
Captain O'Shea. -
We confess we find it impossible to believe
that the career of this great parliamentary
leader, whose genius and persistency brought
his party within actual view of their political
Goshen, was mainly prompted by an ignoble
emotion such as might incite a Kerry peasant
to fire a rick or shoot a bailiff. A lover of
England Parnell certainly was not. But his
course in Parliament, his very policy of obstruc-
tion, goes to show his faith in the ultimate
soundness and honesty of the English people,
and his belief that if, from the forum of the
House of Commons, he could once really gain
the ear of the English electorate the conscience
of the nation would be roused to the justice of
the Irish national appeal. Nothing could be
more untrue than the charge that Parnell was
a mere sower of discord who loved obstruction
for its own sake and took a malignant pleasure
in thwarting the deliberations and blocking the
business of the House. If Parnell disapproved
of the rose-water methods of Butt, he also dis-
approved of the uncouth and brutal methods of
Biggar — from whom, however, he really took
his cue. His ground idea was, as we have said,
that the real reason why the Irish question, as
it presented itself in his day, had not been satis-
factorily settled was that it had not had a hear-
ing. To force that question upon the attention
of the English democracy through constitu-
tional methods was his plan. Therefore, he in
effect served notice upon the House of Com-
mons that until the demands of Ireland had
been duly heard and passed upon no other ques-
tion whatever should be discussed by it as long
as he and his colleagues could prevent it. Par-
nell's attitude has been well illustrated by the
story of the Eastern woman who, having long
tried in vain to get a petition to the Sultan, at
last took her station in the public street with
her little children, and when the Sultan rode
that way flung herself in the road before him,
declaring that he must either listen to her ap-
peal or trample her and her babes to death
beneath his horse's hoofs.
In his concluding chapter Mr. O'Brien quotes
some interesting statements regarding Parnell
made by Mr. Gladstone in the course of a spe-
cial interview in 1890. Asked what it was that
first attracted his attention to Parnell, Mr.
Gladstone replied:
“Parnell was the most remarkable man I ever met.
I do not say the ablest man; I say the most remarkable
and most interesting. He was an intellectual phenom-
enon. He was unlike anyone I ever met. He did
things and he said things unlike other men. . . . There
was no one in the House of Commons I would place
with him. As I have said, he was an intellectual phe-
nomenon.”
As to Parnell's much debated release from
Kilmainham, Mr. Gladstone said:
“. . . What is this they call it? The Kilmainham
treaty. How ridiculous! There was no treaty.” There
could not be a treaty. Just think what the Habeas
Corpus Act means. You put a man into gaol on suspi-
*THE LIFE of CHARLEs STEwART PARNELL, 1846–1891.
By R. Barry O'Brien. With portrait. New York: Harper
& Brothers.
*Mr. Chamberlain, on the contrary, said, when questioned
on this point: “There was a treaty. And the terms on our
side were that we should deal with some phases of the land
question.” Parnell's agreement seems to have been that he
would “slow down the agitation.”


1899.] THE
DIAL 75
cion. You are bound to let him out when the circum-
stances justifying your suspicion have changed. And
that was the case with Parnell.”
Replying to the question as to the time when
his attention was first seriously turned to the
demand for Home Rule, Mr. Gladstone went
on to say:
“. . . I could not, of course, support Butt's move-
ment, because it was not a national movement. I had
no evidence that Ireland was behind it. Parnell's move-
ment was very different. It came to this: we granted
a fuller franchise to Ireland in 1884, and Ireland then
sent eighty-five members to the Imperial Parliament.
That settled the question. When the people express
their determination in that decisive way, you must give
them what they ask. It would be the same in Scotland.
I don’t say that Home Rule is necessary for the Scotch.
But if ever they ask for it, as the Irish have asked for
it, they must get it. . . . The union with Ireland has
no moral force. It has the force of law, no doubt, but it
rests on no moral basis. That is the line which I should
always take, were I an Irishman. That is the line which
as an Englishman I take now. Ah! had Parnell lived,
had there been no divorce proceedings, I do solemnly
believe there would be a Parliament in Ireland now.”
To Parnell's admirers, Mr. O'Brien's dra-
matic account of his fight to retain the lead-
ership of his party after he had forfeited it
through his misconduct in the O'Shea matter
makes painful reading. Mr. Gladstone was
sufficiently explicit in regard to the course
Parnell ought to have taken:
“. . . I do not say that the private question ought
to have affected the public movement. What I say is,
it did affect it, and, having affected it, Parnell was bound
to go. . . . All said it would be impossible for the
movement to go on with him. . . . I think Parnell
acted badly. I think he ought to have gone right away.
He would have come back, nothing could have prevented
him; he would have been as supreme as ever, for he was
a most extraordinary man. Was he callous to every-
thing? I never could tell how much he felt, or how
much he did not feel. He was generally immovable.”
Parnell was originally a poor speaker — the
poorest of speakers. He had a harsh, if strong
and penetrating, voice, and absolutely no flow
of words. As time went on he acquired a con-
cise, effective style of oratory — an eloquence
which consists in saying all that needs to be
said in the fewest and strongest words. But his
début as a speaker, at the time of the Dublin
election in 1874, was most unpromising. Mr.
Sullivan describes the scene:
“. . . To our dismay, Parnell broke down utterly.
He faltered, he paused, went on, got confused, and, pale
with intense but subdued nervous anxiety, caused every-
one to feel deep sympathy for him. The audience saw
it all, and cheered him kindly and heartily; but many
on the platform shook their heads sagely, prophesying
that if he ever got to Westminster, no matter how long
he stayed there, he would either be a “silent member'
or be known as “single-speech Parnell.’”
Equally unfavorable was the impression made
by the young candidate upon Mr. O'Connor
Power. He says:
“Parnell seemed to me a nice gentlemanly fellow,
but he was hopelessly ignorant, and seemed to me to
have no political capacity whatever. He could not speak
at all. He was hardly able to get up and say, ‘Gen-
tlemen, I am a candidate for the representation of the
county of Dublin.” We all listened to him with pain
while he was on his legs, and felt immensely relieved
when he sat down. No one ever thought he would cut
a figure in politics. We thought he would be a respect-
able mediocrity.”
So much for early promises. It was not long
before this feeble stammerer acquired the power
to hold his Irish audiences, – great open-air
meetings, such as had been swept along on the
torrent of O'Connell's eloquence, hanging upon
his words, – and even to fix the attention of
the critical and hostile House of Commons
upon every sentence he uttered. Defeated at
Dublin in 1874, Parnell was returned at the
head of the poll for Meath in the following
year. His maiden speech in Parliament was
“short, modest, spoken in a thin voice and with
manifest nervousness”; but it went to the root
of the business, as he saw it:
“I trust that England will give to Irishmen the right
which they claim—the right of self-government. Why
should Ireland be treated as a geographical fragment of
England, as I heard an ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer
call her some time ago? Ireland is not a geographical
fragment. She is a nation.”
Parnell has at least one claim upon the re-
gard of the entire American nation. He was
opposed to what was known as the “dynamite
policy”—a crude and murderous scheme based
on the childish notion that England could be
terrified into granting Irish demands by ex-
ploding dynamite in the streets of London.
That such a plan was hatched, fostered, and
allowed to be publicly advocated in the press
and from the platform in this country would
have been a burning disgrace to us were it not
for the fact that American humor refused to
take the vaporings of the “professional patriot”
seriously. He was regarded as a “blather-
skite,” a passing nuisance that could easily be
abated when he grew too offensive, and politi-
cians cynically stooped to humor his vagaries
when they wanted his vote. His real objective
was believed to be, not Irish freedom, but Irish
pocket-books; and so the law left Irish morality
and Irish good sense to deal with him. Mr.
Parnell, we are sorry to say, appears to have
opposed the dynamitard line of action more on
the ground of its impolicy than of its odious
and cowardly criminality. He knew the iron


76 THE DIAL
[Feb. 1,
temper of England well enough to see that
nothing would be more certain to turn back
the hands of the clock of Home Rule than the
detestable methods of the “outrage men”—
methods which would be far more likely to land
him and his friends in an English jail than in
the coveted national “Parliament on College
Green.” Therefore, while his native caution
and his conviction of the necessity of keeping
the various Irish political clans and sections
“pulling together” prompted him to keep in
touch so far as possible with them all, he did
not (as Mr. O'Brien states) “conceal his pri-
vate repugnance to the methods of the Amer-
ican extremists. He spoke of Ford and Finerty
as d-d fools.” Mr. Parnell's epithet is not
just the one Americans are commonly accus-
tomed to use in the case.
Mr. O'Brien has given us a good and an ex-
tremely readable biography, as well as a fairly
comprehensive account, largely from the inside,
of the political movement to which Parnell
gave his life, and which now seems to be, if an
American may be permitted to say so, percepti-
bly and happily on the wane. It appears not
improbable that in the course of time and
through the exercise of wise and liberal states-
manship Ireland may come to rest under the
Union as contentedly and with as little sense of
racial degradation as Scotland does. To that
end — a consummation, as we venture to think,
devoutly to be wished—Parnell, though his
aim was otherwise, will have materially con-
tributed. For it was he, more than any other
Irish party leader, who roused England to the
necessity of devising a more rational and right-
eous remedy for Irish unrest than perpetual
coercion. E. G. J.
A TIMELY POLITICAL TONIC.”
Now that the election is long over and the
Governors and other servants of the people
have sworn to do their duty, one may turn again
to Mr. Chapman's account of the state of things
here in America, with a mind more unbiassed
than was probable when the book was pub-
lished. “Causes and Consequences” is a book
that had certain relations to the politics of
New York and of the city of New York. It
was begun, says the author, “in an attempt to
explain an election,” namely, the first municipal
election in Greater New York under the new
*CAUSEs AND CoNSEQUENCEs. By John Jay Chapman.
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
charter, in which Mr. Seth Low, on an Inde-
pendent ticket, was defeated. It was published
on the eve of the last state campaign, in
which Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, who had by
many been regarded as the obvious Independ-
ent candidate, refused the Independent nom-
ination for governor and was elected on the
Republican ticket. Its particular relation to
the campaign lies in the fact that Mr. Chapman
was one of the Independents who offered Col-
onel Roosevelt the nomination, and who, when
the nomination was refused, helped to put an
Independent ticket into the field. During the
campaign, then, anyone who knew something of
the conditions that gave rise to the book was
likely to be especially interested on one side or
the other, and thus the book was probably
prejudged by many. Now that the election is
long past, there will be less prejudice.
Further, however, it is well enough to know
something of these things before reading Mr.
Chapman's book, not because the politics of
New York are necessarily of singular import-
ance to the rest of the Union, but because we
are thereby assured that we have here the pro-
duction of a man practically acquainted with
what he is writing about. It does not follow
from a man's being practically acquainted with
anything that he knows all about it in any large
and intelligent way—the reverse is often enough
the case; and it does not follow from the fact
that Mr. Chapman has had his hand in poli-
tics that the nation should be led by his views
any more than by the views of any district
leader or state boss. The importance of the
matter lies in the fact that we thus have here,
not the product of scholarly seclusion nor of
club conversation, but of actual daily activity.
And such an origin gives reality to a work.
Doubtless the especial kind of activity will not
by some readers be esteemed much more prac-
tical than the intellectual activity of the aca-
demic theorist or the linguistic activity of the
man in the smoking-room. But on the whole
it is more practical. If I, for instance, should
write a book on American politics, I should feel
the want of all that stored-up result of absolute
everyday impression that Mr. Chapman pos-
sesses. We should, therefore, consider his book
as expert testimony, recollecting all the time
the way expert testimony should be considered.
Mr. Chapman's book is the statement of what
will be the character of the reformation of
American public life. The book and its author
will be variously regarded. Some will think of
Mr. Chapman as wearing a white plume and


1899.]
THE DIAL 77
bearing an oriflamme of war. Others will regard
him as the leader of a forlorn hope, and will
expect only after a long time to find his body
by the wall of the fallen fort. Others still will
consider him a sort of Richard Harding Davis in
politics. But none of these figures exactly suits
the case. In fact, it is better to get the matter
out of politics for the moment, — to consider the
book only. So here are some very simple im-
pressions, put down, as nearly as I can manage,
in the order in which they occurred to me.
In the first place, the book is eminently
interesting, — a matter that might, perhaps,
have been expected. I am not so sure of that,
though: books on political and social conditions
rarely attract lay readers unless their main ideas
are distinctly popular. Now, the fundamental
idea of this book is not at all popular: it is, on
the other hand, a little recondite, I should say.
Yet the book is so well written, it is so clearly
the natural and current expression of the work-
ing of a brilliant mind, that almost of necessity
it starts up that counter-working in the mind of
the reader which we call “interest.” Mr. Chap-
man's style is by this time well enough known:
it is naturally effervescing, or perhaps we should
say fermenting. It is true also that it is Emer-
sonian ; but that is probably an accident.
So much occurs to one who reads along in
the book, through Mr. Chapman's account of
present politics and of social life. Next comes
the essay on Education; and this essay I take
to be cardinal to the book. It is a development
of the principles of Froebel on which the Kin-
dergarten is based. Mr. Chapman employed a
governess for his children. “After a couple of
months,” says he, “I discovered that it was I
who was being educated.” He is pretty sure
that anyone else who gets hold of these ideas
will be educated, too. Of one of them he re-
marks that “the consequences of a belief in it
are so tremendous, that no man who is not pre-
pared to spend his life completely dominated
by the idea, ought even to pause to consider it.”
As to the value of these ideas, as to the sound-
ness of Mr. Chapman's exposition of them, I
shall not make even an effort to decide, much
less to make any statement. I will, however,
indulge myself so far as to make one remark.
The influence of action upon belief is, I sup-
pose, unquestionable. Mr. Chapman, for in-
stance, writes well because he realizes his idea;
and he realizes his idea because it has taken
form through action. But why did he act thus
and so 2 Not, I imagine, from accident, but
from belief. And whence that belief?— from
previous action only 2 and so on back? That
must land in chance somewhere.
Now, I have, on the whole, thought it prob-
able that a man's action was as often the result
as the cause of his belief. Mr. Chapman would
perhaps say that this is because I am a logician,
a professor of rhetoric, a student, a theorizer,
a doctrinaire, one who fancies that an idea is a
definite something that may be dropped into
the mind, much as a little medicine may be
dropped into a glass of water, or, rather, a tonic
into a person. Well, it is true that I am all
those things more or less, and doubtless that is
one reason why I prefer to wander with Plato.
But why this trouble as to which comes first,
idea or act? Because Mr. Chapman would seem
to infer from his view that right action (spon-
taneously induced, perhaps, or perhaps from
right example) will bring about a right dispo-
sition here in America, and particularly that
action in reform movements will give us all
such a feeling about Democracy that the United
States will become really what she now is only
potentially. That is his theory, as far as I can
see. He shows that politics is debased through
selfishness encouraged by commerce; he shows
that society is debased by the low tone of pol-
itics. Then he propounds the great truth that,
to be, men must do; and also that they must do
for others, and not only that they must do so, but
that they want to do so, and that they do do so.
This is the constant tendency; commercialism
is temporary and will pass away. Men will be
brought to right action by (among other things)
reform movements. More and more will people
learn to act in politics unselfishly, and thus they
will become individualized and independent,
and the nation as a whole will be purified.
This rather puts the boot on the other leg:
Mr. Chapman is now the logician and all the
other kinds of star-gazer noted above.
Why should we have right action? “Let it
take care of itself,” Mr. Chapman seems to say;
“people prefer to be unselfish; they will insist
on being so; they can’t help it in the long run.”
That is to some degree true. Still, people will
be a little better for good advice in the matter
of government as in other matters.
For it is worth noting that Mr. Chapman
seems to regard government almost as an end
in itself. He says: “Here is the American
people ill-governed. It is a shameful thing.
But by a certain means the American people
will surely be so toned up that they will govern
themselves well. Then it will be all right.”
Mr. Chapman believes “a virtuous ruler to be


78 THE DIAL
[Feb. 1,
the prototype of all possible human fulfilment.”
Now, of course every man thinks that his own
trade is the most important. The schoolmaster
says that education is the panacea. The clergy-
man says that religion will reconstitute society.
The politician thinks that government is the
main thing. Mr. Chapman likes good govern-
ment: he agrees with the poet (may for aught
I know be the poet) who sings:
“Things are there that I wish and I must have—
Will have them — for they suit me. It's my whim.
A decent class of men in public life,
Some tolerably honest courts of law,
A friend or two that would not steal a watch,
And above all a riot of free speech
Where every man may revel to his fill
And not be hounded for a lunatic.”
Those are good things, to be sure; but there
are other things more satisfying to me, and in
reading the book I could n't help thinking:
“This government is only machinery, after all.
If the government only is improved, people will
go wrong in other ways. If the whole plane of
living is lifted up, government is merely a de-
tail.” It is true that something like this may
be said to everybody who tries to better man-
kind in some special direction. I rather think
it cannot be said of what may be called the
fourth dimensional method, which works in a
direction quite unperceivable to most of us.
But I had no intention of going so far in
criticism. The idea that in a couple of columns
you can criticize fairly and fully what a man
has thought out and expressed in two hundred
pages, arouses little enthusiasm in me. I don’t
feel that there is a fair show for either. Nor
would I try to summarize the book, for that
might make people think that they knew what
was in it without a reading. It must be enough
if I have given something of an idea as to the
kind of book it is. Then those who like that
kind will go and read it, — and, it may be
added, they will find it very entertaining and
also beneficial. EDward E. HALE, JR.
THE SUCCESSORS OF HOMER."
Professor Lawton's little volume on “The
Successors of Homer,” a companion and sequel
to his “Art and Humanity in Homer,” offers
the English student an untechnical and very
readable survey of the remains of Greek hexa-
meter poetry outside of the two great epics.
In successive chapters he treats of the lost epics
of the “Cycle,” the Works and Days and Theo-
*THE SUCCEssoRs of HoxtER. By W. C. Lawton, New
York: The Macmillan Co.
gony of Hesiod, the so-called Homeric Hymns,
and the hexameters of the pre-Socratic philo-
sophical poets Parmenides and Empedocles.
Professor Lawton is right in claiming a cer-
tain unity for his theme, whether we find that
unity in the metre, the prolongation and grad-
ual decay of the epic tradition, or the conven-
ience of the modern student. The epic Cycle is
discussed in Lang's “Homer and the Epic.”
There is a fair account of Hesiod in Black-
wood's Ancient Classics, and there are excel-
lent short chapters, on him in Jebb and Sy-
monds. The Hymn to Demeter is the theme
of one of Walter Pater's fascinating studies,
and is enthusiastically interpreted in Professor
Dyer’s “Gods in Greece.” The Hymn to
Homer is accessible in Shelley's delicious trans-
lation. But there is no one work in English
so well adapted as the one before us to bridge
over for the general reader and young student
the gap between Homer and the lyric and
dramatic poetry of Greece.
Professor Lawton's method resembles that of
the well-known “Ancient Classics for English
Readers,” and is for its purpose more effective
than a more pretentious and less direct way of
approach would be. The reader who desires
information about books which he cannot study
in the original tongue does not want a double
distillation of subtle critical epithets. He wishes
to get at the content of the books with as little
hindrance as possible from the scholastic and
critical scaffoldings that have been built up
about them. This want Professor Lawton
meets by translating in the metre of the orig-
inal all the more beautiful or significant pas-
sages. The translations are prefaced or accom-
panied by just enough prologue and commentary
to make them intelligible, and connected by a
running summary of the duller or more tech-
nical omitted passages.
These translations bring up again the eternal
question of the English hexameter. We may
say at once that we like Professor Lawton's
hexameters here better than in his Homer. The
English hexameter, except as an occasional ex-
periment in the hands of a great poet, not only
fails to satisfy a nice ear but is fatally lacking
in distinction. Such a line, for example, as
Who as he sits with Themis engages in chat *"
may pass in a Homeric Hymn. In the Iliad
it would be intolerable. Professor Lawton, of
course, has better lines than this. It would be
a very sensitive ear indeed that felt a jar in the
description of Apollo, -


