be-
come democratized in a rude way; and yet he
might advantageously have used space that he has
given to minor matters to give a fuller and better
exposition of the causes that made these things inev-
itable. The topic is an inviting one, and has never
been adequately treated in all its bearings by any
writer. So confident a writer as our author with
such a subject could not have avoided offering nu-
merous moot points to the critic. Here it must be
said that if he is never dull he is often wrong or
paradoxical. We read on one page that John Ran-
dolph, having retired from political leadership, “re-
mained to the end of his days the most consistent
advocate, barring his occasional extravagances and
abberrations, of the true theory of government,”
and on another page that he organized the South
to a systematic defense of the slaveholding interest,
and formulated the political theory by which it was
to be maintained; moreover, this theory “was wholly
derived from the political doctrines with which he
had begun public life.” The meaning, of course, is
that Randolph's devotion to slavery was merely one
of his “extravagances” or “abberrations,” and
ought not to be counted against him in determining
his rank as a political philosopher. Mr. Peck adds:
“It is one of the seeming paradoxes of politics that
the ablest early exponents of democracy were slave-
holders.” From his point of view he should have
added, “and often aristocrats.” The account of the
introduction of the spoils system presents some very
just observations and important facts that the stu-
dent of the time needs to heed, but it cannot be
accepted as a proper presentation of the subject.
Mr. Peck thinks that John Quincy Adams was more
to blame for the system than Jackson, owing to his
absolute refusal to allow political considerations to
influence the retention or selection of appointees,
which stimulated the clamor and the efforts of the
multiplying “outs.” Even more unsatisfactory is
the handling of the slavery question. The author
sees that slavery was a great evil, but he criticizes
all the men who strove to oppose it, and the Aboli-
tionists with great fierceness; but he does not, that
we remember, drop a single hint as to what should
have been done in reference to slavery. Nothing


344 THE DIAL
[May 16,
is easier than to criticize every practical proposition
that was ever made, looking to the doing away of
the institution, or to restricting its influence; but it
was in the country, and something had to be done
about it, as a writer of history at this late day ought
to discern.
There are few books of the past year
which thoughtful readers will find
better worth perusal than Mr. John
Beattie Crozier's remarkable piece of mental auto-
biography entitled “My Inner Life” (Longmans).
Mr. Crozier is the distinguished author of two pro-
found and original works (one of them as yet un-
finished) in the field of social philosophy; and upon
the general system therein unfolded the present Life
has certain specific bearings. As we gather from
the author's brief Autobiography, one of the main
considerations that led him to compose the present
work was the belief that the philosophic system
elaborated in his books on “Civilization and Pro-
gress” and “The History of Intellectual Develop-
ment” could be most clearly expounded and in a
measure popularized through a detailed account of
the successive steps by which it grew and took shape
in his own mind. We may therefore regard “My
Inner Life” not only as an autobiography proper
(and it is a thoroughly charming and singularly
candid one), but as in some sort a clew or supple-
ment to the author's larger works. With a gener-
ous leaven of lighter episode and digression, Mr.
Crozier traces in the main the story of his intel-
lectual life and effort, from the immature days of
his early dabblings in phrenology down to the period
of measurably settled philosophic conviction. The
chapters describing the author's earlier examination
of the various abstruser philosophic systems are rich
in comment and suggestion, and they should prove
most helpful to the tyro in need of those brief indi-
catory hints or flashes of elementary exposition and
illustration which so often are to the puzzled be-
ginner the magic key to the essential understanding
of a novel system of thought. Mr. Crozier's account
of the simple mental devices and homely compari-
sons that helped him through his first perplexities
in respect to thinkers like Kant and Emerson may
well prove serviceable to the student whose path is
blocked by like difficulties. Very delightful and
refreshingly free from stale conventions are Mr.
Crozier's chapters on men like Macaulay, De Quin-
cey, Hazlitt, Carlyle, Arnold, Addison, the exem-
plars of literary form to whom he turned succes-
sively during the period of his efforts to achieve a
style that might serve to allure the public to a con-
sideration of his ideas. The opening chapters of
the volume sketch with a light and animated touch
the story of the writer's boyhood in a Canadian
town, and introduce to us some odd, Shandean
humorists—notably a queer character called the
“Man with the Bootjack,” of whom Mr. Crozier
might make much should he care to turn his hand
to fiction. The book has a rich anecdotal and remi-
Chapters from
the inner life
of a philosopher.
niscential side. The most amusing chapter in this
kind tells of a visit to Carlyle at Chelsea, under-
taken by the author with a view of finding counsel
and solace at a time of spiritual difficulties. He
found the oracle in a bad humor, which was vented in
abuse of eminent fellow-thinkers whom Mr. Crozier
was rash enough to quote as worth consideration.
Stuart Mill, for instance, was waved aside by the
sage as “a thin, wire-drawn, sawdustish, logic-
chopping kind of body,” while Herbert Spencer was
flatly dubbed “An immeasurable ass!” As to the
latter thinker, Mr. Carlyle went on to say: “And
so ye have been meddling with Spencer, have ye?
He was brought to me by Lewes, and a more con-
ceited young man I thought I had never seen. He
seemed to think himself just a perfect Owl of
Minerva for knowledge!” and then, looking fiercely
at Mr. Crozier, “ye'll get little good out of him,
young man.” Must it not be regretfully owned
that, with all his genius, Thomas Carlyle's nature
was warped by some of the meanest, most hateful
qualities that can disfigure humanity? Mr. Crozier's
book is a rarely readable, multifarious, and nutri-
tive one of is kind; and we heartily recommend it
to our readers.
Mystery and That the late Elizabeth of Austria,
romance of the a woman whose dislike of publicity
** became latterly a sort of mania, and
who had ever loved to draw the veil of privacy alike
over her benefactions and her sorrows, should have
met death at the hands of a man whose chief motive
for his deed was a thirst for notoriety, suggests a dra-
matic contrast. Not long before the tragedy at Gen-
eva, Luccheni, the assassin, said to a friend, “I am
going to kill some person of high rank, so that I can
at last see my name in the newspapers.” This
wretched fellow seems to have been a mere “notori-
ety crank” of the dangerous sort who turn naturally
to murder as the swiftest and surest means of gaining
the distinction they crave. The web of the career of
Elizabeth of Austria was woven largely of sorrow
and romance, and the terrible closing episode of
her life was scarcely more grimly tragic than some
incidents that preceded it. Elizabeth was warm-
hearted, generous, visionary, and eccentric. She
was a rarely interesting and striking personality,
and much was written of her during her life and
immediately after her death. The two handsome
volumes now before us —“Elizabeth Empress of
Austria,” by A. De Burgh (Lippincott), and “The
Martyrdom of an Empress” (Harper), -represent,
we think, the first attempts at a full and definitive
account of her life and character. Both books are
extremely readable, and each occupies a field of its
own. Mr. De Burgh gives us a fairly written and
tolerably accurate continuous biographical sketch,
in which the profuse and well chosen illustrations
form a commendable feature. The anonymous au-
thor of “The Martyrdom of an Empress” confines
herself in the main to matter of her own personal ob-
servation and recollection. Her attitude is frankly


1899.] THE
DIAL 345
that of an adorer of her heroine, and her adoration is
clearly unfeigned and not ill-grounded. She des-
cribes herself as having been for some time the
Empress's “only confidante and truest friend,” and
readers seeking personal details and “revelations”
as to family concerns and secrets will find their
account in her book. A notable chapter is the one
wherein the writer unriddles, or professes to unriddle,
the ghastly episode at Mayerling, to which the gos-
siping world has long sought the key. The book
is picturesquely and effusively written, and bears
every evidence of originating from the fulness of
immediate knowledge. Many guesses will doubt-
less be made at the author's identity. There are a
number of pleasing illustrations, mainly portraits.
In our issue of March 1, 1898, we
reviewed at some length the initial
volume of the Earl of Suffolk and
Berkshire’s “Encyclopaedia of Sport.” The second
and concluding volume (Li–Z) of this sumptuous
work is now issued (Putnam) and it shows the same
wealth of illustration and degree of expert collabo-
ration that we praised in its predecessor. There
are twenty full-page photogravures, together with
a profusion of text-cuts; and the table of contents
shows a great array of names whose authority sports-
men throughout the English-speaking world will
recognize. Among these we may note Sir W. M.
Conway, Mr. Theodore Roosevelt, Mr. John Bick-
erdyke, Mr. Caspar Whitney, Captain Hutton, Mr.
G. E. A. Ross, Lord Dunraven, Mr. A. Rogers,
Mr. A. E. T. Watson, Mr. A. Trevor-Battye, etc.
In short, each article has been undertaken by a well-
known expert and enthusiast in the branch of sport
it treats of. Racing, Riding, Mountaineering, the
Moors, the Partridge, the Pheasant, the Red Deer,
Rowing, Yachting, Shooting, Salmon, Wrestling,
Trout, Swimming, Skating, are among the leading
themes in this volume. We were a little surprised to
find included an article on Snakes—snake-hunting
being a form of sport we should scarcely expect to
see anyone given to. But Mr. P. W. L'Estrange,
who contributes this section, writes with due enthu-
siasm of his pet pastime, and favors us with some
explicit directions how to catch and keep snakes—
which we shall be very careful not to follow. The
volumes make a good showing in their substantial
bindings of dark-green buckram; and they certainly
form a very desirable adjunct to the sportsman's
library.
The sportsman's
Encyclopædia.
Dr. Sylvanus P. Thompson has done
electric science a real service in his clear and concise
*** memoir of the great physicist Fara-
day (Macmillan). At the Royal Institution of
London, Faraday was the connecting link between
Davy and Tyndall. Beginning with chemistry, his
work was expended mainly upon studies which led
to the discovery of the fundamental principles of
the electric science of to-day. His mental vision
was singularly acute. It discriminated clearly the
facts revealed by his skilful experimentation, it per-
A forecaster of
ceived the relations between these facts and the
science then known, and by an intuition almost
divine it discerned the avenues leading to further
progress. Like our own Henry, he made his life
wholly unselfish. He bent all his energies to the
elucidation of science, and was singularly oblivious
to the seductions of wealth. For years he served
the Royal Institution for the pittance of $500 per
annum, with fuel, lights, and the house-room of two
apartments for himself and his wife. Afterwards
he was made rich with a pension of $1500 per an-
num. Although constantly making discoveries of
great commercial value, he never claimed for them
any patent rights. It cannot be said of him, as of
a famous American electrician, that the grass could
not grow in the path between his laboratory and the
patent office. The most notable of Faraday's dis-
coveries were those of terrestrial magnetism; the
para-magnetic or dia-magnetic qualities which char-
acterize and classify all substances; and the basic
principles of magneto-electric induction which fore-
shadowed all the remarkable modern developments
in dynamic electricity and the uses of electric mo-
tors. He was not forgetful of the practical utilities
of the forces he found. For example, in 1847 he
proposed to the officials of Trinity House to mark
harbor channels with incandescent lights carrying
electric platinum wire spirals, and later gave much
attention to the lighting of lighthouses by electricity.
His life furnishes a most inspiring chapter in the
history of modern science.
Scattered through the pages of his-
tory, such accounts as there are of
the city of Rouen leave little impres-
sion of its importance; brought into the compass of
a single book — as in the pretty volume in the
“Mediaeval Towns” series (Macmillan) written by
Mr. Theodore Andrea Cook, illustrated by Helen
M. James and Jane E. Cook,+ the ancient city
fairly looms. The book is interesting, and serves
to bind one's knowledge into a compact and port-
able sheaf. Rouen is recalled as the closing scene
in the tragic history of Joan of Arc. It is also the
city whence William the Bastard set forth for his
conquest of England; the home of those delicious
kings of Yvetót whom Béranger sang and Thack-
eray kept in memory; the birthplace of Corneille,
for whom a street has been named ; the place of
Lord Clarendon's death; the former residence of
Pascal, where he invented his calculating machine,
— and a long list of other matters of less interest
are to be gathered from these annals. The book is
delicately and beautifully illustrated, and well pro-
vided with maps.
Lieutenant Peary made two cam-
paigns to northern Greenland in the
seasons of ’91 – ’92 and '93–’94.
Among his associates was a hardy Norwegian youth,
Eivind Astrup, who was both a close observer, and
a ready fellow for all the peculiar conditions which
befall an explorer. This young man has given us,
A modern book
on an ancient city.
With Peary
near the Pole.


346 THE DIAL
[May 16,
in “With Peary Near the Pole” (Lippincott), a
very readable book. After briefly outlining the two
campaigns, he takes the points of interest by chap-
ters. The most instructive of these are “The Na-
tives of Smith's Sound,” “Hunting,” “Sledge Jour-
neys of the Esquimaux,” “The Esquimaux Manner
of Life, Customs, Character, Moral and Social
Circumstances,” “Intelligence and Artistic Gifts,
Religious Ideas, Customs,” etc. The Greenland dog
also claims large attention, as he is the most import-
ant factor in Esquimau-travelling. The author
vividly sets before his readers the hardships of that
frozen clime, the life of its hardy occupants, and
the struggle for existence on the part of every liv-
ing thing. The results of the expeditions were not
great, but the good done the natives, the more cer-
tain definition of some coast-line of Greenland, and
a knowledge through other eyes of the life of those
regions, fully justify the appearance of this contri-
bution of Mr. Astrup.
In the “feminine renaissance” now
upon us, one of the most interesting
features is the sort of book which is
becoming possible through the remarkable interest
taken by woman in herself and her ancestresses.
While a number of paltry novels continue to pour
out upon the world for the more belated of the
sisterhood, such a book as “The Reign of Margaret
of Denmark” (London: T. Fisher Unwin), by Mary
Hill, is surely in response to the newly awakened
sense of feminine importance. Queen Margaret
was one of those earlier women who found time
both to rock the cradle and to rule the world (to
adapt Wallace's phrase), the latter very literally so
far as the Scandinavian peninsula is concerned. She
was daughter to that King Valdemar who made a
rather famous reply to the Pope upon occasion;
wife to Hakon, King of Norway; mother to Olaf,
King of Denmark; mother by marriage to Philippa,
daughter of Henry IV. of England; conqueror of
Albert, king of Sweden, upon whose captive head
she set a fool's cap in reply to an earlier gift from
him of a stone to sharpen her scissors on ; and was
in every respect a queenly, almost a kingly, woman.
Miss Hill has brought the scanty facts concerning
her into a succinct and very entertaining narrative,
which should be exceedingly encouraging to all wo-
men of to-day who need encouragement.
A heroine
of the nations.
Matter as intimate as that which goes
to make up P.A. Sergyeenko’s “How
Count L. N. Tolstoy Lives and
Works” (Crowell) is seldom free from fulsomeness;
but if a minor modern Boswell, Sergyeenko is still
a Boswell,— moreover, he has a keen sense of hu-
mor. Pleasant anecdote enlivens his pages, and
goes far to redeem what might be called the “cant
of familiarily with the great.” Upon an occasion,
Tolstoy was recognized on the street by an admirer
not less drunk than enthusiastic. Rushing up to
the author, with rolling eye, he exclaimed, “Oh,
Iſome and
private life
of Tolstoy.
Count Tolstoy, I am your adorer and imitator!”
The irrepressible American, man and woman, visits
the Count with frequency. Two of our women
called one day to inform him that they had travelled
around the world in opposite directions, and were
now met at his house in accordance with their agree-
ment. “You might have made a better use of your
time,” said he. “There! I told you he'd say some-
thing like that,” they exclaimed to one another.
The book, for all its praise, leaves the chief of Rus-
sian writers human, which is probably all that should
be asked from it in addition to the undoubted en-
tertainment it provides. Miss Isabel F. Hapgood
furnishes the translation, and the book is attrac-
tively illustrated.
Mr. Augustine Birrell, essayist, mem-
ber of parliament, queen's counsel,
and professor of law at University
College, London, is an ideal lecturer on such a topic
as is now embodied in “The Law of Copyright”;
and his small book forms a suitable and valuable
appendix to the greater work on the same subject
from the pen of Mr. George Haven Putnam, who,
fitly, is the publisher also of Mr. Birrell's book.
The latter has given the subject a literary treat-
ment—what could deserve one more?—and is most
The law of
copyright.
amiably enthusiastic over the future. While he adds :
not a great deal to the information contained in the
larger American work, he does present another
point of view, and is exceedingly encouraging.
BRIEFER MENTION.
Mme. Blanc (Th. Bentzon) is a most industrious
maker of books, and turns to the account of “copy”
whatever sort of experience happens to come her way.
A list of no less than thirty-three volumes is now cred-
ited to her pen, the last of these being a collection of
“Notes de Voyage” concerning “Nouvelle-France et
Nouvelle-Angleterre” (Paris: C. Lévy). Three-fourths
of this readable volume are devoted to Canada, its
women, its education, and its scenery. The other fourth
is a series of rapid impressions of New England. Mme.
Blanc is always a pleasing writer, and we have read
these random sketches with much interest.
The “Text-Book of General Physics” (Ginn), pre-
pared by Drs. Charles S. Hastings and Frederick E.
Beach of Yale University, is a work of advanced grade
for the use of colleges and scientific schools. It is es-
sentially “a strictly quantitative study of various trans-
ferences and transformations of energy,” and as such,
treats the subject of mechanics in an exceptionally
thorough manner. It presupposes trigonometry but not
calculus. We note one special feature in the form of a
chapter on the limiting powers of optical instruments.
A welcome volume in the “Temple Classics” series
(Macmillan) is that containing the “Shorter Poems” of
Shelley, edited by Mr. H. Buxton Forman. The vol.
ume includes only what may be called the longest of
Shelley's shorter poems, fifteen or sixteen in all; the
short lyrics being (presumably) reserved for a separate
volume.


1899.] THE
DIAL 847
LITERARY NOTES.
“An Oral Arithmetic,” by Mr. J. M. White, is just
published by the American Book Co.
“Nature Study for Grammar Grades” by Mr. Wilbur
S. Jackman, is a recent publication of the Macmillan Co.
The American Book Co. publish a new edition of
“The Guyot Geographical Reader and Primer,” by
Mrs. Mary Howe Smith Pratt.
The “Bacchae" of Euripides, text and translation
into English verse, edited by Professor Alexander Kerr,
is published by Messrs. Ginn & Co.
To the series of small books called “History for
Young Readers” (Appleton), a volume on “Spain,” by
Mr. Frederick A. Ober, has just been added.
Mr. Hamlin Garland’s “Rose of Dutcher's Coolly”
is now published by the Macmillan Co., from whom
we have just received a tasteful new edition of the
novel.
Dr. B. A. Hinsdale's well-authenticated work on
“The Old Northwest,” issued several years ago, is to
appear in a new and revised edition from the press of
Messrs. Silver, Burdett & Co.
Messrs. Eldredge & Brother publish a revised edi-
tion of the text-book by John S. Hart, entitled “A
Manual of Composition and Rhetoric.” The revision
has been made by Professor James Morgan Hart.
Professor N. P. Gilman, whose book on “Profit Shar-
ing” appeared a few years ago, is at work on a related
volume to be issued in the Fall by Messrs. Houghton,
Mifflin & Co. with the title “A Dividend to Labor.”
The phenomenal success of “Mr. Dooley” justifies
his publishers (Messrs. Small, Maynard & Co.) in an-
nouncing a new book by him, “Mr. Dooley in the Hearts
of his Countrymen,” to be published in a few months.
His first book, “Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War,” has,
it is said, reached a sale of fifty thousand copies.
The Chautauqua Assembly announcements for 1899
include a number of courses in literature, among them
being lectures by Professor C. T. Winchester of Wes-
leyan University; Professor Alce& Fortier of Tulane
University; and Mr. Walter H. Page, the editor of the
“Atlantic Monthly,” who will treat “The Practical As-
pects of Literature.”
A call has been issued for the organization of an
Illinois Historical Society, an institution which is emi-
nently desirable. A preliminary meeting of those inter-
ested will be held at the University of Illinois, on the
nineteenth of this month, and all who wish to do so are
invited to attend. A special rate of one fare for the
round trip to Champaign can be had from all points in
the State. -
The Superintendent of Public Schools in Chicago has,
it is stated by the daily press, instructed the school
principals to teach their pupils that “thru" spells
through, “altho” spells although, and other philological
vagaries. If there are any “fine old educational mas-
todons” in our School Board, this seems to be a case
where the mastodontic foot should be put down, and
put down hard.
A valuable addition to American bibliography is fur-
nished in the new Catalogue of Authors whose works
are published by Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Bos-
ton. It includes the best of our native writers of the
century, and illustrates the supremacy of this house in
American literature. The catalogue, with more than
two hundred pages, well printed and neatly bound in
boards, gives brief biographical sketches of the authors,
with the titles of their books and the year of their pub-
lication. Great care has been taken to secure accuracy
and precision of statement. The frontispiece contains
a photogravure of a group of six great American authors
—Longfellow, Emerson, Hawthorne, Whittier, Holmes,
and Lowell.
Heretofore there has been but one scientific journal
in the world devoted to the prevention and cure of tuber-
culosis; this was published at Paris. Another of like
character has now been started in this country, at Ashe-
ville, N. C. It is a well-printed quarterly, with Dr.
Karl von Ruck, a prominent specialist, as editor, and
Mr. A. H. McQuilkin, well and favorably known in
Chicago, as publisher.
It is expected that the “War of the Rebellion —
Record of the Union and Confederate Armies,” that
most elaborate of our Government publications, will be
completed in little over a year. Begun in 1874, the
work has gone deliberately on, and will represent, when
completed, an outlay of nearly three millions of dollars.
The total number of volumes will be one hundred and
twenty-nine, of which only about fifteen are yet un-
printed or undistributed.
The University of Wisconsin has hitherto had no
summer session, although Madison has been a favorite
meeting-place for institutions of the Chautauqua type.
The University now announces a summer school of six
weeks’ duration, beginning July 3, 1899. The courses
cover all the principal departments, and are fully
manned by resident and non-resident lecturers. Credit
toward degrees will be given for work done at this ses-
sion, just as has been the case from the start with the
University of Chicago, of whose example the sister insti-
tution is evidently emulous.
Some curious questions regarding the rights of liter-
ary property are raised by a suit against Messrs. G. P.
Putnam's Sons, brought by Mr. Rudyard Kipling, who
appears to have quite regained his vigorous health. It
seems that the firm named lately purchased from various
American publishers of Mr. Kipling's works some copies
of these books in sheets, which they then bound up in
their own styles of covers and offered for sale in their
retail store in complete sets. So far, there was nothing
unusual in this, the re-binding of books being common
in the retail trade, and the sheets purchased yielding
Mr. Kipling, of course, whatever royalty was fixed be-
tween him and his authorized publishers who sold the
sheets to the Messrs. Putnam. There was thus evidently
no intention to interfere with the author's rights of roy-
alty, since he was sure of his legal percentages, no mat-
ter in what form the works were sold. But in re-binding
the volumes the Messrs. Putnam had given the set the
name of “ Brushwood edition,” and used decorations
which are claimed to be in the nature of trade-marks;
and here the legal rights are not so easily determinable.
A further grievance is the inclusion, in this alleged “edi-
tion,” of matter which Mr. Kipling repudiates; and the
arrangement of the pieces and the general scheme he
regards as unauthorized and injurious. The develop-
ments of the suit will be watched with much interest.
It is but fair to add that the defendants have a reputa-
tion for punctiliousness in their regard for the rights of
authors as well as for the courtesies of the trade; and
any injury sustained by Mr. Kipling through them will
be felt to be an inadvertence rather than a deliberate
or conscious attempt at wrong.