1899.] THE
DIAL 79
“Stepping graceful and high, and the splendor glimmers
about him,
Flash of the gleaming feet, and of garments cunningly woven.”
And when the critic has said his worst, it re-
mains true that the line-for-line translation in
the measure, if not quite the metre, of the orig-
inal, conveys a truer average impression than
could easily be given in any other way. What,
for example, could be done in English rhyme
or iambic blank verse with such lines as:
“Glaukonomë, who in laughter delights, and Pontoporeia,
Leiagoré and Euagoré and Laomedeia”?
At the close of each chapter, Professor Law-
ton gives brief references to the chief German
authorities. The commentary is enlivened by
modern touches and a few poetic parallels. We
miss an allusion to the beautiful imitation of
the Hesiodic prologue found in Matthew Ar-
nold’s “Empedocles.” Schiller's line,
“Patroclus liegt begraben und Thersites kommt zurück,”
proves not so much ignorance of the Aethiopis
as acquaintance with Sophocles's Philoctetes,
434–442. PAUL SHOREY.
A DISTINGUISHED WORKER FOR THE
INSANE.”
Pliny Earle was born in 1809 — that annus
mirabilis so prolific in great men the world
over; and in his field, which was a restricted
one, his talents were great, while, if he had not
genius, he had the industry and power of taking
pains, which, we are told, are of the essence of
genius. He did not have a great part to play,
yet he was as remarkable in his field as many
of the great men of 1809 were in their larger
fields. It was in work among and for the insane
that the significance of Dr. Earle's life lay; yet
there are many scenes and episodes related in
his memoirs which have an interest and a charm
for every reader.
Pliny Earle was of Quaker parentage, being
descended from Ralph Earle, one of the found-
ers of Rhode Island; and through life he main-
tained the best characteristics and traditions of
the Society of Friends, though, apparently, not
formally adhering to that communion. His
early travels in Europe brought him into con-
tact, in both England and France, with many
of the makers of Quaker history, and many
other men and women who left their impress
on their time, and the reception he had from
*MEMOIRs of PLINY EARLE, M.D. With Extracts from
his Diary and Letters (1830–1892), and Selections from his
Professional Writings (1839–1891). Edited, with a general
introduction, by F. B. Sanborn. Boston: Damrell & Upham.
them was in itself a tribute to great personal
excellence and attractiveness. There is some-
thing most refreshing in the account of these
European travels at a period (1889) when Eu-
rope would seem to have been more interesting
to the tourist than it is now. The pictures given
in this book of the official life in Washington
during the administrations of Pierce, Buchanan,
and Lincoln, and of social scenes in Washington
and Charleston, are also most interesting. To
read at one's ease to-day about being “jammed”
through the various colored rooms of the White
House at the official receptions in the days of
crinoline mingled with Republican simplicity
— not to say rudeness—is more amusing than
the actual experience could have been ; for Dr.
Earle tells of seeing people go and come by
jumping through the windows, and of a foreign
Ambassador and his lady climbing over piles
of coats when an effective blockade of humanity
barred all the doors, at a reception of President
Pierce.
Again, the accounts of the trip to Cuba in
1852, and of the visit to Havana, Cardenas, and
Matanzas, have an especial interest in the light
of more recent events. Dr. Earle found Cuba
most attractive as it was then in its brief hey-
day of prosperity. Incidentally, one learns with
interest that President Polk made an offer to
Spain of $100,000,000 for the island now so
disastrously lost to her.
Dr. Earle was brought during his visit to
England into immediate contact, as a Quaker
and the guest of Quakers, with the work done
for the insane by the Tuke family of York, the
founders of the York Retreat. The work of
this family for three generations, but especially
of William Tuke in 1790 to 1800, forms as
famous an historical landmark of philanthropy
in England as does Pinel's universally ap-
plauded contemporary heroism in France, in
being the first to remove, and at his personal
risk, the chains from the mad men and women
who had worn them for years in the “bedlams”
of Paris, the Bicêtre and Salpêtrière. Dr.
Earle met Samuel Tuke, a son of William ;
and in becoming familiar with the progress
wrought at the York Retreat he no doubt de-
rived inspiration further intensifying his inter-
est in the insane, and leading him later not only
to oppose the abuses of mechanical restraint
in caring for these unfortunates, but also to
speak and write against the scarcely less abhor-
rent “chemical "restraint by use of nauseating
and narcotizing drugs, and also of blood-letting,
which, under the teachings of Rush, the leading


80 THE DIAL
[Feb. 1,
American authority at this time in the treat-
ment of insanity, was commonly practiced.
Dr. Earle met Elizabeth Fry, Fowell Bux-
ton, and other famous Quakers and philan-
thropists in England. He visited institutions
for the insane in England, Ireland, Germany,
France, Turkey, and even the Island of Malta.
In the Turkish asylum, hard by the Mosque of
Suleiman at Constantinople, he found the un-
happy insane with chains round their necks to
the number of over thirty. All, indeed, were
chained but one, and that one was securely
locked up because he had so often broken his
chains. This seems barbarous now ; but it
does not mean that Turkey was more barbarous
than other countries in that day, for barbarity
toward the insane was then well-nigh universal.
Nothing was attempted for any of the insane
except those dangerous to life and limb, and in
Turkey mild cases were looked upon as sacred
objects. Even in civilized Paris, a worse abuse
than chains was practiced, or authorized, in the
Bicétre, by the son of the illustrious friend of
the insane, Pinel. Here patients affected with
delusions, or neglectful of their tasks, were
fastened in bath-tubs with covers over the tops
through which their heads projected, and if
they insisted upon their delusions or were other-
wise intractable, the cold-water douche was
thrown upon them until they would deny their
delusions or promise to perform what was re-
quired of them.
In 1840, shortly after his return home, Dr.
Earle was engaged to care for the institution of
the Friends at Frankford, Pennsylvania. This
was not a “lunatic asylum,” as such establish-
ments were generally called in that day, but a
“Retreat for Persons deprived of the Use of
their Reason.” Here he had an invaluable
experience, preparing him well for the larger
work to which he was called in 1847, when he
took charge of the Bloomingdale Asylum, the
department for the insane of the Hospital of
the City of New York. His five years' service
at this latter place — where he saw and de-
scribed the first case of “paresis” brought to
light in America, which malady has become so
common since — was marked by noteworthy
labors and researches. After resigning from
Bloomingdale, Dr. Earle engaged in studies,
travels, practice, and work as an expert on
insanity cases, for the years from 1849 to 1864,
and spent much time at the Government Hos-
pital for the Insane, having charge of a portion
of the work, and meeting with many remarka-
ble experiences in the development of this
institution which received and cared for all the
insane of the army and navy. Here he met
many of the famous officials, legislators, and
persons of scientific and social distinction
abounding in Washington at this period. It is
in this portion of the book that we get some of
the cleverest touches of nature and interesting
side-lights on historical times and persons. In
1864 Dr. Earle was made the head of the State
Asylum for the Insane at Northampton, Mass.,
and there he spent twenty-one years of rare
usefulness and renown.
Dr. Earle is presented to us in the portrai-
ture of his biographer as a man with few fail-
ings. Mr. Sanborn is not like some biographers
who have the air of saying throughout their
work, “Oh, how good!” He does not seem to
unduly exalt his hero, but gives us, as a rule,
an exceptionally sedate and sober-minded por-
trayal; hence, a letter incorporated in the
Washington reminiscences, from Dr. Godding,
an associate of Dr. Earle at the Government
Hospital for the Insane, which refreshingly
shows some of the human foibles of our subject,
is especially interesting. Dr. Godding tells us
that the renowned alienist chewed tobacco, and
that he endeavored for some time to leave off
by weighing out a few grains less daily, but
finally desisted; also that he hated inordinately
to be beaten at any game of skill or hazard.
We also learn in another connection that Dr.
Earle was a punster, and a depraved one at
that. This, and the laconic way of telling of
some unseemly things in Cuba—like a cocking
main, a bull-baiting, or Sunday festivities—by
saying, “My barber related these things,” or,
“A man who was in Europe when I was saw
so and so" (meaning himself), — these, as I
said, are pleasingly humorous touches.
We have not left ourselves space to speak of
Dr. Earle's great work at Northampton, where
he introduced economy, order, industry, com-
fort, enjoyment, and beauty into the work of
caring for the insane, and made an establish-
ment famous the world over. Dr. Earle was
the first to introduce lectures and readings be-
fore the insane; he even lectured to them upon
insanity with interest and advantage. He was
also the first to occupy a chair of psychiatry in
a medical school in the United States.
Dr. Earle could hardly have had a better
biographer than Mr. Sanborn, whose biog-
raphies of Emerson, John Brown, and others,
are so well known. The material is handled
with excellent judgment, and from his abound-
ing stores of knowledge he gives us many side-


1899.] THE
DIAL 81
º
*
lights, not to speak of digressions into scarcely
related fields. The virtues of a biographer and
those of his subject are so different that we
may often see very interesting lives rendered
dull, vicious lives made saintly, charming lives
divested of every attraction, and simple lives
made complex; and one does not wonder that
Thackeray left commands that no biography
of him should be prepared, to inform, or mis-
inform, coming generations. Mr. Sanborn's
book may be commended to all who are inter-
ested in social, industrial and educational con-
ditions during the middle third of our century,
and especially to philanthropists and others who
wish to follow the development of men and
institutions devoted to the care of the insane
during the same period at home and abroad.
RICHARD DEwey.
BOOKS ABOUT DANTE.”
Matthew Arnold, in an address made upon
the occasion of the unveiling of the Milton
Memorial Window in St. Margaret's Church,
Westminster, made the following weighty sug-
gestion:
“In our race there are thousands of readers, pres-
ently there will be millions, who know not a word of
Greek and Latin, and will never learn those languages.
If this host of readers are ever to gain any sense of the
power and charm of the great poets of antiquity, their
way to gain it is not through translations of the ancients,
but through the original poetry of Milton, who has the
like power and charm, because he has the like great
style.”
We call this a weighty saying, because it points
out a path whereby the education of the future,
accepting as inevitable the relegation of clas-
sical studies to a band of scholars growing ever
smaller and smaller in their proportion to the
whole body of educated men, may yet remain
possessed of a key to unlock the doors of a cul-
ture not wholly different in kind from that hith-
erto chiefly obtainable by the study of Homer
and Sophocles, of Horace and Virgil. Now,
there is one other modern poet, and only one,
who may in this respect be ranked with Milton,
*A DICTIONARY of PRoPERNAMEs AND NoTABLE MAT-
TERS IN THE WoRks of DANTE. By Paget Toynbee, M.A.
Oxford: At the Clarendon Press. New York: Henry Frowde.
DANTE's TEN HEAvens. A Study of the Paradiso. By
Edmund G. Gardner, M.A. New York: Imported by Charles
Scribner's Sons.
DANTE AT RAvenNA. A Study. By Catherine Mary Phil-
limore. London: Elliot Stock.
Essays on DANTE. By Dr. Karl Witte. Translated and
edited by C. Mabel Lawrence, B.A., and Philip H. Wick-
steed, M.A. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
and who offers in addition the great advantage
of being approachable only through the medium
of a foreign language. It is almost needless
to add that this poet is Dante, or to say that a
student bent upon attaining the special type of
culture known as “classical,” yet determined
to get it through the modern rather than through
the ancient languages—through the tongues
that are still spoken rather than through the
tongues that are no longer heard—can most
nearly accomplish his purpose by devoting him-
self to the works of the immortal Florentine.
The substitute will not be an an exact one, for
the spirit of mediaevalism is not the spirit of
classical antiquity, but it is a closer substitute
than most people-imagine, and Arnold's plea
for the study of Milton applies with twofold
force to the study of Dante.
It is, then, with much satisfaction that we
note the signs, multiplying upon every hand,
of the growing hold of Dante upon the world
of modern culture, and especially of the increase
of interest with which the study of this poet is
being pursued in England and America. Re-
viewing Mr. T. W. Koch’s “Dante in Amer-
ica,” a year or two ago, we commented upon the
American phase of Dante studies, and we are
now called upon to give a brief account of sev-
eral Dante publications that have recently come
from the other side of the Atlantic. Foremost
in importance among them is the “Dante Dic-
tionary” of Mr. Paget Toynbee, a work fore-
shadowed by the index of “nomi proprie cose
notabili” prepared by Mr. Toynbee for Dr.
Moore's “Oxford ” Dante, and now expanded
from the few pages which it occupied in that
work to the dimensions of a quarto volume.
The amount of industry that has gone to the
making of this book, henceforth an indispens-
able adjunct to the labors of every student of
Dante and his period, is something enormous.
Besides the 565 double-columned pages of the
“Dictionary” proper, there are about fifty
more of tables, genealogies, plates, indexes, and
the like. The articles average several to the
page, and include not only the proper names
occurring in Dante, but also such miscellaneous
subjects as “Rosa celestiale,” “Carnali pec-
catori,” “Imperio Romano,” as well as the
titles of all the books mentioned in the works
of the poet. The material has been brought
together from the most varied sources, includ-
ing the scattered Dante literature found in
periodicals. The “Vocabolario Dantesco’’ of
Blanc suggested the “Dictionary,” which, how-
ever, differs from the former work in its restric-


82 - THE DIAL
[Feb. 1,
tion to the matters described by the title, while,
on the other hand, it is not confined to the
“Divina Commedia” alone. We note, in pass-
ing, that Mr. Toynbee is now engaged upon the
preparation of a “Dante Vocabulary” of his
own. Together with Mr. Fay's “Concordance,”
and the “Enciclopedia Dantesca” of Herr
Scartazzini (the latter now in course of publi-
cation), the new “Dictionary” takes its place
among the half-dozen of reference works abso-
lutely indispensable to the student of Dante.
Mr. Edmund Gardner's “Dante's Ten
Heavens” is a running commentary upon the
“Paradiso,” with a supplementary chapter de-
voted to the “Epistolae.” We are particularly
glad to find, in the publication of this and other
recent works, an increasing attention given to
that section of the Sacred Poem which has suf-
fered the most from neglect. While the best
students and critics have never failed to appre-
ciate the ineffable beauty of the “Paradiso,”
there is no doubt that the general reader has
come to be more familiar with the first two
cantiche, or with the first alone, than with the
third. We still meet with the curious opinion
that Dante's essential characteristics were
cruelty and vindictiveness; we still find, even
among spiritually-minded people, a lack of
sympathetic understanding of the poet only to
be accounted for by their undue attention to
the more lurid and forbidding aspects of the
“Inferno.” That Dante, so far from being cruel
by nature, was the very soul of tenderness, and
that his alleged vindictiveness is in truth a
quality so far removed from that base passion
that it is in reality a revelation of the justice of
God made through the utterance of an inspired
spokesman, if such there ever were, are propo-
sitions so self-evident to all who have penetrated
into the secret chambers of the poet's conscious-
ness that one almost scorns to support them by
argument. The vulgar view of this matter is
akin to the self-revelation of those who charac-
terize Othello as jealous, unconscious of the
fact that they thereby place themselves upon
the moral level of Iago, to whom, indeed, the
noble Moor is but a man of like passions to
his own. A reverent study of the whole of
Dante is the best corrective of the grotesque
popular judgment, and such books as this of
Mr. Gardner are exceedingly helpful to the
student who is in good earnest desirous of en-
tering into communion with the loftiest of poets.
The author's attitude toward his subject is
expressed in the following passage: “Here,
perhaps more than in any other part of the
poem, does Dante show himself in thorough
sympathy with his age, its doctrines and rudi-
mentary science, its yearning for knowledge, its
delight in the beauty of intellectual satisfaction.
It is such works as the ‘Paradiso’ that enable
us to realise what were the noblest thoughts
and aspirations of those ages whose exceeding
light has so dazzled weak modern eyesight that
they have sometimes been called dark, for in
them —
“L'occhio si smarria
Come virtù che a tropposi confonda.’”
To the discerning critic, certainly, the “Para-
diso" appears, not merely a part of the great
Epic of the Soul absolutely necessary for the
comprehension of the other parts, but, consid-
ered as poetry and nothing else, from its initial
vision of
“La gloria di Coluiche tutto muove,”
to its final glorification of
“L'Amor che muove il sole e l'altre stelle,”
one long outpouring of divinely rapturous song.
Miss Phillimore's “Dante at Ravenna,” the
third book upon our list, is modestly “offered
as a humble contribution to the mass of litera-
ture and research which centres in that great
name.” It is based, in the main, upon Signor
Ricci's “L’Ultimo Rifugio di Dante Alighieri,”
which has been to some extent supplemented by
the researches of the writer, made in London
and Oxford, in Paris and Ravenna. The book
must be described as a pleasant performance,
but a discursive and amateurish one, not as
scrupulous as it should have been in the veri-
fication of its statements, and fitted rather for
a popular than for a scholarly audience. The
most interesting part of the book is the closing
chapter, which gives the strange history of the
mortal remains of Dante and of their discovery
in our own time. The poet himself, his tomb,
and his beloved Pineta, supply subjects for the
three illustrations of the volume.
We owe to the collaboration of Mr. Philip
H. Wicksteed and Miss C. Mabel Lawrence the
last work upon our list, which is a translation
of certain “Essays on Dante,” selected from
the voluminous writings of Karl Witte. It is
not too much to say, with Mr. Wicksteed, that
“if the history of the revival of interest in
Dante which has characterized this century
should ever be written, Karl Witte will be the
chief hero of the tale.” It is to his efforts,
more than to those of any other man, that the
study of the poet was brought out of the morass
of allegorical interpretation and mystical spec-
ulation to be set upon the firm path of sound
---


1899.] THE
DIAL 83
and sane scholarship. The list of his writings
upon the subject, in German, Italian, and
Latin, begins with the classical essay “Ueber
das Missverständniss Dantes,” published in
1828, and extends to the close of Witte's long
and useful life in 1883, when his years num-
bered those of the century in which he lived.
The writings include twenty-five separate pub-
lications, ranging from articles in the “Dante
Jahrbuch" to the great critical edition of the
“Göttliche Komódie,” besides the two thick vol-
umes of “Dante-Forschungen,” from which Mr.
Wicksteed has selected sixteen of the fifty-two.
There are some interesting things about Witte's
life. His father gave him a John Stuart Mill
education, preparing him to enter the Univer-
sity of Leipzig at the age of nine and a half,
and to take the doctor's degree, with a mathe-
matical thesis, before he was fourteen. And
as Mill claimed that whatever he had accom-
plished was the result, not of special abilities,
but of proper training, so Witte's father
claimed that his son had no exceptional talents,
and was so delighted with what his system had
produced that he published a work in two vol-
umes upon the development of the boy's intel-
lect. It is not strange, then, that at eighteen
Witte found his way to Dante, or that at twenty-
three, by publishing the essay alreadymentioned,
he “entered the lists against existing Dante
scholars, all and sundry, demonstrated that
there was not one of them that knew his trade,
and announced his readiness to teach it to
them.” This essay stands second among the six-
teen in Mr. Wicksteed's selection, and among
the most important of the others are “Dante's
Trilogy,” “Dante's Cosmography,” “The Eth-
ical Systems of the Inferno and the Purga-
torio,” “The Topography of Florence about
the Year 1300,” and “Dante and United
Italy.” Most of these chapters are not merely
monographs of the pedantic German type, but
rather essays of a highly readable sort, brilliant
and even eloquent in their manner. In the
matter of extracts, Mr. Wicksteed has, reluct-
antly, adopted the plan of translating every-
thing, Italian, Latin, and French, into English,
although he admits that “the logic is all the
other way.” We do not think him well-advised
in so doing; the translations are not objection-
able in themselves, but they should have been
accompanied by the originals, even at the cost
of adding another fifty pages to the volume.
In dealing with matters of controversy he has
shown better judgment, avoiding the “running
corrective and refuting commentary" which
disfigure so many scholarly works of this de-
scription, yet supplying footnotes where abso-
lutely indispensable, and discussing in an ap-
pendix the main difficulties involved in Witte's
positions upon controverted themes. On the
whole, we are extremely grateful to the trans-
lators for this book, which provides what is
certainly the best of Witte's work, and prac-
tically all of it that students who will not take
the trouble to learn German have a right to
expect. WILLIAM MORTON PAYNE.
PRESENT TENDENCIES IN ECONOMIC
THOUGHT.”
One of the most successful professors of English
literature used to advise his students to read only
the one best novel of any author, and then to read
a book of the same general sort by some other writer
of prominence: having read “John Halifax, Gen-
tleman,” for example, as the one work on which its
author's reputation in the main rests, follow it with
“ Felix Holt’”; or, if you have been enjoying Scott's
“Legend of Montrose,” then, and not till then, read
Stevenson’s “Kidnapped.”
This advice to read books in pairs is particularly
applicable to works relating to economics and to the
many schemes of political and social reform which are
so forcibly and so persistently urged upon the public.
Such an essay in American economic history, for in-
stance, as that by Professor Hammond on “The Cot-
ton Industry,” in our present category, is a most sav-
ory dish with which to supplement the dry bones of
German economic theory in Professor Crook's ex-
amination of “Wage Theories,” especially as the
one book is excellent of its kind and the other is at
best only indifferently well done; while books like
Mr. Gronlund's “New Economy” and Mrs. Stet-
son’s “Women and Economics” need the wholesome
antidote of Professor Henderson's systematic trea-
*THE NEw EconoMy : A Peaceful Solution of the Social
Problem. By Laurence Gronlund, M.A., author of “The Co-
operative Commonwealth,” etc. Chicago: Herbert S. Stone
& Co.
Wom EN AND EconoMICs: A Study of the Economic Rela-
tion between Men and Women as a Factor in Social Evolution.
By Charlotte Perkins Stetson. Boston: Small, Maynard & Co.
Social ELEMENTs: Institutions, Character, Progress. By
Charles Richmond Henderson. New York: Charles Scrib-
ner's Sons.
THE Cotton INDUSTRY: An Essay in American Economic
History. By M. B. Hammond, Ph.D., Assistant Professor
in Economics, University of Illinois. Part I., The Cotton
Culture and the Cotton Trade. Publications of the American
Economic Association–New Series, No. 1. New York: The
Macmillan Co.
GERMAN WAGE THEoRIEs: A History of their Develop-
ment. By James W. Crook, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of
Political Economy, Amherst College.—Studies in History,
Economics, and Public Law. Edited by the Faculty of Polit-
ical Science of Columbia University. Volume IX., No. 2.
New York: Published by the University.