348
[May 16,
THE DIAL
LIST OF NEW BOOKS.
[The following list, containing 84 titles, includes books
received by THE DIAL since its last issue.]
BIOGRAPHY AND MEMOIRS.
Oliver Cromwell: A History. By Samuel Harden Church,
Litt.D. “Commemoration” edition: illus. in photogra-
vure, large 8vo, gilt top, uncut, pp. 550. G. P. Putnam's
Sons. $6. net.
Story of the Princess des Ursins in Spain (Camarera-
Mayor). By Constance Hill. Illus., 8vo, gilt top, uncut,
pp. 256. R. H. Russell. $1.75.
Thaddeus Stevens. By Samuel W. McCall. 16mo, gilt top,
pp. 369. “American Statesmen.” Houghton, Mifflin &
Co. $1.25.
HISTORY.
Austria. By Sidney Whitman, with the collaboration of
J. R. McIlraith. Illus., 12mo, pp. 407. “Story of the
Nations.” G. P. Putnam's Sons. $1.50.
History up to Date: A Concise Account of the War of 1898.
By William A. Johnston. Illus., 12mo, uncut, pp. 258.
A. S. Barnes & Co. $1.50.
Germany: Her People and their Story. By Augusta Hale
Gifford. Illus., 8vo, gilt top, uncut, pp. 604. Lothrop
Publishing Co. $1.75.
GENERAL LITERATURE.
A Literary History of Ireland. From the Earliest Times
to the Present Day. By Douglas Hyde, LL.D. With
frontispiece, 8vo, gilt top, uncut, pp. 654. “Library of
Literary History.” Charles Scribner's Sons. $4.
Retrospects and Prospects: Descriptive and Historical
Essays. By Sidney Lanier. 12mo, pp. 228. Charles
Scribner's Sons. $1.50.
Godfrida: A Play in Four Acts. By John Davidson. 16mo,
uncut, pp. 123. John Lane. $1.50.
Pan and the Young Shepherd: A Pastoral in Two Acts.
Fºur- Hewlett. 12mo, uncut, pp. 140. John Lane.
Heart of Man. By George Edward Woodberry.
uncut, pp. 329. Macmillan Co. $1.50.
The Writings of James Monroe. Edited by Stanislaus
Murray Hamilton. Vol. II., 1794–1796. Large 8vo, gilt
top, uncut, pp. 494. G. P. Putnam's Sons. $5.
The Law's Lumber Room. By Francis Watt.
series; 16mo, uncut, pp. 202. John Lane. $1.50.
The Penalties of Taste, and Other Essays. By Norman
Bridge. 12mo, gilt top, uncut, pp. 164. H. S. Stone & Co.
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THE
DIAL
3 &tmi-ſāonthlg 3ournal of 3Littrarg Criticism, HBigtuggion, amb Information.
No. 311. JUNE 1, 1899. Vol. XXVI.
CONTENTS.
Pagº
AN AMERICAN ACADEMY . . . . . . . . . .359
TWO ORDERS OF CRITICS. Charles Leonard
Moore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 360
COMMUNICATIONS . . . . . . 362
A Philistine View of Poetry. Wallace Rice.
Is the “Man-Poet” Passing? S. E. B.
The Right of Free Speech. W. H. Johnson.
KNAPP'S LIFE OF GEORGE BORROW. E. G. J. 363
LOWELL AND HIS FRIENDS. Tuley Francis
Huntington . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 367
FOLK-LORE TALES OF AMERICAN INDIANS.
Frederic Starr . . . . . . . . . . . 370
THE NEW EAST AND THE NEW SOUTH OF
THE OLD WORLD. Hiram M. Stanley . . . 370
Diósy's The New Far East.— Mrs. Fraser's Letters
from Japan. — Brown's On the South African Fron-
tier. — Ansorge's Under the African Sun. — Miss
Kingsley's West African Studies.
BRIEFS ON NEW BOOKS . . . . . . . . . . 373
Petrarch as scholar and man of letters. — Letters of
18th century essayists.-Memoirs of an English gen-
tleman and scholar.—Some American men of letters.
– Some famous old English book auctions. – A
famous Frenchwoman at the court of Spain.-Heroes
of the U.S. Navy.—Old-time criticism.—The latest
of the plays of H. A. Jones.—A classic of fresh-
water ichthyology. -
BRIEFER MENTION . . .
LITERARY NOTES . . .
TOPICS IN LEADING PERIODICALS . . . . . 377
LIST OF NEW BOOKS . . . . . . . . . . . 378
. . . 376
. . . . . . 377
AN AMERICAN ACADEMY.
What we once called “the Academy game”
has of late been going merrily on in the pages
of “Literature" — that is, in the American
edition thereof— under the genial direction of
Mr. John Kendrick Bangs, and it seems to be
worth while to announce the outcome, and point
two or three of the more obvious morals of this
and other similar plans for organizing a body
of “immortals” on our own side of the Atlan-
tic. It is difficult for minds of a certain class
to escape from the obsession of this idea. That
it has worked well in France is not seriously
to be disputed, in spite of sarcasms about the
“forty-first armchair,” and the unpleasant part
played by intrigue and wire-pulling in filling
the vacant seats. The French Forty have, on
the whole, always constituted a distinguished
body of thinkers and men of letters. If their
number has failed to include, now and then,
some writer who was one of the chief intellec-
tual forces of his time, it has rarely given place
to a writer who was either a charlatan or a
nonentity. If it has not always risen to the
height of its opportunities, at least it has not,
on the other hand, fallen far below them.
The secret of this relative and considerable
success in bodying forth, for two centuries and
a half, the fine idea of Richelieu, is due to the
fact that popular suffrage has had next to
nothing to do with the selection of academi-
cians. It also suggests the reason why an
American Academy would not be likely to be
a body truly representative of American cul-
ture. In other words, our democracy is still
far from having learned the lesson that it is a
farcical proceeding to settle some questions by
popular vote, and we cannot imagine any plan
of organization likely to win general accept-
ance which should not be based, in consider-
able measure, upon the suffrages of more people
than could possibly be expected to act intelli-
gently in so delicate a matter.
Even the body of readers gathered by so
distinctly bookish a periodical as “Literature”
displays little judgment in its choice, as may
be seen by an inspection of the following list of
names, the outcome of a ballot extending over
several weeks.
W. D. Howells . . . . 84 || George W. Cable . . 45
John Fiske . . . . . 82 Charles Dudley Warner. 43
Mark Twain . . . . . 80 | Donald G. Mitchell . 36
Thomas Bailey Aldrich .. 74 | Henry Van Dyke . . . 36
Frank R. Stockton . . 59 || James Whitcomb Riley .. 36
Henry James . . . . 56 Richard Henry Stoddard 34
S. Weir Mitchell . . . 51 | Miss Wilkins . . 27
Bret Harte . . . . 51 | Margaret Deland . 21
John Burroughs' - - Richard Harding Davis . 19.
Edmund C. Stedman . Bronson Howard . 11
Since each participant in this ballot voted for
ten persons, and the total number of votes is
well within one thousand, we are safe in assum-
ing that about one hundred voters are repre-
sented. It is a small number, no doubt, but
little significance need be attached to that fact,
for had the number of voters been ten or a hun-
dred times as great, we doubt if the result would
have been essentially different from that now
. 49
. 46


360
[June 1,
THE DIAL
recorded. And a glance at that result is enough
to show its critical worthlessness.
To substantiate this judgment, let us exam-
ine the list somewhat in detail. While the
claim that Mr. Howells is our foremost man of
letters is not far astray, if at all, it may yet be
reasonably urged that Mr. Stedman, who is at
once our leading poet and our leading critic, is
even better entitled to head the list. And the
place of Mr. Stoddard should at least be very
near the head. The critical ineptitude that
could set Mr. Riley above Mr. Stoddard, or set
him anywhere in such a list of twenty, is alone
sufficient to prove our case. And Mr. Stockton,
delightful as is his gift of whimsical humor, is
probably as much surprised as any of his read-
ers to find himself outranking Mr. James, Mr.
Harte, and Mr. Stedman, to say nothing of
half a dozen others. And Mr. Davis, what on
earth is he doing in this gallery” Such ab-
surdities as these, and others almost equally
glaring, make the list too freakish to deserve
serious attention.
For one reason, however, not yet adduced, we
wish to take it seriously for a moment. Three-
fourths of the names selected are of poets and
novelists; to their company being admitted, by
way of makeweight, one historian, one natural-
ist, one old-fashioned essayist, one clergyman of
letters, and one dramatist. Considered merely
as a list of poets and novelists, it is conspicu-
ously defective, for Mr. Gilder, Mr. Eggleston,
Mr. Crawford, Miss Murfree, and Miss
Thomas, at least, perhaps several others, count
for more than some of the writers included.
But the fatal defect of the list, of course, is to be
found in its failure to include some of the most
honored men in American letters, simply be-
cause they are not primarily novelists or poets.
We scan the list in vain for the two deans of
our literary guild, Dr. Hale and Colonel Hig-
ginson; we note with absolute amazement the
absence of the most typical academician we
have, Mr. Charles Eliot Norton. It is for
such reasons, rather than for any vagaries of
ranking, that the list is so distinct an illustra-
tion of what the membership of our Academy
ought not to be.
They do these things much better in the home
of academies. A few weeks ago, the ranks of
the French Forty were complete, a condition
which had not previously obtained for more
than a score of years. A classification of the
members showed the following results: eight
historians, five each of the classes of politicians,
professors, dramatists, and novelists, four poets,
two critics, two journalists, one ecclesiastic, one
lawyer, one sculptor, and one scientist; in a
word, nine novelists and poets, thirty-one rep-
resentatives of other types of intellectual dis-
tinction. This tells the whole story. We might
find it difficult to honor so many politicians
and dramatists, but our Academy, constituted
in the same spirit, would find places for such
men as Senator Hoar, Professor William James,
Mr. E. L. Godkin, Bishop Potter, and Mr. St.
Gaudens,—to take typical examples of the five
classes absolutely ignored in the list we have
been considering. It is because no form of
popular vote would ever, by any possibility,
single out the men most deserving of this sort
of distinction that the plébiscite Academy can
never be anything but a rather bad jest.
TWO ORDERS OF CRITICS.
Keats said that one of the three things his time
afforded for rejoicing was Hazlitt's depth of taste.
In the enunciation of general principles, the illum-
ination of dark passages of the mind, Keats was
himself a better critic than Hazlitt. The sense of
pleasure in literature and art, and the expression of
it, is the marked thing in Hazlitt; the attempt to
get at the meaning and underlying principles of
poetry, the characteristic of Keats. Sir Richard
Steele's saying, that it was a great service one man
did another to tell him the manner of his being
pleased, about indicates Hazlitt's achievement. We
might call this method of criticism the criticism of
enjoyment; the other, the criticism of definition.
When Hazlitt writes a sparkling and vivacious
character of Millamant, when Walter Pater re-
paints in words a picture of Leonardo, when Ste.
Beuve projects on his pages the personalities of
Cowper or Guerin, they each and all of them ex-
ercise a minor sort of creative art. They are poets
themselves—or the satellites of poets. They reflect
a light and heat from their principals, though they
have little power or vitality of their own. But
when Aristotle takes his compasses and fixes the
bounds of the different kinds of poetry; when
Lessing defines the provinces of poetry, painting,
and sculpture; when Coleridge gives us the disting.
tion between imagination and fancy; or when Ar.
nold decomposes diction and provides such phrases
as “natural magic” or “the grand style” to denote
different qualities of expression, we are confronted
by another order of critical talent, a kind which
has none of the half-creative warmth of the first,
none of its engaging sympathy, but which, never-
theless, is probably more useful and more permanent.
The one kind of criticism is qualified by depth of
taste; the other, by lucidity of reason.
I am very far from denying reasoned judgment
to Hazlitt, or Pater, or Ste. Beuve, or to critics who


1899.] THE
IXIAL 361
share their gifts. They have enough of it to set up
whole colleges. But it is, I think, a secondary thing
with them. The main appeal with them is to taste,
to sympathy. They deal with particulars rather
than with generals. They are sensitively made to
respond to excellence in special shapes. They viv-
idly realize, and compel us to realize, concrete mani-
festations of beauty or greatness. But we have to
take them on faith; their power over us is as of a
laying on of hands. Hazlitt is perhaps the most
vivid and various of English Essayists. He said of
himself that nothing but abstract ideas made any
impression on him; but surely he was mistaken
here. What impressed him most was that figured
world existent in books and pictures. No one ever
had a deeper sense of its reality. But when Haz-
litt tries to think, he is, if not a child, at least a
very boyish philosopher. No single generalization
of his is a lamp for one's private feet or a star to
pilot the world. I must confess to a very moderate
appetite for Pater's books. His style—so sweet, so
cloying, so sticky—is not for me. Yet he has sub-
tle gifts of discrimination and definition. His re-
marks as to the architectural necessities of style,
and about the quality of soul in style, are very ad-
mirably put, if they are not entirely new. And
there is a web of close reasoning in all his works.
But his force is elsewhere than in analysis. He is
a half artist, a half creator. He tries to reproduce
in prose the cadences of the verse he loves, and he
tries to re-create with words the forms and colors of
the statues and paintings that are ever hovering in
his eye. Ste. Beuve is a library, and to dismiss
him in a sentence is absurd. Yet I believe his weak-
ness is akin to that of the two critics I have dis-
cussed. Dealing with particulars, he is always
sound; dealing with generals, he is usually vague
and unsatisfactory. His basis is the shifting un-
certain one of taste. We are at sea with him. Every
direction is a road, and one is as good as another.
His definition of a classic is a good example of his
strength and weakness. It is admirably thought out
on the side of order, elegance, and art; it fails en-
tirely on the side of power, inspiration, and person-
ality. It seems expressly framed to exclude the
great books of the Bible, Shakespeare, and most of
the Greeks. A definition is, as it were, a fence.
A fence is certainly at fault when it leaves almost
everything of value outside of it.
The criticism of taste, of enjoyment, is a great
breeder of fads and fancies and errors; but it is also
a propagator of enthusiasms. It seizes upon some
partial truth and makes a banner of it, and calls the
cohorts of literature to its back to press to victory.
The armed camp of opposition awakes, and the strife
is on that keeps the world of ideas from stagnating.
The motto on the flag changes every decade: now
it is the revival of the classics; now the exploitation
of the naive and the new ; now realism; now roman-
ticism. Great minds liberate themselves in the
struggle, and do work which probably bears little
relation to the theories on which it was founded.
The abstract definitions and distinctions of the other
kind of criticism do not in any similar degree con-
tribute to human sociability or literary production.
When once propounded they are almost as self-
evident as the axioms of mathematics. Like mathe-
matical axioms, also, they are apt to be brief, and not
to depend on literary style for their value. Analyt-
ical treatises of extent of course exist, such as the
Poetics of Aristotle, the Laokočn of Lessing, and
the aesthetic systems fathered by nearly every great
German philosopher. But pretty nearly all of
these are represented to the world by a few phrases
or distinctions which have the validity of laws. Such
are the Unities of Aristotle, at least the unity of
action; Lessing's discovery that poetry is a time-
art, and painting and sculpture are space-arts, with
the corollary that description is not a main business
of poetry; Schiller's theory of the play origin or
nature of art; and so forth. Pregnant phrases
and sentences which are criticisms of definition have
been dropped by great writers of all kinds. Such
authors find their enjoyment in original work, and
criticism for them is not an affair of pleasure or
gratified taste, but a problem of guiding principles.
Shakespeare's “The lunatic, the lover, and the
poet” is a criticism of definition. So is Lord
Bacon's description of “historians, compilers, and
critics” as “takers of second prizes.” Shelley's asser-
tion that “poets are the unacknowledged legislators
of the world” is one; and so is De Quincey's sep-
aration of the literature of knowledge and the lit-
erature of power. Perhaps the best recent criticism
of definition is Mr. Theodore Watts-Dunton's class-
ification of poets as those of Relative and of Absolute
Vision. Perhaps this distinction derives from Cole-
ridge's eternal object and subject, and it may draw
something from that famous passage in the “Mod-
ern Painters” where Ruskin contrasts the sculptor
who carved the griffin he had seen with the other
sculptor who merely carved a griffin as he thought
it ought to be. But Mr. Watts-Dunton's distinction
is not merely profound—it is a good working one.
It may be objected that the criticism of definition
has covered the whole ground; that, like mathe-
matics or logic, it is nearly a finished business. But
it has to deal with a subject-matter—the produc-
tions of the human spirit, infinitely more varied than
numbers or the relations of sentences. And, besides,
new applications of old principles are always in
order. We moderns call ourselves the heirs of the
ages; and in a measure and in a material way we
are so. We have huge accumulations of books, and
art treasures, and the like. But all these posses-
sions are not in any single man's head, still less in
the general mind. Every generation comes forward
full of bounce and confidence, and with an unim-
paired fund of original ignorance. It does not know
anything about literature or art, but it knows what
it likes. It has a taste, the taste of the age. It is
a serious objection to the theories of heredity and
evolution, that the idea of excellence is not progres-
sive in the human mind. Have our grandfathers


362
[June 1,
THE DIAL
labored for nothing, that our heads are so unfur-
nished? Sir Francis Galton says, if I remember
rightly, that as the modern Englishman is to the
Hottentot so was the Athenian of the best period to
the modern Englishman. Man's faculty of forget-
ting is as miraculous as his gift of memory. And
so it happens that in art and literature and criticism
we are all the time beginning anew. This newness
of impulse and experience is a fine thing. In bustle
and change is production. The literature of every
age must be a record of what that age has experi-
enced, not necessarily in action alone, but in thought
and fancy. Yet there are things also which are
enduring, and the best criticism will not allow the
taste of the age to be imposed upon it, but will rather
seek to impose upon the age the long-tested precepts
fection.
of perfectio CHARLEs LEONARD MooRE.
COMMUNICATIONS.
A PHILISTINE VIEW OF POETRY.
(To the Editor of THE DIAL.)
How to reply to the “Philister” who in your last issue
attacks the manhood of the poet, and be both truthful
and parliamentary at the same time, is not an easy mat-
ter, so wholly unfounded is every leading statement he
makes. With prefatory apologies for a series of flat
contradictions, let me then say: That the reviewer of
recently published verse in “The Nation” should find
better poems from women than from men is surprising
—and purely adventitious. It is so unusual that it
probably never happened before, and it may never hap-
pen again. There are now an average of ten volumes
of original verse being published every week in the En-
glish-speaking world—about five hundred every year.
Of these, not less than fifty deserve to be read by all
who know and love literature in its highest form of ex-
pression; and of these fifty, about forty are written by
men. Women are not holding their own in poetical ex-
pression—are making nothing like the impression in
poetry that they are making in almost every other
department of the world of letters, particularly in
romance and essay writing. Any magazine—almost
any newspaper—should convince “Philister” that there
were never so many persons struggling for poetic fame,
and that the proportion of men among them was never
so large as now. It is true that the poetry of most men
does not “pay” in the monetary sense; but that is an
advantage which almost no other department of litera-
ture enjoys, and its effects are rather favorable than
otherwise, as the growing body of beautiful English
verse abundantly attests.
The notion that there is “something unmanly, or un-
masculine, in the make-up of a poet” is neither “old,”
“lurking,” nor “popular,” nor is it “gaining ground.”
There is a feeling among English-speaking persons
whose associations are remote from cultivated society
that all artists are in some way reprehensible; but these
folk set all forms of enjoyment for enjoyment's sake in
the same category, notably athletic exercise. This feel-
ing, which is no older than puritanism, is frowned upon
by everyone pretending to civilization, and is losing
ground along with other forms of illiteracy. There has
never been a time, from Homer to Browning and Tenny-
son, when the poet was not worshipped—in the old sense
of the word — by intellect and cultivation; and though
we are to-day in a sort of poetical interregnum, many
men now writing will attain undoubted worship of the
same sort. Mr. Edmund Clarence Stedman, one of the
most respected men of business in Wall street, and a
manly and virile writer of manly and virile poems (and
essays as well), had occasion to say a few months ago
that many Americans who have put forth poems within
the last fifteen years would have achieved eminence
had they written earlier; Mr. J. Churton Collins has
said the same for the Englishman, and Mr. William
Sharp for the Celt: and it is a truism to anyone who
knows contemporaneous verse. This verse is conspic-
uously robust; and one must have queer notions of ef-
feminacy who thinks Tennyson, Browning, Meredith,
Lowell, Stedman, Stoddard, and a score more of our
modern “man-poets,” are “effeminate”! There are
even in your correspondent's own Kansas City a number
of men now striving earnestly and manfully for poetic
reputation; and it is conceivable that the residents of
that Missouri metropolis might be as willing to go down
to fame as the townsmen of these poets, as — to draw an
example from “practical” life — of those virile men of
business who canned “roast” beef for the American
soldiers during the recent war.
Chicago, May 20, 1899.
WALLACE RICE.
IS THE **MAN-POET** PASSING P
(To the Editor of THE DIAL.)
I am not a poet nor the son of a poet, so that any
remarks that follow are not prompted by the “pinch of
the shoe.” Your contributor, in his communication (is-
sue of May 16) on “The Passing of the Man-Poet,”
seems for some reason to have swung to an extreme of
cynicism, and it occurred to me that possibly the “pineh”
was on the foot of “Philister” himself. But the West-
ern city from which he writes would hardly be favor-
able to the production of “a big, brawny, bearded he-
creature like Tennyson . . . chirping about “Airy, fairy
Lilian’”; no, that would be expecting too much. Per-
haps we should not be disappointed if we sought there
for men of the class to which “Mr. Dooley” belongs:
men who represent the contributor's idea of the incar-
nation of the practical tendencies of our age; men who
can talk politics over the bar, and make occasional re-
marks that are commented upon by even “Cousin
George” Dewey. Yes, fin de siècle common-sense, and
plenty of it—the kind that thinks poetry should be
given over to women because of a lurking popular no-
tion that “there is something unmanly, or unmasculine,
in the make-up of a poet”—such common-sense is doubt-
less what would most richly reward a searcher in that
city. Your contributor would have us believe that men,
manly men, in this age must yield to vulgar notions about
matters of art. Granting for a moment that this notion
about poets has a real existence, is it not true that there
is a popular notion about painters and artists in general
similar to that about poets? Suppose that this lurking
popular notion were allowed to grow into a prejudice
strong enough to put down men who are burning with
the divine flame of artistic inspiration: we should cer-
tainly have an age prosaic indeed. But this is just what
“Philister” says we are now coming to — except for the
poetry of women. Though it could be done, it is not
our purpose to take the time and space to produce an


1899.]
363
THE TOIAL
array of facts showing that some of the best poetry of
the age is written by men; manly men, who are not
ashamed that they write poetry. The opinion of the
reviewer in “The Nation” is the opinion of an individual
who had a pile of books on his table, among which (and
he probably did not read all of them) he thought the best
parts were written by women; he is seconded in his opin-
ion by “Philister”: two opinions make the passing of the
man-poet ! In all previous literature, two great, really
great, women-poets have appeared: Sappho and Mrs.
Browning. The great men-poets are almost numberless.
Is the ratio to be reversed at once 2
But possibly your contributor did not intend his com-
munication to be taken seriously. If he did not, he has
allowed his cynicism to carry him too far. He not only
does not encourage the writing of poetry by men, but
he contemptuously discourages it; and he discourages
not only the writing of poetry, but indirectly all forms
of artistic endeavor that do not exactly coincide with
popular notions. What cynics say must usually be taken
with due allowance for the cynical mood. And so we
should doubtless take what is said by “Philister.”
. E. B.
Russellville, Ky., May 19, 1899. S
THE RIGHT OF FREE SPEECH.
(To the Editor of THE DIAL.)
I wish with all my heart to congratulate THE DIAL
on its spirited defense of the genuine American prin-
ciple of freedom of speech. The Republic of Letters
has no room for the official censor, and to be safe within
its own domain it must at all times maintain its Monroe
Doctrine of letters, forbidding the encroachment of the
monarchical principle of censorship even upon the neigh-
boring realm of political discussion. The man who does
not see that the attack upon Mr. Atkinson threatens
literature itself has simply failed to follow the matter
to its logical end. One of the great powers across the
sea has been imprisoning men of the type of Mr. Atkin-
son about as fast as they have appeared during recent
years, but it has also included men of the type of the
author of “Mr. Dooley.” Granting the premises on
which it imprisons the one, it is perfectly logical in
including the other. Our own authorities stop where
they do, not because they have a logical stopping-place,
but because they fear the people at the polls. They
will go further if the people show themselves satisfied
with the first step. It has already been hinted from
Washington that the same censorship might be applied
at home, if deemed desirable in the future, and that
Mr. Atkinson might possibly be subjected to a criminal
prosecution. Now, with conditions as they are, the
press is liable to bring forth at any time a comedy on
some such theme as “The Genesis of an Empire,” before
the effective sarcasm of which the heat of the authori-
ties would wax much greater than before the Massa-
chusetts pamphleteer. The material is at hand for such
a play, and every city of size in the Union would have
a fine audience at hand for it. If it should come, would
it be prohibited as seditious?
The country is strong enough, and ought to be intel-
ligent enough, to rise above persecution for opinion's
sake, whether that persecution be through the press and
platform, or the Postoffice Department and the Federal
courts. Imperialism can furnish no satisfactory return
for the sacrifice of the principles of free speech.
W. H. Johnson.
Granville, Ohio, May 23, 1899.
Čbe #tto $ochs.
KNAPP'S LIFE OF GEORGE BORROW.”
In point of documental richness, Dr. Knapp's
Life of that eccentric man and original writer,
George Borrow, should prove a pleasant sur-
prise to even sanguine Borrovians. So far as
we now know, the only noteworthy omission in
this kind is the sheaf of newly discovered let-
ters of Borrow to the Bible Society; and one is
almost glad, out of sympathy with Dr. Knapp,
who has been at such immense pains to ferret
out every shred and scrap of writing necessary
to the completeness of his collection, to learn
that the new “find" is of no special intrinsic
importance. Dr. Knapp's plan has been to
allow the original writings to speak for them-
selves wherever feasible. His book may there-
fore be defined as in the main a mosaic of
documents relating to Borrow, so arranged,
explained and supplemented as to give the care-
ful reader a tolerably clear idea of what the
real Borrow really was and did. Not that Dr.
Knapp has essayed the impossible task of re-
ducing George Borrow to the humdrum level
of commonplace humanity, or the ungrateful
one of proving him to have been, for all his
mystic assumptions and bravura airs, a mere
poseur and exploiter of human gullibility, of
the Cagliostro or George Psalmanazar stripe.
On the contrary, Dr. Knapp inclines to take
Borrow, except as to his linguistic attainments,
pretty much at his own valuation. “Laven-
gro” he accepts as substantially an autobiog-
raphy — which of course it is, although, as
Borrow put it, “in Robinson Crusoe style.”
Perhaps we shall not go far wrong if we regard
that extraordinary book, and its sequel “Ro-
many Rye,” as reflecting the life and adven-
tures of George Borrow as seen through the
prism of George Borrow's imagination. Let
us glance at this remarkable life in outline,
with the aid of the dry light of Dr. Knapp's
researches.
George Henry Borrow, born at East Dere-
ham, Norfolk, July 5, 1803, was the younger
son of Captain Thomas Borrow, an athletic
Cornishman of good family, and Ann Perfre-
ment, a Norfolk woman of French Huguenot
extraction. Ann Perfrement, prior to her mar-
riage, was an actress of small parts at Dereham
* LIFE, WRITINGs, AND Cork Espond ENCE of GEORGE
Borrow (1803–1881). By William I. Knapp, Ph.D. In two
volumes. Illustrated. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.