84 THE DIAL
[Feb. 1,
tise on “Social Elements” to help us maintain a
stable mental equilibrium.
“The New Economy” is an exceptionally clever
bit of special pleading; “Social Elements” is a
judicial review of the several and often discordant
phases of our complex social life. The author of
the one is preaching a doctrine, and he naturally
writes with all the ardor of a reformer and even of
an evangelist; the author of the other is writing a
text-book, - or, rather, he is lecturing to students,
for his book still retains many of the marks of the
lecture form. He therefore carefully avoids argu-
ing the case, but takes you up on the mountain-peak
of highest scholarship and gives you a comprehen-
sive view of the whole field of social activities, point-
ing out the peculiar institutions, with the character-
istics and significance of each.
Professor Henderson has also given a distinctly
literary flavor to his book, not only by crowding his
pages with the noble thoughts of the poets and prose
writers of all ages and of every nation, but by having
a care to his own thought, giving it beauty of form as
well as strength of substance. This does not mean that
he has attempted any of that “fine writing” which
disfigures, but that he has chosen his words and
phrases with that simplicity which gives elegance to
his style and pleasure to his readers; he has not
forgotten that books are written to be read, and that
the aim of an author should be to have his thoughts
easily understood. His work consequently com-
mends itself to those “whom extended experience
in the classroom has taught to view with profound-
est respect the infinite capability of the human mind
to resist the introduction of knowledge.” There is,
moreover, a skilful arrangement of chapters, by
which we are led easily up from the simple and the
familiar things about us to those less known and
more difficult of comprehension, our interest never
flagging, until at last we find ourselves wrestling
with “Some Problems of Social Psychology,” in
Chapter XV.
Mr. Gronlund's logic is simple in the extreme,
and his programme of social reform sounds so per-
fectly feasible and so thoroughly practical that the
wonder is we do not adopt it at once. Indeed, the
casual reader, differing though he might with the
author at nearly every conclusion he reaches, would
find it difficult to tell why they should have parted
company, and where or how one can admit the pre-
mises of Mr. Gronlund — (1) that “something must
be done,” and (2) that “industrial democracy is
inevitable "— and still deny the truth of his appar-
ently logical inference, (3) that “collectivism is the
climax’’ and the noble ideal toward which we should
all strive with every means in our power. Our im-
mediate aim, he says, should be to give to our work-
ingmen as much security and independence as pos-
sible short of the Cooperative Commonwealth, so
that we may soften, though not solve, the labor
problem (p. 135). To this end he proposes a party
programme of eleven measures, six of state (p. 150)
and five of national activity (p. 227), as follows:
1. Obligatory Industrial Arbitration.
2. Effective Labor Organizations.
3. State Productive Work for Unemployed (Road-mak-
ing, e.g.)
4. Municipal Enterprises under State Control-water, gas,
and electric light supply, street-car accommodation, telephone
service, etc.
5. State Control of the Liquor Traffic. This “is right,
mainly because it will abolish the saloon while not depriving
any one of the indulgence in moderate drinking, which the
State has no right to do” (p. 209).
6. State Socialization of Mines.
7. Nationalization of the Telegraph and Express Business.
8. Government Banking in its two divisions (a) savings-
banks, (b) loan-offices, to which
9. Postal Savings Banks afford a first step.
10. National Control of all Fares and Freight Rates, as a
step to the Nationalization of the Railroads.
11. The Department of Agriculture constituted an effective
organ for the farmers, “for buying them the machinery, the
fertilizers, the seeds, the breeding animals which they may
need, – their organ for selling their surplus products for
them ’’ (p. 291).
For each of these steps Mr. Gronlund offers careful
explanation of how it has worked, and ample justi-
fication of how it would work for the uplift of hu-
manity and the betterment of the race. He urges,
moreover, that the peculiar note of collectivism is
wholly absent from these measures, and that there
is a good deal more collectivism in any one of our
trusts than in all of them (p. 296). Singularly
enough, the means by which Mr. Gronlund expects
to secure the adoption of this platform with eleven
planks is popular education in the public school:
the substitution, that is, of Kindergarten and Man-
ual Training methods for the present undemocratie
system of primary and secondary education. In
addition to this pedagogical campaign to secure
higher ideals in the next generation, Mr. Gronlund
proposes civic churches (p. 350) where “well-
informed, thoughtful men and women will on Sun-
days listen to lectures by competent, trained teach-
ers on political, economical, and educational sub-
jects, and take part in sober discussions thereon —
not with a sort of apology as is done even in so-called
“People's Churches, but conscious that they are
acting in unison with the powers and forces that
are working out the destiny of humanity.”
“It should not be difficult to make every public-
spirited citizen see that, if we could gather the squalid
children teeming in the tenements of our large cities
into sunny Kindergartens, teach them neatness and gen-
tleness, open their eyes to beauty, train their hands in
useful activities and develop their minds naturally and
by an orderly method, the gravest dangers to our civili-
zation would be averted” (p. 313).
“Manual training will finally solve the problem we
have set ourselves. It will, in the first place, give the
pupil power to make the most of himself, to know some-
thing thoroughly, and this it will accomplish by leading
the youthful mind to form habits of observation, of self-
activity, of self-development, and thus to become a self-
educator. And, in the second place, it will actually
make of the youth an all-around man—and an all-around
woman, too, for that matter; it is in very truth itself a
liberal education; manual training, properly understood,
opens up the whole universe of knowledge and culture”
(pp. 323–324).


1899.] THE
IXIAL 85
Mr. Gronlund is confident that a fourteen-year-old
boy, educated as he suggests (and the experiment
has already been tried, both in Boston and in a
suburb of Chicago) “will be fully the peer in knowl-
edge, in mental acumen and moral perceptions, of
any of our young men of twenty-one who has just
graduated from Harvard” (p. 325). But it is not
on this account that he advocates a new education;
it is, rather, as his sub-title suggests, as a means to
the peaceful solution of the social problem. A higher
body of ideals and a growing consciousness of our
being social functionaries will alone “relegate pay,
profits, and property to the secondary position, where
in fact they belong” (p. 42). He depends upon
the school to supply the one, and the civic church
the other. Both are essential, he insists, as the
only means of preventing that civil war of classes
for which socialists are preparing us.
“The plain fact is, that every one of us, industrially
or socially employed, whether as a banker, a baker, a
teacher, or a hod-carrier, is doing his work, because so-
ciety, and only because society, needs his services and
needs them then and there. A man may choose his
function in the community, but its duties are not of his
choosing” (p. 40).
It is the conscious social recognition of this fact that
will bring about and will mark the new economy.
“The Trust is the last evolutionary term of the pres-
ent social order. Democracy in any real sense is as
yet but a tendency, though an irresistible tendency”
(p. 27). This practical programme Mr. Gronlund
proposes as the best we can hope for in the interim
which must elapse before mankind is ready for the
Cooperative Commonwealth.
Standing near Mr. Gronlund's Civic Church, we
may confidently look in the next century for Mrs.
Stetson's “commodious and well-served apartment
house for professional women with families”
(p.242). It will be without kitchens, but there will
be a kitchen belonging to the house from which
meals can be served to the families in their rooms
or in a common dining-room as preferred. It will
be a home where the cleaning will be done by effi.
cient workers, not hired separately by the families,
but engaged by the manager of the establishment;
and a roof-garden, day-nursery, and kindergarten,
under well-trained professional nurses and teachers,
will insure proper care of the children.
“The demand for such provision is increasing daily
and must soon be met, not by a boarding-house or a
lodging-house, a hotel, a restaurant, or any makeshift
patching together of these; but by a permanent pro-
vision for the needs of women and children, of family
privacy with collective advantage. This must be offered
on a business basis to prove a substantial business suc-
cess; and it will so prove, for it is a growing social need.”
The author's contention is that our homes as at
present constituted afford none of those things which
we have been accustomed to associate with them,
and that the several professions involved in our
clumsy method of housekeeping should be special-
ized to make the home of the twentieth century in
keeping with church and state and industry. She
wastes no sympathy mourning over the past, but
urges that the economic dependence and consequent
social subjection of women has fulfilled its evolu-
tionary function and is rapidly becoming socially
destructive, not constructive; that the insufficient
and irritating character of our existing form of
marriage is shown by the fact (p. 300) “that women
must be forced to it by the need of food and clothes,
and men by the need of cooks and housekeepers”;
that the home (p. 313) should no longer be an eco-
nomic entity, with its cumbrous industrial machinery
huddled behind it, but that the industries of the
home life should be managed professionally; that
the existing relation of economic dependence does
not contribute to the development of either of the
three essential elements of society — beautiful
women, strong men, and intelligent children; that
what we need are changes which shall minister to
the social uplift of the newly specialized American
wife and mother, and homes which shall give play
for her increasing specialization.
“Where the embryonic combination of cook-nurse-
laundress-chambermaid-housekeeper-waitress-governess
was content to be “jack of all trades” and mistress of
none, the woman who is able to be one of these things
perfectly suffers doubly from not being able to do what
she wants to do, and from being forced to do what she
does not want to do. To the delicately differentiated
modern brain the jar and shock of changing from trade
to trade a dozen times a day is a distinct injury, a
waste of nervous force” (p. 155).
There is a sense, therefore, in which Mrs. Stet-
son's attractive volume will serve as a suitable
counter-irritant both to Professor Henderson's sci-
entific analysis of the five elementary social institu-
tions — the family, the schoolhouse, industry, the
church, and the government, — and to Mr. Gron-
lund's advocacy of the Collectivist Republic: both
books are written from what might be called the
masculine point of view, if a point could be said to
have life; “Women and Economics” shows us the
woman's side of the case in an entirely new light.
The author is not arguing a case in court, but stat-
ing a profound social philosophy; and she does this
with enough wit and sarcasm to make the book
very entertaining reading, and with such a wealth
of illustration from the study of man's development
from primitive conditions, and of the sex relations
of animal life, as to make her theory seem almost
startling in the vividness of its truth.
“This change is not a thing to prophesy and plead
for. It is a change already instituted, and gaining
ground among us these many years with marvellous
rapidity” (p. 316).
“It is worth while for us to consider the case fully
and fairly; to introduce conditions that will change hu-
manity from within, making for better motherhood and
fatherhood, better babyhood and childhood, better food,
better homes, better society,+ this is to work for human
improvement along natural lines. It means enormous
racial advance, and that with great swiftness; for this
change does not wait to create new forces, but sets free


86 THE DIAL
[Feb. 1,
those already potentially strong, so that humanity will
fly up like a released spring. And it is already hap-
pening. All we need to do is to understand and help.”
(p. 317).
We are the only animal species in which the female
depends on the male for food, the only animal spe-
cies in which the sex-relation is also an economic
relation. Mrs. Stetson's book is written to offer a
simple and natural explanation of this fact, to show
its present significance, and “to reach in especial
the thinking women of to-day, and urge upon them
a new sense, not only of their social responsibility as
individuals, but of their measureless racial import-
ance as makers of men.” Herein her book em-
bodies the idea which marks perhaps the most pro-
nounced tendency of recent thought along economic
lines, namely, that social progress is more and more
becoming a conscious process, and that, while it is
perfectly true that there is a natural and physical
basis for society and for social institutions, it is
equally true that in a large measure man is as he
thinks he is and as he wills he shall be.
The two books remaining to be noticed in this
review also illustrate this tendency, though in a less
degree. They are both of them doctors’ theses
offered at Columbia, and therefore represent uni-
versity tendencies in part rather than those of the
thinking world at large. They deal with the history
of a particular line of industry and the evolution of
a special phase of German thought; these are of
necessity impersonal in character, and do not involve
controversy and criticism; they are to be judged
on the accuracy and comprehensiveness of the inves-
tigation and the attractiveness with which results
are presented.
Professor Hammond has made a careful study
of the cotton culture and trade, and tells us what we
want to know about it. The effect of the agricul-
tural economy of the Southern States produced by
the cultivation of cotton is shown in the introduc-
tory chapter. In his second chapter the connection
beween slavery and cotton-growing at the South is
set forth in a systematic, judicial, and critical man-
ner; we are shown the necessary relation of cause
and effect in social as well as chemical matters.
“Cotton was not responsible for the origin of slav-
ery in the South, but to it was wholly due the ex-
tension of that institution. The movement towards
emancipation was checked by the discovery that
cotton could be profitably cultivated throughout the
whole Southern country” (p. 42). After three
chapters devoted to the history of Southern agri-
culture, Book I. closes with two chapters on the
present condition of the cotton culture and the
remedy for over-production. This latter, Mr. Ham-
mond thinks, is only to be found in the establishment
and extension of a proper system of agricultural
credit (p. 196). Book II. is a study of the cotton
trade and the evolution of the cotton market, the
most noticeable feature of which, since the Civil
War, has been the growth of the cotton manufacture
near the seat of the supply of the raw material
(p. 343). The cotton industry will form the sub-
ject of another volume.
All history will have to be rewritten, was the
reply of one of America's greatest historians, Mot-
ley, to the question as to what field he would advise
a young man to cultivate. Each succeeding century
—each generation, almost — gains a new outlook
and higher standards of truth by which to measure
the thought and life of the past. We study what
has been and what is, to show us what will be. An
essay which does not show this contrast, and which
does not afford better light to our path and lamps
to our feet, is subject to the criticism that it begins
nowhere, ends nowhere, and has nothing scientific
between : it has not even an academic interest.
This criticism is in part applicable to the attempt
of Professor Crook to write a history of the de-
velopment of German Wage Theories. He be-
gins well, by showing the dependence of German
economists on Adam Smith and the definite reason
for this: “The conditions of economic life in the
two countries were very different. There was want-
ing on German soil the stimulating influence of
unsolved practical problems of economics” (p. 8).
Germany had no factory system during the first half
of the century; as late as 1882 “42 per cent of
the German textile industry was still conducted in
the home or domestic workshop” (p. 9). But the
author's conclusion (p. 113) that, when we have
made all allowances, the residual theory fails to
satisfy the mind completely, is not, to say the least,
eminently satisfying in itself, and there is nothing
exceptionally scientific between the beginning and
the end: one is forced to query why such history is
written. ARTHUR B. Woodford.
BRIEFS ON NEW BOOKS.
An English The need of an English history of
handbook of Spanish literature, authoritative and
*** up-to-date, has long been felt, for
the want has been but imperfectly supplied by
Mr. Butler Clarke's manual and by Mr. David
Hannay's volume upon “The Later Renaissance.”
As for Ticknor, while that monumental work is
not likely to be wholly displaced for a long time,
it must be admitted that it is very defective in the
light of later research. The need is now supplied,
as far as a single volume of moderate dimensions
can supply it, by the “Spanish Literature” written
for the series of “Literatures of the World” (Ap-
pleton) by Mr. James Fitzmaurice Kelly, of all
living English writers the most competent to pre-
pare such a book. This accomplished Spanish
scholar and Cervantist not only knows his subject,
but he has also the literary faculty required to make
thoroughly interesting reading of such a manual, in
which latter respect his volume does not derogate
from the high standard already set for this series
by Dr. Garnett and Professor Dowden. He has,


1899.] THE
DIAL 87
too, opinions of his own, which is rather refreshing
in view of the colorless and perfunctory character
usually attaching to condensed surveys of this gen-
eral description. For example, he remarks of
Señor Echegaray that, “a delightfully middle-class
writer, his appreciation by middle-class audiences
calls for no special comment.” This comment will
cause exquisite pain to the “advanced” critics who
hail every new experimental literary product as a
revelation of hitherto unequalled genius. In the
matter of extracts, the author is rather more liberal
than his predecessors in the preparation of this
series, and he is not afraid to use an occasional line
or two of Spanish. We are minded to suggest one
bit of criticism that he would probably have used
had he known of it. Schopenhauer, after reading
the “Numancia” of Cervantes, made it the subject
of the following quatrain:
“Den Selbstmord einer ganzen Stadt
Cervantes hier geschildert hat;
Wenn alles bricht, so bleibt uns nur
Rückkehr zum Urquell der Natur.”
We mention this because it is the sort of thing that
Mr. Kelly likes to introduce, and the introduction
of which makes his volume so more than usually
readable. We may add, by way of closing, that the
author's theme is Castilian literature, and has little
to say of books written in the Asturian, Galician,
and Catalan dialects, or in that “spoiled child of
philologers,” the Basque tongue.
The second volume of the “Histor-
ical Development of Modern Europe
—1849–97." (Putnam) is equal in
scholarship and similar in treatment to its prede-
cessor. The history of Europe is shown as a devel-
opment; movements and subjects are dealt with as
“logical wholes.” The separate parts or movements
considered are such as the Second Empire, European
diplomacy in the Crimean War, the constitutional
development of Piedmont and the union of Italy,
the growth of Prussia and the struggle for German
hegemony, the establishment of the Austro-Hunga-
rian Monarchy, the Progress of the Eastern Ques-
tion. If we were called upon to choose out of these
splendid chapters, we would say Mr. Andrews is
particularly happy in treating of Napoleon III. and
European politics in his time. A single sentence
summarizes the causes of the rise of this charlatan:
“Lamartine, the idol of the Parisians ten months
before, and Cavaignac the dictator of the June days,
were both defeated by a name and a legend.” The
author shows how the Crimean War indirectly was
the revenge of Europe for its reactionary policy in
1848; how Louis Napoleon himself, hypocritically
pretending liberal ideas, profited by the discon-
tent to acquire glory, calculating that the political
theories of England would force her to the French
side. Another chapter in which Mr. Andrews so
successfully treats European history as a “logical
whole” is that narrating the unification of Italy.
The combination of circumstances which led to the
French intervention in Italy, the arrest of Ital-
The historical
development of
Modern Europe.
ian unity at the very gates of Rome, the effect of
'66 and Sedan upon Italian politics, – all these
are skilfully woven into one compact account, mas-
terful in clearness and in grasp. The book, how-
ever, has a false end. The year 1878 had been a
much better terminal point, for since that time new
policies and purposes have initiated changes the
wide ends of which no man can guess. What with
the Dreyfus affair in France, the crisis in Austria-
Hungary, and the Far Eastern Question, the future
of Europe is uncertain. The last quarter of the
nineteenth century to the coming historian will be
rather the prologue to the twentieth century than
an epilogue to the nineteenth.
In a tasteful volume of 275 pages,
entitled “Historic Homes of the
South-West Mountains, Virginia”
(Lippincott), Mr. Edward C. Mead essays to per-
petuate the characteristics of the famous old houses
of this cynosural section of the Old Dominion, and
gives a brief anecdotal and genealogical account of
the families whose names are more closely and his-
torically connected with them. Some of these names
—as Jefferson and Randolph—are of national, and
all of them are of local, historic interest. There are
twenty-eight papers in all, the list being headed with
an account of Monticello — that political shrine of
serio-comic memory which is well symbolized in its
quaintly composite architecture, showing, in front,
the chaste portico of a Doric temple, through which
the votary passes on to the domestic and culinary
arrangements of the interior and the rear. Thither
the philosophic Jefferson retired, an honored Pali-
nurus, from the helm of state, to prune his vines
and plant his cabbages,—and, as the event showed,
to be literally eaten out of house and home by
intrusive swarms of the “plain people” who came
ostensibly to pay their respects to, but really to stare
at, the future Patron Saint of American democracy.
One scarcely knows whether to be more amused or
disgusted at the picture of these Wandals lighting
like locusts on Monticello, “eating up all the pro-
duce of the estate,” and committing a thousand vul-
gar impertinences under the veil of admiration for
the persecuted proprietor, upon whom they bestowed
nothing in return for his enormously abused hospi-
tality save the crown of martyrdom. Mr. Mead
writes sympathetically and with an intimate knowl-
edge of his theme. There are many pleasing half-
tone plates, and the volume is got up in the sump-
tuous style of a gift-book. The edition is limited to
750 copies.
Historic homes
in the mountains
of Virginia.
“Idylls of the King” (R. H. Russell),
and “Ten Drawings in Chinatown”
(San Francisco: A. M. Robertson),
two publications of the pronounced “Holiday” type,
reached us too late for inclusion in our regular De-
cember reviews of books of their class. The first-
named volume is a profusely decorated and rubri-
cated flat octavo containing Tennyson's noble epic,
with sixty drawings and decorations by Messrs.
Two belated
Holiday books.


88 THE DIAL
[Feb. 1,
George and Louis Rhead. The decorations remind
one of Mr. Walter Crane, and are in the main sat-
isfactory. The full-page drawings are in the pre-
Raphaelite or neo-mediaeval manner, and range in
quality from good to indifferent—though one or
two examples (as the preposterous plate on page 88)
must in candor be pronounced positively bad. The
drawings by the brothers Rhead are undeniably
clever and striking in their way; but in too many
instances they are marred by a certain stiffness, one
might almost say woodenness, which becomes un-
pleasantly apparent when one compares them men-
tally (as is inevitable) with the work of such illus-
trators as Hunt and Rossetti, or even of Madox
Brown, with whose-manner they have closest affin-
ity. But altogether the publication is a pleasing, as
it certainly is a striking one, and should find favor
as a gift-book. The text is printed in black letter
in double columns, and the cover is of white buck-
ram showily stamped in black, red, and gilt.—“Ten
Drawings in Chinatown,” a sort of combination of
book and portfolio, is the joint work of Mr. Ernest
C. Peixotto, who supplies the pictures, and Mr.
Robert Howe Fletcher, who is responsible for the
text. The whole is the result of a trip, or rather
of several trips, through Chinatown, undertaken by
these gentlemen under the guidance of a resident
pilot, Wong Sue; and anyone who has “done” the
sights (and smells) of San Francisco's bit of the
Far East will vouch for the accuracy of the recorded
impressions of both narrator and artist. Mr.
Fletcher develops a very happy vein of quiet humor,
and his knack of neat and graphic description is
undeniable. The drawings are on thin paper
mounted on boards, and they are sprightly and
artistic. The edition is limited to 750 copies.
It may be suspected that if the amen-
*::::::::.. ities of legal debate were preserved,
and Marie Corelli allowed to close
the argument in “The Modern Marriage Market”
(Lippincott), as she was to open it, its forensics
would resemble nothing so much as the Kilkenny
cats of fable. For Miss Corelli falls afoul of the
“Modern Marriage Market” (whatever that is);
Lady Jeune falls afoul of Miss Corelli, and the
M. M. M.; Mrs. Flora Annie Steel of L. J., M. C.,
and the M. M. M.; and Susan, Countess of Malmes-
bury, of all the foregoing, in a manner which has
the elaborate constructive detail of “The House that
Jack Built” and the style of the contest between
the famous cats aforesaid. Only, Miss Corelli not
being permitted a rejoinder, there is a very small
tip left of her argument indeed, while the Countess
of Malmesbury's flourishes like a green bay tree: if
the tropes are here confused, they are assuredly
much less so than the topic after it has passed
through so many distinguished inkstands. For it is
a hopeless undertaking to save even shreds of “The
Modern Marriage Market.” It is, and it is n't.
One of the contestants avers one thing, only to be
supported and contradicted by each of those who
come after. Miss Corelli — speaking, it is to be
hoped, without her own experience—regards it as
something dreadful, and descants upon it in a way
which is nothing less than passionate. Lady Jeune
thinks pretty well of it, and discusses it in relation
to the colonial empire of Great Britain and other
closely related matters. Mrs. Steel is not quite sure,
but believes upon the whole that the Hindoo custom
of child-marriage is better. And Lady Malmesbury
thinks all the other things that are left for anybody
to think of. It can hardly be expected that the
reader will think at all — if he is a man, he will
not, in self-defence.
- In his chastely elegant little volume
:* entitled “Tales of the Enchanted
Islands of the Atlantic” (Macmillan),
Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson turns to
graceful account the riches of the hitherto similarly
unexploited field of legendary lore that the European
fancy for more than a thousand years wove about
the mysterious isles, real or fancied, of the Western
Ocean. Although we cannot quite admit the accu-
racy of Colonel Higginson's sweeping claim that
these legends are “a part of the mythical period of
American history,” we have nothing but approval
for the way in which he has treated them. The vol-
ume is conceived in the spirit and written in the
style of Hawthorne's “Wonder Book,” of which it
forms a worthy and desirable counterpart. There
are twenty tales in all, under such alluring titles as
“The Story of Atlantis,” “Taliessin of the Radiant
Brow,” “Merlin the Enchanter,” “Sir Lancelot of
the Lake,” “Maelduin's Voyage,” “The Island of
Satan's Hand,” “Harald the Viking,” “Bimini and
the Fountain of Youth.” Mr. Albert Herter has
supplied a half-dozen full-page illustrations, which
are both charmingly fancied and artistically done,
and add decidedly to the attractiveness of the pret-
tily bound, well-printed volume. It is an especially
acceptable and stimulating book for young readers,
whose imaginations are certainly in little danger of
over-feeding in these practical times.
The city of Penn and Franklin has
found a graceful and sympathetic
popular historian in Miss Agnes
Repplier, whose “Philadelphia, the Place and the
People” (Macmillan) forms a suitably sober pendant
to Miss King's romantic and stirring story of New
Orleans, its companion volume. Miss Repplier's
always rather prim style, with its old-time graces
and mannerisms and verbal tags out of Pepys and
the “Spectator,” accords well with her present
theme. Beginning with a kindly sketch of its ex-
cellent though maligned founder, she sketches with a
light and fluent touch the generally serene though
not untroubled history of the Quaker City down to
present times. The treatment is popular, and from
a literary point of view especially the book calls for
cordial approval. There are many illustrations,
comprising a charming portrait of Penn – who
A pleasant history
of Philadelphia.


1899.] THE
1)IAL 89.
must, it would seem, have been extremely unlike
the unctuous philosopher-farmer of West's pictorial
idyl, “The Treaty at Shackamaxon.” We have
nothing but praise for these two delightful compan-
ion studies in civic history, and we hope to see other
volumes added to the series.
** Sartor At first thought, “Sartor Resartus”
Resartus --
illustrated. books to tempt the hand of an illus-
trator. But even the Bible is “pictured” and “dec-
orated” nowadays, and it was probably inevitable
that the illustrators would sooner or later get around
to Carlyle. We can therefore only be grateful that
the task has been elected by such a capable artist
as Mr. Edmund J. Sullivan, whose seventy-five pen-
and-ink drawings for “Sartor Resartus” are em-
bodied in a handsome new edition of that work just
issued in this country by the Macmillan Co. Mr.
Sullivan has not attempted to depict the complete
scenes and episodes of the book, but has confined
himself, in the main, to portraits of the principal
characters and to pictures of an allegorical or dec-
orative nature. With few exceptions, the drawings
show considerable originality and strength, and en-
title the artist to a place in the front rank of pen-and-
ink draughtsmen of the day. We fancy the true
Carlylean will prefer his “Sartor” unillustrated,
but in any case he cannot fail to be interested in
Mr. Sullivan's clever drawings. .
Two more volumes have appeared of
biographical the biographical edition of Thack-
Thackeray. eray's works (Harper). The eighth
contains “The Newcomes,” and extends to more
than eight hundred pages, besides the usual forty of
introduction. Mrs. Ritchie's selection of material
for her part of the book consists of reminiscences
and letters of Thackeray's schoolboyhood, and notes
on his continental wanderings during the years
1853–55, when the novel was written. It came, as
will be noticed, between his two visits to America,
and filled in the period fairly well, when we con-
sider that it took nearly half a million words to tell
the story. The ninth volume gives us the “Christ-
mas Books,” with all their wealth of caricature
illustration. The introduction to this volume is the
longest yet written, extending to sixty pages, and
made proportionally interesting by its account of
the relations between Thackeray and FitzGerald.
Readers will remember the quoted reply of the
novelist when asked, late in life, whom of his friends
he loved best. “Old Fitz and Brookfield.” The
story is here corroborated by Mrs. Ritchie. She
says: “I have been wondering whereabouts in my
father's life the FitzGerald chapter should come in.
It lasted from 1829 to 1863, sometimes carried on
with words and signs, sometimes in silence, but it
did not ever break off, though at times it passed
through the phases to which all that is alive must be
subject: it is only the dead friendships which do
not vary any more.” After the novelist's death,
More of the
would seem to be one of the last.
FitzGerald put together a book of Thackeray's let-
ters to him, including many drawings, and it is this
unique volume that has supplied most of the mate-
rial for the present chapter. It contains nothing
more touching than some verses written by Fitz-
Gerald in the early years of the friendship. Here
is one of the stanzas:
“If I get to be fifty, may Willy get too.
And we'll laugh, Will, at all that grim sixties can do.
Old agel Let him do of what poets complain,
We'll thank him for making us children again;
Let him make us grey, gouty, blind, toothless, or silly,
Still old Ned shall be Ned, and old Willy be Willy.”
Mrs. Ritchie adds: “All through our own childish
days the dear and impressionable friend, so gener-
ous and helpful in time of trouble, used to appear
and disappear, just as a benevolent supernatural
being might be expected to do, whose laws were
somewhat different from ours, and for whom com-
monplace and dull routine hardly existed.”
Mr. John A. Gade has compiled from
original and orther sources a reada-
ble little work on “Book Plates, Old
and New" (Mansfield). Within small compass and
in an interesting manner, he has told the story of
the ex-libris from its small mediaeval beginnings
to its acceptance as a latter-day fad. He is accurate
and sufficiently scholarly within the narrow limits he
sets himself. It is not quite true to say that Lord
de Tabley is better known to-day as John Leicester
Warren, though to a collector of book-plates his
works in verse would hardly commend themselves
as contributing to a fame won as a connoisseur when
book-plate collectors were comparatively few. The
volume is suitably illustrated, and its price will
make it useful. —
Three great
Book-plate lore
and fancies.
The story of Lord Nelson's life being
campaigns what it is, and his private affairs
of Nelson. being readily dissociable from his
career as the greatest of all sea-fighters, there seems
to be room for an account which shall include his
three greatest campaigns and nothing more. Such
a book appears in “The Great Campaigns of Nel-
son” (imported by Charles Scribner's Sons), pre-
pared by Mr. Wm. O'Connor Morris from papers
originally contributed to the “Pall Mall Magazine.”
Maps have been added, and the lucid chapters may
be said to serve as a compendious hand-book for
Captain Mahan's great work. Necessarily, some of
the fascinating tales of Nelson's early courage are
omitted, but the gain in succinctness is great, and
the book seems destined to serve a useful end. For
our own part, however, we prefer Southey.
- Mr. H. T. Newcomb's little volume
*::::... on “Railway Economics” (Railway
World Publishing Co.) may be read
with profit by all who are interested in the trans-
portation problem, and especially by those who are
in the habit of regarding the railways as all-powerful
and grasping monopolies engaged in plundering the
public. Mr. Newcomb shows that railway rates are


90 THE DIAL
[Feb. 1,
subject to definite laws, which are largely beyond
the control of railway managers; and that while
competition among the railways themselves cannot
be relied upon to regulate rates, or for any other
useful purpose, there is a competition among pro-
ducers which keeps freight rates down to the lowest
possible point. A study of the undesirable and
wasteful features of the other kind of competition
leads to the conclusion that the Interstate Com-
merce Act should be so amended as to legalize
pooling.
Mr. William D. Guthrie’s “Lectures
on the Fourteenth Article of Amend-
ment to the Constitution of the
United States,” delivered last spring before the
Dwight Alumni Association in New York, have
been published in book form by Messrs. Little,
Brown, & Co. The lectures deal first with the his-
tory of the amendment and the principles of inter-
pretation, and then with the meaning of such phrases
as “due process of law” and “the equal protection
of the laws” as expounded in decisions of the Su-
preme Court. A multitude of cases are cited, in
some of which Mr. Guthrie himself took part as
counsel, urging a broad interpretation of the amend-
ment which “has done more than any other cause to
protect our civil rights from invasion, to strengthen
the bonds of the Union, to make us truly a nation,
and to assure the perpetuity of our institutions.”
At the end of the book the Constitution is conven-
iently annotated with references to cases in which
it has been construed.
The Fourteenth
Amendment.
BRIEFER MENTION.
The Bodleian manuscript of Omar Khayyam, discov-
ered in 1856 by Professor Cowell, and transcribed by
him, is the oldest codex of the poet as yet known, and
dates from the year 1460. It has, furthermore, the
special interest of being the manuscript upon which
FitzGerald based his immortal poem. A photographic
reproduction of this manuscript, with a transcript into
modern Persian characters, a prose translation into En-
glish, a learned commentary, and a great variety of
bibliographical and miscellaneous annotation, are all
provided by Mr. Edward Heron-Allen in “The Rubaiyat
of Omar Khayyam,” a sumptuous volume published in
this country (in its second edition) by Messrs. L. C.
Page & Co. It is a book that no Omarian can possibly
spare from his collection.
“The New Gulliver,” by Mr. Wendell Phillips Gar-
rison, is in form a very tastefully printed little book
issued from the Marion Press of Jamaica, New York.
In content, it is the story of the strange experience of
Mr. Theophilus Brocklebank, who rediscovered the coun-
try of the Houyhnhnms, left unvisited by any Yahoo
from the time of its original explorer. In purpose, it
is a mild satire upon the relativity of human knowledge
and the futility of theological speculation, although this
purpose is left rather vaguely defined, with the inten-
tion, we suspect, of mystifying the reader rather than
of contributing to his real enlightenment.
LITERARY NOTES.
The next publication of the “Brothers of the Book”
will consist of a reprint of Robert Louis Stevenson's
essay on “The Morality of the Profession of Letters,”
taken from the “Fortnightly Review” for April, 1881.
“Bush-Fruits,” by Mr. Fred W. Card, is “a horti-
cultural monograph of raspberries, blackberries, dew-
berries, currants, gooseberries, and other shrub-like
fruits,” just published by the Macmillan Co.
“The Boy Who Drew Cats” is a Japanese fable told
in English by Mr. Lafcadio Hearn, and printed on
crêpe paper with colored illustrations as an issue of the
“Japanese Fairy Tale Series” published in Tokyo by
Mr.T. Hasegawa. It is a charming little book as to both
text and illustration.
One of the daintiest little books of the season, a book
that brings joy to the eye and the heart alike, is a se-
lection of Elizabethan lyrics made by Mr. FitzRoy
Carrington, illustrated with portraits of famous Eliza-
bethans, printed with sixteenth century spelling and
typography, and entitled “The Queen's Garland.” Mr.
R. H. Russell is the publisher.
One of the most interesting of recent announcements
comes in prompt fulfilment of our wish, expressed in
writing of the Tolstoy anniversary, that we might soon
have a uniform English edition of the books of the great
Russian. Such an edition, in twenty volumes, is now
under way, to be edited by Mr. Nathan Haskell Dole,
and published by Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons.
It is announced that the competitive examinations for
the fellowships of the American School of Classical
Studies at Athens will be held this year on March 16,
17, and 18. Candidates are to enter their names on or
before February 1 with Professor B. I. Wheeler (Ith-
aca, N.Y.), Chairman of Fellowship Committee, from
whom all information as to place, subjects, etc., may be
obtained. These fellowships yield $600 each. The
Hoppin Fellowship, open to women only, yields $1000.
Lewis Henry Boutell, of Evanston, Illinois, who died
on the sixteenth of January at the age of seventy-two,
was a soldier and lawyer of much distinction. His death
deprives THE DIAL of a valued contributor, and histor-
ical scholarship of a zealous student whose published
work, although inconsiderable in quantity, exhibited
qualities of a high order. His most important publica-
tion was a “Life of Roger Sherman,” which appeared
about two years ago. This biography was undertaken
at the request of Senator Hoar, who had himself made
preparations to write it, and who transferred the task,
together with the materials collected, to the competent
hands of Mr. Boutell.
In the death of William K. Sullivan, on the seventeenth
of January, Chicago lost one of the best-known and most
highly-esteemed of its public men. THE DIAL records
his death for two reasons: As a member of the Chicago
Board of Education, and for a term of years its Presi-
dent, he always stood for the highest standards and the
most enlightened ideals of public education. As a pro-
fessional newspaper worker for the greater part of his
active life, first with Mr. Dana on the New York “Sun,”
then with Mr. Horace White on the Chicago “Tribune,”
and eventually as editor of the Chicago “Evening Jour-
nal,” his influence was always on the side of those tra-
ditions of dignity and seriousness that are now fast
disappearing from journalism. Born in 1843, in Water-
ford, Ireland, he came to this country in time to serve


1899.] THE
DIAL 91
as a volunteer in the closing period of the Civil War.
He was also a member of the Illinois Legislature, and
a President of the Chicago Press Club. In 1890 he
went to Bermuda as United States consul, remaining a
year in that position. Personally, he was endeared to
all who knew him by his sincerity, his generosity, and
the fine courtesy of his manner. There was nothing
superficial about these qualities; they were rooted in
the depths of his nature.
After experimenting for some months with an Amer-
ican issue of “Literature” which was merely the English
edition imported in sheets and supplied with new covers
and a belated date, the publishers, Messrs. Harper &
Brothers, have at last come to a conclusion which was
inevitable from the start, and have begun the issue of
what is in the genuine sense an American edition of this
periodical. That is, the English matter is used only in
part, and is supplemented by at least an equal amount
of new matter prepared in this country. Some of the
reviews are signed, and others are not. The total matter
included is less than we have had heretofore (especially
in the readable department of “notes”), but it is all
chosen with reference to the interests of American
readers, and consequently far more likely to attract
subscribers. January 10 is the date with which this
“new series” begins.
TOPICS IN LEADING PERIODICALS.
February, 1899.
Anglo-Saxon Affinities. Julian Ralph. Harper.
Aguinaldo, a Character Sketch of. Review of Reviews.
Astronomical Outlook, The. C. A. Young. Harper.
Charity, Subtle Problems of. Jane Addams. Atlantic.
College Property, Taxation of. C. F. Thwing. Educat'l Rev.
Colonial Expansion of U.S. A. Lawrence Lowell. Atlantic.
Colonial Governments, Drift toward. Review of Reviews.
Constructive Workin Common Schools. Educational Review.
Conventions, Four National. George F. Hoar. Scribner.
Cubans, Character of the. Crittenden Marriott. Rev. of Revs.
Cyrano de Bergerac. Lionel Strachey. Lippincott.
Dewey at Manila, With. Joseph L. Stickney. Harper.
Dickens, Suppressed Plates of. G. S. Layard. Pall Mall.
Diplomatic Forecast, A. Austin Bierbower. Lippincott.
Dyaks, Among the. J. T. Wan Gestel. Cosmopolitan.
Forrest, Lieut.-Col., at Ft. Donelson. J. A. Wyeth. Harper.
History, How to Study. Anna B. Thompson. Educ’l Rev.
Indian on the Reservation. G. B. Grinnell. Atlantic.
Interstate Commerce, Federal Taxation of. Rev. of Reviews.
Lincoln, Recollections of. James M. Scovel. Lippincott.
Mathematics, Limitations of. J. H. Gore. Educational Rev.
Military Ballooning, European. Pall Mall.
Newfoundland. Sir Charles Dilke. Pall Mall.
Northwestern State University. W. K. Clement. Educ'l Rev.
Philanthropy, Practical,Training for. P.W.Ayres. Rev. of Revs.
Poetry, Enjoyment of. Samuel M. Crothers. Atlantic.
Poetry: Will it Disappear? H. E. Warner. Lippincott.
Psychology, Practical Aspects of. Jos. Jastrow. Educ'l Rev.
Psychology, Talks to Teachers on. Wm. James. Atlantic.
Riordan's Last Campaign. Anne O'Hagan. Scribner.
Rough Riders, Journey of, to Cuba. Theo. Roosevelt. Scribner.
Signal Corps of the Army in the War. Review of Reviews.
Spanish-American War, The. H. C. Lodge. Harper.
Stevenson's Life in Edinburgh, Told in his Letters. Scribner.
Subways, City. H. F. Bryant. Cosmopolitan.
Thackeray. W. C. Brownell. Scribner.
Tropical Islands, Dutch Management of. Review of Reviews.
United States as a World Power. A. B. Hart. Harper.
War Relief Associations. W. H. Tolman. Rev. of Reviews.
Westminster Abbey, Naval Heroes in. Pall Mall.
William, Emperor, in Holy Land. S. I. Curtiss. Cosmopolitan.
Wilson, James, and his Times. D. O. Kellogg. Lippincott.
IIST OF NEW BOOKS.
[The following list, containing 58 titles, includes books
received by THE DIAL since its last issue.]
BIOGRAPHY AND MEMOIRS.
Memorials, Personal and Political, 1865–1895. By
Roundell Palmer, Earl of Selborne. In 2 vols., with por-
traits, large 8vo, uncut. Macmillan Co. $8. net.
Forty Years a Fur Trader on the Upper Missouri: The
Personal Narrative of Charles Larpenteur, 1833–1872
Edited by Elliott Coues. In 2 vols., illus., large 8vo, un-
3. “American Explorers Series.” Francis P. Harper.
... net.
The Emperor Hadrian: A Picture of the Graeco-Roman
World in his Time. By Ferdinand Gregorovius; trans. by
*; Robinson. Large 8vo, uncut, pp. 415. Macmillan
0. , met.
Zoroaster: The Prophet of Ancient Iran. By A. W. Williams
*::: Large 8vo, gilt top, uncut, pp. 314. Macmillan
- ... net.
The Autobiography of a Veteran, 1807–1893. By General
Count Enrico Della Rocco: trans. from the Italian and
edited by Janet Ross. With portrait, large 8vo, gilt top,
uncut, pp. 299. Macmillan Co. $2.50.
Michael Faraday: His Life and Work. By Silvanus P.
Thompson, D.Sc. With portrait, 12mo, pp. 308. “Century
Science Series.” Macmillan Co. $1.25.
Cavour. By the Countess Evelyn Martinengo Cesaresco.
12mo, pp.222. “Foreign Statesmen.” Macmillan Co. 75c.
James Hunter: An Address. By Joseph M. Morehead.
8vo, pp. 76. Greensboro, N.C.: C. F. Thomas, Paper.
HISTORY.
The Medieval Empire. By Herbert Fisher. In 2 vols.,
large 8vo, uncut. Macmillan Co. $7. net.
The Royal Navy: A History from the Earliest Times to the
Present. By William Laird Clowes. Vol. III., illus. in
hotogravure, etc., 4to, gilt top, uncut, pp. 609. Little,
º: & Co. $6.50 net.
Roman Society in the Last Century of the Western Empire.
By Samuel Dill, M.A. Large 8vo, uncut, pp. 382. ac-
millan Co. $4. net.
The American Revolution. By the Right Hon. Sir George
Otto Trevelyan, Bart. Part H. 1766–1776. 8vo, gilt top,
pp. 434. Longmans, Green, & Co. $3.
A Short History of Switzerland. By Dr. Karl Dändliker;
trans, by E. Salisbury. With maps, large 8vo, uncut,
pp. 322. Macmillan Co. $2.50.
Spain: Its Greatness and Decay (1479–1788). By Martin
A. S. Hume; with Introduction by Edward Armstrong;
12mo, uncut, pp. 460. “Cambridge Historical Series.”
Macmillan Co. $1.50 net.
GENERAL LITERATURE.
Creation Myths of Primitive America in Relation to the
Religious History and Mental Development of Mankind.
# ji. Curtin. With photogravure frontispiece, 8vo,
gilt top, uncut, pp. 532. Little, Brown, & Co. $2.50.
Scottish Vernacular Literature: A Succinct History. By
T. F. Henderson. 12mo, gilt top, uncut, pp. 462. London:
David Nutt.
The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine. Vol. LVI.,
May to October, 1898. Illus., large 8vo, gilt top, pp. 960.
Century Co. $3.
The Rogue's Comedy: A Play in Three Acts. By Henry
Arthur Jones. 16mo, gilt top, pp. 131. Macmillan Co. 75c.
Sursum Corda: A Defence of Idealism. 16mo, uncut, pp. 212.
Macmillan Co. $1.
Extemporaneous Oratory for Professional and Amateur
Speakers. By James M. Buckley, LL.D. 12mo, pp. 480.
aton & Mains. $1.50.
Sermons from Shakespeare. By William Day Simonds.
12mo, pp. 110. Chicago: Alfred C. Clark & Co.
Why, When, How, and What We Ought to Read. By
Rev. J. L. O'Neil, O.P. Third edition; 12mo, pp. 135.
Marlier, Callanan & Co. 50 cts.
NEW EDITIONS OF STANDARD LITERATURE.
Sartor Resartus. By Thomas Carlyle; illus. by Edmund J.
Sullivan. 12mo, gilt edges, pp. 352. Macmillan Co. $2.
The Uncommercial Traveller. By Charles Dickens.
“Gadshill” edition; with Introduction by Andrew Lang.
8vo, gilt top, uncut, pp. 425. Charles Scribner's Sons. $1.50.