364
[June 1,
THE DIAL
Theatre. Captain Borrow rose from the ranks.
He had “taken the Queen's shilling” to evade
arrest as ringleader and chief combatant in a
rural riot, in the course of which he had sig-
malized his known prowess by knocking down
a score or so of people, including a peace offi-
cer. Captain Borrow's puissant fists were
much in evidence throughout his career. He
won fame as the conqueror of the celebrated
bruiser, “Big Ben,” in a Homeric combat in
Hyde Park; and he must have wept for joy
to hear of his son's immortal victory over the
“Flaming Tinman.” These facts about the elder
Borrow are noted as partly accounting for the
pugilistic bent of his gifted son, who was much
given to the ways and company of “the fancy,”
who attended many a “merry mill” in the
days of his vagrom youth, who celebrated in
manly prose the deeds of Spring, Cribb, Oli-
ver, Painter, and Molineaux, and who was him-
self, in his prime, second to few men in England
in the use of nature's weapons. “Don Jorge”
(who must have distributed “apostolic blows
and knocks” almost as freely as Bibles in
Spain) thus summed up in rhyme his youthful
gifts and attainments:
“A lad who twenty tongues can talk,
And sixty miles a day can walk;
Drink at a draught a pint of rum,
And then be neither sick nor dumb;
Can tune a song or make a verse,
And deeds of Northern kings rehearse;
Who never will forsake his friend
While he his bony fist can bend;
And, though averse to brawl and strife,
Will fight a Dutchman with a knife;
Oh, that is just the lad for me,
And such is honest six-foot-three.”
George Borrow's regular schooling (there
was not much of it) was had at Edinburgh
High School, and latterly at Norwich Gram-
mar School, where he slighted his set tasks,
and plunged ardently into the study of the Ro-
mance languages under such chance tutorship
as offered itself. At Norwich he led an irreg.
ular life, quite in the Lavengro way, consorting
much with bruisers, strollers, horse-dealers, and
other loose fish, including Thurtell, who after.
wards murdered William Weare,” and was
hanged at Hertford in 1824, as Borrow's other
crony, David Haggart, had been hanged at
Edinburgh in 1821. Queer beginnings these
for the future translator and disseminator of
the Gospel ! It is difficult to acquit young
Borrow of a taste for bad, or at least loose,
*“His throat they cut from ear to ear
His brains they battered in ;
His name was Mr. William Weare,
He lived in Lyon's Inn.”— Old Song.
company, though in his case it sprang from an
overflow of animal vigor and an inborn impa-
tience of restraint and convention. High-
mettled youth is apt to confound the lawless
and vicious with the spirited and romantic, until
experience and reflection come to its aid. No
man could be morally sounder at the core than
was George Borrow ; and, after all, these grimy
doings and grimier companionships of his un-
regenerate youth were grist for the mill of the
future Lavengro. What Borrovian regrets
them 2 Another of Borrow's Norwich friends
was scholarly, free-thinking, loose-living Will-
iam Taylor, whose precept and example did
him no good. At Norwich, too, his old gypsy
friend Jasper Petulengro (now “orphaned ”
through the transportation of his worthy pa-
rents) again turned up; and many and weird
were the dialogues of the twain on lonely
Mousehold Heath, where the wind blew, and
the stars shone, and “Mr. Petulengro" devel-
oped his truly great theory of the beauty and
the delight of life.
In 1819 Borrow was articled for five years
to a firm of solicitors at Norwich, with whom
he, naturally, learned little law, and a vast
amount of matter that had nothing at all to do
with law. He had formerly studied Latin,
Greek, Irish, French, Italian, Spanish, and
English-Gypsy; he now began Welsh, Danish,
German, Hebrew, Arabic, Gaelic, and Arme-
nian — as if he meant to rise superior to the
curse of the builders of Babel. It is needless
to say that Borrow's knowledge of tongues was
always and at best wide rather than deep. In
point of quantity he was, as Dr. Knapp says,
“prodigious ” (at the age of twenty he is re-
ported to have “translated with facility and
elegance twenty different languages”), and, as
to quality, he was undoubtedly considerably
more than the mere smatterer. But it is not
on his scholarship, but on his remarkable style
as a writer of English prose from 1841 to 1862,
that his reputation rests.
In 1821 Borrow met Sir John Bowring, then
engaged in translating his way into public office
and emoluments, and at once “fell into the
translation snare.” Bowring, a shrewd man,
regarded translating merely as a stepping-
stone to office, and he throve accordingly;
poor Borrow, on the contrary, regarded it as a
life-absorbing work that would yield him fame
and a competence. For ten years of mortifi-
cation and poverty he was under this delusion,
translating into English rhyme Welsh (“ten
thousand lines of Ab Gwilym " "), Danish, and


1899.] THE
DIAL 365
German, and hunting a market for his indif-
ferent and unsalable wares. Borrow's father
died in 1824, and in that year his term in the
solicitor's office expired. So he packed up his
precious versions of “Faustus,” the “Ancient
Songs of Denmark,” and the everlasting “Ab
Gwilym,” and set out for London, eager to
“begin.” Then came a long season of poorly
paid and unpaid pen-drudgery, casual gypsy-
ing, actual want, of “drifting on the sea of
the world” and of “digging holes in the sand
and filling them up again,” as Borrow mourn-
fully put it, which we may pass over. These
years included that mysterious “veiled period"
of seven years, which Borrow hints were spent
in “roving adventure” in distant countries,
but which Dr. Knapp prosaically concludes
were mainly passed between London and Nor-
wich in “doing common work for booksellers”
and earning the indispensable modicum of
daily bread. It was George Borrow's humor
to mystify, and he was quite willing his ad-
mirers should infer from his vague hints that
this really commonplace and squalid interim of
eclipse in his “Robinson Crusoe’’ autobiog-
raphy was spent in romantic wanderings and
strange, may unhallowed, enterprises in the
Orient, over which it were well to drop the veil.
Dr. Knapp assigns as Borrow's two leading
principles:
“(1) What was disastrous in his career was carefully
concealed, and the proofs (he thought) destroyed. (2)
The secrets thus obliterated were treasured up, and
duly reappear in his writings under other names and
characters, more or less distorted to evade detection
and interpretation. A third might be added, viz. that
he never created a character, and that the originals are
easily recognizable to one who thoroughly knows his
times and his writings.”
Borrow gave up the fight in London in 1830,
and returned to Norwich, where he tarried three
years, still “digging holes in the sand and fill-
ing them up again.” Just how the wind was
tempered to him at this time does not clearly
appear, and we find his artist brother John
(equally in the dark it seems) writing him
from Mexico, “You never tell me what you
are doing; you can't be living on nothing.”
This brother, who was of a practical turn, first
recommended the army (for, he cheerfully
urged, “you would make a good grenadier”),
then “sticking to the law"; and he once ob-
served, with considerable truth, “I am con-
vinced that your want of success in life is more
owing to your being unlike other people than
to any other cause.” Thus was the very qual-
ity, by virtue of which in the main George
Borrow lives and grows in the minds of men
to-day, sincerely deplored.
At last, in 1833, the dawn came. George
Borrow's hitherto burdensome acquirements
were to be turned to profitable account. The
British and Foreign Bible Society happened to
need an agent versed in Eastern languages to
superintend the printing at St. Petersburg of
a Manchu translation of the New Testament;
and Borrow was recommended by Mr. Gurney
of Norwich as precisely the man for the work.
The preliminary bargain was promptly struck
— much to the amusement of respectable Nor-
wich, which laughed consumedly to think of
the quondam chum of Thurtell and disciple of
godless “Billy” Taylor thus suddenly con-
verted into an instrument for saving the
heathen. Says Miss Martineau :
“When this polyglott gentleman appeared before the
public as a devout agent of the Bible Society in foreign
parts, there was one burst of laughter from all who re-
membered the old Norwich days.”
But it was to be “the devout agent,” and
not Norwich “gigmanity,” who laughed last.
Borrow spent his stipulated six months in
studying Manchu-Tartar, then passed the Soci-
ety's competitive examination brilliantly, and,
on July 31, 1833, started for Russia. Dr.
Knapp's chapters on the Russian mission show
Borrow in a new light. His duties were ardu-
ous (the entire conduct of the business in hand
fell upon him), and he performed them with a
tact, zeal, and practical “push’’ that surprised
and delighted his employers. The Government
imprimatur secured, which was no small task
to begin with, Borrow contracted for his mate-
rial, engaged his printers, taught them to set
the strange type, bullied, bribed, or cajoled
them back to their work when they went “on
strike,” battled successfully with the thousand-
and-one difficulties of red-tapeism, ignorance,
and human wrong-headedness that daily beset
him, and, in September, 1835, had his whole
edition of one thousand copies of the Manchu
Scriptures ready for use. He had also, largely
with his own hands, cleansed, separated, and
generally repaired an abandoned font of Man-
chu type which had been apparently ruined in
the disastrous inundation of the Nevá ten years
before. The stipulated work done, Borrow
astounded the Committee with the “noble
offer" to himself distribute his Bibles in the
benighted regions of the then dim and myste-
rious Far East. In his own words, he “would
wander, Testament in hand, overland to Pe-
king,” by way of Lake Baikal and Kiakhta,


366
[June 1,
THE DIAL
“with side-glances at Tartar hordes.” This
scheme, long seriously considered by the Soci-
ety, in the end came to naught; but, says Dr.
Knapp slyly, “Borrow always believed that he
went to Kiakhta, China, and over the East,
and so did the readers of his books.” When
it came to his repute as a traveller, George
Borrow never stood in his own light.
Of the details of Borrow's colportage in
Spain, nothing need be said here. Dr. Knapp
tells us not much that is new in this connec-
tion, but he throws some light on what has
been doubtful. It was evidently more due to
the unfavorable change in Spanish politics in
1838, than to differences with his principals at
home, that Borrow's work in Spain was dis-
continued. Such a mission as his could not
flourish under a reactionary régime. How he,
his work, and his immortal book, appeared in
orthodox Spanish eyes, is manifest in the fol-
lowing passage from the “History of Religious
Dissent in Spain” by Don Menéndez Pelayo:
“The first emissary of these Societies was a Quaker
by the name of George Borrow, a hoity-toity indi-
vidual of little learning and less wit, and with a large
amount of gullibility. Borrow wrote a most absurdly
grotesque book on his travels in Spain, of which we
might say as of Tirante el Blanco, that it is a “storehouse
of amusement and a mine of diversion’—a book, in
fine, capable of exciting roars of laughter in the most
ascetic of readers.”
The laughter of Don Menéndez himself over
Borrow's account of his countrymen does not
appear to have been of the mirthful and jocund
order.
Borrow's marriage to Mrs. Clarke, in 1840,
put an end to his wanderings and his vagrant-
ism, gave him a comfortable home in England,
and the leisure he needed for his real work in
life. Of his wife he contentedly, if unroman-
tically, writes, in “Wild Wales,” that she is a
“perfect paragon of wives—can make puddings
and sweets and treacle posset, and is the best
woman of business in Eastern Anglia.” Evi-
dently Lavengro was in a snug harbor at last.
The pair settled down at Oulton Cottage,
Lowestoft, where Borrow proceeded to finish
the “Gypsies of Spain,” his first original book,
the dutiful “paragon of wives” acting as aman-
uensis. The gipsying, tinkering days of the
wind-swept heath and the roadside dingle were
gone indeed — but their memory, as we know,
loomed tinged and softened through the mists
of time. The “Gypsies” was duly finished and
submitted to Murray, as Dr. Smiles relates:
“In November, 1840, a tall athletic gentleman in
black called upon Mr. Murray, offering a MS. for pe-
rusal and publication. Mr. Murray could not fail to
be taken at first sight with this extraordinary man. He
had a splendid physique, standing six feet two in his
stockings, and he had brains as well as muscles, as his
works sufficiently show.”
The “Gypsies’’ was published in April,
1841, and succeeded fairly well. Then came
“The Bible in Spain’” (substantially a mosaic
of the author's letters to the Bible Society),
issued in December, 1842, which at once took
the reading and the reviewing world by storm.
In England the sales far outran the hopes of
author and publisher. As to America (alas!),
the two works were printed at New York and
Philadelphia “in tens of thousands,” “by three
rival houses”; and from these sales, we learn,
George Borrow “derived nothing”. The
wronged man wrote to his wife:
“A letter appeared last Saturday in the ‘Athenaeum’
which states that an edition of thirty thousand copies
has just been brought out in America. I really never
heard of anything so infamous.”
Let us congratulate ourselves that our law-
makers have now shown signs of a dawning or
rudimentary conscience in respect of the rights
of the foreign author.
The origin, progress, and character of “La-
vengro" are satisfactorily indicated in Dr.
Knapp's copious extracts from Borrow's corre-
spondence. The book was “on the stocks”
virtually before the “Bible” was issued. On
October 2, 1843, Borrow wrote to Murray:
“The book I am at present about, will consist of a
series of Rembrandt pictures interspersed here and there
with a Claude. I shall tell the world of my parentage,
my early thoughts, and habits; how I became a sapengro,
or viper-catcher; my wanderings with the regiment in
England, Scotland, and Ireland, in which latter place
my jockey habits first commenced. Then a great deal
about Norwich, Billy Taylor, Thurtell, etc., etc.; how I
took to study and became a law-engro." . . . Whenever
the book comes out it will be a rum one.”
A “rum one" it was, in all conscience,—
too “rum ” for the wiseacres of the reviews,
who shook their sapient heads at it, and con-
demned it with scarcely a dissenting voice.
Borrow, of course, was furious, and laid about
him like an angry bull tormented by a swarm
of gnats. In the preface to a later edition he
declared that he had had the honor of being
rancorously abused “by every unmanly scoun-
drel, every sycophantic lacquey, and every po-
litical and religious renegade in Britain +”; and
in his Appendix he truculently held up his
critics, “blood and foam streaming from their
*Word-master.
f These were the words of the autograph original. Murray
judiciously softened them into: “by the very people of whom
the country has least reason to be proud.”


1899.] THE
DIAL 367
jaws.” Borrow's abuse of his censors was of
course as ill-judged and ineffectual as was their
dispraise of his book. No author, as somebody
observes, was ever permanently written down
(or, let us add, written up) by anyone but
himself; and time is verifying Dr. Hake's pre-
diction that “‘Lavengro's' roots will strike
deep into the soil of English letters.”
But we must now take leave of Dr. Knapp's
valuable book. After the death, in 1869, of
Borrow's wife, the course of his life ran un-
eventfully and drearily to the end. The old
fitful hypochondria dogged his closing years;
and the “Romany Rye" died alone — in the
more melancholy sense of the word, as there is
reason to believe — at Oulton, on July 26,
1881. Soon afterward the cottage was pulled
down and the grounds were modernized; but
the summer-house where “Lavengro" was
written still stands among the trees — a shrine
for Borrovian pilgrims.
On the score of style, Dr. Knapp's book can-
not in candor be praised; but it is on the whole
a noteworthy and useful performance, for which
students of Borrow especially will be thankful.
E. G. J.
LOWELL AND HIS FRIENDS.*
Dr. Edward Everett Hale has drunk deep
from the Fountain of Youth; for, notwithstand-
ing the fact that he wants but a few years of
attaining to the dignity of an octogenarian,
he still writes with all the vigor of the happy
prime of manhood. Not all his years and labors
have exhausted his inventiveness. His work is
still characterized by the features which distin-
guished it years ago. It is marked by the
same genial humor, the same wholesome optim-
ism, the same sound sense; and the charm of
his style—with its ease, its simplicity, its seem-
ing disregard of method — is as fascinating as
ever. He is still the supreme master of the
material in which he works.
In his latest work, “James Russell Lowell
and his Friends,” his object, he reminds us,
was not so much to give a history of Lowell's
life as “to show the circumstances which sur-
rounded his life and which account for the
course of it.” Here certainly, there was need
of a supreme master of material, for the friends
Lowell made in the course of his many-sided
career were legion, and a less gifted author
*JAMEs RUSSELL LowRLL AND HIs FRIENDs. By Edward
Everett Hale. With portraits, facsimiles, and other illustra-
tions. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
than Dr. Hale might easily have been led to
say too much. That Dr. Hale has not said too
much, goes without saying. In an age gone
mad with the ungovernable desire of sweeping
up the chips of every author's literary work-
shop and of displaying these worthless frag-
ments to the gaze of the public, it is refreshing
to come across such a book as this, for the self-
restraint which the author has shown in exclud-
ing from his book all that was not absolutely
essential is as admirable as it is unusual.
Added to this there was the intimate personal
knowledge of the men and manners described,
which has enabled Dr. Hale to reproduce the
life of the time—the thoughts, the feelings,
and the actions of these men of whom he him-
self was an associate. The result of all this is
that, no matter what period of Lowell's life we
follow — whether it be his childhood and boy-
hood at Elmwood, his undergraduate days at
Harvard, his rustication to Concord, his asso-
ciations in Boston in the forties, his inner com-
panionship with the young men and women
known respectively as “The Club” and “The
Band,” his entrance upon a career of letters,
his experiences as public speaker and editor,
his professorship at Harvard or his connection
with politics and war, his ministry in Spain
and England or his last years in the Elmwood
of his youth — no one can rise from the perusal
of this book without feeling that he has learned
to know Lowell as a man better than ever be-
fore, that he has come to regard Lowell with
something of the affection that most people
bestow upon Longfellow, and that of all men
living Dr. Hale was the one best fitted to bring
us to an appreciation of the really loveable side
of Lowell's character.
It would be manifestly impossible, in the
space of a brief article, to give the reader any
adequate idea of Dr. Hale's treatment of the
several phases of Lowell's life, unless we were
to select some one or two for special considera-
tion. Perhaps the two most interesting por-
tions of his book are the chapters dealing with
Harvard during Lowell's undergraduate days,
and with Boston in the forties, just as Lowell
was entering upon his literary career.
When Lowell entered Harvard in 1834 —
to follow Dr. Hale's account—that institution
was what we should now call an Academy.
There were some two hundred and fifty stu-
dents, most of whom were between the ages of
sixteen and twenty-two; and these gave their
days and nights — when they were studiously
inclined — to the study of Latin, Greek, and


368
[June 1,
THE DIAL
mathematics. On three days of the week,
Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, teachers of
modern languages appeared, and everyone not
a freshman was obliged to choose some one of
these languages and pursue it for four terms.
When the student came to count up his credits,
however, a modern language was worth only
half as much as a classical language. Later in
his career the student read rhetoric, logic, moral
philosophy, political economy, chemistry, and
natural history. There was at that time no
study of English literature, although excellent
drill was had in writing the English language.
A day in the older Harvard was a rather dull
affair. You attended morning and evening
prayers in the chapel, half the year at six in
the morning and six in the evening, or, when
the days shortened, as late as half-past seven in
the morning and as early as quarter past four
in the afternoon. After morning prayers you
went to the class-rooms and recited your lessons.
The rest of the day you spent in the library,
or reading and studying in your own room.
In Lowell's undergraduate days, Josiah Quin-
cey was president of the college—the man who
had been a leader of the old Federalists in
Congress, who had opposed Randolph and Jef-
ferson, and who, like Socrates, believed he had
a “Daimon" to direct him. Fortunately for
Lowell, Edward Tyrrel Channing, one of those
great teachers who have an individuality to im-
press upon their students, was then a member
of the Faculty, and to him, says Dr. Hale, was
due the English of Emerson, Holmes, Sumner,
Clarke, Bellows, Lowell, Higginson, and other
men who came under his training. And if one
stops to think of it what a tribute this is
When Longfellow came to Cambridge in 1836,
he inaugurated a sort of renaissance in modern
continental literature. He was fresh from study
in Europe, he came from Bowdoin—thus show-
ing the Cambridge undergraduates that accom-
plished men could be trained outside of Harvard
— and he was already known as a man of let-
ters. At that time the atmosphere of Harvard
was distinctly a literary one; and Longfellow's
arrival made it more so. Dr. Hale says that
the books which the fellows took from the col-
lege library, and those they bought for their
own subscription libraries, were books of liter-
ature — that is, “mere" literature. One of
the books seen everywhere, for instance, was a
volume printed in Philadelphia, containing the
poems of Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats. We
are told that Emerson's copy of Tennyson's first
volume of poems passed eagerly from hand to
hand, and that Carlyle's books were purchased
and read as fast as they appeared. Three or
four literary societies helped to foster this love
of literature, as did also the Alpha Delta Phi
when it was founded. The truth seems to be
that if the fellows did dabble in anything be-
sides literature, they were very like to show an
indifference splendidly illustrated by one of
Dr. Hale's anecdotes. He says:
“In the year 1840, I was at West Point for the first
time, with William Story, Lowell's classmate and friend,
and with Story's sister and mine. We enjoyed to the
full the matchless hospitality of West Point, seeing its
lions under the special care of two young officers of our
own age. They had just finished their course, as we had
recently finished ours at Harvard. One day when Story
and I were by ourselves, after we had been talking of
our studies with these gentlemen, Story said to me:
“Ned, it is all very well to keep a stiff upper lip with
these fellows, but how did you dare tell them that we
studied about projectiles at Cambridge 2'
“‘Because we did,” said I.
“Did I ever study projectiles?’ asked Story, puzzled.
“‘Certainly you did,” said I. “You used to go up to
Peirce Tuesday and Thursday afternoons in the summer
when you were a junior, with a blue book which had a
white back.’
“‘I know I did,” said Story; “and I was studying
projectiles then 2 This is the first time I ever heard
of it.’”
Not five of the fellows, says Dr. Hale, saw a
daily newspaper, and the isolation from the
world outside of Cambridge and Boston was
well nigh complete. Even as late as 1860, the
men at Harvard paid little attention to what
was going on elsewhere, a fact made clear by
the story which follows. The accuracy of this
story has been questioned, but Dr. Hale says
he has taken care to verify all its details.
“One of Lowell's fellow professors told me this curi-
ous story, which will illustrate the narrowness of New
England observation at that time. There appeared at
Cambridge in the year 1860 a young gentleman named
Robert Todd Lincoln, who . . . is quite well known in
this country and England. This young man wished to
enter Harvard College, and his father, one Abraham
Lincoln, who has since been known in the larger world,
had fortified him with a letter of introduction to Dr.
Walker, the president of the college. This letter of
introduction was given by one Stephen A. Douglas, who
was a person also then quite well known in political life,
and he presented the young man to Dr. Walker as being
the son of his friend Abraham Lincoln, “with whom I
have lately been canvassing the State of Illinois.’ When
this letter, now so curious in history, was read, Lowell
said to my friend who tells me the story, “I suppose I
am the only man in this room who has ever heard of
this Abraham Lincoln; but he is the person with whom
Douglas has been traveling up and down in Illinois,
canvassing the State in their new Western fashion, as
representatives of the two parties, each of them being
the candidate for the vacant seat in the Senate.” What
is more, my friend says it is probably true that at the
moment when this letter was presented by young Robert
*


1899.] THE
TXIAL 369
Lincoln, none of the faculty of Harvard College, ex-
cepting Lowell, had ever heard of Abraham Lincoln.
The story is a good one, as showing how far it was in
those days possible for a circle of intelligent men to
know little or nothing of what was happening in the
world beyond the sound of their college bell.”
So much for Harvard. Dr. Hale begins his
account of Boston in the forties with the state-
ment that he despairs of making anyone appre-
ciate the ferment in the life of Boston at that
time. However that may be, he has assuredly
written a most entertaining account. Boston
was then a town where everybody knew pretty
nearly everbody else, he says, and where, as
someone said, “You could go anywhere in ten
minutes.” Most of the people were of the old
Puritan stock, who “lived to the glory of God”
and who “believed in the infinite capacity of
human nature.” Whatever they did, they did
on a generous scale and as if confident of suc-
cess. Boston, in fact, “became the headquar-
ters for New England, and in a measure for the
country, of every sort of enthusiasm, not to
say of every sort of fanaticism. . . . There
was not an “ism” but had its shrine, nor a cause
but had its prophet.”
Those were the days, too, of “The Five of
Clubs,” known also as the “Mutual Admira-
tion Society,” which was composed of Charles
Sumner and his law partner, George Stillman
Hillard; H. W. Longfellow; Cornelius Conway
Felton, professor of Greek at Harvard and
afterwards president of the college; and H. R.
Cleveland. Here is the story of an epigram
which the Club made upon “In Memoriam ”:
“The firm, then Ticknor & Fields, were Tennyson's
American publishers. They had just brought out “In
Memoriam.” One of the five gentlemen looked in as he
went down town, took up the book, and said, “Tennyson
has done for friendship what Petrarch did for love, Mr.
Fields,’ to which Mr. Fields assented; and his friend —
say Mr. Hillard—went his way. Not displeased with
his own remark when he came to his office—if it were
Hillard—he repeated it to Sumner, who in turn repeated
it to Cleveland, perhaps, when he looked in. Going
home to lunch, Sumner goes in at the shop, takes up
the new book, and says, “Your Tennyson is out, Mr.
Fields. What Petrarch did for love, Tennyson has done
for friendship.” Mr. Fields again assents, and it is half
an hour before Mr. Cleveland enters. He also is led to
say that Tennyson has done for friendship what Petrarch
has done for love; and before the sun sets Mr. Fields
receives the same suggestion from Longfellow, and then
from Felton, who have fallen in with their accustomed
friends, and look in to see the new books, on their way
out to Cambridge.”
In this same chapter, “Boston in the Forties,”
there is a paragraph about Emerson which is
worth quoting, partly because it shows how Dr.
Hale makes use of Lowell's friends to enliven
his book and partly because it hints at some
of the practical difficulties Lowell himself had
to overcome when he adopted a literary career:
“The truth was that literature was not yet a profes-
sion. The men who wrote for the “North American’
were earning their bread and butter, their sheets, blan-
kets, fuel, broadcloth, shingles, and slates in other en-
terprises. Emerson was an exception; and perhaps the
impression as to his being crazy was helped by the
observation that these “things which perish in the using”
came to him in the uncanny and unusual channel of
literary workmanship. Even Emerson printed in the
“North American Review' lectures which had been
delivered elsewhere. He told me in 1849, after he had
returned from England, that he had then never received
a dollar from the sale of any of his own published works.
He said he owned a great many copies of his own books,
but that these were all the returns which he had received
from his publishers. And Mr. Phillips told me that
when, after ‘English Traits,’ published by him, had in
the first six months’ sales paid for its plates and earned
a balance besides in Emerson's favor, Emerson could
not believe this. He came to the office to explain to
Mr. Phillips that he wanted and meant to hold the
property in his own stereotype plates. And Mr. Phil-
lips had difficulty in persuading him that he had already
paid for them and did own them. Emerson was then
so unused to the methods of business that Mr. Phillips
had also to explain to him how to indorse the virgin
check, so that he could place it at his own bank account.”
Perhaps these passages will suffice to show at
least the entertaining character of this work.
While not all the passages here quoted bear
directly upon Lowell's life, it should be re-
marked that the reader is never allowed to for-
get that Lowell is the central figure of this
biography. Each period of his life is treated
with a true sense of the proportion due it,
although the chief object of the work, as already
stated, was rather to show Lowell's environ-
ment and the extent to which his life and char-
acter were the products of that environment.
The pleasure of tracing with Dr. Hale the
course of Lowell's career, and be assured it is
no small pleasure, we must leave to the reader.
It should be said, in conclusion, that the
attractiveness of Dr. Hale's book is enhanced
by more than two score of portraits, facsimiles,
and other illustrations, that in the course of
his narration not a few of Lowell's poems are
printed which either have not appeared before
in print or are not now easily accessible. The
most important of these poems, and a really
beautiful poem it is, is one of sixty lines called
“My Brook,” which was written at Whitby in
1889 and published the next year in the “New
York Ledger.” Owing to the circumstances of
its publication, it does not appear in the “Li-
brary edition” of Lowell's works.
TULEY FRANCIS HUNTINGTON.


370
[June 1,
THE DIAL
FOLK-LORE TALES OF AMERICAN
INDIANS.*
Jeremiah Curtin needs no introduction to the
folk-lore student or to the lover of good litera-
ture. In his folk-lore work he is an original
investigator, gathering his stories at first hand.
His collections of Irish and Slav folk-tales are
unsurpassed. The book before us, “Creation
Myths of Primitive America,” while not his
first work upon American Indian legends, is
the first he has presented in form for popular
reading. The stories are gathered from two
Californian tribes — the Wintu and the Yana.
These tribes have little importance numerically,
and present a rather low grade of culture.
Their stories are, however, rather unusually
consistent and well-told.
Mr. Curtin recognizes two cycles of myths
among American tribes. “The first cycle of
myths — that is, those which relate to creation,
in other words to the metamorphoses of the
first people or gods into everything which is in
the world, including the world itself—is suc-
ceeded by another in which are described the
various changes, phenomena, and processes
observed throughout nature. In this second
cycle . . . light and darkness, heat and cold,
opposing winds, heavenly bodies, appear as
heroes and leading actors.” These two groups
Mr. Curtin calls creation myths and action
myths. If these two are to be recognized —
and they should be, although they are often
confused and intermingled — a third group
should be as clearly recognized. Barbarous or
savage myths may profitably be distinguished
as three in kind — cosmogonic or creation
myths, hero or action myths, and migration
legends.
Mr. Curtin considers only cosmogonic myths
in this little book. Nine of those he presents
are from the Wintu, thirteen from the Yana.
They present considerable similarity, and illus-
trate one system of thought. In an introduc-
tory chapter the author, rather laboredly, dis-
cusses “the Indian myth system.” He quotes
a native American as saying:
“There was a world before this one in which we
are living at present; that was the world of the first
people, who were different from us altogether. Those
people were very numerous, so numerous that if a count
could be made of all the stars in the sky, all the feathers
on birds, all the hairs and fur on animals, all the hairs
of our own heads, they would not be so numerous as the
first people.”
Mr. Curtin claims that the creation story
*CREATION MYTHs of PRIMITIvE AMERICA. By Jeremiah
Curtin. Boston: Little, Brown, & Co.
always begins with these conditions, and traces
the actions of these “first people” and their
final destruction or transformation giving rise
to the world, animals, plants, and man.
Certainly these Wintu and Yanastories illus-
trate such a system. But is it not a little un-
fortunate at this time to emphasize, as Mr.
Curtin thus does, the unity of the American
tribes? All tribes do not give just such stories.
We should cease, for a little, asserting the great
likeness of all American Indians—that “when
you have seen one Indian you have seen all.”
Do not the works of Boas on American phys-
ical types and the Northwest Coast myths, and
the monographic studies of the Bureau of Eth-
nology, show our present need to be the exam-
ination of tribes in detail and the bringing out
of differences rather than of similarities? Just
now, to lay out great systems for the whole
“race” is confusing rather than helpful.
Of course the stories are well-told: trust
Mr. Curtin for that. The great number of
actors and the strange names make it difficult
sometimes to follow the narration, but on the
whole the legends exhibit quaint ingenuity and
shrewdness. Sometimes they show bold and
lofty conceptions. The book is rather elegantly
made up, but the binding is bad: the pages are
likely to fall out with a single reading.
FREDERICK STARR.
THE NEW EAST AND THE NEW SOUTH
OF THE OLD WORLD.”
A new order of things is rapidly making its way
in the Old World, and nowhere more rapidly than
in the Far East. In Mr. Arthur Diósy's book
on “The New Far East,” we have an enthusiastic
brief for Japan, proving by her late conquest of the
Chinese her right and power as “a dominant fac-
tor in Eastern Asia.” Much to the disadvantage
of the Chinese and Koreans, he compares them with
the Japanese in their costumes, manners, and char-
acters. In passing, he gives a curious origin to the
immense broad-brimmed hat.
“An ancient Korean king is alleged to have intro-
duced them in order to put a stop to the continual riots
and brawls that disturbed the country. In those early
days the Korean was, as as he still is, a born plotter and
*THE NEw FAR EAST. By Arthur Diósy. Illustrated.
New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.
LETTERs FROM JAPAN. By Mrs. Hugh Fraser. Illustrated.
New York: The Macmillan Co.
ON THE South AFRICAN FRONTIER. By W. H. Brown.
Illustrated. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
UNDER THE AFRICAN SUN. By W. J. Ansorge.
trated. New York: Longmans, Green, & Co.
West AFRICAN STUDIEs. By Mary H. Kingsley. Illus-
trated. New York: The Macmillan Co.
Illus-


1899.] THE
DIAL 371
exceedingly fond of fighting—not, indeed, of the strife
with weapons on the battlefield, but of a good rough-
and-tumble contest with fists and feet, cudgels and
stone-throwing, such as the lower classes indulge in to
this day, in the first month of the year, ward against
ward in a city, and village against village in the coun-
try. To him it is as much a ‘divarsion” as to any
“broth of a bhoy’ in the palmy days of Donnybrook
Fair. This sportive pugnacity is not the only point of
resemblance between the characteristics of Koreans and
Milesians; both races combine charm of manner with
a disinclination for sustained effort in serious matters;
both are much attracted by politics of a militant sort.
The condition of an earthenware hat, three feet in diam-
eter, after a lively scrimmage between rival factions,
may easily be imagined. Even that reproach to our
civilization, the silk hat, would come better out of the
fray. Now, a broken hat gives a disreputable appear-
ance to its wearer in any civilized community; in ancient
Korea it entailed more serious consequences than mere
loss of outward respectability. Its possession rendered
the purchase of a new hat unnecessary, as it involved,
when brought under official notice, the instant decapi-
tation of the owner. Nor was this the only advantage
of the hat as a preserver of the public peace: it became
simply impossible for the disaffected to put their heads
together for the purpose of plotting treason when their
skulls were surrounded by brittle brims a yard across.”
The author regards the Japanese as having no great
vices and being free from many of the smaller ones.
For example:
“The Japanese cannot swear, even if he had a mind
to; his language will not allow itself to be thus defiled;
it contains absolutely no “swear-words.” This limita-
ation has its inconveniences; when a Japanese takes to
playing golf he is obliged to learn English.”
The Japanese, Mr. Diósy maintains, are not merely
imitative, they are constructing a new civilization
as an expression of their own virtues and powers,
the European civilization being merely an external
stimulus. The enterprising cheap industry of Japan
threatens the industrial supremacy of the West.
The power of Russia and the inaptness of Britain
in the Far East are emphasized. Russia regards
it as her heaven-sent destiny to rule Asia and Eu-
rope, to be the World-Power, and the Peace Con-
ference is but “the truce of the Bear.” Only if
Britain ally herself with Japan and the United
States, can Russia be kept in bounds. Such are the
author's conclusions, and the book is certainly of
interest and value as giving much real information
on the vexed Eastern question from one who evi-
dently has an intimate acquaintance with the peoples
of the Orient.
Another interesting book on the New Japan is
Mrs. Hugh Fraser’s “Letters from Japan,” a very
pleasant account from the standpoint of a three
years' residence in Tokyo and of some excursions
in the country. The picturesque in landscape and
people, and the poetic in legend and folklore, attract
Mrs. Fraser, and she is of course greatly interested
in the Japanese woman and child, both of whom
she much admires. The intense patriotism of the
Japanese, their unbounded simple-minded pride in
their nation, was never more manifest than in the
matter of the attack by a Japanese on the Cesare-
vitch in 1891.
“The theatres were closed, the shops and markets
abandoned; everywhere people spoke in groups and
with profound sadness in their tones. The little daugh-
ter of Wiscount Aoka, the Minister for Foreign Affairs
(she is ten years old), heard the announcement of the
outrage with a stony face, and went away in silence to
her room. There, for hours, she lay on the floor in an
agony of grief and shame, moaning, “I am a Japanese !
I must live with this shame ! I cannot—I cannot l” . . .
A little samurai girl, a mere child of sixteen, I think,
was in service near Yokohama. She travelled to Kyoto,
dressed herself in holiday robes, composed her little
body for death by tying her sash tightly round her
knees after the custom of samurai women, and cut her
throat in the doorway of the great government offices.
They found on her two letters: one, a farewell to her
family; the other containing a message, which she
begged those who found her to convey to the Emperor,
saying that she gave her life gladly, hoping that though
so lowly it might wipe out the insult, and she entreated
him to be comforted by her death. Her name, they
say was Yuko, which means full of valor. . . . People
who were on board the Cesarevitch's ship told me that
it seemed to sink with gifts; the decks, the saloons, the
passages were encumbered, and still they came and
came and came ! The universality and spontaneousness
of the manifestation gave it an overwhelmning value,
which the Prince here and his parents at home were
quick to appreciate. Rich people gave out of their
riches, and objects of unexampled beauty and rarity
were brought out from the treasure-houses and sent
with messages of love and respect to the boy who lay
healing of his wounds in Kobe Harbour. The poor sent
the most touching gifts — the rice and shoyu, the fish
and barley-flour, which would have fed the little family
for a year; poor old peasants walked for days so as to
bring a tiny offering of eggs.”
Mrs. Fraser has much to say of the social life of
the highest circles of the Japanese officials; she had
exceptional opportunities of observation, and do-
mestic life is portrayed with sympathetic insight.
If ladies can be interested in books of travel, they
will assuredly like this one. The illustrations are
abundant and dainty.
Africa, the New South of the Old World, is
changing most rapidly in the Far South. In the
book entitled “On the South African Frontier,”
Mr. W. H. Brown recounts his experiences and ob-
servations “during seven years' participation in the
settlement and development of Rhodesia.” The
book “treats variedly of travel, collecting, hunting,
prospecting, farming, scouting, fighting,” and “had
its origin principally in a desire to give to my
fellow-countrymen in America a clearer idea than
it has been possible to glean from fragmentary ac-
counts, appearing from time to time, of the events
which have taken place during the past nine years
in connection with Anglo-Saxon conquest and colo-
nization on the South African frontier.” Mr. Brown
had a hand in the opening up of Rhodesia, a country
larger than France and Germany combined, with a
climate like that of California; a country fertile,


372
[June 1,
THE DIAL
and rich in gold, iron, and coal. The natives made
trouble on the African frontier much as the Indians
did on our frontier, and several thrilling tales are
given of conflicts between the whites and blacks in
the Matabele and Mashona uprisings. Mr. Brown
had a varied experience with them in war and peace.
He notes an interesting trait of the Banyai.
“High up among the rocks, in almost inaccessible
places, these timid beings dwelt in neighborly proximity
to the baboons and monkeys. Their fields were in the
valleys below, where they raised Kafir corn, mealies,
and melons. . . . The Banyai were apparently good-
natured creatures, small of stature, though symmetri-
cally and strongly built. The scouting party came upon
a man working in his field, near whom were several big,
shaggy baboons, industriously digging for roots. The
savage was frightened at the appearance of the white
men, but the baboons worked on, paying little heed to
the intruders. . . . During the interview the baby
baboons, up among the rocks near the dwelling of the
natives, were heard crying, exactly like human babies.
The Banyai were asked if the baboons did not molest
the children, but they replied, ‘No, they are friends
with one another.’”
“Under the African Sun,” by W. J. Ansorge,
concerns itself with the heart of Africa and the rise
there of the Uganda Protectorate under British rule.
“The Uganda Protectorate does not mean simply
Uganda—the kingdom which the famous autocrat King
Mtesa ruled over once upon a time — but it includes
also the vast realms around it, territories where no
white man has ever passed, lakes only recently dis-
covered by hardy explorers and travellers, and races of
men differing from each other in language, in manners,
and in customs. Those who read stirring records of
exploration and discoveries associated with names like
Livingstone, Speke, Grant, and Mungo Park, are very
much mistaken if they imagine that similar achieve-
ments are out of their reach because all that can be dis-
covered has been discovered. Within the last few years
Count Teleki has added to the map two new lakes
lying close together, and named by him Lake Rudolph
and Lake Stephanie.” .
Mr. Ansorge's work was not, however, that of ex-
ploration; but as medical officer and administrator
he visited the various stations in Uganda, and re-
cords in this book impressions of travel made since
1894, describing the various districts and tribes, and
giving some notes on hunting and collecting. Per-
haps the most interesting of the tribes he visited
were the Kavirondo. This people are not savages,
nor even the lowest of barbarians, being farmers
and iron-workers; yet it is the fashion of all to go
entirely nude.
“Scanty dress may naturally be expected amongst
savages of a low type and living in a tropical climate,
but to find oneself among a race absolutely naked is a
strange experience; and yet within a few weeks or
months the novelty wears off, and one fails to notice
anything extraordinary in such a mode of life. The
inhabitants of Kavirondo recall the state of mankind in
the Garden of Eden before the Fall. Banana-trees and
other tropical vegetation around the huts, at least in
some parts of their country, would strengthen this
impression of being in a garden, were it not for the tree-
less grass-plains outside the village. Young and old go
about in the same primeval garb. Women often wear
a curious ornament, in the shape of a tail, which con-
sists of a number of plaited strings manufactured out of
some sort of vegetable fibre. A tiny apron of the same
material is worn by a few of the women. As it is never
worn by the unmarried, I was told that its presence was
the equivalent for the European wedding-ring; but I
am sure this is incorrect, as I have come across numbers
of young mothers and wives without this apron, and
have seen widows with and without it. I believe it is
simply a fashion, like the tail, without another object.”
The latter portion of the book is taken up with
hunting adventures with elephants, lions, rhinocer-
oses, hippopotami, gazelles, antelopes, and smaller
game. This simple, clear, modest narrative makes
attractive and agreeable reading, and the abundant
illustrations are very good.
While the advance of British influence is more
rapid in South and Central Africa than in West
Africa, yet here also, as Miss Kingsley indicates in
her “West Africa Studies,” England is fast increas.
ing her power. But Miss Kingsley devotes some
chapters to a sharp indictment of the English Colo-
nial system, ending thus:
“You have got a grand rich region there, populated
by an uncommon fine sort of human being. You have
been trying your present set of ideas on it for over 400
years; they have failed in a heart-breaking drizzling sort
of way to perform any single solitary one of the things
you say you want done there. West Africa to-day is
just a quarry of paving-stones for Hell, and those stones
were cemented in place with men's blood mixed with
wasted gold.”
Miss Kingsley probably knows more at first-hand
about African fetish than any other living person,
and there is much that is suggestive in her treat-
ment of the subject. She finds in fetish a thoroughly
natural and logical point of view which culminates
in the highest philosophy. She can even learn wis-
dom from a witch doctor.
“He talked for an hour, softly, wordily, and gently;
and the gist of what that man talked was Goethe's Pro-
metheus. I recognized it after half an hour, and when
he had done, said, “You got that stuff from a white man.”
“No, sir,’ he said, “that no be white man fash, that be
country fash; white man no fit to savee our fash.’
“Aren't they, my friend?' I said; and we parted for
the night, I the wiser for it, he the richer.”
Fetish often infects white people in Africa, and we
suspect Miss Kingsley is too much of a fetishist to
give the thorough objective analysis which science
requires, though many of her remarks are very
penetrating. Superstition everywhere is logical
and rational in its own childish and foolish way.
Miss Kingsley has many vivid sketches of the native
African and we must close this notice with one ad-
mirable bit on African volubility.
“Woe to the man in Africa who cannot stand perpet-
ual uproar. Few things surprised me more than the rarity
of silence and the intensity of it when you did get it.
There is only that time which comes between 10:30 A.M.
and 4:30 P.M., in which you can look for anything like
the usual quiet of an English village. We will give


1899.] THE
DIAL 378
man the first place in the orchestra; he deserves it. I
fancy the main body of the lower classes of Africa think
externally instead of internally. You will hear them
when they are engaged together on some job — each
man issuing the fullest directions and prophecies con-
cerning it, in shouts; no one taking the least notice of
his neighbors. If the head man really wants them to do
something definite, he fetches those within his reach an
introductory whack; and even when you are sitting alone
in the forest you will hear a man or woman coming down
the narrow bush-path chattering away with such energy
and expression that you can hardly believe your eyes
when you learn from him that he has no companion.”
HIRAM. M. STANLEY.
BRIEFS ON NEW BOOKS.
There are some men in the history
of European culture whose manifold
activities refuse to be brought within
any single category. As writers, they occupy a
place in the history of literature; but all that may
legitimately be said of them by the literary histor-
ian is quite inadequate to explain why they loom so
large in the broader history of the human spirit.
Francis Bacon, Ludwig Holberg, and Leonardo da
Vinci were such men; such, prečminently, were
Erasmus and Voltaire. And it is no mere “aberra-
tion of national pride” that impels the greatest of
Italian poets and critics now living to group the
name of Petrarch with those of Erasmus and Wol-
taire, as being, in their respective ages, the intel-
lectual arbiters of Europe. This statement, indeed,
is such a commonplace to the student of European
humanism that we marvel at its seeming to need a
defence, even for the popular mind, at the hands of
the men who have prepared the very interesting
book about Petrarch now before us. This book,
which has for a title “Petrarch: The First Modern
Scholar and Man of Letters” (Putnam), is the joint
work of Professors James Harvey Robinson and
Henry Winchester Rolfe. It consists mainly of
selections from Petrarch's letters; but the editors
have added much matter of their own in the way
of criticism, biography, and connective tissue. The
result is such a presentation of the subject to English
readers as had not previously been made, and we
are heartily glad to have it. And it is an important
thing to set Petrarch right in the popular estimate.
“It is a sad commonplace to the thoughtful student
of the past that the successful reformer is sometimes
remembered for his weaknesses rather than for his
true strength. Nothing is easier than to pronounce
Voltaire a shallow deist, Erasmus a timorous dys-
peptic crying peace when there was no peace, and to
see in Petrarch only the lifelong victim of an unfor-
tunate love affair.” When we remember that “to
their author, the incomparable sonnets seemed little
more than a youthful diversion,” we begin to get
some notion of the true perspective of his life. He
himself wrote of them thus disparagingly: “These
Petrarch as
scholar and
man of letters.
popular songs, the result of my youthful distress,
now overwhelm me with shame and regret, although,
as we see, they are still acceptable enough to those
suffering from the same malady.” Again, we should
recall the fact that, if it is important for us to know
Petrarch for what he was in the history of culture,
we are abundantly provided with the necessary ma-
terials. Say our editors: “There is perhaps no other
historical character before the age of Luther, with the
possible exception of Cicero, who has left so complete
and satisfactory account of his spiritual life and en-
vironment.” Thus we see that both the need and the
matter for such a book as the one before us made its
preparation desirable; and in recognizing the one
and dealing so intelligently with the other, Messrs.
Robinson and Rolfe have laid us under a consider-
able obligation. Among the interesting features of
Petrarch's correspondence here given are some of
the “Letters to Dead Authors,” the letters to and
about Rienzo, the famous description of the ascent
of Mount Ventoux, and a series of letters and ex-
tracts from letters in illustration of his classical
studies.
Two tastefully printed volumes of the
letters of Swift, Addison, and Steele,
and of Johnson and Chesterfield,
edited by Mr. R. Brimley Johnson (Holt), intro-
duce a series of a literary form most interesting to
literary connoisseurs. The letter presented in serial
groups, “each sufficiently large to create an atmos-
phere,” and together illustrative of the style and
manners of the age chosen, is a new and welcome
departure that promises to succeed, for the field is
rich. In this century of Queen Anne and the first
Georges, letter-writing was an art; and then flour-
ished also political parties and party literature.
Although the tone of literature was lowered by the
combative spirit, the fierce contention brought forth
the greatest of English satirists and the most orig-
inal writer of his age; it unfolded the genius of
the retiring scholar who gave to English literature
a perfectly graceful style; and its varying issues
carried, now high, now low, the gay, imprudent, but
generous, witty, and lovable adventurer, Dick Steele,
whose name is always linked with those of Swift
and Addison. In this turmoil, political and literary,
we see on terms of intimacy the affairs great and
small of each character. But familiarity does not
breed contempt. Delightful are Steele's misspelled
letters, “the most spontaneous unfeigned love-letters
in the language.” Addison appears here, as always,
the Greek ideal, a just harmony of the virtues, noth-
ing in excess, everything in measure, a model in
propriety. Of the 239 pages of Volume I., 178,
or three-quarters, are given to Swift; and, indeed,
the purpose of the book is to correct the common
mistaken judgment of him derived from the essays
of Macaulay, Thackeray, and Taine. This is the
book's chief claim to a place on our already crowded
shelves. The editor has placed the reading public
under obligation for a real contribution to its knowl-
Letters of
18th century
essayists.


374
[June 1,
THE DIAL
edge; he has put into convenient form interesting
letters available until now “only in more or less
elaborate and expensive complete editions, or in
small anthologies containing at most half a dozen
letters by the same writer.” The introductions do
not attempt to cover the whole history of the time,
and the notes are not chronological tables. Very
properly, the letters are left to tell their own story,
and thus the volumes seem well calculated for lovers
of literature who enjoy the selection of letters, and
can connote the historical, biographical, and literary
setting.
Memoir, oran The name of Henry Reeve is not a
English gentleman familiar one to the American public,
and scholar. and one may question whether it was
much more widely known at home. This is sug-
gested by the words that Mr. Lecky dedicated to
his memory in the “Edinburgh Review,” over
whose destinies Mr. Reeve had presided for forty
years. “The career of Mr. Henry Reeve is per-
haps the most striking illustration in our time of
how little in English life influence is measured by
notoriety. To the outer world, his name was but
little known. He is remembered as the translator
of Tocqueville, as the editor of the “Greville Mem-
oirs,’ as the author of a not quite forgotten book on
Royal and Republican France, showing much knowl-
edge of French literature and politics; as the holder
during fifty years of the respectable, but not very
prominent, post of Registrar of the Privy Council.
To those who have a more intimate knowledge of
the political and literary life in England, it is well
known that during nearly the whole of his long life
he was a powerful and living force in English litera-
ture; that few men of his time have filled a larger
place in some of the most select circles of English
social life; and that he exercised during many
years a political influence such as rarely falls to
the lot of any Englishman outside of Parliament,
or indeed outside the Cabinet.” But it is not for
the interest that we may find in this career, singu-
larly long and full as it was, nor for the pleasure
and profit of knowing a fine specimen of English
gentleman, that the two stately volumes of Reeve's
“Memoirs” (Longmans) have their sole nor indeed
their main value. It is rather for the familiar con-
tact into which they bring us with many of the great
political events and many of the most prominent
men of Europe during the century just closing.
One must not look to these volumes for “revela-
tions”; but the near glimpses and the direct im-
pressions of famous men, both of England and the
Continent, and the selections from their letters to
him, refresh and enlarge our knowledge of them.
It was not a colorless medium in which they are
here reflected. He brought to the observation of
the men he met very positive opinions of his own
— prejudices, if you will; but this contributes to
heighten the vividness if not the truthfulness of his
pictures—as, for instance, in his account of his first
meeting with Victor Hugo and Balzac.
Mr. M. A. DeWolfe Howe's volume
on “American Bookmen” (Dodd,
Mead & Co.) does not call for the
particular comment which would properly be given
it were its contents not already widely known. The
series of articles of which it consists was originally
published in “The Bookman.” This fact probably
accounts for what seems to us an unfortunate title:
in the ordinary use of the word (if there be an or-
dinary use of a word so uncommon) a number of
the men of letters here spoken of were not bookmen.
We hesitate to think of Walt Whitman as a book-
man, as Mr. Howe himself remarks; and we should
add Emerson or Hawthorne. But a title is often a
minor matter: the title in its simplest significance
has in this case little connection with the treatment.
In some other ways the name does give an idea of
the book, which is not a history of American liter-
ature, nor a series of criticisms of American men
of letters, although it contains a good deal that is
historical and is written under the guidance of crit-
ical estimate. It is a series of biographical sketches
of the chief figures in our literature, well written
and well illustrated. A book like this is of a good
deal of value just now. Not that we have not
enough books about American literature. There
have been published in the last few years half a
dozen school histories. Nor that this book is (or
pretends to be) an adequate treatment of the de-
velopment of letters in America. We can afford
to wait for such a book until the end of the first
century of American letters, which we incline to
place in the year 1909, the centennial of “ Knick-
erbocker's New York.” But while we wait, public
interest is aroused and public opinion is stirred by
such books as this. Mr. Howe had here a good
opportunity, to which he proved himself quite equal.
He includes the chief of our men of letters; he
writes a fluent account with rich illustration by por-
trait, picture, and facsimile; he has always some-
thing of the critical idea in mind, and yet never
really departs from his own plan to present his facts
“primarily as a narrative.” We are not sure that
there is any other book which takes just the place
for which this is planned: we certainly do not think
of any that is better.
Some American
men of letters.
Bibliophiles will find some interest-
ing facts handily and compactly got
togetherin Mr. John Lawler's “Book
Auctions in England in the Seventeenth Century,”
the latest addition to “The Book-Lover's Library”
(Armstrong). The subject of book auctions at this
period has not heretofore been treated in any de-
tailed form, information relating to them, except
what may with difficulty be gleaned from the orig-
inal catalogues, being meagre and scattered. Mr.
Lawler's little book, therefore, fills a want. Though
book auctions had been common in Holland at least
since 1604, the custom of disposing of libraries sub
hasta did not begin in England till 1676, at which
date a sale was held by William Cooper, a dealer
Some famous
old English
book auctions.