92 THE DIAL
[Feb. 1,
BOOKS OF VERSE.
Songs and Meditations. By Maurice Hewlett. 12mo,
uncut, pp. 136. Macmillan 8. $1.25.
Beneath Blue Skies and Gray. By Ingram Crockett.
12mo, uncut, pp. 108. R. H. Russell. $1.
"76 Lyrics of the Revolution. By Rev. Edward C. Jones,
A.M. With portrait, 16mo, pp. 134. H. T. Coates & Co.
75 cts.
Yale Verse. Compiled by Charles Edmund Merrill, Jr.
12mo, gilt top, uncut, pp. 160. Maynard, Merrill & Co. $1.25.
Tales Told in a Country Store. By Rev. Alvin Lincoln
Snow. Illus., 8vo, pp. 311. Creston, Iowa: Snow Pub'g
Firm. $1.40.
Rural Rhymes. By Hon. S. B. McManus. Illus., 12mo,
pp. 157. Curts & Jennings. $1.
Verses. By J. C. L. Clark. 18mo, pp. 24. Lancaster, Mass.:
Published by the author. Paper.
FICTION.
The Key of the Holy House: A Romance of Old Antwerp.
By Albert Lee. 12mo, pp. 315. D. Appleton & Co. $1.;
paper, 50cts.
Some Marked Passages, and Other Stories. By Jeanne G.
Pennington. 16mo, gilt top, pp. 219. Fords, Howard &
Hulbert. $1.
TRAVEL AND DESCRIPTION.
Rock Villages of the Riviera. By William Scott, Illus.,
12mo, gilt top, uncut, pp. 218. acmillan Co. $2.50.
Puerto Rico and its Resources. . By Frederick A. Ober.
Illus., 12mo, pp. 282. D. Appleton & Co. $1.50.
Observations of a Ranchwoman in New Mexico. By
Edith M. Nicholl. Illus., 12mo, uncut, pp.271. Macmillan
Co. $1.75
NATURE.
The Wild Fowl of North America. By Daniel Giraud
Elliot, F.R.S.E. Illus., 12mo, pp. 316. Francis P. Harper.
º 0. -
-- ART.
Angels' Wings: A Series of Essays on Art and its Relation
to Life. By Edward Carpenter. Illus., 12mo, uncut,
pp. 248. Macmillan Co. $2.
SPORT.
The Encyclopaedia of Sport. Edited by the Earl of Suf-
folk and Berkshire, Hedley Peek, and F. G. Aflalo. Parts
XIX. and XX., completing the work. Each illus, in pho-
togravure, etc., large 8vo, uncut. G. P. Putnam's Sons.
Per part, $1.
EDUCATION.—BOOKS FOR SCHOOL AND
COLLEGE.
Journal of Proceedings and Addresses of the Thirty-
seventh Annual Meeting of the National Educational As-
sociation, Held at Washington, D.C., July, 1898. Large
8vo, pp. 1139. Published by the Association.
Report of the Commissioner of Education for the Year
1896–97. Wol. II., large 8vo, pp. 1200. Washington:
Government Printing Office.
A Complete Latin Grammar. By Albert Harkness, Ph.D.
12mo, pp. 448. American Book Co. $1.25.
Plane and Solid Geometry. By James Howard Gore,
Ph.D. 12mo, pp. 210. Longmans, Green, & Co. $1.
Our Country's Flag, and the Fl of Foreign Countries.
By Edward S. Holden, LL.D. Illus, in colors, etc., 12mo,
p. 165. “Home Reading Books.” D. Appleton & Co.
1. net.
Rights and Duties of American Citizenship. By Westel
Woodbury Willoughby, Ph.D. 12mo, pp. 336. American
Book Co.
Text-Book of Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene. By
E. Franklin Smith, M.D. Illus., 12mo, pp. 198, Wm. R.
Jenkins.
Critique of Some Recent Subjunctive. Theories. By
Charles Edwin Bennett. 8vo, pp. 76. “Cornell Studies
in Classical Philology.” Macmillan Co. 50 cts.
Altes und Neues: A German Reader for Young Beginners.
By Karl Seeligmann. 12mo, pp. 125. Ginn & Co. 45 cts.
Seed Dispersal. By W. J. Beal, M.S. Illus., 12mo, pp. 89.
Ginn & Co. 40 cts.
Playtime and Seedtime. By Francis W. Parker and Nellie
Lathrop Helm. Illus, in colors, etc., 12mo, pp. 158.
“Home Reading Books.” D. Appleton & Co. 32 cts.
United States History in Elementary Schools. By L. L.W.
Wilson, Ph.D. Teacher's Manual; 12mo, pp. 53. Mac-
millan Co. ots.
Three Narrative Poems. Edited by George A. Watrous,
A.M. 12mo, pp. 107. Allyn & Bacon. 30 cts.
Select Essays and Poems of Emerson. Edited by Eva
March Tappan, Ph.D. 12mo, pp. 120. Allyn & Bacon. 30c.
Spyri's Rosenresli. Edited by Helene H. Boll. 12mo,
pp. 62. D. C. Heath & Co. 25 cts.
La Main Malheureuse. Edited by H. A. Guerber. 12mo,
pp. 106. D. C. Heath & Co. 25 cts.
MISCELLANEOUS.
St. Nicholas. Conducted by Mary Mapes Dodge. Wol. XXV.,
November, 1897, to October, 1898. In 2 parts, illus., large
8vo. Century Co. $4.
The World's Exchanges in 1898. By John Henry Norman.
8vo, pp. 54. G. P. Putnam's Sons. Paper.
The Methodist Year Book for 1899. Edited by A. B.
Sanford, D.D. Illus., 12mo, pp. 140. Eaton & Mains.
Paper, 10 cts. net.
4. ZENI, 72 The Aztec Legend, by LeRoy Leach. Second
ORIZEL’’ º Gold title. Imitation
leather. Price, 15 cents. THE ORACLE CO., Wood Lake, Neb.
AMERICAN SHAKESPEAREAN MAGAZINE. –$1.50 per Year;
single numbers, 15 cts. ANNA RANDALL-DIEHL, Editor,
251 Fifth Avenue, New York City.
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Masterpieces of Ancient Art.
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Sººpy AND PRACTICE OF FRENCH IN SCHOOL. In three
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fully graded course, meeting requirements for entrance examination at
college. Practice in conversation and thorough drill in Pronunciation
and Grammar.—From Education (Boston): “A well made series.”
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Readers of French desiring good literature will take pleas-
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... WILLIAM R. JENKINS,
Nos. 851 and 853 Sixth Ave. (cor, 48th St.), NEw York.


THE
DIAL
% $tmi-ſtlanthlg 3ournal of 3Literarg Criticism, HBigtuggion, amb Information.
THE DIAL (founded in 1880) is published on the 1st and 16th of
each month. TERMs or SUBscRIPTIox, 82.00 a year in advance, postage
prepaid in the United States, Canada, and Mexico; in other countries
comprised in the Postal Union, 50 cents a year for extra postage must
be added. Unless otherwise ordered, subscriptions will begin with the
current number. REMITTANCEs should be by draft, or by express or
postal order, payable to THE DIAL. SPECIAL RATEs to CLUBs and
for subscriptions with other publications will be sent on application;
and SAMPLE Copy on receipt of 10 cents. Advertising RATEs furnished
on application. All communications should be addressed to
THE DIAL, 315 Wabash Ave., Chicago.
No. 304. FEBRUARY 16, 1899. Vol. XXVI.
CONTENTS.
CONCERNING DEGREES . . . ... 105
RECENT SCHOOL LEGISLATION FOR CITIES.
B. A. Hinsdale . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
COMMUNICATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
Why is Poe "Rejected” in America? A. C. Barrows.
Some Causes of “The American Rejection of Poe.”
Caroline Sheldon.
What are Critics for? E. E. Slosson.
THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD. Samuel Willard 112
SOME RECENT BOOKS ON EDUCATION. B. A.
Hinsdale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
Walker's Discussions in Education.—Gilman's Uni-
versity Problems in the United States.— Russell’s
German Higher Schools.-Rouse's History of Rugby
School. — Balfour's Educational Systems of Great
Britain and Ireland. – Work and Play in Girls'
Schools.-Introduction to the Study of History.
CURRENT THEATRICAL CRITICISM. Edward
E. Hale, Jr. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
AN IDEALIST'S IDEAS OF EVIL. Caroline K.
Sherman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
RECENT FICTION. William Morton Payne . . . 123
Chambers's Ashes of Empire.—Stephens's The Road
to Paris. – Rivers's The Count's Snuff-Box. — Alt-
sheler's A Herald of the West.—Barron's Manders.-
Stockton's The Associate Hermits. – Whittaker's
Exiled for Lèse Majesté. — Fowler's With Bought
Swords. – Parker's The Battle of the Strong. —
Maarten Maartens's Her Memory. — Besant's The
Changeling.— Marriott-Watson's The Adventurers.
– Crockett's The Red Axe. — Machray's Grace
O'Malley.—Capes's Adventures of the Comte de la
Muette. —Bloundelle-Burton's The Scourge of God.
BRIEFS ON NEW BOOKS . . . . . . . . . . 127
New England letters and New England life.—France
as elucidated by the Dreyfus case. — University ad-
dresses by Principal Caird.—The recent bloody busi-
ness in the Sudan.-Parochial history extraordinary.
-Two recent books on Physiography. — Scrap-book
of the French Revolution.—“The New Rhetoric.”—
A new one-volume Bible Dictionary. — A review of
the century.—Ferdinand Brunetière in English.- A
minor biography of Gladstone. — Biography of a
famous Scot.—Court of the Second Empire.
BRIEFER MENTION . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
LITERARY NOTES . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
LIST OF NEW BOOKS . . . . . . . . . . . 133
CONCERNING DEGREES.
The measure providing for a regulation of
academic degrees in the State of Illinois, pre-
pared by President Henry Wade Rogers of
Evanston, and recently introduced into the
Legislature through his initiative, marks the
first serious attempt to do away with what has
long been a great evil and a scandal to the good
name of the State. For several years past,
Chicago has harbored certain institutions, ex-
isting chiefly on paper, incorporated under the
lax educational statutes of the commonwealth,
and engaged in the nefarious business of fur-
nishing academic or professional degrees to all
applicants offering the stipulated consideration
in cold cash. These rascally traffickers in titles
to distinction have published their alluring
offers far and wide, and have found gullible
victims in considerable numbers, mostly in
other States and other lands. A number of
Englishmen, for example, have become bache-
lors or doctors of these bogus institutions, and
the swindle has attracted enough attention to
be made a subject of inquiry in the English
Parliament. It is certainly time that the abuse
should be ended, and the measure to which we
have referred is designed to accomplish that
desirable purpose.
In general terms, it is proposed that the
granting of degrees in Illinois be restricted to
institutions of approved educational standing,
and to this end a State Commission is to be
established, with power to pass upon the claims
and pretensions of institutions that wish to
bestow degrees upon their students. So far,
the proposed measure corresponds to the sort of
regulation that already obtains in other States,
and that has been enforced with such conspic-
uous success in the State of New York. Fur-
ther, it is proposed that, in the case of colleges
to be incorporated in the future, a minimum
endowment of one hundred thousand dollars
shall be an imperative condition of the degree-
conferring power. There is also the wise pro-
viso that degrees may not be granted by any
institutions carried on for private gain. It is
extremely desirable that the measure which
embodies these salutary provisions should be
given statutory force by the present Legisla-
ture; and we urge upon everyone interested


106
[Feb. 16,
THE DIAL
in the cause of serious education, as distin-
guished from sham education, to lend his influ-
ence to the enactment of the proposed law. A
great many narrow and selfish interests—to
say nothing of dishonest interests — will be
arrayed against it, and the work of distortion
and misrepresentation, which began as soon as
the measure was made public, will create an
opposition not easily to be overcome. Yet the
good name and the dignity of the State demand
that the title-factories should be suppressed,
demand that every degree henceforth granted
under the authority of Illinois should stand
for good work done, or, in the case of the
honorary degree, for an achievement judged
to be worthy by some reputable institution of
learning.
For the weak-minded persons who are willing
to purchase the fraudulent degrees so obligingly
offered we must confess that we have little
sympathy. It is a pitiful form of vanity to
which the allurements of the diploma-shops
appeal, and we are not particularly concerned
to protect that sort of ambition from the conse-
quences of its own foolishness. But the public
has a right to be protected from charlatans of
all descriptions, and the granting of a degree
is an act that touches public interests so nearly
that the process should be hedged about with
all reasonable restrictions. Indeed, the pro-
visions of the proposed legislation seem to us
to err, if anything, upon the side of leniency,
and we view with no little suspicion the stipu-
lation of one hundred thousand dollars as the
minimum endowment of degree-conferring
institutions hereafter to be incorporated. The
New York requirement of five times this en-
dowment seems to be the wiser provision of
the two, for surely the latter sum is none too
large for the needs of any new college that
would be a desirable addition to those we
already have in this State. It is to be noted
that the bill is not made retroactive in this
matter of endowment, so that no injustice to
existing institutions would result from its en-
actment.
The desire to parade a degree of some kind
is, no doubt, one more illustration of the instinct
that has created orders of nobility in the older
civilizations, that has given Frenchmen the
mania for decorations, and made Germans
such sticklers for the use of whatever official
titles they may bear. The American character
is popularly supposed to have risen above these
vanities, but this is only a superstition. The
desire of the individual to be in some way dis-
tinguished from his fellows is so inherent in
the human nature which all peoples have in
common, that, if denied vent in one direction,
it will find it in another—that, if not allowed
the gewgaws of knighthood and rank, it will
find a substitute in the mock distinctions that
come from membership in societies which shall
here be nameless, but of which no reader will
have to look far for as many examples as he
needs. Of course, the ambition to possess an
academic degree is a shade worthier than the
ambition to be a Grand Commander of some-
thing or other, or to sport the proud badge of
the Scions of Colonial Tax-Gatherers. The
former ambition betrays, at least, some trace of
the feeling that intellectual distinctions have
more intrinsic worth than any others; yet even
in this case how often is it true that the exter-
nal mark of the distinction is the thing sought
after, rather than the powers for which it
should rightfully stand.
The full force of this observation requires
for its realization that we take into account not
only the poor souls who stand ready to pur-
chase degrees outright at the current market
rates, but also those who bid for them indi-
rectly, who make gifts to colleges, for example,
anticipating in return the honorary doctorate.
We look with righteous scorn upon the English
ministry that is willing to traffic in titles of
nobility — making peers out of brewers and
stockbrokers whose political contributions have
been sufficiently liberal—and how much more
contemptible is the action of the American col-
lege that is willing to degrade in similar fashion
the titles of intellectual aristocracy which it
ought to guard as a sacred trust. There is a
good deal that might be said also about the
motives of those who earn their degrees in legit-
imate ways. Many students seem to think that
getting a degree is the be-all and the end-all of
college life. “Will it count for a degree?” is
the question they ask when some new kind of
work is recommended to them. Every teacher
knows this spirit, and knows how deadly an
enemy it is of all culture for the sake of cul-
ture. If the spectacle of young men and young
women actuated mainly by this motive is a dis-
heartening one, a spectacle even more disheart-
ening is offered by those students of advanced
age who so often are found in the classes of
our larger universities, and who are so obviously
out of place there. We make no reference to
men and women seeking to round out, in later
life, the defective education of their youth.
Their pathetic case calls for nothing but sym-


1899.] THE
DIAL 107
pathy and respect. We do, however, refer to
those who, having got far beyond the period of
their lives when training of the university type
was what they most needed, submit themselves
to that training for the sake of its prizes. It
is not the best sort of discipline for them; it is
intellectually wasteful rather than economical;
nothing but the incentive of the doctorate im-
pels them to undergo it; the act is, in short,
an unworthy concession to an artificial standard
of culture.
It is this tendency to make a fetich of the de-
gree—as if there were no other possible criterion
of a man's attainments—that is responsible,
on the one hand, for the disreputable business
of diploma-selling, and, on the other, for the
spectacle of graybeards engaged in the perform-
ance of tasks fitted only for youth. If a ficti-
tious value were not attached to degrees in the
pedagogical estimation, we should have neither
the one nor the other of these evils to deplore.
The common university attitude toward degrees
is not unsuggestive of the attitude of the
church toward the consecration of priests: it is
tacitly assumed that the scholarship has no
validity which is not thus certified at the hands
of men who have themselves gone through the
academic routine and received the consecrating
cowl. Yet the cowl no more makes the scholar
than it does the monk. Again, those who are
banded together by the common possession of
degrees, especially if they are engaged in the
professional work of education, are too apt to
assume an attitude similar to that assumed by
trade unions toward the outsider. They seem
to say that, whatever distinction a man may
have achieved in irregular and unorthodoxways,
he cannot really be a superior person, because
he has dared to court fame while forsaking
the beaten path. The tendencies which we
have thus noted do not often go to the extremes
of arrogance or fatuousness, but they go farther
than they should be allowed to, and they some-
times work grave injustice. The president of
one of our leading universities spoke, a few
years ago, of the Roman emperor who wished
that all his enemies had a single neck that
he might cut it off at one stroke, and then
said that, for his part, he wished that all de-
grees had a single neck that a single blow
might put an end to them. While we should
hardly express our own opinion in so hot a
fashion as this, we can neither help feeling a
certain sympathy with the utterance, nor help
sharing in the indignation by which it was
inspired.
| urgent.
RECENT SCHOOL LEGISLATION
FOR CITIES.
When the article entitled “City School Systems”
appeared in THE DIAL (Oct. 16, 1898), I hoped
at no distant day to return to the subject, going
more into detail, but dealing with it in a less critical
and in a more constructive way. Such an article I
thought might, at the present stage of discussion,
prove helpful to some readers; but now that the
time to carry out this plan has come, I am per-
suaded that a still better one will be to review, in
a general way, some recent school legislation that
illustrates the later movements of public thought.
The first act of legislation to be noticed related
to the city of Cincinnati, where, as was widely be-
lieved at the time, the evils of the old system had
become intolerable and the need of reform very
In 1887 the General Assembly of Ohio
enacted that henceforth the superintendent of the
public schools of Cincinnati should appoint all the
teachers of said schools, by and with the advice
and consent of the board of education, and that the
board or superintendent might remove teachers for
cause. It will be seen that this is putting the super-
intendent and the board in the same relation to
appointments that the President and Senate of the
United States occupy, as prescribed by the Consti-
tution, in relation to appointments in the National
service. The superintendent nominates teachers to
the board, which confirms or rejects the person or per-
sons nominated; but if the board rejects one of the
superintendent's nominees, it can do nothing toward
filling the place until the superintendent sends in a
second nomination. As we shall see, this method
of appointing teachers has since been adopted in
other cities. This law made no other change in the
administration of the Cincinnati schools.
The Reorganization Act for the Board of Edu-
cation of Cleveland, passed in 1892, was a far more
radical piece of legislation than the one just con-
sidered. It is, indeed, the most radical act of the
kind that has been passed for any city up to date, and
deserves the careful study of all men who are inter-
ested in the reform of city school administration.
As amended, this act offers to our consideration the
following principal features:
1. The board of education consists of a school
council and a school director.
2. The legislative power and authority of the
city school district is vested in a school council of
seven members, elected biennially for the city at
large in two groups consisting of three and four mem-
bers each, who receive each a compensation of $240
annually. They are chosen by the legally qualified
electors for school purposes. All legislation enacted
by this council is by resolution; and every resolu-
tion involving expenditure of money or the approval
of a contract for the payment of money, or for the
purchase, sale, lease, or transfer of property or levy-
ing any tax, or for the change or adoption of any