1899.] THE
DIAL 375
dwelling at the sign of the “Pelican" in Little
Britain. The example of Cooper, who probably
took his cue from the Elzevirs, soon found imitators,
the method at once commending itself to collectors
and persons wishing to dispose of their libraries.
So from 1676 to 1700 over a hundred auctions were
held, which meant the disposal of some 350,000
works, bringing about £250,000 — or a much
greater sum if reckoned in the money value of to-day.
The auctions soon spread to the provinces, and were
held even in booths at country fairs. Dunton
boasted of shipping “ten tuns" of books to Ireland
to be sold under the hammer. Those were days of
good bargains, too, -of what would now be bar-
gains undreamed of by the most sanguine collector,
in books that now form the summum bonum of his
pursuit. Fancy getting Holland's “Herbologia,” with
the fine portraits by Pass, for seven shillings; Edward
WI.'s “Prayer Book” of 1552 for sixteen shillings;
the Jenny Geddes “Prayer Book” of 1637 for four
shillings; or a first edition Bacon’s “Advancement
of Learning” for one shilling ! One's mouth waters
at many such an item in these old lists. Mr. Law-
ler's book comprises a general Introduction, followed
by separate chapters on William Cooper's sales,
Edward Millington's sales, those of other auction-
eers of the century, the sale of Dr. Barnard's library,
and John Dunton's Irish book auctions. There is
an index.
A famous In a pretty volume entitled “Story
Frenchwoman - - - -- 7-2
at the court of the Princess des Ursins in Spain
of Spain. (R. H. Russell), we have an account
of one of those women of two centuries ago, who
occupied high social station and made it the means
of wielding real political influence. In 1701, the
Princess des Ursins, then fifty-nine years of age,
was appointed Camarera-Mayar at the court of the
newly-established Bourbon dynasty in Spain. Her
previous history and her experience in diplomatic
affairs seemed to Louis XIV. to fit her for this post,
and it was expected by him that her influence would
serve to keep the vacillating Philip W. of Spain
faithful to French interests in the war of the Span-
ish Succession, then just breaking over Europe.
The author of the present work, Miss Constance
Hill, shows us that in this expectation Louis XIV.
was disappointed, for from the moment of her ar-
rival in Spain the Princess threw herself heart and
soul into the cause of the Spanish Bourbons—a
course highly satisfactory to the King of France at
first, but later distasteful to him when he would
have sacrificed the interests of his grandson to the
necessities of French policy. To her, indeed, more
than to any other one person was due the stubborn
courage which animated the loyal party in Spain,
at a time when all seemed lost. Her discriminat-
ing judgment of men, her careful estimate of the
relative importance of events, her good sense in the
every-day affairs of life, her skill in diplomacy, and
above all her unfailing good nature and cheerful
courage, are made plain by the pleasantly written
narrative of her labors and by excellent selections
from her letters to Madame de Maintenon and
other personages of note in France. Even in her
fall from power, after the contest with Austria was
over and the battle won, we sympathize with her
and admire her bravery, for in a measure she for-
feited her position because she dared to attempt a
reformation of that bºte noir of so many Spanish
politicians, the Holy Inquisition. Possibly her part
in the direction of Spanish policy is overestimated
in the present volume, but certainly she was an
influential woman, and her story is here prettily told.
The new glory of the American
#º. Navy, which is shown on one side by
the great increase in number and im-
provement in character of the men anxious for
naval service since the war with Spain, is reflected
on another side by such a book as “From Reefer
to Rear-Admiral” (Stokes), prepared a few years
before his death by the late Rear-Admiral Benja-
min F. Sands, U.S. N. The word “Reefer” in
the title is misleading to a landsman, as indicating
a rise from the ranks; whereas Sands was a duly
appointed midshipman from the beginning of his
long and successful career. It is such a life as his
which shows how unbroken is the tradition of our
forces afloat. Sands, who was in active service for
forty-seven years, from 1828 to 1874, including both
the Mexican and Civil Wars, was the contemporary
of Dewey, Sampson, and Schley, as he was of Far-
ragut and Porter, the former having been a lieu-
tenant on the first ship in which Sands saw service,
and as the three great admirals of the war with
Spain were of the two great admirals in the war
between the States. David D. Porter was at the
gallant taking of Tabasco from the Mexicans, as
well as the gallant taking of Fort Fisher from the
South; and Farragut served with Porter's father,
David Porter, Jr., in the famous cruise of the
“Essex” in the war of 1812; while David Porter,
Jr., was in the fight of the “Constellation” and the
“Insurgente” in the naval war with France, serv-
ing under Captain Thomas Truxton, one of the naval
heroes of the Revolutionary War, and later with
Decatur, Macdonough, Barney, and the rest, off
Tripoli. David Porter, Sr., was also a Revolution-
ary hero. Sands was a gallant officer, but his more
memorable exploits were in the direction of the sci-
ences. Here he was something of an extremest,
inventing a deep-sea sounding apparatus, and being
an astronomer at the head of the Naval Observa-
tory. The book is excellent reading, even if it
makes no great addition to our knowledge of history.
Ought those who like Mr. Meredith's
novels to like his poetry also: And
what is to be said of the novels them-
selves 2 And what should we remember of the De
Weres 2 And of Matthew Arnold's poems, now half
a century old * Anyone who is in a state of sus-
pense on these matters, and desires something to
Old-time
criticism.


376
[June 1,
THE DIAL
effect a precipitate, may turn to Mr. W. M. Dixon's
“In the Republic of Letters” (imported by Scrib-
ner). These essays have been already published
in magazines; their author is Professor of English
Literature in Mason College, Birmingham. So
much will give a hint of what help Mr. Dixon will
give the seeker. We have read the essays with
interest. There are many critical essays published
nowadays: in each we try to distinguish some new
note. Here we distinguish none; but to make up,
we hear at times the clear, beautiful music which
is now more like a reminiscence of some golden
days of youthful appreciation than an allurement
toward anything to come. There is no harm in that:
we are prone to be too eager for “new notes” and
“modern ideas”; there is such a thing as a charm,
a beauty which is always old — as old, say, as New-
man, or Pascal, or Plato, and which is still mod-
ern in spite of the Des Goncourts and Mr. Ruskin.
We would hardly say that Mr. Dixon's work has
the charm of those great persuasive writers whom
we have just thought of. It does, however, have
something more like it than we have found in much
critical writing that has of late come to our notice,
— which is in some ways not saying very much,
but in others is more than a little.
In “The Physician” (Macmillan),
the latest of the plays of Mr. Henry
Arthur Jones to come to us in book
form, we find the same originality of imagination
and the same conventional staginess of treatment
that have excited and depressed us before. It is
something fresh and real to take for protagonist a
famous specialist in nervous diseases who feels that
his own life is poisoned by some strange trouble that
his greatest skill cannot cure. There, it seems to
us, the dramatist has a chance for some pretty deep-
sea sounding in the human heart. But it also seems
to us that it is not making the most of so good a
chance to set your specialist down for six months’
attendance on a temperance worker who is a victim
to alcoholism to the extent of about one spree a
month, all unsuspected by his charming fiancée
whose tender solicitude it is that calls in the doctor.
When one has got as far as that, it is not hard to
foresee that the drunkard will escape the specialist
and die in the gutter, and that the doctor's cruel
nervous disease will be cured by the love of the
ex-fiancée. Mr. Jones has been very successful
in pleasing the many who gather in the theatres to
see and hear; it will be interesting to see how
far he will please those who stay at home and read
books.
The latest of
the plays of
B. A. Jones.
In the early part of the present cen-
tury, that eccentric naturalist Con-
statine Samuel Rafinesque published
in “The Western Review and Miscellaneous Maga-
zine” of Lexington, Ky., a series of articles on the
fishes of the Ohio River. These were subsequently
issued in book form, under the title “Ichthyologia
A classic of
Jºresh-water
ichthyology.
Ohiensis.” This work contains the original descrip-
tions of a considerable number of the fresh-water
fishes of the Mississippi river system; for the author
had the evil fortune—at least so far as his suc-
cesses are concerned—to stumble upon and to name
many of the most common species of this great river
and its tributaries. Indeed, he often wove a scien-
tific description from an idle fisherman's tale, with-
out ever seeing the mythical fish. Execrable as
much of Rafinesque's work was, his “Ichthyologia
Ohiensis” has become the foundation of fresh-water
ichthyology in America. For many years his de-
scriptions were often ignored, but the stricter appli-
cation of rules of nomenclature in these later years
has made his work the starting-point for all who
would deal comprehensively with the subject. Dr.
R. E. Call has done the science a service by his
carefully edited reprint (Burrows Brothers) of this
ichthyological classic. The book contains a portrait,
several facsimiles, a complete bibliography of Ra-
finesque's ichthyological publications, and a brief
sketch of this versatile but unfortunate naturalist.
The volume is handsomely gotten up, and will be a
welcome addition to the library of every student of
our fresh-water fishes.
BRIEFER MENTION.
Heretofore, our own country has been represented in
“The Statesman's Year Book” by a modest outline
account of its form of government and existing admin-
istration, inserted somewhere between Turkey and Ura-
guay in the alphabetical arrangement of the manual.
With the 1899 issue (Macmillan) this is all changed,
and the United States now glories in an extensive
chapter, set in the forefront of the volume, filling
nearly three hundred pages, and made authoritative
by the name of Mr. Carroll D. Wright. The other
features of the work remain practically as in earlier
editions.
Messrs. Little, Brown, & Co. are engaged in publish-
ing a “Centenary” edition of Balzac, in Miss Worme-
ley's translation. There are to be thirty-three volumes
in all, of which the first two have just been issued.
These include “Pere Goriot,” “The Marriage Contract,”
“Memoirs of Two Young Married Women,” and “Al-
bert Savarus.” Each volume has three photogravure
illustrations. The same publishers send us “Fromont
and Risler” (“Sidonie”), translated by Mr. George
Burnham Ives, in a new uniform edition of Daudet,
which will extend to twenty volumes.
Mrs. Anna Bowman Dodd's “Cathedral Days” and
“In and Out of Three Normandy Inns "have achieved
a well-deserved popularity during the decade or so that
they have been before the public. They are now re-
issued in a handsome new edition by Messrs. Little,
Brown, & Co.
Dr. George Willis Botsford’s “History of Greece for
High Schools and Academies,” just published by the
Macmillan Co., is a handsome volume, well supplied
with illustrations, maps, analyses, and other apparatus,
which is interesting to read, scholarly in statement, and
in every way highly commendable.


1899.] THE
DIAL 377
LITERARY NOTES.
The Open Court Publishing Co. send us a new edition,
in paper covers, of “Buddhism and its Christian Critics,”
by Dr. Paul Carus.
Mr. Charles W. Bain has edited the seventh book of
the “Odyssey” for the “School Classics” published by
Messrs. Ginn & Co.
“Redgauntlet” and “St. Ronan's Well,” each in two
volumes, have been added to the pretty Dent-Scribner
edition of Scott's novels.
Mr. Andrew Lang's “Myth, Ritual, and Religion,”
in two volumes, is published in a new edition by Messrs.
Longmans, Green, & Co.
Messrs. Eldredge & Brother publish “A Text-Book
of Elementary Botany, including a Spring Flora,” by
Professor W. A. Kellerman.
“The Story of the British Race,” by Mr. John Munro,
is published by Messrs. D. Appleton & Co. in their
“Library of Useful Stories.”
“The Technique of the French Alexandrine” is a
doctoral dissertation presented to Johns Hopkins Uni-
versity by Mr. Hugo Paul Thieme.
Goethe's “Wilhelm Meister,” in two volumes, has
just been published by Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons
in their “Centenary” edition of Carlyle.
Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons import a new vol-
ume of “The Muses' Library,” being “The Poems of
Thomas Carew,” edited by Mr. Arthur Vincent.
A “Collection of Poetry for School Reading,” edited
by Mr. Marcus White, and designed for children from
ten to fifteen years of age, is published by the Macmil-
lan Co.
“Our Right to Acquire and Hold Foreign Territory,”
is a “question of the day” discussed by Mr. Charles
A. Gardiner in a pamphlet published by Messrs. G. P.
Putnam's Sons.
A new edition of De Morgan's book “On the Study
and Difficulties of Mathematics,” is one of the most
acceptable of the books recently issued by the Open
Court Publishing Co.
Messrs. Little, Brown, & Co. publish a new edition,
at a reduced price, of “Without Dogma,” the powerful
psychological novel of modern Poland. The translation
is by Miss Iza Young.
“Sir Bevis,” being an “adaptation” of the “Wood
Magic” of Richard Jefferies, made into a reading-book
for young people by Miss Eliza Josephine Kelley, is pub-
-lished by Messrs. Ginn & Co.
“Books I Have Read,” published by Messrs. Dodd,
Mead, & Co., is one of Lamb's biblia a-biblia. It is a
blank book intended for readers of other books who may
wish to note down their impressions.
“Sound” is the first volume of “A Text-Book of
Physics,” to appear in five sections. It is the work of
Professors J. H. Poynting and J. J. Thompson, and is
published in America by the J. B. Lippincott Co.
Mr. Samuel Harden Church’s “Oliver Cromwell,”
duly reviewed by us when published five years ago, is
now put forth by the Messrs. Putnam in a sumptuous
“Commemoration” edition, with eighteen full-page
illustrations. The edition is limited to six hundred
copies.
Baedeker’s “United States” (imported by Scribner)
has reached a “second revised edition,” in which we
notice no material changes. It is a model of condensa-
tion and reasonably up-to-date information, and we
counsel travelling Americans, no less than visiting
Europeans, to add it to their luggage, no matter how
slender the latter may be. Mr. J. F. Muirhead, who
has become a resident of this country, continues to be
the editor of this highly useful publication.
Two new volumes, the fourth and fifth, in the “His-
tory of Egypt,” of composite authorship, have just been
imported by Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons. Professor
Mahaffy writes the volume upon the period of the
“Ptolemaic Dynasty,” while the period of “Roman
Rule” has fallen to the pen of Mr. J. Grafton Milne.
LIST OF NEW BOOKS.
[The following list, containing 103 titles, includes books
received by THE DIAL since its last issue.]
BIOGRAPHY AND MEMOIRS.
Life, Writings, and Correspondence of George Borrow
1803–1881). Based on official and other authentic sources.
y William I. Knapp, Ph.D. In 2 vols., illus., 8vo, gilt
tops, uncut. G. P. Putnam's Sons. $6.
Life of Danton. By A. H. Beesly. With photogravure
tºº. 8vo, uncut, pp. 355. Longmans, Green, & Co.
4.50.
The Life of William Ewart Gladstone. Edited by Sir
Wemyss Reid. In 2 vols., illus., large 8vo. G. P. Put-
nam's Sons. $4.50.
The Life and Work of Thomas Dudley, the Second Gov-
ernor of Massachusetts. By Augustine Jones, A.M. Illus.,
8vo, gilt top, uncut, pp. 484. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. $5.
George Müller of Bristol, and his Witness to a Prayer-
Hearing God. By Arthur T. Pierson; with Introduction
by James Wright. Illus., 8vo, pp. 461. Baker & Taylor
Co. $1.50.
Recollections of Lincoln and Douglas Forty Years Ago.
By an Eye-Witness. Illus., 16mo, uncut. New York:
Privately Printed. $1.50.
Adam Smith. By Hector C. Macpherson. 12mo, pp. 160.
"Famous Scots.” Charles Scribner's Sons. 75 cts.
HISTORY.
The Civil War on the Border: A Narrative of Military
Operations in Missouri, Kansas, Arkansas, and the Indian
Territory, during the Years 1863–65. By Willº Britton.
Wol. II.; large 8vo, gilt top, uncut, pp. 546. G. P. Put-
nam's Sons. $3.50.
A History of Egypt. New vols.: Under the Ptolemaic
Dynasty, by J. P. Mahaffy; and Roman Rule, by J. Grafton
Milne, M.A. Each illus., 12mo, uncut. Charles Scribner's
Sons. Per vol., $2.52.
The Story of the People of England in the Nineteenth
Century. By Justin McCarthy. Part II., 1832-1898.
Illus., 12mo, pp. 261. “Story of the Nations.” G. P. Put-
nam's Sons. $1.50.
The Old Northwest: The Beginnings of our Colonial Sys-
tem. By B. A. Hinsdale, Ph.D. Revised edition; with
maps, 8vo, pp. 430. Silver, Burdett & Co. $1.75.
Selections from the Sources of English History, B. c. 55
—A. D. 1832. Arranged and edited by Charles W. Colby.
#; 12mo, uncut, pp. 325. Longmans, Green, & Co.
1.50.
The Story of the British Race. By John Munro. 24mo.
pp. 228. “Library of Useful Stories.” D. Appleton & Co.
40 cts.
GENERAL LITERATURE.
Unaddressed Letters. Edited by Frank Athelstane Swet-
tenham, K.C.M.G. 12mo, uncut, pp. 312. John Lane.
$1.50
More. By Max Beerbohm. John
First vols.: Alabama, by
Lane. $1.25.
New Series of Modern Plays.
Augustus Thomas; The Weavers, by Gerhart Hauptmann,
trans. from the German by Mary Morison; Lonely Lives,
by Gerhart Hauptmann, trans. by Mary Morison.
16mo. R. H. Russell. Per vol., $1.
12mo, uncut, pp. 201.


378
[June 1,
THE TOIAL
Character not Creeds: Reflections from Hearth and Plow-
Beam. By Daniel Fowler DeWolf, A.M. 12mo, pp. 258.
Robert Clarke Co. $1.25.
Anna Ruina: A Drama. 12mo, gilt top, uncut, pp. 101.
London: David Nutt.
NEW EDITIONS OF STANDARD LITERATURE.
The Works of Honoré de Balzac, “Centenary" edition.
Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley. Vol. I.,
Père Goriot, and The Marriage Contract; Vol. II., Me-
moirs of Two Young Married Women, and Albert Savarus.
Each illus. in photogravure, 12mo, gilt top. Little, Brown,
& Co. Per vol., $1.50.
The Poems of Thomas Carew. Edited by Arthur Vincent.
With photogravure portrait, 18mo, gilt top, uncut, pp. 264.
“Muses' Library.” Charles Scribner's Sons. $1.75.
Fromont and Risler (“Fromont Jeune et Risler Ainé”).
By Alphonse Daudet; trans. by George Burnham Ives.
ith photogravure frontispiece, 12mo, gilt top, uncut,
pp. 489. Little, Brown, & Co. $1.50.
The Works of Shakespeare, “Eversley” edition. Edited
by C. H. Herford, Litt.D. Vol. III.; 12mo, uncut, pp. 500.
Macmillan Co. $1.50.
Goethe's Wilhelm Meister. Trans. from the German b
Thomas Carlyle. “Centenary” edition; in 2 vols., wit
portraits, 8vo, uncut. Charles Scribner's Sons. $2.50.
The Waverley Novels, “Temple” edition. New vols.:
St. Ronan's Well, and Redgauntlet. Each in 2 vols., with
photogravure frontispieces, 24mo, gilt tops. Charles
Scribner's Sons. Per vol., 80 cts.
Without Dogma: A Novel of Modern Poland. By Henryk
Sienkiewicz; trans. from the Polish by Iza Young. Pop-
ular edition; with photogravure frontispiece, 12mo, pp. 423.
Little, Brown, & Co. $1.
Cassell's National Library, New Series. Edited by Prof.
Henry Morley. First vols.: Shakespeare's Hamlet, The
Merchant of Venice, and Julius Caesar. Each in 1 vol.,
24mo. Cassell & Co. Per vol., paper, 10cts.; cloth, 20cts.
POETRY AND VERSE.
Poems. By Ernest Hartley Coleridge. 12mo, uncut, pp. 107.
John Lane. $1.50.
The Silence of Love. By Edmond Holmes.
pp. 56. John Lane. $1.25.
Within the Hedge. By Martha Gilbert Dickinson. 12mo,
uncut, pp. 127. Doubleday & McClure Co. $1.
Jingle and Jangle, and Other Verses for and about Children.
By William S. Lord. 12mo, gilt top, pp. 58. F. H. Revell
Co. 75 cts.
FICTION.
Dross. By Henry Seton Merriman. Illus., 12mo, gilt top,
uncut, pp. 330. H. S. Stone & Co. $1.75.
The Fowler. By Beatrice Harraden. 12mo, pp. 345. Dodd,
Mead & Co. $1.50.
Men's Tragedies. By R. W. Risley. 12mo, gilt top, uncut,
pp. 303. Macmillan Co. $1.50.
A Double Thread. By Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler, 12mo,
pp. 418. D. Appleton & Co. $1.50.
The Queen of the Swamp, and Other Plain Americans.
By Mary Hartwell Catherwood. 16mo, pp. 331. Hough-
ton, Mifflin & Co. $1.25.
Children of the Mist. By Eden Phillpotts. 12mo, pp. 550.
G. P. Putnam's Sons. $1.50.
Idols. By William J. Locke. 12mo, gilt top, uncut, pp. 366.
John Lane. $1.50.
Tiverton Tales. By Alice Brown. 12mo, pp. 339. Hough-
ton, Mifflin & Co. $1.50.
Love among the Lions: A Matrimonial Experience. By
F. Anstey. Illus., 12mo, pp. 116. D. Appleton & Co. $1.
The Short Line War. By Merwin-Webster. 16mo, gilt top,
uncut, pp. 334. Macmillan Co. $1.50.
The Jamesons. By Mary E. Wilkins. Illus, in colors, 16mo,
gilt top, uncut, pp. 177. Doubleday & McClure Co. $1.
The Eye of a God, and Other Tales of East and West. By
W. A. Fraser. With frontispiece, 16mo, pp. 260. Double-
day & McClure Co. $1.25.
The Awakening. By Kate Chopin. 12mo, gilt top, uncut,
pp. 303. H. S. Stone & Co. $1.50.
The Duke of Linden: A Romance. By Joseph F. Charles.
12mo, uncut, pp. 295. John Lane. $1.25.
The Fight for Dominion: A Romance of our First War
with Spain. By Gay Parker. Illus., 12mo, gilt top, uncut,
pp. 316. E. R. Herrick & Co. $1.50.
8vo, uncut,
A Fair Brigand. By George Horton. Illus., 16mo, gilt top,
uncut, pp. 330. H. S. Stone & Co. $1.25.
The Passing of Prince Rozan: A Romance of the Sea. By
John Bickerdyke. 12mo, uncut, pp. 286. G. P. Putnam's
Sons. $1.
Pursued by the Law. By J. Maclaren Cobban.
pp. 343. D. Appleton & Co. $1.; paper, 50 cts.
D’Arcy of the Guards; or, The Fortunes of War. By Louis
Evan Shipman. 16mo, gilt top, uncut, pp. 238. H. S. Stone
& Co. $1.25.
Mistress Content Cradock. By Annie Eliot Trumbull.
{!"; 16mo, gilt top, uncut, pp. 306. Barnes &
0. 1.
Transatlantics. By Frederick W. Wendt.
pp. 219. Brentano's. $1.
Oliver Iverson. By Ann Devoore. With frontispiece, 18mo,
gilt top, uncut, pp. 181. H. S. Stone & Co. 75 cts.
Yale Yarns: Sketches of Life at Yale University. By John
Seymour Wood. 12mo, pp. 307. G. P. Putnam's Sons.
Paper, 50cts.
TRAVEL AND DESCRIPTION.
The European Tour. By Grant Allen. 12mo, pp. 297.
Dodd, Mead & Co. $1.25.
In and Out of Three Normandy Inns. By Anna Bowman
Dodd. Illus., 12mo, gilt top, uncut, pp. 394. Little,
Brown, & Co. $2.
Cathedral Days: A Tour in Southern England. By Anna
Bowman Dodd. New edition; illus., 12mo, gilt top, uncut,
pp. 390. Little, Brown, & Co. $1.50.
Across India at the Dawn of the 20th Century. By Lucy
E. Guinness. Illus., large 8vo, pp. 260. F. #. Revell Co.
$1.50 net.
In Modern Spain: Some Sketches and Impressions. By
Reginald St. Barbe, Illus., 12mo, uncut, pp.95. London:
Elliot Stock.
THEOLOGY AND RELIGION.
The Polychrome Bible. New vols.: Book of Ezekiel, by
C. H. Toy, LL.D. ($2.50); and Book of Joshua, by Rev.
W. H. Bennett, M.A. ($1.25 net). Each illus., 4to. Dodd,
Mead & Co.
The Victory of the Will. By Victor Charbonnel; trans.
from the French by Emily Whitney; with Introduction b
Lilian Whiting. 12mo, gilt top, pp. 331. Little, Brown, &
Co. $1.50.
Myth, Ritual, and Religion. By Andrew Lang. New edi-
º in 2 vols., 12mo, uncut. Longmans, Green, & Co.
2.50.
The Life of Trust: Being a Narrative of the Lord's Dealings
with George Müller. Written by himself; with Introduc-
tion and concluding chapter by J. R. Miller, D.D. Final
edition; illus., 12mo, pp. 544. T.Y. Crowell & Co. $1.50.
Heaven; or, That Better Country. By Jonathan Weaver,
D.D. With portrait, 12mo, pp. 240. Dayton, Ohio:
United Brethren Publishing House. $1.
A Soul's Pilgrimage: Personal and Religious Experiences.
By Charles F. B. Miel, D.D. With portrait, 12mo, pp.190.
George W. Jacobs & Co. $1. net.
Buddhism and its Christian Critics. By Dr. Paul Carus.
12mo, pp. 316. Open Court Publishing Co. Paper, 50cts.
FCONOMIC AND POLITICAL STUDIES.
The Economic Foundations of Society. By Achille Loria;
trans. from the French by Lindley M. Keasby; with a
new Preface by the author, 12mo, uncut, pp. 385. Charles
Scribner's Sons. $1.25.
Our Right to Acquire and Hold Foreign Territory. By
Charles A. Gardiner. 12mo, pp. 56. “Questions of the
Day.” G. P. Putnam's Sons. Paper, 50 cts.
ART.
A History of French Art, 1100–1899. By Rose G. Kings-
ley, 8vo, uncut, pp. 517. Longmans, Green, & Co. $5.
Selected Examples of Decorative Art from South Ken-
sington Museum. Edited by F. E. Witthaus. Parts I-IV.
Folio, Longmans, Green, & Co. Per part, $1.
XVII Designs to Thornton's Virgil. Reproduced from
the original woodcuts of William Blake. Large 8vo, uncut,
pp. 58. Portland, Maine: Thomas B. Mosher. $2. net.
Concerning the Royal Academy and the Paris Interna-
tional Exhibition of 1900, and Other Reveries. By Henry
Naegely, 8vo, uncut, pp. 73. London: Elliot Stock. Paper.
12mo,
16mo, uncut,
*


1899.] THE
DIAL 879
REFERENCE.
A Dictionary of the Bible. By James Hastings, M.A.,
with the assistance of others. º: II., Feign-Kinsman.
Large 8vo, pp. 870. Charles Scribner's Sons.
The Statesman's Year-Book for 1899. Edited by J. Scott
Keltie, LL.D., and I. P. A. Renwick, M.A. American
edition, edited by Carroll D. Wright, LL.D. With maps,
12mo, pp. 1500. Macmillan Co. $3. net.
Cumulative Index to Periodicals, Third Annual Volume,
1898. Edited by the Cleveland Public Library. Large
8vo, pp. 792. Cleveland: Helman-Taylor Co. $5.
The United States, with an Excursion into Mexico: A
Handbook for Travellers. Edited by Karl Baedeker.
Second revised edition; with maps, 18mo, pp.579. Charles
Scribner's Sons. $3.60 met.
SCIENCE AND NATURE.
Stars and Telescopes: A Hand-book of Popular Astron-
omy. By David P. Todd, M.A. Illus., 12mo, pp. 419.
Little, Brown, & Co. $2.
The Bee People. . By Margaret Warner Morley. Illus.,
12mo, pp. 177. A. 8. §§. & Co. $1.25.
EDUCATION.—BOOKS FOR SCHOOL AND
COLLEGE.
Social Phases of Education in the School and the Home.
By Samuel T. Dutton. 12mo, gilt top, uncut, pp. 259.
acmillan Co. $1.25.
Talks to Teachers on Psychology, and to Students on Some
of Life's Ideals. By William James. 8vo, gilt top, uncut,
pp. 301. Henry Holt & Co. $1.50.
The Art of Teaching. By David Salmon.
Longmans, Green, & Co. $1.25.
Psychology in the Schoolroom. By T. F. G. Dexter,
B.A., and A. H. Garlick, B.A. 12mo, pp. 413. Long-
mans, Green, & Co. $1.50.
El Sí de las Niñas. Por Leandro Fernández de Moratin;
edited by J. D. M. Ford, Ph.D. 12mo, pp. 95. Ginn &
Co. 55 cts.
Coleridge's The Ancient Mariner. Edited by John Phelps
Fruit, Ph.D. With portrait, 18mo, pp. 85. Benj. #
Sanborn & Co.
12mo, pp. 289.
25 cts.
MISCELLANEOUS.
The Conduct of War: A Short Treatise on its Most Impor-
tant Branches and Guiding Rules. By Colmar Freiherr
von der Goltz; trans. from the German by Major G. F.
Leverson, P.S.C., 8vo, uncut, pp.285. “Wolseley Series.”
Charles Scribner's Sons. $3.50.
Islam in Africa: Its Effects-Religious, Ethical, and Social
– upon the People of the Country. 'By Anson P. Atter-
bury; with Introduction by F. F. Ellinwood. 12mo, gilt
top, pp. 208. G. P. Putnam's Sons. $1.25.
RARE BOOKS 100,000 VOLUMES IN Stock.
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Mill(J.S.). Principles of Political Economy. 2 v.,8vo, clo. Bost. 1848 3.75
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THE
DIAL
3. Semi-ſāonthlg 3ournal of Literary Criticism, HBigtuggion, amb information.
THE DIAL (founded in 1880) is published on the 1st and 16th of
each month. TERMs or SUBSCRIPTION, 82.00 a year in advance, postage
prepaid in the United States, Canada, and Merico; 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, Fine Arts Building, Chicago.
JUNE 16, 1899. Vol. XXVI.
No. 312.
CONTENTS.
- PAGE
BOYS AND GIRLS AND BOOKS . . . . . . . .387
SPIRIT OF SONG. (Poem.) Clinton Scollard . . .389
COMMUNICATIONS . . . . 389
Mr. Kipling's “Cynical Jingoism” toward the Brown
Man. Henry Wysham Lanier.
Free Discussion of the Philippine Question. David
Starr Jordan.
Scorn not the Ass. W. R. K.
AUBREY BEARDSLEY IN PERSPECTIVE.
G. M. R. Twose . . . . . . . . . . . . .391
OUR NEW ISLAND POSSESSIONS. Ira M. Price 394
Lala's The Philippine Islands. – Younghusband's
The Philippines and Round About.—Noa's The Pearl
of the Antilles. – Morris's Our Island Empire.—
Vivian and Smith's Everything About Our New
Possessions.
ECONOMICS AND PHILANTHROPY OF
RUSKIN. Max West . . . . . . . . . . .396
STUDIES OF SOCIETY AND HUMANITY. C. R.
Henderson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 398
Giddings's The Elements of Sociology.—Wright's
Practical Sociology.—Woods's The City Wilderness.
—Wyckoff's The Workers: The West. — Riis's Out
of Mulberry Street.— Mrs. Bosanquet's The Standard
of Life, and Other Studies. – Fletcher's That Last
Waif. — Hird's The Cry of the Children.
BRIEFS ON NEW BOOKS . . . . . . . . . . 400
McCarthy's 19th century England. – Critical essays
from the French. — The problem of the tides.—
Memories, literary and political. — The American
acting drama. – Completion of Ratzel's History of
Mankind. – “More” from Max Beerbohm. – Two
forgotten men of letters.-Mrs. Meynell's new vol-
ume,
BRIEFER MENTION . . . . . . . . . . . . 403
LITERARY NOTES . 404
LIST OF NEW BOOKS . . . . . . . . . . . 404
BOYS AND GIRLS AND BOOKS.
The curse (we use the word deliberately)
which at present rests upon the teaching of
English literature in our elementary and sec-
ondary schools is the imposition upon young
people of a priori programmes. We try to
inculcate a love of literature by making boys
and girls read books that they do not like, sim-
ply because in our Olympian opinion, and from
our superior point of view, they ought to like
them. The result is the natural one that a
large proportion of our grammar and high-
school children learn to hate the very name of
literature, and by our injudicious treatment are
cut off (many of them for good) from one of
the chief joys of life. And yet nearly all of
them have their literary interests, have some-
where in their mental make-up the germs of
good taste. Any intelligent teacher, free to
deal with the problem presented by a particu-
lar individual or even a particular class of stu-
dents, can get at these interests and develope
these germs. But this necessary freedom in
diagnosis and treatment is denied to most teach-
ers by the stupidity of the authorities placed
over them, and they are condemned to the hope-
less task of working within the rigid limits of
prescribed texts and courses. The colleges, for
example, announce that they will examine can-
didates in certain texts, and the consequence
of this announcement is that thousands of hap-
less young students (to take two peculiarly
flagrant cases of recent years) are set to study-
ing Defoe's “History of the Plague" and
Burke's speech on “Conciliation.” Small won-
der if, under these circumstances, the study of
literature itself becomes a plague, because ab-
solutely devoid of the sort of conciliation that
is really needed. And if undue deference is
not paid to the requirements of the colleges,
there is never any lack of doctrinaires among
superintendents and committeemen to devise
programmes that are equally well calculated to
destroy the nascent liking for literature that is
the normal possession of healthy young minds.
This way of dealing with the most sacred
interests of children is educational quackery
and nothing else, whether it proceed from auto-
cratic individuals or from bodies of educators
in solemn conclave. It is the proprietary-


388 THE I) IAL
[June 16,
medicine principle applied to the treatment of
the mind. The fatuousness of prescribing cer-
tain texts to be studied by children in certain
stages of their education is so amazing that
words are inadequate to deal with it. That
one man's meat is another man's poison is a
statement as true in psychology as it is in phys-
iology. Imagine a body of representative phys-
icians meeting for the purpose of preparing a
course of drugs to be administered uniformly
to young people of certain ages. At fifteen,
let us say, they should take calomel for so many
months, quinine for so many others, and thus
throughout the whole period of development.
The illustration is grotesque, no doubt, yet it
offers a fair parallel to the methods of many
educators when dealing with this delicate ques-
tion of literary instruction. Mr. Ruskin once
described himself as “a violent Tory,” and the
contemplation of such methods as these should
be enough to make “a violent Individualist”
of everyone having a proper appreciation of
the aims to be kept in view by the teacher of
literature. “Chaos is come again" would
doubtless be the cry of the partisans of routine
should their precious schemes be roughly set
aside in the interests of the individual student.
But in pedagogy, at least, there is one thing
worse than chaos, and that thing is the sort of
regimentation toward which so much of our
modern education tends.
We are impelled to these observations by
the recent publication of a small book called
“An Introduction to the Study of Literature,”
compiled by Dr. Edwin Herbert Lewis. It is
a book of detached pieces, about one hundred
and fifty in all, and, as we look it over, our
first impression is that it offers one more incen-
tive to that “reading by sample" against
which Mr. Pancoast protests so effectively in
the last number of “The Educational Review.”
A further examination, disclosing such juxta-
positions as William Cullen Bryant and Mrs.
Charlotte Perkins Stetson, Walt Whitman and
Mr. William Canton, Shakespeare on “the
fop" and Cardinal Newman on “the gentle-
man,” gives the impression that we are plung-
ing into a sort of literary grab-bag, and curi-
osity as to what will come out next becomes the
predominant element in the consciousness. But
our thoughts take a more serious turn when
we seek in the preface of the book to discover
the principle upon which it has been put
together. It then appears in its true light as
an attempt (the first of its sort that has come
to our knowledge) to place before young peo-
ple the kind of literature that they really like
instead of the kind that their elders think they
ought to like. The book is based upon actual
experiment rather than upon a priori reasoning;
each selection is the result of an induction from
many observations rather than of a deduction
from any pedantic principle. But in this mat-
ter Dr. Lewis must speak for himself.
First of all, he tells us that the appeal of
literature should be made to the “highest nor-
mal interests” of the student. Then, “it must
be ascertained by what stages the imagination,
the emotions, and the character develope. The-
oretically, there is a masterpiece for every
month of the student's life. The surest way of
learning where the masterpieces fit is to allow
the student to “browse' in a library.” The
following passage describes the method which
has resulted in the volume now under consid-
eration.
“Warious classes in the Lewis Institute have been en-
couraged to “browse,’ to see if they might not hit upon
a body of literature that would remain a constant inter-
est to their equals in age. However imperfect and
incomplete these investigations, the sifting process, upon
which the students entered actively and honestly, has
been of the greatest value to all concerned. It has
shown that noticeable differences of interest exist be-
tween ninth and tenth, tenth and eleventh grades. In
the nature-sense, for instance, as it appears in the youth
not hopelessly hardened by “business’ aims, there are
usually marked changes between thirteen and sixteen.
The change is first from the child's scientific curiosity
about nature to a half-poetic, but objective, interest in
her; the boy becomes capable of direct, unreflecting joy
in nature, or even of direct displeasure with her, in
something of the Homeric manner; then he slowly grows
to sympathize with the modern view, so much more
imaginative and sometimes so much less wholesome than
Homer’s.”
That the method thus outlined is the only
rational one for the teaching of literature to
young students seems to us beyond question. It
makes the work attractive rather than forbid-
ding. It coaxes the recalcitrant tastes and
emotions instead of domineering over them. It
prepares the way for that systematic study of
literary history and aesthetics that has its un-
disputed place in the later stages of education,
but is entirely out of place in the earlier years.
We should not be taken to mean that Dr. Lewis
has prepared a book that may properly be
administered to any class of young people of
the age with which he has dealt. That would
be denying the fundamental principle of our
philosophy. But he undoubtedly has prepared
the best sort of book for his own particular set
of young people, and a book, furthermore,
which points to other teachers the way in which
.


1899.] THE
DIAL 389
º:
they should get at the interests of their own
students. Nor must it be imagined that his
method runs to “chatter,” or that it neglects
the disciplinary aspect of instruction. He says
at the outset that “there is need of Spartan
severity regarding chirography, orthography,
punctuation, syntax, and logic. The task of
securing correctness by Spartan methods, and,
at the same time, of arousing an unconstrained
love for noble literature, is the almost hopeless
labor set for the English teacher. Gradgrind
and enemy of Gradgrind he must be within the
same hour. But there is no escaping the double
duty, and no denying that the second part of it is
the more important.” Note the emphasis of this
latter clause, and note also the word “uncon-
strained,” which must be the keynote of sug-
cessful endeavor. It is because constraint is
applied at the wrong points that our schools
make so miserable a failure of that part of their
work which should exemplify the most shining
success. And this misapplied constraint, be it
observed, rarely comes from the initiative of
the intelligent teacher; it rather originates in
the councils of those set above him in author-
ity, and is transmitted by him, unwillingly
enough, to the hapless victims of the system
with which both teachers and students are
burdened.
SPIRIT OF SONG.
O where, O where,
Into the blue engirdling vasts of air,
As fair and evanescent as the dawn,
O blithe and winged spirit, art thou gone,
And why so far withdrawn?
Of yore, of yore,
When sea and shore
Were glad with summer or with winter frone,
I knew thy radiant presence eve and morn;
Now am I lone and lorn!
From day to day
I wait thy coming in the old sweet way,+
Thy zephyr-soft surprisings grave or gay;
Thy tremulous minors and thy majors bold;
Thy melodies manifold!
Return, return,
O thou for whom I yearn!
Gladden my heart, as doth the stir of spring
The earth, with vernal hopes on fairy wing,
All clearly cadencing!
So shall I know
Once more the ecstacy, the thrill, the glow,
That lifts above the whelm and surge of strife
Wherewith the rondure of our days is rife,
So shall I touch the haloed heights of life!
CLINToN Scollard.
COMMUNICATIONS.
MR, KIPLING'S “CYNICAL JINGOISM** TOWARD
THE BROWN MAN.
(To the Editor of THE DIAL.)
I have read with rather special interest the pages of
your issue of May 16, in which Mr. Henry Austin (im-
pelled by “the hardihood of intense conviction, coupled
with a stern sense of duty”) reproves a public given
over to a “hysteria of unreasoned admiration,” to a
“toy tempest of flatulent adulation,”—of Mr. Rudyard
Kipling.
It is quite unnecessary for any admirer of Mr. Kip-
ling's work to attempt any reply to assertions that the
“Recessional” is inferior in technique and style to the
work of “a dozen other English poets,” particularly
Mr. Rennell Rodd; or that “most of his verses” are
“on the same plane with the work of many minor En-
glish and American poets.” With all due respect to
Mr. Austin, such statements, even when they appear in
THE DIAL, violate all laws of physics by having no ac-
tion except a reaction.
But when a journal like yours gives place to a char-
acterization such as the following, I feel as if the most
obscure reader had a right to protest. Mr. Austin, after
quoting Dr. Felix Adler's denunciation of Mr. Kipling's
“teaching as a gospel of force,” goes on:
“It is not, however, with Kipling's jingoism and frank
cynicism toward inferior races, as the Apostle of Force, of
Might against Right, that literature is concerned, exceptinas-
much as these essentially pagan and very antiquated senti-
ments might be shown to affect his art.”
Now, it is the penalty of candor to subject itself to
misunderstanding as well as wilful misrepresentation;
yet it is difficult to conceive how a man of Mr. Austin's
intelligence can make a declaration of so peculiarly
inaccurate and unjust a nature as the above, except on
the supposition that he has not read a large majority
of Mr. Kipling's writings. Here is an author who
writes of things as they are — not as they might be; of
men who do the world's work, dirty work, hard work,
unpoetic work much of it, — not of those who delude
themselves and others into believing that matters are
as they would like to have them. He is perhaps more
entirely sincere, more thoroughly free from hypocritic
cant or shadow of self-deception than any writer now
prominently before the public: it is very natural that
such frank disregard of their little air-structures should
offend the sentimentalists; but it is almost incredible
that any fair-minded person could speak of his “cyni-
cism toward inferior races” after even the most super-
ficial examination of his stories and poems that deal
with the natives of India and the Far East. Is this
quality to be found in “The Masque of Plenty” (“De-
partmental Ditties”) — written, too, when his work
showed a far greater preponderance of head over heart
than was later visible? Or perhaps in “The Song of
the Women”? or “What the People Said”? Does
Mr. Austin's “intense conviction” result from a con-
templation of “The Ballad of East and West” or
“Gunga Din,” or, in prose, of “The Story of Muham-
mad Din,” “Without Benefit of Clergy,” “The Judg-
ment of Dungara,” “At Howli Thana,” “Gemini,”
“The Sending of Dana Da,” “On the City Wall,” or
any other of dozens of poems and stories which are to
be found in Mr. Kipling's books?
What a miserably unfair thing is it, because an author


390 THE DIAL
[June 16,
tells more intimately and openly than ever before of
“Tommy Atkins”— whose chief business is policing
and fighting black and brown men — to cry out upon
him as the “Apostle of Might against Right” Ignor-
ing all the innumerable ways in which he has shown an
understanding of the native, and a real manly, brotherly
feeling for him, such as our literature does not equal
elsewhere !
The truth is that Mr. Kipling has been the first
man who has ever introduced the Anglo-Saxon to the
real native of India – a fellow-man, with hopes and
fears, and pride and resentment, and hopeless resigna-
tion. His best claim to attention is his infinite sympa-
thy with all things animate and inanimate: this is the
very warp and woof of his whole literary fabric. He
has well earned the right to inscribe in his books as he
has done in the beginning of his new “From Sea to
Sea”: “Write me as one that loved his fellow-men.”
HENRY WYSHAM LANIER,
New York, June 3, 1899.
FREE DISCUSSION OF THE PHILIPPINE QUESTION.
(To the Editor of THE DIAL.)
In reading your timely and pertinent editorial on
“The Menace to Free Discussion,” in your issue of
May 16, one smiles at the thought that Mr. Atkinson's
little pamphlet should demoralize our soldiers at Manila.
These soldiers can tell far more — those who have re-
turned have told me far more — than Mr. Atkinson ever
dreamed of, of the horrors of war and disease.
No doubt THE DIAL is right in believing that the
impulse to emulate British colonial methods is “noth-
ing more than a severe fever that will run its course
and pass away.” The heart of the patient is sound, and
the reaction will come sooner or later. But one neces-
sity of convalescence is that the patient be very careful
to guard his ways. The sequelae of this illness promise
to be appalling. Most of us have admitted, in loose
fashion, that we were likely in a new enterprise to make
blunders; but few anticipated such colossal and fatal
mistakes as we have been led into, without our consent,
within the last few months.
No one dreamed, for example, (1) that we should
break our pledge not to seek extension of territory by
force of arms; or (2) that we should repudiate without
explanation our promises to our allies in Luzon, what-
ever these pledges were. We have (3) failed to con-
ciliate these people, once our allies, or even to appear
to try to conciliate them. We have (4) refused for
months to give them any answer to their questions as to
our plans. We have (5) rejected or insulted their en-
voys. If the determination of policy rests with Con-
gress, we have failed to tell them so, or (6) to arrange
for a peaceful modus vivendi until Congress should meet.
We failed (7) to take advantage of the hopeful begin-
ning of civil government at Malolos. We have (8)
played fast and loose with ourselves, talking in one
breath of duties to civilization, in another of impe-
rial conquest; in one breath of free constitutional rule
in the islands, in another of industrial slavery and the
demands of commerce. We have (9) adopted no pol-
icy of our own, in the hope, apparently, that chance —
called “manifest destiny”— may give us what justice
must refuse. We began war (10) on February 5, the
general in charge using as an excuse a drunken escapade
of natives for which their leaders were not responsible.
We (11) refused their explanations, and their request
for a neutral zone and a truce. We (12) have held
our army in such relations that friction with the natives
was inevitable. We have (13) rejected all later offers
of peace except on the outrageous terms of “uncon-
ditional surrender.” We have (14) treated these peo-
ple on their own soil as “rebels,” in defiance of fact,
of justice, and apparently in defiance of our own Con-
stitution and of the recognized law of nations. We
have (15) permitted a declaration of war to be virtu-
ally made by a general who at the best is regardless of
statesmanship, and who is reported rarely to leave his
office “where he devotes himself faithfully to the duties
of a quartermaster's clerk.” The operations of this
most undemocratic war have been in part conducted
(16) with the same waste and cruelty that roused us all
to indignation in Cuba. The towns we occupy have been
burned and looted; and the natives, rich and poor, ed-
ucated and barbarous alike, have been alike shot or
driven to the swamps. I suppose that successful war-
fare in tropical islands can be waged in no other way.
Guerrilla warfare means devastation. Why not end the
horror at once 2 We have nothing to gain by victory,
nor our opponents anything to lose save their lives by
defeat. Meanwhile, the most gigantic blunder (17)
known to man or nation is to refuse to retrace false
steps.
As matters are, we can only wait till the curtain falls.
If in trying to do what seems wrong we have blundered
so awkwardly, what would be the result of an attempt
on the part of the powers that be to do what is right?
In hands unskilful or unclean any policy is doomed to
failure. The American people can only watch the play
till it is played out, and maybe heed its lessons for the
future. Meanwhile, the problem of what to do with
Cuba and the Philippines is tenfold more difficult than
it was a year ago. DAvid STARR Jordan.
Stanford University, California, June 5, 1899.
SCORN NOT THE ASS.
(To the Editor of THE DIAL.)
Have not “Philister’s ” critics, in THE DIAL of
June 1, been a little harsh with that unfortunately
constituted gentleman? His case seems to me one call-
ing for compassion rather than anger. Would Professor
Rice and S. E. B. trounce a blind man for speaking ill
of Raphael, or a deaf one for flouting Beethoven 2 My
own attitude toward “Philister.” I have endeavored to
convey in the subjoined stanzas. I trust he will see
that, though the figure employed therein is homely, the
sentiment is sincere.
LINEs to A TETHERED Ass.
(With apologies to Sterne.)
Pensive I view thee, thou poor drudge of Fate,
In thy small circumscript abjectly tied,
While the rude elements tempestuous beat
Their pitiless tattoo on thy rough hide.
For thee the rose is scentless, and for thee
The fluting throat of Philomel is still;
Thy fairest dream is of a thistle-field
Where thou canst browse at ease and munch
tly fill.
I am not of thy scorners; for I see
How bare thy lot is, and how dim thy day:
My ear compassionate can e'en detect
A plaintive note in thy discordant bray.
W. R. K.
Pittsfield, Mass., June 6, 1899.


1899.] THE
DIAL 391
Čbe #tto $ooks.
AUBREY BEARDSLEY IN PERSPECTIVE.”
It was while watching the progress of a
friendship between two exceedingly unattract-
ive boys—an attraction between two repellants
— that I arrived at a sense of the possible
charm of unlovely things. The connection of
Beauty and the Beast is pathetic — in some
minds for Beauty, in others for the Beast; but
in the companionship of Beast and Beast, in-
stead of a double pathos one finds a double
beauty. This is a surprise that the hideous
often contains for those who are apt to consider
the non-existence of a quality proved by their
inability to perceive it. Adroitly evaded as
companions by their brighter eyed and more
ready tongued kind, these two youths had dis-
covered in each other — of necessity piercing
below externals — that charm inherent in all
humanity, the perception of which is love. The
occasional wonder, to which we are all subject,
as to whatever he saw in her or she in him,
and why they married, is after all only a proof
of our inferior and their superior sympathy or
perception — in that especial case, of course.
So, in view of the first repulsive impression of
the bulk of Aubrey Beardsley's work, and the
strongly expressed sympathy of such trained
perceptions as Mr. Joseph Pennell and Mr.
Arthur Symons, it becomes somewhat of a duty
to endeavor to understand what they saw in
him, rather than to insist on what most of us
don't see.
Of the three books dealing with Beardsley
recently published, the smallest is a reprint of
Mr. Arthur Symons's essay which originally
appeared in “The Fortnightly Review.” The
next in size is a collection of fifty drawings,
published without comment; and the last and
largest is the sumptuous volume published by
Mr. John Lane with a preface by Mr. H. C.
Marillier. Mr. Marillier avails himself of Mr.
Symons's essay to a degree which would seem
to make that essay the authoritative statement,
backed up as its spirit is, in my mind, by Mr.
Pennell's generous-spirited letter to the “Lon.
don Daily Chronicle" soon after Beardsley's
death. To anyone who is trying to range
*THE EARLY Work of AUBREY BEARDsley. With a
Prefatory Note by H. C. Marillier. New York: John Lane.
ASEcond Book of FIFTY DRAwiNGs. By Aubrey Beards-
ley. New York: John Lane.
AUBREY BEARDslEY. By Arthur Symons. Unicorn
Quarto, No. 3. New York: M. F. Mansfield and A. Wessels.
Beardsley's work in its relation to the absolute,
Mr. Symons's critique is somewhat of a disap-
pointment, as it deals mainly with Beardsley's
work in its relation to Beardsley. Acknowl-
edging the impossibility of entirely eliminating
the personal equation, the real interest of the
present moment would, however, seem to be
rather the value of Beardsley's work in relation
to ourselves and to our existence. Letting this
unknown quantity be represented for the mo-
ment by ac, we have, in considering these draw-
ings, to remember three things: that they are
the work of a young man who died at the age
of twenty-six, that they are largely of that char-
acter we have agreed to describe as Pagan,
and that, given a few more years of life, the
young man would probably have gone alto-
gether to the good. Mr. Symons indicates the
beginning of this last process in referring to
Beardsley's last drawings, in which, he says,
“Beardsley has accepted the convention of nature
itself, turning it to his own uses, extracting from it his
own symbols, but no longer rejecting it for a convention
entirely of his own making. And thus in his last work
we find new possibilities for an art which, after many
hesitations, has resolved finally upon the great compro-
mise, that compromise which the greatest have made
between the mind's outline and the outline of visible
things.”
That is very good, both for Beardsley and for
Mr. Symons, who has put an important prin-
ciple very featly and instilled a very definite
regret that Beardsley died before these possi-
ble futurities were consummated. The state-
ment enables us to transfer to a the third fac-
tor, that of Beardsley's probable volte-face, so
that a = value of Beardsley's work to us and our
existence – our regret at early death before it
had any. This leaves the two factors of Beards-
ley's youth and his paganism; and looking over
the drawings, one realizes that he was indeed
young — bitterly young. An assumption of
knowledge of good and evil — especially evil—
seems inseparably connected with the inexpe-
rience of youth; but this phase, evident as it is
in Beardsley, is slight compared with another
—the impressionable quality with which he
receives and records in rapid succession the
many and varied influences of masters past and
present.
Mr. Symons, in discussing Beardsley's work,
assists us to an understanding of it with epi-
grams like this: “At one time of his life, a
man works in order to please a woman; then he
works because he has not pleased the woman;
then because he is tired of pleasing her,”—
which is good as an epigram, but hardly uni-