108 THE DIAL
[Feb. 16,
text-book, must, before it takes effect, be presented
certified to the school director for his approval. If
the director approves of the resolution, he shall sign
it, and it becomes law; but if he does not approve
it, and refuses to sign it, he shall return it with his
objections to the council, and it can then become
law only when it receives the votes of two-thirds of
all the members. The council has power to provide
for the appointment of all necessary teachers and
employees, and prescribes their duties and fixes
their compensation.
3. The executive power is vested in a school
director, who, like the members of the council, is
elected on a city ticket by the qualified voters of
the city, and, like them, holds his office for the term
of two years. He is required to devote his entire
time to the duties of his office, and he receives a
salary, fixed by law, of $5000 a year. The duties
of the director in regard to purchasing property,
entering into contracts, building buildings, making
repairs, providing supplies, etc., are important, but
do not come within the range of this article. It
will be seen that the director is wholly independent
of the council, standing to the people of the city in
precisely the same relation as the members of the
council themselves.
4. The provisions of the law relative to the ap-
pointment and duties of the superintendent of
instruction are so important that I shall quote the
entire section that contains them.
“Sec. 10. The school director shall, subject to the approval
of and confirmation by the council, appoint a superintendent
of instruction, who shall remain in office during good behavior,
and the school director may at any time, for sufficient cause,
remove him; but the order for such removal shall beinwriting,
specifying the cause therefor, and shall be entered upon the rec-
ords of his office; and he shall forthwith report the same to the
council, together with the reasons therefore. The superintend-
dent of instruction shall have the sole power to appoint and dis-
charge all assistants and teachers authorized by the council to
be employed, and shall report to the school director in writing
annually, and oftener if required, as to all matters under his
supervision, and may be required by the council to attend any
or all of its meetings, and, except as otherwise provided in
this act, all employees of the board of education shall be ap-
pointed or employed by the school director. He shall report
to the council annually, or oftener if required, as to all mat-
ters under his supervision. He shall attend all meetings of
the council and may take part in its deliberations, subject to
its rules, but shall not have the right to vote.”
5. The auditor of the city is the auditor of the
board of education. -
This important enactment has exerted a consider-
able influence upon subsequent legislation, although
it has not been copied in its most radical features.
A law to reorganize the school system of the city
of St. Louis passed the State legislature in 1897.
According to this law the superintendent of instruc-
tion is appointed by the board of education, which
consists of twelve members, for a term of four years,
during which term his compensation cannot be re-
duced. On his nomination, the board appoints as
many assistant superintendents as it deems neces-
sary, and they may be removed by him with the
board's approval. The superintendent has general
supervision, subject to the control of the board, of
the course of instruction, discipline, and conduct of
the schools, of text-books and studies; and all ap-
pointments, promotions, and transfers of teachers,
and introduction and changes of text-books and
apparatus, are made only upon his recommendation.
One more act may be mentioned, that for Toledo,
passed in 1898. The city board of education con-
sists of five members, elected for the city at large
by the electors who are qualified to vote at school
elections, to serve for the term of five years. Only
such persons can have their names put on the offi-
cial ballot, and receive votes, as are endorsed in
writing for members of the board to the city board
of elections by two hundred of the legal voters of
the city (as above), of either sex, not less than ten
days previous to the election. The names of all
persons who are thus certified, the board of elec-
tions must publish in the daily papers, and prepare
ballots containing them, which ballots must be voted
at the annual municipal election and be deposited
in a separate ballot-box provided for this purpose.
Every elector may vote for as many of the candi-
dates on the ballot as there are members to be
elected. This provision in regard to making up the
official ballot is believed to be a novel feature. The
superintendent of instruction has the power to ap-
point, subject to the approval and confirmation of
the board, all teachers authorized to be employed.
The tendencies of recent school legislation makes
some things very clear, the more important of which
may well be set down in numbered order.
1. There is a strong and a growing conviction
in the minds of the people most interested, that the
old-fashioned system of school provision, mainten-
ance, and administration is not now adapted to ex-
isting conditions, and must be thrown aside as
obsolete. At least, it is very clear that such is the
case in the cities that have been passed in review,
for the thing has already been done.
2. While the new laws show considerable differ-
ences in details, there is nevertheless a substantial
agreement upon the main points. One of these
points is that the old board of education was too
large, was too carelessly selected, and exercised
powers that were both too many and too much
diversified. A second point is that the board should
be practically kept within legislative limits, and not
be allowed to roam at will, directly or indirectly,
over the whole field of administration. The third
point, and perhaps the most important of all, is that
executive powers and duties should be entrusted to
properly qualified executive departments or officers,
that should have a status clearly recognized by law,
and so be independent, to a greater or less extent,
of the action of the board. Every one of these
new laws recognizes two such departments, and the
Cleveland law recognizes three. The latter would
seem to be the proper number. In a report sub-
mitted to the National Council of Education in 1888,
I contended that there should be three executive
departments: the Department of Finance, Ac-


1899.] THE
DIAL 109
counts, and Records; the Department of Construc-
tion, Repairs, and Supplies; the Department of
Instruction and Discipline. I contended, further,
that the heads of these departments might be called
the auditor, the superintendent of construction,
and the superintendent of schools; and that they
should be men of decided ability and character,
having each an expert knowledge of the important
duties committed to their charge. Such modifica-
tion of this recommendation as is suggested by the
school director of Cleveland and the business man-
ager of some of the other cities is perhaps a desir-
able modification of my former plan.
On one point the testimony, so far as it goes, is
quite conclusive; namely, the great evils that have
affected the public schools, so far as they originated
on the business side of the city system, are mainly
due to the composition, character, and methods of
school boards. Of course, conditions existing in the
cities must be taken into the account; for the prob-
lem of city school reform is most distinctly a part
of the great American problem of the reform of
municipal government.
The argument could be strengthened by taking
account of reform movements that have not yet
crystalized into legislation. Mention may be made
of Boston, where the subject of reorganization on
new lines has attracted sufficient attention to bring
it before the State legislature. The Report of the
Chicago School Commission has already been made
the subject of an elaborate editorial article in this
journal. The two largest cities of Michigan, De-
troit and Grand Rapids, are now moving to bring
the reorganization of their school systems before
the legislature at the present session. No doubt
there are other movements that have escaped my
notice. The general subject is sure to attract the
increasing attention of the public mind for some
time to come. What the final type of school organ-
ization for an American city will be, I do not un-
dertake to say; indeed, there is no reason to think
that there will be, in a close sense of the term, a
single type of system; but there is little room to
doubt that the recent legislation which has been re-
viewed has been on lines that the future will approve.
B. A. HINsdale.
COMMUNICATIONS.
WHY IS POE “REJECTED’’ IN AMERICA2
(To the Editor of THE DIAL.)
A writer who is a “ logic machine,” who is marked
by “lack of humor” and “deficient knowledge of human
nature,” is hardly fitted to secure lodgment in the Amer-
ican heart, though he be “the greatest intellect America
has produced — assuredly the best artist.” The writer
on Poe, in your issue of Jan. 16, should hardly wonder
at the rejection of such a writer, however he may regret
it. But, as he seems to remain puzzled by the fact, it
may be worth while to point out two peculiarities of the
writings of Poe, pervading them all, though more notice-
able in his prose tales than in his poems, – peculiarities
which, as I happen to know, have prevented some read-
ers who fully appreciate his marvellous mastery of lit-
erary form from taking much delight in him.
He is astonishingly unrealistic: it is utterly impossible
to persuade oneself to care much for the outcome of his
fictions, because we cannot bring ourselves to that degree
of faith in them which is necessary for sympathy. A
rapid review of a few typical tales will make this plain;
and it will be most satisfactory to select for that purpose
the seven tales lately edited by Professor Perry—for
Poe is entitled to be judged by his best.
No house ever fell after the manner of the “Fall of
the House of Usher”; the assertion is true of the story
as a whole, and of the details generally, from the queer
observations made by the narrator as he approached the
house to its final sinking. The weakness of “Ligeia”
lies not in its being a study of an impossible problem —
the return to life, in another person's body, of a woman
long dead, - but in the unreality of the scenery amid
which, following his usual taste, the struggle is located.
The process by which the victim in “The Cask of
Amontillado” is lured to his doom is certainly thought
out by a “logic machine,” but the only motive for the
horrible crime is the difference between being injured
and insulted,—disposed of in one sentence of twenty-
one words. To secure for the story that moderate
amount of credence which is required for fiction, the
author should have enlarged upon the insult enough to
make it seem possible that such revenge could be taken
by a human being. Shakespeare did not lead up to the
murder of Desdemona by saying in one short sentence
that Othello suspected Cassio. A similar absence of
reported motive makes it impossible to sympathize with
the couple who made an “Assignation” to meet in sui-
cide. We could care for them by first getting to have
faith in them; we might actually wish that their pro-
posed elopement from life might not be thwarted, if we
knew enough about their past lives and relationships to
feel that they had indeed become inseparable. The
“Manuscript found in a Bottle” reports dream-storms
and dream-waves. The particular “Black Cat” of the
tale has a way of coming to life after being killed that
reminds us of the other cat which, the day after being
beheaded, appeared at the door carrying its head in its
mouth. The investigations of the hero of “The Gold
Bug,” though certainly told by a perfect “logic ma-
chine,” carry not the slightest conviction, as is discovered
by the reader who notices that he remains perfectly
passive; he does not share the excitement of the digger
for the hid treasure, — does not care whether the spade
turns up gold or sand. And as to the cryptogram, we
all feel from the very start that it is a “put-up job.”
This strange lack of realism, or naturalness, in all Poe's
writings—for it characterizes his poetry also – doubt-
less results from his “deficient knowledge of human
nature.” And “this effect defective comes by cause.”
It is originally due to a deficient interest in morals. It
is a sort and a degree of deficiency that becomes a de-
fect in art; for it is severe criticism on a man's artistic
quality to assert that his work is not so grounded on
the passions of mankind as to carry the reader through
to the end with a vitalizing interest in the outcome.
This assertion of the artistic importance of morals is
frequently misunderstood: it has become almost a fash-
ion to misinterpret it. It is supposed to imply only a
desire for didactic morality; but it is simply a demand
for moral motive as the impelling power of human ac-


110 THE DIAL
[Feb. 16,
tion. We do not demand of Poe, or of any other liter-
ary man, that he write goody-goody tales, that he aim
to show “young persons” how to live, or mistake Sunday-
school books for a high type of literature. We only
rememember that men are supremely interested in the
moral aspects of life, so that the way to interest one's
fellows is to appeal to moral motives. It is a maxim of
art, which should be familiar to every artistin whatsoever
medium he works, that the moral creates enthusiasm
and so secures belief. In point of fact, literary illusion
is obtained by moral warmth rather than by clear-cut
logical consistency.
The absence of the moral element from Poe's writings
will appear the moment one attempts to state the sub-
jects of his tales in moral terms. Shakespeare's “Mac-
beth’’ is a study of the effect upon a man under tempta-
tion of the assurance that he can succeed by crime —
the co-working of fatalism and ill-desire. Hawthorne's
“The Birthmark” works out the results of impatience
with a slight blemish in what is otherwise perfect. The
“Fall of the House of Usher ” might have shown how
gloomy anticipations tend to fulfil themselves, if the
author had not involved stone and mortar in the ruin.
The problem of “Ligeia" – the victory of will over
death, – can be stated, and there would have been a
satisfactory basis for the action, if Poe could have kept
to the subject—if he had not, as is his wont, over-
emphasized the eyes, the squirming draperies, and other
such details, and if he had not confused all moral sense
by the notion that there was something criminal in taking
a bride into such an apartment. If the murder included
in “The Black Cat” is not utterly motiveless, it is at
least to be hoped that a long time must pass before men
take to wife-murder with no more rational promptings
thereto. Comparison of “The Gold Bug” with Stev-
enson’s “Treasure Island” reveals at once the defect in
Poe: Stevenson leads his reader gradually up to interest
in the success of the quest, and arouses a distinctly
moral prejudice, to which much of our interest is due;
we take sides against the party among whom are to be
found some of the most cruel of the pirates who had
by murder and pillage gathered the treasure.
I do not care to weigh against each other Poe's won-
derful linguistic perfection and his weakness in that part
of art which has to do with the gathering and marshall-
ing of fact and motives. I only wish to remind those
who are charmed by his mastery of the resources of
speech that it is vain to expect our people, for the pres-
ent at least, to everlook the absence of moral motive
and of consequent realism. For the present: if the
time ever comes when the creations of the opium-eater's
imagination are actually born into the world and live
out their careers, they will be apt to take him “home
to their business and bosoms,” — at least they will ad-
mire the prophetic genius which enabled him to write
their biographies beforehand. A. C. BARRows.
Columbus, Ohio, Feb. 7, 1899.
SOME CAUSES OF “THE AMERICAN REJECTION
OF POE.”
(To the Editor of THE DIAL.)
Is it altogether a matter of unfairness and prejudice
that American readers as a rule make little of Poe 2
Surely Griswold's misrepresentations have been so often
and so convincingly answered by Poe's friends and ac-
quaintances that no serious student of American letters
is influenced by their manifest injustice. Does not the
real reason lie deeper – in the nature of the poet him-
self, and in that of the nation which, as a rule, does not
read him?
In fact, your contributor who deplores Poe's non-
appreciation by the mass of his countrymen has himself
supplied several good reasons for it. One is his fatal
lack of humor. Let us take as an example the opening
lines “To Helen”:
“I saw thee once- once only-years ago;
I must not say how many – but not many,”–
where the attempt at playfulness, taken in connection
with the rest of the poem, produces an effect that is
neither more nor less than ludicrous. No man with the
faintest sense of humor could have been guilty of a
blunder like that. Now, humor is a warm-hearted,
kindly quality, which endears a man to his fellows. He
who does not in some degree possess it must makeshift
as best he can to dwell in a world apart from human-
kind; and however this world may be lighted by poetic
fancy and adorned by imagination, it will after all be
only a cold moonlit region whose beauty will never com-
pensate for its loneliness. George Eliot has told us that
“there is no strain on friendship like a difference of
taste in jokes,” and this is one explanation of the dis-
tance between Poe and the public whom he failed to
reach: they had no common ground whereon to stand
long enough to become acquainted with each other.
Poe had in him, it is true, “something exotic which
hinted of another clime and age.” Had he lived in
Persia one or two thousand years ago, some enter-
prising Orientalist might have discovered him, and
translated his writings for the benefit of a small but
enthusiastic circle of readers, and publishers might have
brought out his works in beautifully bound and illus-
trated 6ditions de luze. There is scarcely another nine-
teenth century author whose works afford scope for
greater originality in illustration.
Poe has certain qualities that the most unkindly critics
cannot deny him: weird and powerful imagination, con-
structive ability, and exquisite melody of expression in
both prose and verse. His perception and handling of
tone-color are unsurpassed by even the greatest of lit-
erary artists. There are certain lines of his that linger
in the memory because of their perfect beauty of sound,
while others come back frequently because of the pic-
tures they suggest. But to many readers, the realiza-
tion of Poe's artistic genius is only another source of
vexation. Great poetry must have great subjects. Per-
fection of form is not enough, –although, in spite of
Whitman and his followers, some readers will continue
to think beauty of form one of the essentials of genuine
poetry. The great poet, however, the poet who lives in
the hearts of his own countrymen and wins for himself
a lasting place in the affections of mankind, must voice
in some effective manner the feelings and thoughts
common to humanity. This Poe does not do. As he
does not laugh with those that laugh, neither does he
weep with those that weep. His weeping he does all
by himself. In fact, his most musical dirges, with their
refrains of “the lost Lenore,” “beautiful Annabel Lee,”
and “Ulalume,” seem less like the expression of real
sorrow than complex and finished studies in minor
chords. One's heart is not touched by them as by such
simple lines as those in “After the Burial”:
“There's a little ridge in the churchyard
Would scarce stay a child in its race, *
But to me and my thought it is wider
Than the star-sown vague of space.”
This quatrain is a sincere and beautiful expression of


1899.]
THE TOIAL 111
human experience. No heart that has shrunk before the
mystery of death can fail to vibrate in response to it.
Even pagan Horace appeals to us more than Poe, when
he says, with sturdy manliness:
“The sorrow that we cannot cure may yet
Be lessened by that strength of heart
That in all trials of our life endures.”
We are a strenuous race, we Anglo-Normans, and this
girding-up of the loins of the soul in the face of bereave-
ment has for us far more of pathos than the most mu-
sical outpourings of self-pity. Herein is Poe's vital
defect: he indulges too much in self-pity, and is too
little moved by the sorrows and burdens of the world.
Poe himself says that “a poem deserves its title only
inasmuch as it excites by elevating the mind.” Whether
or not it be a defect in our make-up, it must be acknowl-
edged that for the most part Americans, while we may
be refreshed and soothed by poems which give us “pure
beauty” and nothing else, are elevated only by those
which voice the experiences of our common humanity,
or call us to high endeavor. And is not one or the other
or both of these elements to be found in all poems which
have outlasted the century wherein they were produced ?
Victor Hugo has told us that “while the poet needs
wings, he must also have feet”; he must touch the earth
occasionally, must come near to us, if he would persuade
us to follow him into the blue ether. So, notwithstand-
ing Poe's many and varied gifts of the intellect, the poet
of our hearts will for a long time continue to be some
other than the poet of “Lenore.”
CAROLINE SHELDoN.
Des Moines, Iowa, Feb. 5, 1899.
WHAT ARE CRITICS FOR 2
(To the Editor of THE DIAL.)
A short time ago it fell to the lot of the literary
editor of one of Chicago's most popular dailies to re-
view “Aylwin.” He had evidently not been informed
as to the aristocratic parentage of the book, for he
seized upon it as the work of a green and friendless
writer, only fitted to be a target for humorous sharp-
shooting. Accordingly his Procrustean column was
filled with fragments of gipsy incantations, Welsh dia-
lect, and mystical jargon, punctuated with sic's and (!)'s,
and supplemented with a witty commentary reflecting
ou the sanity of a novelist who expected intelligent peo-
ple to interest themselves in such a “farrago of non-
sense,” and to read Welsh names where the consonants
were in such large majority. A few weeks later the
same newspaper published another review of the same
book, this time evidently inspired by the publishers, for
it included all those details about Mr. Watts-Dunton
which were published (usually in the same words) in
other so-called critiques: all about his distinguished
friends, the circumstances under which the book was
written and published, an authentic key to the charac-
ters, some remarks on the esoteric popularity of George
Borrow and the Welsh Gipsies, etc. The Pre-Raphael-
itism, Neo-Platonism and Post-Zolaism were neatly
dissected out and identified with the skill of a clinical
snrgeon, and one knew not which to admire the more:
the author who had made these dry bones live, or the
critic who discerned their origin and function.
We can leave the explanation of such incidents to
those who know what goes on behind the curtain of
anonymity. The managing editor is not to be severely
blamed, since there was nothing to indicate that the two
reviews pertained to the same subject except the title of
the book. But whether Deutero-Critic was the same
individual as the first except for the change of heart, is
not of importance. What does shock the reader is to
find that the “literary column” of the average news-
paper is its most carelessly written department, with
the exception of the dramatic criticism, which is usually
worse. The athletic editor, the fashion editor, the culi-
nary editor, the dermatological editor, the horoscope
editor, all seem to understand their business and show
some independence of judgment; but the literary editor
often shows neither independence nor judgment.
What is demanded by the reader of the critic is not
infallibility but responsibility. We will overlook his
mistakes if we only have his assurance that he is doing
the best that he can. A critic in discussing Mr. Paul
Laurence Dunbar's recent novel commented on the curi-
ous fact that all the characters were colored people;
another critic called attention to the equally curious fact
that Mr. Dunbar had introduced no characters of his
own race, but had written a “white folks' story.” Now
both these critics were above the average, because they
realized that there is a difference between black and
white, and they resisted the prevalent tendency to call
everything gray; and it is probable that one or the other
of them was partly right.
It is to be expected that a critic will err, but we wish he
would not boast of his errancy as Mr. Andrew Lang did
a few months ago. His attention was called to the fact
that a book he had condemned in a few careless words
as unworthy of notice had proved a literary success, and
in his gracefully facetious way he explains that a critic
has so little time to give to reading that he cannot be
expected to know whether a book is good or not, and
that for his part he does not care whether his judgments
are correct or false.
This confession disturbed me a good deal, for I had been
relying on Mr. Lang's criticisms for many years. A book
he condemned I always read; and if he attacked a book
savagely I bought it at once, for I knew it must be
worth owning. By following this rule I have acquired
a select library of the world's best literature with not a
trashy volume in it. But when he says he does not
know and does not care whether the books he reviews
are good or bad, my faith in his negative infallibility is
rudely shaken. I may miss some important work
through a neglected condemnation on his part.
A respectable lawyer who loses a case, the respect-
able doctor who kills a patient, is properly ashamed of
it: would it be too much to expect of a respectable
critic who has pronounced a false judgment or killed
a good book that he should conceal his glee over the
achievement? What is a critic for, anyway? Is he to
be a publisher's echo, a writer of philosophical essays
with a book for a text, a jester at the author's expense,
a bric-a-brac collector of second-hand personalities? or
is it his duty to read new books and tell us what they
are? We would like to have the critics save us time
and money by reading the twenty-five books published
each day and giving us a trustworthy and impartial
account of them, so we can tell whether we want to read
them or not. We are not interested in the critic's likes
and dislikes, except in so far as we can use them to fore-
tell our own. If, after the critic has given us the nec-
essary information, he wants to tell us about how Hall
Caine plagiarized from the Bible, and Watts-Dunton
Borrow-ed his Gipsies, we may be interested in that also.
E. E. Slosson.
Laramie, Wyoming, Feb. 10, 1899.