392
[June 16,
THE DIAL
versal. We also find phrases such as “the
spectacular vices,” “sin transfigured by beauty
and then disclosed by beauty,” and he later
tells us that “a profound spiritual corruption
is a form of divine possession by which the
inactive and material soul is set in fiery motion,
lured from the ground into at least a certain
high liberty. And so we find evil justified of
itself, and an art consecrated to the revelation
of evil equally justified.” These illuminating
sentences are powdered with descriptions of
“bloated harlequins,” “bald and plumed Pier-
rots,” “leering dwarfs,” “immense bodies
swollen with the lees of pleasure,” “cloaked
and masked desires smiling ambiguously at
interminable toilets.” Anyone reading this
essay before seeing the drawings would be justi-
fied in inferring that the dead artist did not
draw very nice things; but somehow the gen-
eral impression is that the essay and the draw-
ings are concerned with something too artificial
to be really evil. One might even argue from
Mr. Symons's pleasure in his own descriptions
that he himself is somewhat youthful; for “lees
of pleasure” and “masked desires smiling
ambiguously” are excellent terms, but terms
derived rather from a good literary instinct
than from any cryptic experience of the kind
so darkly hinted at. And then, looking at the
drawings and seeing the very evident and
marked reflection of Burne-Jones, Botticelli,
Velasquez, various Japanese artists, Dürer,
Flaxman, and others, one is convinced that the
character, plastic enough to receive so rapidly
so many impressions, is youthful enough to be
its own excuse for many errors of judgment.
So it happens that when Mr. Symons says
Beardsley expresses evil with an intensity which
lifts it into a region almost of asceticism, there
arises a mild impression that he is talking about
a knowledge and an experience of evil which
Beardsley could not and naturally did not ex-
press. The general impression given by most
of the subjects of the drawings is truly one of
much vulgarity; but to imply that the strange
creatures therein represented are evil, or even
unconventional, would be distressingly anthro-
pomorphic. Mr. Wells, in his very exciting
story “The War of the Worlds,” has invented
a race of Martians who cannot possibly be
judged by our code of sexual morality, because
they are bi-sexual, and reproduce by a budding-
off process. Du Maurier did the same thing;
so have others; and it would be uncritical, be-
cause the nice people I know usually take wraps
to the theatre, to condemn the race invented
by Beardsley who conspicuously don't. They
are evidently the product of different condi-
tions, and different systems of ventilation,
and cannot be judged by the standards by
which we judge. As Mr. Wells's people, from
our point of view, are neither moral, immoral,
nor supra-moral, but are rather non-moral, so
Beardsley's people at the theatre or other-
wheres can only be described in the same way.
They are a strange race to whom may well be
applied the artist's comment on himself: “Par
les dieux jumeaux tous les monstres ne sout
pas en Afrique”; their ethical standard is un-
known, and, frankly, they inspire one with no
desire for further love or knowledge of them.
Mr. Symons and Mr. Marillier apparently
think them profoundly evil. I may miss the
point; but then I have my consolations, and
both gentlemen must know that we have seen
the swollen bodies and lees of pleasure before,
in Japanese work, rendered with a much greater
skill than Beardsley's; and of them we have
always said that, judged by occidental stand-
ards, they were rather low.
The terrible annunciation of evil, which is
insisted on so strongly, will, I think, when
investigated, simmer down to an unpleasant
vulgarity. Most terrible annunciations and
denunciations do, and the dwarfs and monkeys
and swollen bodies, and so forth, cannot mean-
while obtain admission to the Palace of Art,
on Mr. Symons's pretense that they are sym-
bols. A symbol is something substituted by
general consent for something else, and we are
by no means agreed on these. The justification
of this vulgarity in the minds of most, includ-
ing Mr. Symons, is that “perfection of line is
virtue.”
“That line which rounds the deformity of the cloven-
footed sin, the line itself, is at once the revelation and
the condemnation of vice, for it is part of that artistic
logic which is morality. And, after all, the secret of
Beardsley is there, in the line itself rather than in any-
thing intellectually realized which the line is intended
to express.”
Supposing the end it is wished to realize is a
very ill-defined one, such as a terrible annun-
ciation of evil is likely to be, it is of course
pleasant to find that the medium per se is
charming. Still, to be insulted wittily, to be
drugged sweetly, to be smothered with roses,
are states achieved by means which may be
consolations but are by no means compensations.
That struggle with his material which is the
despair of every artist may well account for
Mr. Pennell's admiration of one who seemed
to dominate his so easily, but it is hardly a


1899.] THE
DIAL 393
factor that can be transferred to ac. Drawings
of the sort that Beardsley did with such power
over line and mass and decoration, always seem
to me to be accurately described by reference
to one of Poe's stories, “The Facts in the Case
of M. Waldemar.” M. Waldemar is mesmer-
ized in articulo mortis. This arrested the nat-
ural post-mortem process, and retained the
body in statu quo ante mortem for some months
until the experiment of awakening him was
made. As soon as the mesmeric influence was
withdrawn, M. Waldemar became what seven
months' death makes of us all. It is not a
pleasant story, and those interested in details
are referred to the original; but, taking Beards-
ley's power over mass and line as the parallel
to the mesmeric force of the story, it seems as
though in the majority of his drawings it were
used in the same way — to arrest the natural
decomposition of a mass of matter which can
only be maintained in a horrid semblance of
life, has no virtue in it, and were better entirely
dead. It is not a pleasant use of power (ref.
erence is again made to Poe's story for details),
but, however used, it is power; and it is un-
doubtedly in this very ability to delineate, to
compose, to balance mass and void, to sustain
a harmonious relation of line to line, of whole
to unit, in this sensitiveness to organic rela-
tionship, we begin to get a hint of that charm,
that fineness, which Beauty discovered in the
Beast, and Mr. Pennell in Beardsley's draw-
ings. By any trained or sympathetic percep-
tion, this inherent charm is doubtless at once
divined; but it must not be forgotten how large
a part loneliness must have played in quickening
the perceptions of Beauty; the loneliness of a
worker struggling with his material in the vast-
ness of any art is a parallel situation, but one
impossible to the multitude of us.
With all due credit, then, to Beauty and to
Mr. Pennell for their generous perception, it is
yet somewhat of a relief to consider how much
emotional effort was economized, and how many
apologies Beauty was saved by the translation
of the Beast into a handsome Prince — that
transformation which Mr. Symons mentions as
occurring in Beardsley's last drawings, the
possibility of which is evident in all. Beauty
was probably as glad to be relieved from the
strain of reminding herself that though hid-
eous her husband had a beautiful disposition,
as Mr. Symons must be at not having to
sustain his paradox of an abstract spiritual
corruption revealed in beautiful form. In the
same way, most of us prefer the line of least
resistance; and we shall undoubtedly evade
those drawings in which the subject is nasty
but the drawing skilful, in favor of those in
which the Prince's sense of life is conveyed in
a fine smile rather than a sneer. This qual-
ity we find in such drawings as the “Chopin
Nocturne’’ and “Ballade,” the two Venus de-
signs, “Les Revenants de la Musique,” the
outline portrait of Réjane, and most of the
cover and catalogue designs. Herein we have
the Prince (the fairy-tale Prince perhaps,
somewhat light and glancing); Mr. Pen-
nell is justified, and a ceases to be a merely
minus quantity. For herein is the subject that
attracts and induces us to linger until the
innate quality penetrates also. Here we have
no poor dead M. Waldemar maintained in an
unconvincing semblance of life by a misuse of
power, but life itself in a most delicate and
evanescent aspect caught and depicted in a way
that makes it a force in quickening the feeling
for the delicate and fanciful in others. There
never yet was anything but regret at the death
of anyone who gave promise of ministering with
power to the needs of the human character;
and in that promise, and some slight beginnings
of fulfilment, lies the value of Beardsley to us:
not the thing he did for the most part, nor the
thing he started others doing, but the work he
gave promise of doing. That promise, scat-
tered through his executed work, excites a
regret, a deep and tender regret, he nearly
missed, but which is nearer to fame than the
notoriety he desired and achieved.
With regard to the books as books, it must
be added that the Unicorn quarto came to
pieces at the first possible opportunity, and Mr.
Marillier's prefatory note in the large edition
is, for a prefatory note bearing the address of
Kelmscott House, vilely printed, ranging from
a smudgy black to a very pale gray. The “Sec-
ond Book of Fifty Drawings” is of course
mainly interesting to those who have the “First
Book,” since it is a sort of addendum containing
many drawings whose only interest is that they
were done by A. W. B.
G. M. R. TwoSE.
THE “Cumulative Index to a Selected List of Peri-
odicals,” edited by the staff of the Cleveland Public
Library, and published by the Helman-Taylor Co., has
just appeared in its third annual volume, betokening a
success that is richly deserved, and promising a perma-
nent existence to what must have been at the outset a
very doubtful venture. There are nearly eight hundred
pages in this volume, making it much the thickest of
the three thus far produced.


394
[June 16,
THE DIAL
OUR NEW ISLAND POSSESSIONS.*
Our national events of the past year have
opened a new door to old writers and developed
a host of new ones. Book-stalls are already
groaning under the burden of books descriptive
either of the events of the year or of the lands
touched by these events. The new and fresh
works on these islands are a welcome addition
to our geographical and ethnographical litera-
ture. Doubtless many who considered them-
selves well-read in matters of general interest
could have told little about them a year ago.
The Philippine Islands especially were to the
most of us an unknown land. One of the freshest
and best of the accounts of this great archi-
pelago, now the point of chief interest in our
military affairs, is that written by Mr. Ramon
Lala, a native Manilan, educated in England
and in Switzerland, and now a naturalized
American citizen. He is thoroughly conver-
sant with his native land, its peoples, its former
and present oppressors, its struggles for liberty,
its customs, its resources and commercial im-
portance. He writes as a man who has gathered
his information at first-hand, and is enthusiastic
in the telling of it. He sketches fluently the
early history of the islands, the British, Dutch,
and Chinese struggles on its shores, and the
final Spanish colonial system of (mis)govern-
ment. The poor Filipinos have been beaten,
lashed, robbed, and almost crushed out of ex-
istence by long centuries of corrupt and vicious
methods of control. But we cannot properly
speak of the Filipinos as a nation: they are no
nation. They consist of about eighty different
tribes distributed among the hundreds of islands
of the archipelago. They vary in the scale of
civilization all the way from the educated Ma-
nilan, or Tagalog to the wild men of central
Mindoro or Mindanao, who recognize no supe-
rior authority, and know as little about the
refinements of civilization. The whole group
of islands registers in area not far from 150,000
square miles, or about as much as the combined
*THE PHILIPPINE IsLANDs. By Ramon Reyes Lala, a
native of Manila. With 134 illustrations and two maps. New
York: Continental Publishing Company.
THE PHILIPPINEs AND Round ABouT. By Major G. J.
Younghusband, Queen's own Corps of Guides, etc. With
eighteen illustrations and one map. New York: The Mac-
millan Co.
THE PEARL of THE ANTILLEs: A View of the Past and a
Glance at the Future. By Frederic M. Noa. New York:
G. P. Putnam's Sons.
OUR Island EMPIRE: A Hand-Book of Cuba, Porto Rico,
Hawaii, and the Philippine Islands. By Charles Morris.
With four maps. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co.
EveRYTHING ABout OUR NEw Possessions. By Thomas
J. Vivian and Ruel P. Smith. New York: R. F. Fenno & Co.
areas of New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey,
Maryland, and Delaware. Luzon and Min-
danao are about equal to all of the other islands
combined, and either one of them is nearly the
size of Cuba. All of the islands are mountain-
ous, and of volcanic formation. The principal
peaks in Mindoro, Mindanao, and Luzon, rise
more than eight thousand feet above the sea.
The flora of the islands is beautiful beyond
description.
“One that has never seen it can form no idea of the
splendor of such a tropical forest—teeming with all that
is brilliant and grand in nature. It would seem as if the
Creator had emptied the cornucopia of his gifts over this
garden-spot of the world, making it a veritable Eden.”
This prodigious growth is forced by the hu-
midity of the atmosphere, and by the enormous
annual rainfall — averaging ninety inches.
This botanist's paradise is not surpassed any-
where on the globe, either for the variety of its
species or for the stupendous growths seen on
every hand. . Mr. Lala describes the principal
agricultural industries of the islands, such as
that of raising rice, hemp, tobacco, coffee,
fruits, etc. The mineral wealth is supposed to
be great, and its future a boon to the islanders.
The volume closes with the American occupa-
tion of Manila and the long wait for the con-
clusions of the peace commission. Mr. Lala has
done an excellent service for his native land,
and, so far as we may judge from the scope of
our reading, has done it in a fairly impartial
manner, though leaving a more favorable
impression of the Filipinos than found in other
writers. The book is well written, very read-
able and instructive, and profusely illustrated.
For an all-around view of the Philippines, it is
surpassed in modern works only by that of
Mr. Foreman.
Major Younghusband's work entitled “The
Philippines and Round About" is a free-and-
easy description of the Philippine Islands,
Aguinaldo, Iloilo, Manila, Dewey's naval bat-
tle, the fall of Manila, Admiral Dewey, the
American soldier, the career of Rizal, the future
of the Philippines, Saigon, Java, etc. The
value of his work lies in the fact that it gives
the impressions of a widely-travelled, wide-
awake, and straightforward Englishman. The
“inside" information furnished on the events
of the last three years in the Philippines is
enough to arouse the ire of the most phleg-
matic temperament. The Spanish methods of
buying off Aguinaldo, of robbing merchants to
pay fees and fill their own pockets, of wresting
exorbitant fines, of bloody, almost indiscrimi-
nate, slaughter of suspects, furnish us examples
*:


1899.] THE
TXIAL 395
of the species of political and civil training that
the Filipinos received at the hands of Spaniards.
The author visited Aguinaldo at his own head-
quarters and paints in vivid colors what he saw.
“Aguinaldo is a young man of only twenty-nine years
of age, stands about five feet four inches in height, is
slightly built, and dressed in a coat and trousers of drab
tussore silk. He is a pure Philippine native, though
showing a slight trace of Chinese origin, of dark com-
plexion and much pock-marked. His face is square and
determined, the lower lip protruding markedly. On the
whole a man of pleasant demeanor, even-tempered, and
with strong characteristics. Slow of speech, and per-
haps also of thought, his past career has hall-marked
him as a man of prompt decision and prompter action.
. . . A short time ago it appears that another of the
insurgent leaders began to secure a following which bade
fair to shake the supremacy of Aguinaldo. The Presi-
dent stayed to take no half measures, attempted no
parleying; he grasped the nettle firmly, and ordering
his reputed rival out into the courtyard, had him shot
on the spot. . . . In conversation Aguinaldo professed
his complete ignorance of the terms on which the En-
glish exercise jurisdiction over the protected states of
the Malay Peninsula, and of how a dependency like
India is governed, and capped his ignorance of the out-
side world by asking whether Australia was an island,
and whether it belonged to America. . . . therefore it
was no surprise to be asked whether the Americans or
the English won the battle [of Omdurman]. In spite
of the strict embargo placed on the importation of arms,
Aguinaldo said that he was then expecting a large con-
signment of Mauser rifles and ammunition from a Ger-
man firm.”
The author attributes to Aguinaldo great credit
for the manner in which he maintains his hold
upon his people, and the determination which
he exhibits to fight for complete independence.
His criticisms of the American army are free
and outspoken :
“The army and navy of America and their welfare
are not in the hands of well-tried sages of the military
and naval services, but are like many other vital mat-
ters—the shuttlecocks of political parties. . . . With-
out for a moment wishing to criticize too severely a
force thus thrown together, under officers without stand-
ing, experience, or training, and remembering well what
excellent troops men of the same nation were trans-
formed into in the course of a prolonged campaign by
leaders like Washington, Lee, or Grant, yet it would be
only inviting the Americans to courtfuture disaster if an
outside critic were to refrain from expressing an opinion
that such troops are not fit, under the rapid conditions
of modern warfare, to meet an army highly organized
and highly trained, and ready to take the initiative at a
moment's notice. . . . We should be doing the Amer-
icans an unkindness if we allowed it to be thought that
such tardy mobilization [as that shown at the beginning
of the campaign in the Philippines] would not put them
under the severest disadvantages if their antagonists
happened to be any one of the first-class Powers of the
world.”
The author describes an arrangement with the
Spaniards during the last days of the siege of
Manila,
“Whereby the town was to be saved from bombard-
ment, and the Americans, after the brief show of resist-
ance which would satisfy Spanish honour, were to be
allowed to enter and occupy the place. . . . The Amer-
ican fleet was for the space of an hour or so to shell the
Polverina or Powder Magazine. . . . At the end of the
given period the fleet was to cease firing, and the Span-
ish Governor would then hoist the white flag in token
of capitulation, after which the American troops were
to enter the town and occupy it.”
The subsequent clash between the Spanish and
American troops, on the eve of surrender, was
due to a failure to see the proper signal. Major
Younghusband's tributes to the valor, good be-
havior, and gentlemanly bearing of the Amer-
ican soldier must be noted as in striking con-
trast with that of the former occupants of the
fortresses and camps about Manila.
“Fully 75 per cent of the men are mature, power-
fully built fellows, averaging probably 24 or 25 years
of age, fine strapping fellows, who would do credit to
the Grenadier Guards, and taken all round a more pow-
erful and hardy set than are now to be found in a Brit-
ish line regiment even after a prolonged foreign tour.”
Mr. Noa's little book entitled “The Pearl of
the Antilles” is a brief, concise statement of
some of the Spanish movements which aroused
and justified the Cuban struggle for independ-
ence. His access to sources and state papers
not mentioned by other writers gives his book
a kind of permanent value to students of Cuban
history.
“Our Island Empire,” by Mr. Charles
Morris, is a handbook of the four groups of
islands mentioned in the title — Cuba, Porto
Rico, Hawaii, and the Philippines. The author
has compiled useful material regarding each of
these on such points as (1) history, (2) phys-
ical conditions, (3) natural productions, (4)
civil and political relations, (5) centres of pop-
ulation, (6) manners and customs, (7) agri-
cultural productions, (8) manufactures and
commerce. A very good small map and an
index accompany the volume — making it a
kind of vade-mecum. Its information is not,
as that of many new works on special islands,
first-hand, but collated from many sources.
“Everything about Our New Possessions”
is a compilation, much of it in statistical form,
of some things only, rather than everything,
about our new possessions. It contains many
valuable facts gleaned from many sources; but
lack of discrimination in the use of material,
lack of harmony in matter taken from different
sources, lack of any map or chart or table of
contents, and a poor index, rather hastily de-
cide the fate of this little book.
IRA. M. PRICE.


396
[June 16,
THE DIAL
THE ECONOMICS AND PHILANTHROPY
OF RUSKIN.”
Although much has been written about Mr.
Ruskin's economic heresies, and about his social
theories in general, it is interesting to learn the
opinion of one who is himself known as an
economist, if not a very orthodox one; and
especially when the opinion is so clearly and
attractively expressed as Mr. Hobson's always
are. That he is an appreciative critic appears
from the preface, where it is said:
“Mr. Ruskin will rank as the greatest social teacher
of his age, not merely because he has told the largest
number of important truths upon the largest variety of
vital matters, in language of penetrative force, but be-
cause he has made the most powerful and the most felic-
itous attempt to grasp and to express, as a comprehensive
whole, the needs of a human society and the processes
of social reform.”
The further claim is made that Mr. Ruskin
“has done more than any other Englishman to
compel people to realize the nature of the social
problem in its wider related issues affecting
every department of work and life, and to en-
force the supreme moral obligation of confront-
ing it”; and again, he is called “the man who,
by the conjunction of the keenest sense of jus-
tice with the widest culture and the finest gifts
of literary expression, has succeeded in telling
our age more of the truths it most requires to
know than any other man.”
But Mr. Hobson by no means permits his
admiration to blind him to the economic defects
of Mr. Ruskin's writings; on the contrary, he
criticizes particular propositions more in detail
than one feels to be really necessary. Minute
dissection is not the kind of examination which
seems most appropriate to Mr. Ruskin's polit-
ical economy; the exaggeration of eloquence
leaves many points vulnerable, and yet the
shafts of criticism aimed at these may leave
the main body of the argument untouched.
But at any rate, it speaks well for the real
worth of Mr. Ruskin's philosophy that so severe
a critic can be at the same time so enthusiastic
a disciple. And it fulfils the saying of Mr.
Ruskin himself, that no true disciple of his
would ever be a Ruskinian:– “he will follow,
not me, but the instincts of his own soul, and
the guidance of its Creator.”
However open to criticism Mr. Ruskin's po-
litical economy may be in certain details, there
are other points at which it will bear the closest
scrutiny. In some of his word-contests with the
orthodox economists of his time he but antici-
*John Ruskin, Social REFoRMER. By J. A. Hobson.
Boston: Dana Estes & Co.
pated the more scientific economics of to-day.
There is no more representative example of this
than his insistence upon the fundamental im-
portance of Consumption, as the human end
for which the industrial processes of Produc-
tion, Distribution, and Exchange all exist. To
take a mere matter of momenclature for another
example (for Mr. Ruskin never thought the
abuse of the Queen's English an unimportant
matter), the economists now approximate his
use of the word “cost” as meaning human dis-
utility, and when they mean money cost or
expense instead of real cost they now think it
worth while to say so. Even in denying the
name of Political Economy to the orthdoxindus-
trial science of his day, and calling it Mercan-
tile Economy instead, Mr. Ruskin was right,
and doubtless meant to enforce a lesson which
might have been learned, or at least begun,
with “The Wealth of Nations” for a primer.
For a long time after Adam Smith's day eco-
nomic theories were evolved with a notable
disregard for the political or social point of
view, and even Mill professed to consider only
“some of their applications to social philoso-
phy.”
In Mr. Hobson's view, the most revolution-
ary of Mr. Ruskin's positions is his use of the
term “value” to mean intrinsic usefulness
instead of value in exchange; yet in that too
he only amplified Adam Smith's conception of
“value in use.” While that is not just the
sense in which the term is used by economists
to-day, it is a use quite consistent with, and
following naturally from, or else leading logic-
cally to, his subjective conception of cost; and
the economists have at least gone far enough in
the same direction to see that value is largely
a subjective phenomenon. Mr. Hobson attaches
so much importance to the reduction of cost and
utility to their true bases in human joy and
pain, that he is led to say of Mr. Ruskin's
work that it “will hereafter be recognized as
the first serious attempt in England to establish
a scientific basis of economic study from the
social standpoint.” We must at least admit,
if we are reasonably unprejudiced, that while
Mr. Ruskin may have been as far from the
literal truth on some points as were the econo-
mists whom he held up to ridicule and scorn,
he has proved on the whole a true prophet;
and true prophets are as rare and as valuable
to society (in the Ruskinian sense) even as
scientific economists. They are not as valuable
in the commercial sense, of course, because no
one cares to pay a prophet a salary for merely
•.


1899.] THE
TXIAL 397
being a true prophet; they must “get out and
hustle” with the rest of us. Even a prophet
who is lucky enough to have prosperous and
thrifty forbears is likely to spend his fortune
and most of his earnings in good works, as Mr.
Ruskin has done.
It is in Mr. Ruskin's politics, rather than in
his economics, that Mr. Hobson finds the most
fundamental errors, and points out certain ap-
parent inconsistencies, not of word or phrase
merely, but of very substance, which are difficult
to harmonize. Mr. Ruskin is at once a good
deal of a socialist and an arch-individualist: the
latter because of his aristocratic instincts, rein-
forced by the philosophy of Carlyle, and the
former owing perhaps to the negative influence
of the mercantile economists. At times he
recognizes that the democratic movement is
inevitable, and not altogether to be regretted;
yet again he seems to stake the future upon the
virtue of a ruling class to be composed of a
regenerated nobility. If Mazzini, with whom
he has much in common, had been his master
in politics instead of Carlyle, his whole social
philosophy would have been more consistent;
for it would have lost much of its individualism,
and with it the dependence upon aristocracy,
and gained more of collectivism and the demo-
cratic spirit. To be sure, democracies need
often to be reminded that they must have
trained leaders—that politics is a science and
administration a profession; but the reminder
would have carried more weight with English-
men and the sons of Englishmen if the de-
mocracy of the message had been more
apparent.
Mr. Ruskin deserves to be called a social
reformer quite as much because of his own
actual attempts to improve matters as on ac-
count of the ideas expressed in his books; but
Mr. Hobson gives no complete account of these
experiments, though he devotes one chapter to
a few of them, including especially the St.
George's Guild and the revival of hand weav-
ing and spinning. He also tells something
about the principal institutions and associations
which serve as monuments to Mr. Ruskin by
carrying out his ideas, such as the Museum at
Sheffield begun by the master himself, the
Home Arts and Industries Association, the
Ruskin Linen Industry of Keswick, the craft
school in Westmoreland, and the Ruskin Soci-
eties at Birmingham, Liverpool, Glasgow, and
elsewhere in both England and America. To
many readers this will prove the most interest-
ing part of the book; but they will wish there
were more about the Working Men's College,
the improved tenements, and even the “Hink-
sey diggin's,” and something at least about
the tea-shop and the street-cleaning. Perhaps
Mr. Hobson thought these matters sufficiently
treated in Mr. Collingwood’s “Life”; but there
is other material in various out-of-the-way
places,” and it would seem well worth someone's
while to bring it all together. One growing class
of Mr. Ruskin's admirers would like above all to
know more about Mr. Ruskin's influence upon
the University Settlement movement; they
know that the idea was born at his house, at a
meeting in which he had called together a hand-
ful of university men who were already living in
East London, but no one seems to know just
how much of the plan was conceived by Edward
Denison and John Richard Green, and how far
it was Mr. Ruskin's own. There is a remark-
able correspondence between the activities of
the Settlements and Mr. Ruskin's conception
of the functions of Bishops, which suggests that
both ideas may be products of the same mind
to a greater extent than has been supposed.
In giving to the world this guide to the study
of the Ruskinian social philosophy, Mr. Hob-
son has performed a real service, for the phil-
osophy in question is scattered through so many
works, and sometimes expressed in such fanci-
ful language, that most readers get but a hazy
idea of what Mr. Ruskin's views really are.
But, as Mr. Hobson says:
“The confusion, even chaos, of which some careless
readers of Mr. Ruskin complain, yields to a clear unity
of system as we regard the meanderings of his versatile
intelligence from the standpoint of social justice, a plea
for honesty of transactions between man and man. This
unity of system is not indeed a mechanical unity, an
objective system of thought, but rather a unity imposed
by personal temperament and valuation. When we
understand it, we understand John Ruskin, his person-
ality, his view of life.”
The tributes expressed and implied in this
volume ought to gladden the heart of the grand
old man at Brantwood, who believes his social
and economic teachings to be the most import-
ant part of all his varied work. It is indeed
rare that so radical an iconoclast comes to be so
all but universally hailed as a true prophet
during his lifetime, or even has the satisfaction
of reading so sympathetic and discriminating
an exposition of his heresies.
MAX WEST.
*For example, Mrs. Arnold Toynbee's account of Mr. Rus-
kin's road-making was given in “The Century” a year ago;
and how he gave aid and comfort to Miss Octavia Hill is told
in the Eighth Special Report of the Commissioner of Labor,
p. 164.