112
[Feb. 16,
THE DIAL
Čbe #tto $ochs.
THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD.”
Fifty years ago everybody that was interested
in American politics and everybody that read
newspapers had heard of the Underground
Railroad. It was much talked of, but not by
those who knew the most about it. It was as
mysterious as the Iron Mask, or the Fehm-
gericht, or the Old Man of the Mountain in
the middle ages. The phrase was purely meta-
phorical. There was no railroad, and it was
not subterranean. There was no corporation;
there were no directors, no president, no stock-
holders, no track, no cars, no engines, no time-
table, no regular time or place of trains, no
rates of fare, no tickets; —name everything
that belongs to a railroad except passengers
and conductors, and deny the existence of all
that you have listed, and you will be in the
right. And the so-called conductors were not
like real railway conductors. The laws of most
of the states were against this shadowy elusive
thing, whatever it was: yet in every community
where it was known or supposed to exist, some
of the best men of the community, the most
upright, men who feared God and wrought
righteousness, were spoken of as deepest in its
mysteries, most audacious in its management.
Can we call the “U. G. R. R.” (so the abbre-
viation ran) an institution ? Slavery was called
by one of its defenders “our peculiar institu-
tion ”; surely here was the counter peculiar
institution.
Slavery was well-organized, had vast wealth,
had unlimited social support, had special pro-
visions for its defense in the Constitution
of the United States, had seats in Congress,
controlled elections, made presidents, judges,
and officers of every grade. But the unorgan-
ized counter-institution, without money, without
law, without political place or power, like the
invisible antagonist in the fairy stories who
carries a magical sword, proved to be such an
annoying assailant and such a powerful adver-
sary that it must be reckoned one of the great
causes of the final ruin of slavery.
The political importance of the escapes of
fugitives and of the recovery of them is made
*THE UNDERGRound RAILRoAD FROM SLAvery To
FREEDOM. By Wilbur H. Siebert, Associate Professor of
European History in Ohio State University. With an Intro-
duction by Albert Bushnell Hart, Professor of History in
Harvard University. With illustrations. New York: The
Macmillan Co.
very prominent by the efforts of the South to
recover slaves under the law of 1793 and to get
a more stringent law. “Five bleeding wounds!”
said the great orator of compromise and con-
ciliation in 1850, describing the condition of his
country, “five bleeding wounds !” counting
them off on the diverging fingers of his out-
stretched hand. Benton cynically said that if
Clay had had more fingers he would have found
more wounds. But Benton might have spared
his sneer, as he would have done had he fore-
seen. Now that the whole matter is half a cen-
tury away, we can look with sympathy upon
the efforts of Clay, Calhoun, and Webster
to avoid the civil war which they believed to be
imminent. There were indeed bleeding wounds.
To Clay, one of the fatal five was the action of
Northern people when they aided fugitives and
fought the slave-hunters.
It is wonderful that he could have thought
Mason's Fugitive-Slave Bill to be a healing
balm for that gaping wound. The remedy was
like the old surgery of wounds before the days
of Ambrose Paré, when caustic potash was ap-
plied to every cut, “to draw out the peccant
humors,” the creation of which modern science
finds due to the potash itself. If the law of 1793
was offensive to the North because of its ten-
dency to provoke breaches of the peace when
the slaveholder sought to recover his slave by
simple “reprisal” (which Blackstone explains
as one's taking his property wherever he finds
it), and because it was a cloak for kidnapping
free men, how could it be supposed that the
North would peaceably bear an enactment
which increased both these evils, and contained
several special and new grievances and provo-
cations? The more we have studied the pecu-
liarities of this law and the results of its enforce-
ment, and the subsequent career of James M.
Mason, its author (the Confederate envoy taken
from the Trent), the more it seems plain that
it was not intended to make peace, but to lead
to secession. It was a test measure: if the
North will stand this, slavery is secure; if it
will not, the South will know the next step
must be secession. The gaping, bleeding wound
was enlarged; but slavery, not the nation, died
of the hemorrhage.
Clay's curative measures were passed one by
one: they failed to go through together, as a
real compromise. Nevertheless, they were called
the compromises of 1850. The admission of
California gave an actual majority in the Sen-
ate to the North, and shattered forever Cal-
houn’s favorite scheme of an equal balance


1899.] THE
DIAL 113
º
there. Texas was paid not to make war upon
the United States, and to yield her claims upon
New Mexico. All things were indeed settled
and compromised except Northern conscience
and love of liberty, and Southern claims of
property and defense of slavery. With the
new law to help him, the Southern master or
his agent made hunting-grounds of the North-
ern States. He became frequent and very
obvious. JR'ugitives who had long rested secure
in Northern villages and cities or worked on
Northern farms fled in swift alarm to Canada.
Their absence was eloquent. Throughout the
South the rumor spread, and suggested flight
to daring spirits. As masters talked, slaves
learned that there were friends of liberty in the
North as well as officers of oppression.
In the North every arrest excited greater
attention, and brought the peculiar institution
into the blaze of publicity. The Underground
Railroad increased its business. The South
and the North grew still more angry with each
other as collisions were more frequent. North-
ern states passed “Personal Liberty Laws”
and other measures within their constitutional
rights to make recovery difficult. The Supreme
Court of Wisconsin came into conflict with the
United States and its Supreme Court. “Uncle
Tom's Cabin" was written, and sold by thou-
sands and tens of thousands of copies. Doug-
las's Kansas and Nebraska Bill poured oil on
the flames by renewing the political struggle
and rending the lately victorious Democratic
party.
The operators on the Underground grew
bolder; for men now winked at or aided them
who had before denounced them as disturbers
of the peace and enemies of the public welfare.
This is well illustrated in the Garner case, in
Cincinnati, in 1856. Rutherford B. Hayes is
the relator of the story as given by Professor
Siebert. Margaret Garner had escaped into
Ohio with four children, and was hidden near
Cincinnati. When her master found them,
she determined to save her little ones from
slavery by the second of Patrick Henry's alter-
natives; she killed the best beloved of her little
flock, but succeeded no further. Efforts to save
her from returning to Kentucky all failed:
even a process against her for murder and vio-
lation of the law of Ohio was of no avail: the
property right of the master overrode the crim-
inal justice of Ohio. Mr. Hayes was living
on a street full of pro-slavery people; but this
tragedy converted them all; one of the leaders
among them called on Mr. Hayes at his house
and declared with great fervor, “Mr. Hayes,
hereafter I am with you. From this time for-
ward I will not only be a Black Republican,
but I will be a damned abolitionist / " Such
conversions abounded. The execution of the
law killed it. Moderate men in the North, –
Abraham Lincoln, for example, – said the
slaveholders were entitled to a law for the re-
covery of their property; but it must now be
doubted whether even the allowance of a jury
trial on the question of identity would have
calmed the aroused and indignant Northern
people.
The great contests of the giants in Congress,
and the occasional capture of a fugitive like
Anthony Burns, or Sims, or Jerry of Syracuse,
were matters of history open to all men; but
the underlying cause of much of the commo-
tion was as secret as a fire in a peat-bog. It
avoided the publicity that makes history. Now
and then some daring or skilful escape would
be told in the Northern newspapers; but Fred-
erick Douglas complained that all such narra-
tions made later escapes more difficult by mak-
ing masters and hunters aware of the tricks
and turns and disguises and resting-places of
the fugitives and their friends. He would not
tell how he escaped in 1838. Henry Box
Brown was put into a box three feet long, two
feet wide, and two feet eight inches deep, and
so sent by Adams Express from Richmond,
Va., to Philadelphia. The early and triumph-
ant publication of the story put an end to such
escapes, and helped bring the man who had
boxed Brown, and who had aided fugitives for
twenty years, to the penitentiary. It was the
policy of the shrewdest station agents and con-
ductors to know as little as possible of the work
of others.
Hence, it happened that when slavery came
to an end and there was no reason for further
concealment, no one could write a history of
the Underground Railroad. Occasionally some
actor in this drama behind the scenes would
relate and publish his reminiscences. There
are a few interesting books of this sort, — as
the Life of Levi Coffin, or Still's account of
things noted at Philadelphia, or Dr. R. C.
Smedley's memoranda of Chester County. The
men who had been most active were now for
the most part old and grayheaded men, passing
rapidly away. Men born sixty years ago had
not become adult when the drama closed. The
stories they can now tell are for the most part
traditions from their elders. Seeing that this
knowledge must soon be lost, Professor Siebert


114
[Feb. 16,
THE DIAL
has devoted much time and labor to the collec-
tion and arrangement of historical matter re-
lating to the Underground Railroad, which is
presented in the volume under review.
Professor Siebert's book is both the most
extensive and the most comprehensive work of
all hitherto issued upon this subject. He dis-
cusses his sources of information; the origin,
growth, methods, and managers of the Under-
ground; abductions from the South; fugitives
in the North and in Canada; prosecutions
under the Acts of 1793 and 1850; the effects
of the Underground Railroad in politics and
otherwise, in discussion of which he affirms that
“the U. G. R. R. was one of the greatest forces
which brought on the Civil War and thus de-
stroyed slavery.” He gives thirty-seven pages
to “the map of the U. G. R. R. system,” giv-
ing one general and five local maps. He gives
in an appendix the Acts of 1793 and of 1850,
and the fugitive clauses in the Constitution, in
the Ordinance of 1787, and in the Missouri
Compromise; and adds another appendix giv-
ing eighty-one important fugitive-slave cases
with reference to the sources of information
concerning each. To these he might well have
added from Wheeler’s “Law of Slavery” the
early case of Avis in Massachusetts, often cited
as a leading case; and the cases of Phoebe vs.
Jay, Borders vs. the People, and Willard vs. the
People in Illinois.
Another valuable appendix is an extensive
bibliography. This ends with “Imaginative
Works,” listing only four, of which one is
“Uncle Tom's Cabin,” and another is Whit-
tier's Poems. Why not also Longfellow's
“Poems on Slavery,” which preceded Whit-
tier's first book that had an anti-slavery poem 2
Why not Lowell? And for novels, there should
be named Trowbridge's “Neighbor Jackwood,”
Epes Sargeant's “Peculiar,” William L. G.
Smith's pro-slavery “Uncle Tom's Cabin as it
is,” of which 15,000 copies were sold in fifteen
days, and Mrs. Stowe's “Dred,” called later
“Nina Gordon": to these we could add many
more of less importance.
Another appendix of thirty-seven pages is
called a “Directory of the Names of Under-
ground-Railroad Operators.” The present re-
viewer is sorry to be obliged to say that unless
the rest of it is more accurate than certain parts
that come within his own personal knowledge,
it is so unreliable as to be practically useless.
By defect, it omits names that should be there;
but this fault is naturally incident to the diffi-
culty of obtaining information at the present
time, almost forty years after the secret coali-
tion ceased operation.
For example, in Sangamon County, Illinois,
the station at Farmington, near the present
Farmingdale, had operators Rev. Bilious Pond,
Deacon Lyman, and Messrs. Estabrook and
Low ; and the knowing ones sent fugitives
thither rather than to pro-slavery Springfield,
though the capital was honored by the residence
of Luther Ransom, a fearless and active Gar-
risonian. These names are not given; but
three names are given for Sangamon, of so
little fame that only surnames represent two of
them. So in Morgan, Henry Irving and W. C.
Carter, the principal “coachmen’’ from Jack-
sonville, are unnamed, as well as Julius A.
Willard, whose name is found in our Supreme
Court Reports. In the same volume with
Willard's case appeared the case and name of
Andrew Borders of Randolph, not listed. Pro-
fessor Siebert may be excused for not getting
these names; but their absence may show that
such a list or “directory” cannot be made.
Again, men are listed who never were Under-
ground Railroad operators, but were known only
as anti-slavery men, and perhaps lukewarm as
such. The reviewer knew Morgan County
pretty well, and can say that the three names
given for that county should have no place
there. Still worse, in the list for Jersey County
are three names that belong to Morgan; and
one of those had no active connection with the
movement. Of the remaining four names in
Jersey, who would recognize in the Frenchy
name “Garesche” the sturdy Yankee miller,
Joseph Gerrish 2 In Henry County, William
T. Allan (not Allen) appears also as William
S. Allen, non-existent. McLean is honored
with the single name of Deacon Moss; but this
is the same man as the “Dea. Mark Morse’’ of
Woodford, “Mt. Hope Station,” on the road in
1840. Charles Lippincott never lived in Ran-
dolph, but in Madison and Bond. There is a
very suspicious identity of three names in the
Bond County list of Illinois and the Bond
County list of Indiana.
Leaving Illinois, where more defects could be
shown, let us go to Pennsylvania. Here, from
the list for Chester County, J. Williams Thorne
should be transferred to Lancaster, where he
is erroneously given as I. William Thorne.
Enoch Walker should be given to Montgomery;
Philip and Benjamin Price should be taken
from Delaware to Chester, where one of them
is listed as Pierce. Other changes should be
made in that region; and Mahlon Brosius


1899.]
THE DIAL 115
&
should be added to Chester. Forty-two per
cent of the “Directory” is given to Ohio, which
is probably nearer to accuracy. But the “Di-
rectory” and the maps are tentative, partial,
and defective: a true map cannot be made.
Let not this criticism of the weak point of
the book (weak because its author attempted
what no man can now do) obscure or hide
from our readers the fact that Professor Sie-
bert's work is the great work on its subject,
the book to which writers on American his-
tory must hereafter look as the best summary
of information. It is an honest and laborious
attempt to gather the facts of the time; and
they are skilfully classified and arranged.
There is no superflous rhetoric. It must have
cost the writer an effort to omit the romance
of the Underground Railroad, the marvellous
stories of escapes and perils which would have
made the volume more readable, but would
have made it less a sober and self-contained
history. For those incidents one must go to
Still and Smedley and Coffin and the like. The
present reviewer, who heard Garrison lecture
sixty-eight years ago to a scanty audience, and
who was an interested observer and an active
sharer in the anti-slavery contest to its close, is
glad to see a presentation of one of the greatest
agencies of the conflict so suitable to its import-
ance and so worthy of praise.
The last paragraph of the text speaks of “the
cancellation of the slave clause in the Consti-
tution by the amendment of that instrument.”
This is a not uncommon error. But that clause
is not cancelled. If a duly-bound apprentice
or a person who has made a contract to labor
for a specified time should run away from Ohio
into Indiana, under this still-valid clause the
injured party could reclaim the fugitive, whom
no law of Indiana could release from his obli-
gation. This clause, used for the benefit of the
slaveholder, is valid without slavery, and is a
condensed form of a similar provision in the
instrument of union of the New England col-
onies in 1643, which was meant for indentured
servants; though after their treaty of 1650
with New York, it was extended to that Dutch
colony, and it is reported that under it one
slave was reclaimed.
The book is well printed, and is, except in a
few proper names, free from typographical
errors: it has thirty-eight pages of index.
Having been so interested in the work as to read
every page of its text, the reviewer congratu-
lates Professor Siebert upon the completion of
his monumental labor. SAMUEL WILLARD.
SOME RECENT BOOKS ON EDUCATION.”
General Francis A. Walker was known to
the country in many ways; he was a man of
varied talents and diversified activities. Per-
haps it would not be an easy matter to rate his
ability and the value of his work, relatively,
in the several spheres of action in which he
figured. He was a soldier of the Union and
the historian of important phases of the Civil
War; he was superintendent of the National
Censuses of 1870 and 1880; he was a student
of economics, and the writer of valuable eco-
nomical books; and he was a practical educator.
All this was well known to the public; but we
assume that the extent and value of his contri-
butions to educational discussion were not
equally well known. We have now before us
the evidence of his work in this department of
activity, in the solid and beautiful volume en-
titled “Discussions in Education,” which is
made up of his occasional addresses and papers.
It is a fitting memorial to its author, and a
fresh evidence of the country's loss in his un-
timely death.
General Walker was a man of varied educa-
tional experience, serving at different times as a
college tutor, a college professor, and President
of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
He also served on the Boston School Board,
and probably in other similar administrative
offices. The breadth of his experience, as well
as the natural range of his mind, are reflected
in these “Discussions.” The subjects dealt with
are all live and practical subjects; the author
was apparently too busy to deal with educa-
tion under its historical or philosophical aspects.
The contents are grouped by the editor under
*Discussions IN EDUCATION. By Francis A. Walker,
Ph.D., LL.D., late President of Massachusetts Institute of
Technology. Edited by James Phinney Munroe. New York:
Henry Holt & Co.
UNIvERs1TY PROBLEMs IN THE UNITED STATEs. By
Daniel Coit Gilman, LL.D., President of Johns Hopkins Uni-
versity. New York: The Century Co.
GERMAN HIGHER SCHOOLs. The History, Organization,
and Methods of Secondary Education in Germany. By James
E. Russell, Ph.D., Dean of Teachers' College, Columbia Uni-
versity. New York: Longmans, Green, & Co.
A History of RUGBY School. By W. H. D. Rouse, M.A.,
Sometime Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge. New York:
Charles Scribner's Sons.
THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMs of GREAT BRITAIN AND
IRELAND. By Graham Balfour, M.A. New York: Oxford
University Press.
WoRK AND PLAY IN GIRLs' Schools. By Three Head
Mistresses: Dorothea Beale, Lucy H. M. Soulsby, Jane
Frances Dove. New York: Longmans, Green, & Co.
INTRoduction To THE STUDY of History. By Ch. W.
Langlois and Ch. Seignobos of the Sorbonne. Translated by
G. G. Berry, with a Preface by F. York Powell. New York:
Henry Holt & Co.


116
[Feb. 16,
THE DIAL
four heads: “Technological Education,” “Man-
ual Education,” “The Teaching of Arithme-
tic,” and “College Problems.” But General
Walker never deals with his subject in a nar-
row or so-called “practical” way; right or
wrong, he always has his eye fixed on some
valuable educational end. Nor does he tumble
into the pitfall that always yawns for the spe-
cialist. For example, he writes:
“My own opinion is that engineering education is
primarily and principally an educational and not an en-
gineering problem; and that the judgment of a strong
and experienced teacher who has studied this problem
is more likely to be right than that of any engineer
without experience as a teacher, however eminent he
may be in his profession.”
Again, he does not find the value of industrial
education in special utilities, but writes:
“I heartily believe that the introduction of the me-
chanic arts, and of sewing and cooking, into the public
schools, will do much, very much, not only to increase
the interest of the pupils in their work, as has been
already indicated, but to win for the schools a far larger
degree of interest on the part of parents and a far
heartier support of the system on the part of the general
community.”
And again, speaking of manual training :
“I care comparatively little for its influence upon
eye or hand. Its chief work in my view is educational;
and in that educational work I place foremost its power
of rectifying the mind itself, of straightening the crooked
limb, - so to speak, - of strengthening the weak joint,
of healing the lesion, which, if not cured, will proceed
to deep and irreparable injury.”
President Gilman’s “University Problems,”
like General Walker's “Discussions in Edu-
cation,” consists of the more weighty utterances
of its author, during the last twenty-five years
or more, on educational subjects. Most of
these utterances originally took the form of
public addresses; and such form they still re-
tain. The book is a valuable contribution to
educational discussion. Here the reader will
find the resources and ideals, the methods and
field, of Johns Hopkins University, with some-
thing of its history, clearly set forth by its
President. President Gilman throws out one
original suggestion relative to a National uni-
versity that may yet prove to be highly import-
ant. It is, that the Smithsonian Institution
shall “organize a plan by which the literary
and scientific institutions of Washington may
be associated and correlated so far, and so far
only, as relates to the instruction and assist-
ance, under proper guidance, of qualified stu-
dents.” There will be no difficulty, he assures
us, about the funds if this were done. As we
understand him, this is the scheme that Dr.
Gilman has in mind in this passage:
“If the university in Washington could be so ordered
that all the scientific resources of the nation were avail-
able for study, under the guidance of competent per-
sons, without reference to honors, and without formal
and prolonged curricula, very many well-qualified schol-
ars — some who have graduated, and some who have
never been in college; men and women; foreigners and
Americans; some in early and some in later life —
would there be gathered, and would be aided, taught,
and inspired by the opportunities and influences thrown
open to them, in an amplitude worthy of the National
Capital.”
Professor Russell is fully justified in assum-
ing, as he does in his preface to “German
Higher Schools,” that there was room in our
pedagogical literature for a new book on the
subject. As he tells us, German elementary
schools and German universities have become
familiar to American educators, but the sec-
ondary schools, which could be studied by us
with still greater advantage, are much less
known. Not only has he discovered the want,
but he has gone far toward meeting it: still, no
one book could meet it fully. One hundred and
seven pages of his handsome volume are given
to an historical account of German education
and schools, from the days of Columban and
Boniface to the present time, and the remainder
to an exposition of the existing system of sec-
ondary education. The work is not closely
confined, however, to secondary schools, and, if
it were to be a good one, could not be; it must
present the subject in its relations to other
parts of the educational system. The author
shows wide reading on his subject and skilful
use of the note-book. He sprinkles quotation
over his pages most plentifully, but he so
weaves them into his narrative or exposition as
not seriously to impair the unity of his compo-
sition. But, what is more to the purpose, he
shows, when dealing with the secondary schools
as they now exist, a large first-hand knowledge,
obtained by personal visitation of schools and
conference with teachers and educational au-
thorities. There is no work in the English
language known to us that contains so much
and so valuable information about the second-
ary schools of Germany. Nor is the book a
book of facts merely; the author has an eye
also for ideas and forces, and conducts his his-
torical narration with constant reference to
these factors.
We do not know how it may be with Rug-
beans or other British readers, but it is pretty
safe to say that such Americans as read Mr.
Rouse's “History of Rugby School” will find
the centre of interest in the external rather
than the internal features, as he portrays them,


1899.] THE
IXIAL 117
of that famous school. While these readers
have a considerable knowledge of the interior
work and life of a great English public school,
they generally know little of its exterior his-
tory. We cannot say that, under this aspect,
Rugby is a typical school; undoubtedly, these
institutions present many points of difference,
but, after all, the great public schools, as well
as the large class to which they belong — that
is, the endowed schools—must have much ex-
ternal history in common. Mr. Rouse has, in
general, presented this side of his subject with
commendable fulness.
When Lawrence Sheriffe, member of the
Worshipful Company of Grocers, and grocer
to Queen Elizabeth, died in 1567, he left be-
hind him a will and accompanying documents,
in which Rugby School had its origin. He
was a Rugbean by birth, and, having prospered
in business, wished to leave to his native town
a legacy that would be productive of lasting
good. So he left to George Harrison and
Barnard Field, trustees, three pieces of prop.
erty: A mansion house that he had built at
Rugby, together with the land round about it,
“being altogether one rood thirty poles or
thereabouts”; the parsonage of Brownsover,
near Rugby, “with one yard of glebe, more or
less, and the tithes”; and one-third of “the
field hard by Holborn, some half mile outside
of London, commonly called Conduit Close or
Conduit Mead,”— these pieces of property
being devoted to the founding of an almshouse
and a public school. The potency of Rugby
lay in the piece of meadow land. This was at
the time of comparatively little value, but it
was by and by swallowed up by the great me-
tropolis and so became a source of great and
increasing wealth to the double foundation.
Although Lawrence Sheriffe added a codicil to
his will, and then fortified both documents with
an “intente,” he still left the business in great
confusion. As we have seen, the foundation
was double, and it was a long time before the
school and the almshouse could be fully sepa-
rated; the founder stated his intentions and
wishes in a vague and general manner, not even
providing for the succession of the trusteeship;
while some of his relatives who had some slight
claims upon his estate did all that they could
do to destroy the trust altogether. What with
an imperfect devise, indifferent or incompetent
trustees, suits and commissions in equity, acts
of Parliament, and greedy heirs, it was not a
little remarkable that the foundation ever be-
came a great school, or even survived at all.
This point we had in mind when we spoke
above of the external history of Rugby. Of the
many hundreds of school endowments made in
England in the sixteenth century, some, and
probably many, must have perished utterly, or
have been wholly diverted from their purpose,
by causes similar to those that came so near to
wrecking Rugby.
Still, the view that we get of the interior of
the school is by no means without interest.
Dealing with the new spirit introduced by Dr.
Arnold, the author sets forth his own view, as
well as Arnold's, of one important feature of
school discipline:
“Arnold did not in the least suffer from that false
sentimentalty common in our own generation, which
condemns all corporeal punishment as degrading. There
can be no degradation when none is felt, and ordinary
boys, as every practical teacher will admit, feel none in
corporeal punishment. They hail it, rather, as far pre-
ferable to long and monotonous impositions; if judi-
ciously and calmly administered, it never leaves a grudge
behind, as impositions often do.”
The reader of this passage would naturally
expect to find Mr. Rouse defending fags and
fagging, and this he does. He tells us that:
“It raises a smile to read what some eminent edu-
cationalists have written of the fagging system, as
though it were a thing essentially bad, and only to be
tolerated because it cannot be abolished. If it be essen-
tially bad, that the young should serve before they can
rule, then the whole system of government in all organ-
ized countries, and in the army and navy, and in com-
merce, is essentially bad. Experience shows that the
fagging system, if properly limited, is a good and use-
ful institution, and an excellent training in habits of
smartness and obedience.”
There may be some shadow of truth in this
view of the subject, but the fagging system will
disappear, and future masters of Rugby, suc-
cessors of Mr. Rouse, will wonder that he ever
defended it.
Mr. Graham Balfour has attempted to
describe the three grades of education in the
four countries, England, Ireland, Scotland,
and Wales. He defines his purpose as not to
write a history of education, but to give “an
account of the framework of which education
is the life and spirit.” “I have had,” he says,
“to deal only with the dry bones, for the first
and most pressing need was a picture of the ex-
isting skeleton.” Skeletons, even if grinning
and ghastly, are of the first importance to all
systems, and of great interest to all students of
anatomy. This book might be described, there-
fore, as a treatise on the educational anatomy
of the four countries just named. We do not
see how the author could have done his work
better than he has done it. He has ranged


118
[Feb. 16,
THE DIAL
over the whole field for facts, and has presented
them in a manner that shows decided power of
analysis and combination. It is hard to see
how more information could have been put in
the same compass, or how what is here found
could have been presented in clearer or more
concise language. The book is one that all
students of education in Great Britain and
Ireland will find most useful, if not indispens-
able. Still, we have some fear that readers
who have not some considerable previous knowl-
edge of the subject will find it too solid and
compact for their purpose. But compendiums
are not written, or should not be written, for
novices.
Mr. Balfour's book illustrates in a striking
way the extraordinary variety of schools exist-
ing in the four countries named, and especially
in England and Wales, which, for the purposes
of elementary teaching, are subject to the same
laws. Even the reader who is already familiar
with the field—that is, if he lives on this side
of the ocean — will be impressed again by the
utter absence of controlling ideas and princi-
ples, and the absolute predominance of empir-
icism and precedent, in British education. He
will also be impressed again by the progress of
elementary instruction in recent years. Govern-
ment grants began with £20,000 in 1833; they
amounted to £800,000 in 1860, and reached
£9,000,000 in 1897. Nor were the rates, or
local taxes as we should call them, which
amounted to nearly £5,000,000, counted in the
sum given for the last year. Mr. Balfour
counts the educational fund from public grants,
endowments, and other sources, for Great
Britain and Ireland, at fully £20,000,000 an-
nually; and estimates that this sum will have
to be considerably increased before existing
Wants are met.
The title-page of “Work and Play in Girls'
Schools” suggests that the book is wholly the
work of the three head-mistresses named, all of
whom have at some time been members of the
teaching staff of the Cheltenham Ladies' Col.
lege. But such is not the fact: many other
writers have contributed to the volume. Nor
are Miss Soulsby and Miss Dove relatively
prominent; the one writes the section on the
“Moral Side of Education ” and the other that
on the “Cultivation of the Body.” The veteran
Miss Beale is much the most abundant con-
tributor to the book. The aim of the authors
is to cover the whole field of girls' education.
Some of the pedagogy that it contains is rather
antiquated, and some of the exercises recom-
mended are useless; but on the whole it is a book
of solid value and breathes a wholesome spirit.
It may be observed that Miss Beale keeps her
good old English faith in examinations un-
shaken. She argues with old-time confidence,
and with perfect truth that, provided examina-
tions are rightly conducted, they are useful as a
test of what we really know; that preparation
for them enables us to find out what are our
permanent possessions; that competitive exam-
inations compel us to set these possessions in
order and estimate their relative importance;
that examinations tend to produce presence of
mind and mental self-control; that they sup-
press wordiness and abolish a florid style, and
tend to make us feel the supreme importance
of clearness and accuracy. All the current
arguments against examinations that are now
so popular are based on their abuses.
It is generally agreed among scholars that no
better university work in history is now any-
where done than in Paris. This fact will give
importance to the “Introduction to the Study
of History,” quite apart from its intrinsic
merits. MM. Langlois and Seignobos are lec-
turers on history at the Sorbonne, and they give
us in this book, as we understand the matter,
the view of history and the general method of
studying it that are now in favor at this cele-
brated seat of learning. They intend to go to
the bottom of things, as this paragraph from
their preface will show:
“We propose to examine the conditions and the
methods, to indicate the character and the limits, of his-
torical knowledge. How do we ascertain, in respect of
the past, what part of it is possible, what part of it is
important, to know? What is a document? How are
documents to be treated with a view to historical work?
What are historical facts? How are they to be grouped
to make history? Whoever occupies himself with his-
tory performs, more or less unconsciously, complicated
operations of criticism and construction, of analysis and
synthesis. But beginners, and the majority of those
who have never reflected on the principles of historical
methodology, make use, in the performance of these
operations, of instinctive methods which, not being, in
general, rational methods, do not usually lead to scien-
tific truth. It is, therefore, useful to make known and
logically justify the theory of the truly rational methods
—a theory which is now settled in some parts, though
still incomplete in points of capital importance.”
The keynote of the work is that history is a
science. Mr. York Powell, in introducing it
to English readers, strikes this note in this
in anner :
“It is not an historian's question, for instance, whether
Napoleon was right or wrong in his conduct at Jaffa, or
Nelson in his behavior at Naples; that is a matter for
the student of ethic or the religious dogmatist to decide.
All that the historian has to do is to get what conclusion


1899.] THE
DIAL 119
he can get out of the conflict of evidence, and to decide
whether Napoleon or Nelson actually did that of which
their enemies accuse them, or, if he cannot arrive at
fact, to state probability, and the reasons that incline
him to lean to the affirmative or to the negative.”
The meaning of this is that the historian is to
look upon the actions of men just as the geolo-
gist looks upon the eruptions of a volcano and
the spouting of a hot spring. “The historian
very properly furnishes the ethical student with
material,” Mr. Powell tells us further, “though
it is not right to reckon the ethical student's
judgment upon the historian's facts as history
in any sense.” This ideal, we venture to say,
is both false and impossible. The kind of man
that Napoleon or Nelson was, is an historical
question; and neither one is to be studied as
though he were an elemental non-moral force.
That, no doubt, was Napoleon's own view of
the matter. The first duty of the historian, and
one hitherto much neglected, is to get at the
facts; but, this done, he is to seek out their
causes and interpretation. Moreover, the char-
acter of the man himself is a factor in this sec-
ondary process. Our authors have produced a
strong book, and one that we gladly recom-
mend to students and teachers of history; but
we protest that history is not one of the natural
sciences. B. A. HINSDALE.
CURRENT THEATRICAL CRITICISM,”
It is not the custom of our dramatic critics
to collect and publish their works. You may
go into any well-appointed bookstore and ask
for Mr. Alan Dale’s “Life and the Stage,” or
Mr. Franklin Fyles's “Sunlight and Foot-
lights,” but you will not get them, for they do
not exist. So many libraries consider it re-
spectable to bind the “New York Tribune”
that Mr. William Winter's views will be always
accessible; and now that Mr. Norman Hap-
good has taken to the magazines, he is safe for
immortality. But as a rule the press comments,
even on our “metropolitan” stage, are breathed
forth but once into the great expanse of news-
paper readers, and after a day or so are as if
they had never been. In other countries, men
are more or less in the habit of publishing their
theatrical criticism; and this is a good thing,
on the whole, for it dignifies the tone of criti-
cism and of the stage as well. So it is of some
interest that Mr. Dupont Syle should have
broken the ice in the matter.” His “Essays
in Dramatic Criticism" contain two different
kinds of work, -first, a number of essays on
general dramatic subjects; and second, several
critical notices of current plays.
It is curious, if nothing more, that the stage
which forms the object of Mr. Syle's criticism
should be that of San Francisco. That will
explain the fact that of the fifteen plays that
he speaks of, not a single one can really be
said to be of any permanent interest. The best
known of them are “Trilby,”“Shore Acres,”
and “The Geisha”; these, people have heard
of and still remember; the others were either
never known at all or are now forgotten. Many,
many people live in places (one-night stands)
where the “Opera House” offers very few real
attractions; but few who have any dramatic
possibilities at all have gazed on a list of
plays of less interest to anybody except the
inexperienced and the confirmed theatre-goer.
Yet in this very fact (and I think that Mr.
Syle appreciates it perfectly) lies the chief
interest of this book. Mr. Syle is a pretty well
equipped dramatic critic; he has seen good
acting here and abroad, he is a professor of
literature and therefore familiar with the great
dramatists, he has the disposition and reading
of a critic. Now, if a competent critic happen
to live in San Francisco (or near it) what is he
to do? Keep quiet? Certainly not: let him
criticize anything in sight. A good critic should
be something like a good portrait-painter: he
should work on the material at hand, and not
always demand the brightest and best. Prob-
ably the men that Rembrandt and Franz
Hals painted would have seemed commonplace
enough to us, at least some of them. A good
critic will have something to say about almost
anything.
These criticisms, then, were very interesting
to me, although I do not think that I should
have cared much about the plays. I do not
know that they would be interesting to every-
body, for doubtless a great part of my interest
might be called (with an unintentional double.
meaning) professional. Perhaps the general
run of people would not care to read about plays
that they have never seen and never wish to see
and for which they care absolutely nothing. It
may be so; and yet Mr. Syle has written well
concerning them, written on a high plane, but
*It seems hardly possible, in these days of republication,
that no one should have done so before, so I am prepared to
*Essays IN DRAMATIC CRITICISM. With Impressi of
Some Modern Plays. By L. Dupont Syle. New York:
William R. Jenkins.
DRYDEN's Essays on THE DRAMA. Edited, with Notes,
by W. Strunk, Jr. New York: Henry Holt & Co.
be wrong in this matter. But it is certainly an uncommon
practice.


120 THE DIAL
[Feb. 16,
easily and quite without pedantry or conven-
tionalism.
I suppose it may be urged against these
critiques that they are “too literary.” I think I
have heard this expression used of dramatic crit-
icism, although I am not at all sure that I know
just what it means. Mr. Syle rather lays him-
self open to this allegation, for the first essays
in the book (Essays as distinguished from Im-
pressions) are undoubtedly “literary” in char.
acter. The longest is an indication of the
influence of Molière on Congreve and Sheridan,
good in itself, and perhaps rather better if it
should lead anyone to carry on the inquiry and
ask whether we can trace any influence of
Molière and Congreve and Sheridan upon Mr.
Pinero and Mr. Henry Arthur Jones. The
four other essays are much shorter; pleasant
reading, but without much novelty of idea. The
last may perhaps be excepted; Mr Syle, in
comparing our stage with the Elizabethan
drama, shows how several of the popular ele-
ments of the latter, poetry, eloquence, history,
have of late found better means of expression
than the drama. So far he is quite right;
probably right also when he says that the chief
distinctive element of the art of the present
playwright is the construction of situation,
and explains thus the popularity of the farce,
wherein situation is the chief dependence. If
this be so, however, I hardly follow Mr. Syle
in thinking that with a decrease in our present
commercialism, the drama will again take to
itself “the poetical and ethical elements which
we see flourishing in the works of the great
playwrights.” It may well be that in that
millennium the drama will find that possession
is nine points of the law.
But to return to the criticism of contempo-
rary plays. Whether the general reader be
interested in such essays or not, it would be
rather for the better, so far as the stage is con-
cerned, if he were interested and if there were
more such books as this. We have, nowadays,
so many books anyway that a few more could
at least do no harm. And books like this are
in the way of doing good in so far as they tend
to raise the tone of our theatrical criticism, both
on the part of the critics and of play-goers as
well. There is no doubt that, critics or not,
people will keep on going to the theatre, and
generally to see what they like. But there can
be no doubt either that they will also continue
to talk about the plays they have seen and
therein find a great part of their pleasure. You
buy a ticket and see a play; but that is only
the beginning of your good time. After the
play there is always a fresh interchange of
opinion or repartee at the theatre supper or in
the streetcar going home. Then for a week
or so there is the constant, “Have you seen
this or that?” “Well, my dear, what did you
think of it?” “Were n’t the dresses,” etc.,
a sort of conversation which, independently of
the weight of opinion expressed, is generally
pleasant to the conversers. And then after-
ward, for a longer or shorter time, there is the
general impression left by a play and its acting,
rarely taking definite form but usually present,
the impression which does most (when anything
at all is done) to influence taste and character.
Everybody knows this, and yet nobody to speak
of thinks much of it. With a book, a picture,
a piece of music, we all think opinion is im-
portant enough to be worth our attention. Ah,
but these are opinions on the great books, the
great pictures, the great music, not of mere
contemporary appearances. True enough; but
of the great plays as acted plays, we can never
have anything but contemporary criticism.
Hence, if we are going to have dramatic criti-
cism at all, it must be from day to day, and
just as it is worth while to have criticism of
literature, painting, music, so it is worth while
to have some criticism of the drama. Not that
people may thus get the right opinions ready
made and so know what to think, but that they
may have a chance to form for themselves more
definite ideas and standards than they can easily
do now, when popular theatrical criticism is
largely impromptu and a matter of accident.
Let anyone think whether novel-reading would
be as much fun as it is now had we never read
any literary criticism; whether paintings would
be so absorbing to us if we had never read a
word about the art of the great painters. And
let anyone think, too, whether “good music"
would not be more truly attractive to many if
people ever read any musical criticism. Criti-
cism of anything arouses interest; it makes us
notice what had before escaped notice; it gives
a chance for opinion either by agreement or
disagreement; it encourages thought. So I saw
Mr. Syle's book with pleasure, just as I see
with pleasure the gradually increasing custom
of publishing plays in real books. Both tend
toward the creation of a more active, a sounder
state of public opinion than we have now ; and
this is the first thing necessary to having better
plays and better acting. When people want
the best, they will generally find a way to get it.
A farther view of this book is suggested by


1899.] THE
DIAL 121
another, published a little while ago, namely,
Dryden’s “Essays on the Drama,” edited by W.
Strunk, Jr. This is an excellent little book. It
contains the essay “Of Dramatic Poesy,” the
“Defence” of the Essay, and the essay “Of
Heroic Plays,” with very good apparatus. Mr.
Strunk has done his work thoroughly ; he gives
(besides the usual biographical facts and notes
on style and allusions) a history of the discus-
sion of which these essays were a part, an ac-
count of Dryden's sources and authorities, an
index of plays cited, and, in his notes, a pretty
constant comparison of Dryden's opinions with
the classics of criticism of his time. The book
gives a good opportunity for an introduction
to Dryden's dramatic criticism.
In the presence of a fairly definite body of
dramatic criticism as you will find in Dryden,
one inclines to look to Mr. Syle to see what
are the principles on which his remarks rest.
It is true that Dryden's criticism was the criti-
cism of a man who was more interested in
writing plays than in seeing them acted. It is
true also that he spent most of his energy upon
the development of the action and on the ques-
tion of rhyme; and further, it will be allowed
that Dryden was in his criticism too much
bound to precedent for the best results. Still,
it is of interest to have bases of criticism, un-
less you mean to have absolutely impressionistic
criticism.
Mr. Syle does not give us impressionistic.
criticism: he gives what he calls “impressions,”
but they are really more like opinions, judg-
ments. Now, without differing especially with
many of these opinions, I should much like to
know the guiding principles. For instance,
Mr. Syle says, “Constructively the play is
well made " (p. 94), although it afterwards
appears that the first and fourth acts are the
strong acts, while in the second and third acts
“there is nothing that one could not foresee
after listening to the opening speeches.” Else-
where he says, “It is a thousand pities that
the author who could conceive such a character
had not imagination enough to set it forth in
truly poetic form" (p. 104), whereas another
play of apparently the same kind is at fault
because its dialogue has not “a shred of wit,
humor, or anything but a surface observation
of life” (p. 94). I do not mean to be captious
or hypercritical in calling attention to these
remarks, but I find it hard to see from them
just what kind of construction, what kind of
dialogue, Mr. Syle thinks good. If I did see,
if I got at the fundamentals, I might improve
my own ideas. I do not myself think that con-
struction is very good which permits us to fore-
see the end of an act from the beginning. I
have not, as a rule, thought that we could ask
for poetic charm in the presentation of the
characters in a melodrama, nor much wit or
humor in its dialogue. But if I have been
wrong, it would surely be interesting to me to
have some definite bases on which I could carry
out a re-accommodation.
But perhaps everyone (else) knows all about
such things already.
EDwARD E. HALE, JR.
AN IDEALIST's IDEAS OF EVIL.”
Professor Royce's latest book is a series of
essays, more or less related to each other, and
all bearing upon the general subject of Good
and Evil. As might have been expected from
the author's previous works, his point of view
is that of the ethical idealist. This does not
mean that Professor Royce is an idle dreamer,
vaguely explaining away the essential differ-
ences between right and wrong. On the con-
trary, he looks facts squarely in the face and
holds closely to the realities of everyday human
life. He is an ethical idealist in that he inter-
prets the universe as a realm whose significance
lies in the ethical ideals which its processes
realize.
Of all the problems of life, none are more
baffling and intricate than the one which per-
tains to the existence of Evil. If God be good,
why does He permit Evil? is a question that
in one form or another has perplexed every
thoughtful being. It is the question which
Professor Royce attempts to answer. To put
the matter in concrete form, he takes the case
of Job as illustrating the experience of suffer-
ing humanity. To Job, this world is the work
of a Being who ought to be intelligent and
friendly to righteousness. Yet this God seems
at times to show himself just the reverse. What
is the explanation? After considering vari-
ous familiar answers which have been given as
solutions to the problem — that Evil is but
transient discipline, that without Evil there
could be no free-will, that we see only in part
and a complete view would justify the belief
that Evil is but partial good, Professor Royce
gives his own interpretation. He regards Evil
*STUDIEs of Good AND Evil. By Josiah Royce. New
York: D. Appleton & Co.


122
[Feb. 16,
THE DIAL
as a real fact, and holds that its existence is not
only consistent with the perfection of the world,
but is necessary for the very existence of that
perfection. As the hero could never be hero
without controlling fear and pain; as the saint
could never be saint without overcoming temp-
tations to sin, so a knowledge of Good is possi-
ble only as one knows Evil and subordinates it
to the Good. “If moral Evil were simply de-
stroyed and wiped away from the external
world, the knowledge of moral goodness would
also be destroyed,” is the langu