398
[June 16,
THE DIAL
STUDIES OF SOCIETY AND HUMANITY.”
Professor Giddings has followed his “Principles
of Sociology” with a “text-book for colleges and
schools.” In the effort to reduce his material to
more elementary form for young students, there is
a gain in clearness of style, and at many points the
author has wisely learned from his critics. The
claim is made, in the “note to the reviewer,” that
there are important developments of theory not
fully presented in the earlier and larger work: the
analysis of the practical activities of social popula-
tions and of the motives from which they spring;
coöperation; a fuller analysis of the social mind;
civilization, progress, and democracy; and a new
statement of psychological causes of social phe-
nomena.
In essential features, and modes of thought and
treatment, we have the same book as “The Prin-
ciples of Sociology”; but at many points this virile
writer has written his way to greater clearness and
fresh points of view. It is very desirable that so-
ciology should be presented from many sides by
minds of different orders; and all students of the
subject will be grateful for the many suggestive
hints and interesting speculations of Professor Gid-
dings. The teachers and the students who use this
text-book for beginners ought to be put on their
guard, however, against a certain danger in the writ-
er's way of statement. This way may be illustrated
by a part of the last chapter (p. 342), in which we
are taught that our interpretations of our fellow-men
are made by ascribing to them our own experiences.
While there is an important truth in this statement,
it needs more qualification in order to prevent im-
posing on the outer world our own subjective modes
of thought. There is a confidence in some of the
generalizations set down which does not seem justi-
fied by the present state of knowledge. At one
place (p. 237) we read: “We are unable to ascer-
tain very much about the earliest beginnings of hu-
man society.” But in the immediate connection we
have generalizations which would require quite com-
plete and connected knowledge to justify. In one
sentence we have a double affirmation of certainty
which almost awakens scepticism (p. 240): “The
process was undoubtedly the same in the early de-
velopment of spoken language in primitive human
communities, except that the original process un-
doubtedly occupied a much longer time.” In another
place we have the unqualified assertion (p. 232):
“There is hardly a single fact in the whole range
of sociological knowledge that does not support the
conclusion that the race was social before it was
human, and that its social qualities were the chief
means of developing its human nature.” But the
eminent naturalist Dr. L. F. Ward (“Outlines of
Sociology,” p. 90 f.) seems to take precisely oppo-
site grounds. The reader should at least take pains
to compare the statements and see if the difference
does not lie in different definitions of the word
“social.”
While it does give one a comfortable sense of
finality and completeness to have his sociology
served up in such neat, comprehensive, and author-
itative form, one can hardly avoid the feeling that
much work remains to be done. The solution here
offered appears to be too easy, in view of the mul-
titude of unsettled problems in all the sciences on
which sociology depends. If, therefore, this strong,
clear, massive book is used with youngsters, already
too quick to catch the dogmatic spirit and be done
with philosophy at a gulp, we would advise a com-
panion volume of more modest scope. The true
pedagogue will know how to start with outward ex-
pressions of social thinking, with local and verifi-
able phenomena, and lead the pupil up to these
heights of bold speculation. And the teacher who
realizes the peril of prematurely closing discussion
under the spell of a powerful book will be careful
to start inquiry as to the grounds of assertion. In
doing this, the teacher will but obey pedagogic sug-
gestions made by the author himself, but not by any
means uniformly followed.
In the chapter on “The Theory of Society,” the
“law of least effort” is made to play a command-
ing rôle. The claim must not pass without critical
challenge. “The law of least effort” has a place,
but it is too vague, general, and negative to give a
true cause of, say, the English Constitution, the
world of Shakespeare, the million social aspirations
which seek expression in Tennyson and Browning.
The attempt to explain the psychical life by modes
of reasoning applicable to the physical sphere is
unsatisfying. The formula which is adequate for a
wind or a stream breaks down when it professes to
meet the demands of the infinitely wide processes
and contents of spiritual being. The “law of least
effort” does have place in the physical side of being
which is correlated to the psychical. But prema-
ture identification of the two sides is not fruitful of
discovery or explanation. One may agree with
Professor Giddings (Preface, p. vi.) that the field of
social phenomena should be outlined in high school
and college, in order to coördinate politics, eco-
nomics, ethics, and law, and yet see the necessity of
having this text-book used by an instructor who
knows enough of the history and schools of sociology
to prevent his becoming a slave of any one of them.
By F. H. Giddings.
*THE ELEMENTs of Sociology.
New York: The Macmillan Co.
PRACTICAL Sociology. By C. D. Wright.
Longmans, Green, & Co.
THE CITY WILDERNEss. Edited by Robert A. Woods.
Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
THE Workers—THE WEST. By W. A. Wyckoff. New
York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
New York:
OUT of MULBERRY STREET. By Jacob A. Riis. New
York: The Century Co.
THE STANDARD of LIFE, AND OTHER STUDIEs. By Mrs.
Bernard Bosanquet. New York: The Macmillan Co.
THAT LAST WAIF; or, Social Quarantine. By Horace
Fletcher. Chicago: The Kindergarten Literature Co.
THE CRY of THE CHILDREN. By Frank Hird. Illus-
trated by D. Macpherson. New York: M. F. Mansfield &
A. Wessels.
•.


1899.] THE
DIAL 399
*_
A certain university training in sociology would be
necessary for one who proposed to use this or any
other text-book in preparatory school or college. To
these sentences of caution we may now add, in good
conscience, that no one who professes to teach soci-
ology has a moral right to neglect this volume.
The United States Commissioner of Labor is in
the most advantageous position for preparing the
materials for such a book as “Practical Sociology.”
The strength and limitations of this volume lie in
the fact that the industrial and economic element is
made the commanding feature of the discussion.
This is entirely natural for one whose life has been
devoted to collecting and interpreting materials of
the economic order. In this field of thought, Mr.
Wright's book presents more abundant stores of
fact than any similar publication. The statistical
matter is actually made interesting. Nor would it
be fair to say that the author neglects those social
values which are the really ultimate ends of wealth
itself and of political organization. Indeed, the
idealist is delighted to find everywhere a frank rec-
ognition of the cultural aims of enlightened human-
ity. But the limitation of the method of treatment
may be seen in the meagre discussion of the aesthetic
social interest, and the relatively large space given
to industrial and commercial phenomena. Sociology
still suffers from being in the frontier stage where
the bare struggle for being monopolizes attention,
and Aristotle's “well-being” loses its full meaning
and is reduced to the economic order. This criti-
cism does not signify that Mr. Wright has said too
much on economics, when he talks as master and
expert; but only that the complete presentation of
so vast a subject cannot be made by any one mind.
The student of society is here supplied with a mass
of data of great importance, and is directed to
abundant and valuable sources of information and
discussion. The treatment is rather elementary and
popular in form, and the spirit almost too optimis-
tic. One is grateful that we have such a man as
Mr. Wright at the head of our Department of Labor.
The papers relating to the work and studies of
South End House, Boston, now collected into a vol-
ume entitled “The City Wilderness,” deserve a
fuller notice than can here be given. They consti-
tute one of the most weighty and significant con-
tributions ever made in America to the interpreta-
tion of crowded urban conditions and heterogeneous
populations. The essays are not extemporized, but
are the “hard-won gains of actual experience.”
Every phase of life is portrayed with a master-hand;
the history of the district, the elements of popula-
tion, the conditions of health, the work and wages,
the secret of political corruption, tendencies to vice
and crime, amusements, religion, education, charity,
philanthropy, city government, are all adequately
described. Students of social amelioration will here
learn the price of progress and the grounds of hope.
It is far more satisfactory to read Mr. Wyckoff's
story of “The Workers” in book form than in the
fragments of magazine articles. The second vol-
ume is even better than the first. The author has
grown in power of observation. He has learned at
every step. He gains in respect for the working-
man as he understands his situation and motives.
Old residents of Chicago will learn something of
their own city from this volume, and if readers are
not moved to act for betterment they are incapable
of response to one of the finest appeals ever made to
the higher nature of man. Every city official should
ponder the treatment given the street wanderers,
and be led to study the achievements of Boston,
New York, and Indianapolis. In the next genera-
tion these pictures of human beings, guiltless of
crime, sleeping on stone floors in police stations,
which reek with disease and swarm with vermin,
will seem incredible. But there are the photo-
graphs, and here is the testimony of a sensitive
scholar, finely bred, who lay down among the vaga-
bonds that he might help to know and redeem them.
Mr. Wyckoff's account of country life in the West
is charming and cheering. It is a soul's rest after
the tragedy of the city and its congested labor mar-
ket and sweating dens.
If the public remains ignorant and apathetic in
relation to the Unemployable, it will not be the fault
of such writers as Professor Wyckoff and Mr. Jacob
Riis. The latter's sketches of New York City life
among the lowly are set forth by a master-hand,
and tell the story with mighty pathos. One does
not think of “literature,” but of life, as he reads
these stories. Here is one who has looked and thought
and sympathized. He has watched the motley com-
pany which throngs the miserable streets and police
courts of the metropolis, until he knows all their
types of character, all their tragedies and comedies.
When our cities become habitable, and the poor are
decently provided for, and the slums are cleansed,
and humanity is restored, among the sons of the
tribe of Abou Ben Adhem, Mr. Riis will be in the
front row to receive plaudits. To bless his name
will arise Denny the Robber, John Gavin the Misfit,
the foundling Chinese baby, the brave fireman whose
story he tells, the policemen whose vices he repro-
bates while he glorifies their humanity and good-
ness. It is not high life; it is not beautiful, nor
even clean; but divine elements are discovered, and
the promise of better things. “Love hopeth all
things.”
The little volume of essays by Mrs. Bernard
Bosanquet are fine illustrations of the working of a
mind trained in the explanation of concrete phe-
nomena of society. The paper on “The Standard
of Life” is a trenchant treatment of a vital theme,
and shows how definition and a certain ideal of
comfort and culture help working people to stand
firmly in the regulation of their own conduct and
in facing the employers in unions. The criticism
of a philanthropy which thoughtlessly helps to
make wages lower is just and telling. The essay
on the psychology of social progress is clearly writ-
ten, and helps to grasp some of the elementary no-
tions of social psychology. The treatment of the


400
[June 16,
THE DIAL
education of women is instructive, without giving a
new contribution to our knowledge.
Full of social optimism and confidence in the
regenerating power of kindergartens is Mr. Horace
Fletcher, the genial friend of little children. “That
Last Waif" is a phrase which shows confidence that
the “unfit” are soon to disappear from the streets
of our sodden cities. Perhaps the author has not
counted in all the adverse forces which biologists and
teachers are compelled to measure in their depths.
Perhaps he has not made full account of heredity
and the momentum of tradition. But then, he sees
the hopeful side, and he urges the most timely meas-
ure of progress. It is a pleasure to call attention
to the scheme which the affable author calls “Social
Quarantine”—especially as all profits of his publi-
cation go to kindergarten work.
The little volume entitled “The Cry of the Chil-
dren” draws its illustrations from English city life.
The author has evidently studied at first-hand the
occupations of young children in box making, belt
and umbrella making, paper bags and sack making,
artificial flower making, furniture polishing, and
canal life. One may hope that this constant reitera-
tion of the wrongs of children will help to promote
the movements on their behalf — kindergartens,
parental schools, clubs, settlements, factory inspec-
tion, compulsory education, and kindred measures.
C. R. HENDERson.
BRIEFS ON NEW BOOKS.
The reader not already familiar with
the details of English history will
have considerable difficulty in under-
standing just what historical connection exists be-
tween the subjects chosen for elaboration by Mr.
McCarthy's
19th century
England.
Justin McCarthy in his “England in the Nineteenth.
Century” (Putnam). There are in the first volume
eleven chapters, each treating of some interesting
event or political movement, but each leaving the
impression of a separate essay whose exact bearing
on or relation to that which precedes or follows it
is difficult to determine. Nor is the work as a whole
up to Mr. McCarthy's usual standard. Never an
exact historian, it is the less surprising that he re-
peats at length the errors of the popular historian
in the old tale of Canning's superlative prescience,
and (by inference) Castlereagh's feeble grasp, in
diplomatic affairs. Canning is pictured as alone
responsible for Enpland’s emergence from the toils
of the Holy Alliance,—a fable long accepted by
politicians, but never seriously asserted by any
careful student of British state papers. Mr. Mc-
Carthy's carelessness in historical statement is illus-
trated also by his calm assertion of another historic
lie, namely, that the Holy Alliance of 1815 did
at that time definitely intend the suppression of all
revolutionary movements in Europe. The chief
merits of previous works by this author have been
readableness and attractive characterizations; and
it is in respect to these features that the present
work is not up to the usual standard. Haste is evi-
dent in every chapter, and here and there extra-
neous matter is inserted as if having come to mind
at the moment of writing. The vim and movement
usual with the author are utterly lacking, and the
volume sinks to a dull level depressing in its effect
upon the reader. Coming from Mr. McCarthy, the
work is a distinct disappointment.— The second
volume (received since the above was written) in no
way alters the opinion formed from a perusal of the
first volume. Carelessness in language, in statement
of fact, and in generalization, constitute its short-
comings. For example, on page 171 of the second
volume the misleading generalization, “the whole
ambition of the Emperor Napoleon's life was to re-
store the glories of the great Napoleonic time,” is
given, and in the same paragraph the inaccuracy of
detail is shown in crediting to Prince Napoleon
rather than to Thiers the saying that “the Emperor
Napoleon III. had twice taken Europe in first
when he made her to believe him to be a dullard,
and next when he made her to believe him to be a
statesman.” On the whole, however, the second
volume is more readable than the first, because of
a better selection of topics illuminating England's
history. Yet Mr. McCarthy's reputation for enter-
taining and fairly accurate historical writing will
not be benefited by the present work.
The translator of the critical essays
of M. René Doumic has done well in
taking no one book of his, but rather
making a selection. M. Doumic's volumes have
not, as a rule, much logical unity: they gather up
the essays of a year or two, much as it may chance.
In each volume a good many of the subjects are
more interesting to the French reader than they
would be to the American. But by selecting from
several books the essays on the novelists, Miss Mary
Frost has made an attractive collection in “Con-
temporary French Novelists” (Crowell). People
have heard more of French novelists than of French
poets, preachers, or critics. So far as these latter
are concerned, they have probably heard something
of M. Doumic himself, because he was here in
America a year ago, and because he writes for the
“Revue des Deux Mondes.” Those who regard
that standard periodical as the cream of French lit-
erature naturally regard M. Doumic as a critic both
sound and rare. For ourselves, we have but a gen-
eral interest in M. Doumic's criticism. It has not
the attraction of the academic quality (so charac-
teristic of France when it is at its best) that one
may find in the work of M. Gaston Deschamps or
M. Gustave Larroumet, to mention but two critics
who are in the habit of collecting their work. Nor
has it the free-lance cheerfulness of M. Jules
Lemaitre, or of that Thelemite of letters M. Ana-
tole France. Nor has it the curious leaven that one
may detect in the writing of M, Henry Bordeaux or
Critical essays
from the French.
•.


1899.] THE
DIAL 401
*
M. Paul Desjardins. Of course a man need not
have these things, or anything like them, to be good.
M. Brunetiere has not them; he has something else.
What has M. René Doumic? Well, he is objective;
he has chiefly facts and inferences. He regards
literature as the product of men of letters; there-
fore, this book is on novelists rather than on novels.
He has pretty definite ideas of what is worth doing,
and a great deal of common sense; so that his criti-
cism, even if not very stimulating, is pretty sound.
The present translation is not a model of excellence.
Miss Frost has allowed herself various liberties: she
has sometimes quite disregarded the original arrange-
ment of paragraphs and sections, a matter about
which modern French essayists are rather particu-
lar; she has always omitted a sentence or two when
she felt like it; she has sometimes overstepped the
conventions of mood and tense, so as to offer us a
freer translation than would be otherwise possible.
We do not think, however, that she has anywhere
really perverted the meaning of the original, so that
those who want merely the ideas of the original will
be pretty sure to find them.
The fact that the regular diurnal
variations in the level of the sea, as
observed in varying degrees at all
sea-ports, are caused by the moon and the sun, was
ages ago recognized. The modern theories of grav-
itation and of the translation of wave movements
have accounted for most of the complicated and
often contradictory phenomena, leaving yet much
that is difficult of comprehension, so remote and so
subtle are the influences in action. Professor George
Howard Darwin, of Trinity, Cambridge, elucidates
the subject in a well-devised course of lectures given
in 1897 at the Lowell Institute in Boston, and now
issued in book form by Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin
& Co. The range of the phenomena described and
discussed is of the widest. From tidal activities
detected in lakes and in enclosed seas, in the estua-
ries of rivers, in the earth's interior, it extends to
other planets, particularly to Saturn, to the forms of
nebulae, and to the movements of double stars. The
terrestrial tides are discussed as to their causes,
their place of beginning and progressive movements,
the prediction of their recurrence at specified ports,
their influence upon the earth's figure, the periods
of its rotation, and upon the revolution of the moon.
On the crucial point, the attempt to show how the
attraction of the moon can cause a heaping up of
the waters upon the side of the earth opposite the
moon involves the usual obscurity of representing a
reversal of forces, as indicated in figure 22 on
page 100. The influence of a centrifugal force,
resulting from the revolution of the earth about the
centre of gravity of the system composed of the
earth and the moon, is brought into the account,
properly of course, so far as it goes. But the cen-
trifugal force generated in the time of a lunar revo-
lution can have little part in the production of a re-
sult like the reverse terrestrial tide which is a matter
The problem
of the tides.
of daily occurrence. The key to the solution of the
problem of the tidal form lies in the difference of
the lunar force of attraction, as found at the centre
of the earth and on the nearer and remoter surfaces.
The distances of these representative particles from
the moon vary as the numbers 51, 60, and 61, and
the corresponding attractions vary as the squares of
those numbers. The three particles may be figured
by three boys holding to a rope and running in suc-
cession with forces corresponding to their strength
or to the influences arousing them. If the three
were of equal strength there would be no strain upon
the rope. If the foremost boy were stronger and
the rear boy weaker than the middle boy, the fore-
most will pull the middle boy forward; while the
rear boy, being unable to keep up, though running
with all his might, seems to pull back. But for the
rope which drags him along he would fall behind,
as do the waters on the remote side of the earth.
All the particles of the earth are falling toward the
moon—those on the nearer side with greater, those
on the farther side with less, movement; conse-
quently they are distributed over a greater space in
the direction of the lunar force. The resulting
figure of the earth is a prolate spheroid, such as
any body assumes when falling toward a centre of
attraction.
In “Wordsworth and the Coleridges”
(Macmillan), Mr. Ellis Yarnall has
written pleasantly of his acquaint-
ance and friendship with some of the great men
and women whom he met in the course of a long
life. His recollections have to do with both En-
gland and America, and date back in the one case
to the coming of Lafayette to America in 1824 and
in the other to his own visit to England for the
first time in 1849. Of the ten chapters which make
up the book, the four dealing with Wordsworth and
the Coleridges — Sara Coleridge and her two broth-
ers, Hartley and Derwent Coleridge, and Sir John
Taylor Coleridge and Lord Coleridge (late Lord
Chief Justice of England) — constitute the raison
d'être of the book. To these four chapters, which
occupy about half the volume and give the work its
title, are added various other memories, literary and
political, treating of Charles Kingsley, John Keble,
William Edward Forster, Oxford, and the House
of Commons in the closing days of the American
Civil War. Three of these chapters have been pre-
viously published in a more or less complete form.
Mr. Yarnall's acquaintance with the men he writes
of, with one or two exceptions, seems to have been
too slight to enable him to ascertain the distinctive
traits of character possessed by each,- a fact that
has obliged him frequently to supplement his own
opinions with those of others, and sometimes to
introduce irrelevant matter into his book. His rec-
ollections impress us as being those of a sympathetic
and appreciative visitor to the homes and haunts of
certain great men, rather than the memories of an
intimate friend. On the other hand, Mr. Yarnall's
Memories,
literary and
political.


402
[June 16,
THE DIAL
style is easy and natural, and he has written a very
readable book. He has recorded many of the wise
sayings which fell from the lips of the men and
women he met, and he has related some interesting
incidents that are worth remembering. He has also
told us something of the awe with which most peo-
ple came into the presence of Wordsworth; some-
thing, too, of the beautiful old age of Mrs. Words-
worth; something of the traits of the wonderful
author of “The Ancient Mariner’” which could
still be traced in the poet's children, Sara, Hartley,
and Derwent Coleridge; and a good deal about the
late Lord Chief Justice of England, Lord Coleridge,
with whom Mr. Yarmall was on terms of cordial
friendship and with whom he carried on a corre-
spondence which extended over a period of thirty-
seven years, all of which was well worth the telling.
We are hardly familiar enough with
the American acting drama of to-day
to be able to judge whether or not
it is proper to regard Mr. Augustus Thomas's “Ala-
bama” (Russell) as properly representative in a series
that includes some of the finest dramatic work done
of late in France and Germany. We should incline
to hope (if nothing more) that we had something a
little more serious to offer; but we may demand
more than there is. M. Rostand is certainly a dis-
tinguished figure in the French drama of to-day,
Hauptmann in the German: possibly America is fitly
represented by Mr. Augustus Thomas. “Alabama”
is an American play. It deals with peculiarly
American situations,— namely, such as might arise
in the influx of Northern capital and energy into
the South, some twenty years after the war. It
deals with American characters, too; Northern men
of business and Southern planters. The play is
thus perhaps as representatively American as any-
thing we have, although personally we should have
preferred one of Mr. Harrigan's Irish and Negro
conglomerates, or one of Mr. Hoyt's racy eccentric-
ities, or something like “The Old Homestead” or
“Shore Acres.” These plays seem to us to be more
typical of some aspects of our civilization than
“Alabama’’ is of others. Yet there is no use
grumbling in such an embarrassment of riches.
Perhaps the courage of Mr. Thomas in printing his
play will lead others to follow his example. It is
the first step that costs: we hope it will not cost
Mr. Thomas and Mr. Russell very much, for we
want to see more American dramas in print.
The final instalment (Volume III.)
of Professor Ratzel's great work on
“The History of Mankind” in an
English dress (Macmillan) presents the same char-
acteristics as the preceding volumes, which have
been fully noticed in these columns. The present
volume is loaded with good cuts of ethnic types and
ethnographic objects, and is supplied with some ex-
cellent colored plates and maps. In Book IV. the
discussion of the Negro Races is completed by
The American
acting drama.
Completion of
Ratzell's History
of Mankind.
chapters upon the Africans of the Interior and the
West Africans. The final division of the work,
Book V., deals with the Cultured Races of the Old
World. In following the discussion of African ne-
groes, we are constantly impressed by their political
instability: how many kingdoms have risen sud-
denly to power, and as suddenly have disappeared,
leaving no trace! Preliminary to the study of the
Cultured Races of Africa and Asia, the author con-
siders the desert and nomadism most suggestively.
Islam and its influence are fairly treated. Consid-
ering the great size of the work, the conditions de-
scribed are astonishingly up to date. Recent
political events in Africa and Asia are taken into
the account. The discussion of China—social and
religious — is good; that of the European peoples
is less notable. In a work of so wide scope, full
and detailed accounts of peoples cannot be expected:
Professor Ratzel has done wonderfully well in giving
so much as he does. The subject and plan of the
work necessitated dry and terse statement. Still,
it is unfortunate that Ratzel could not have fallen
into the hands of a better translator. The English
could hardly be more difficult and obscure; the
author's meaning is sometimes lost; the grammar
is bad. The translator does not appear to know
either authors or literature. He several times re-
fers to Crawfurd as Crawford. Where English
authors are quoted, it appears that their original
statement is not looked up, but is retranslated.
These translator's faults, manifest and constant,
will prevent this English edition of völkerkunde
from becoming popular. The work is, however, too
valuable to students to be neglected, and will become
an important book of reference.
Mr. Max Beerbohm has been rather
":":"*" ingenious in making criticism on hi
Mar Beerbohm. g g s
“” later book “More” (John Lane) im-
possible. In criticism of any such book the all-
important thing is point of view. Now the most
obvious point of view for the critic of Mr. Beerbohm
to take is that of Mr. Beerbohm himself: a proceed-
ing quite out of the question, not because it would be
difficult, but because it would be imitative and there-
fore silly in anyone except the gifted author. And
any other point of view would also be impossible, for
it would have to be either in earnest or not. One can-
not, of course, consider these bits in earnest. And
if one is to think of them affectedly, one is practic-
ally in the position of trying to go beyond Mr. Beer-
bohm or else to vary from him, neither of which
acts is self-respecting. We say nothing, then, ex-
cept that one should not read these essays in a rage.
This may seem a needless caution, but Mr. Beer-
bohm's earlier labors did arouse rage in some hearts.
These latter works will not be likely to do so; in
fact, in our heart they have aroused on the whole
pleasure. One thing only we rather regret: we
are quite unable to regard Mr. Beerbohm as a great
thinker, veiling his ideas under a trivial form. We
find a good many very sensible remarks here and
•.


1899.] THE
DIAL 403
there in his essays; but we cannot think of him as
a delver after truth. He has no message to his
time; and that is a pity. The gifted man whom
he so sedulously imitates did have a message, though
he would have been zealous in denying the fact.
Perhaps further and more careful study of Mr.
Beerbohm would have shown that he has one, too;
but we doubt it. Still, we commend a study of
the question to those who find themselves some
summer afternoon with nothing of greater import-
ance to do. The book is of a size suitable for a
hammock. -
The two names Pollok and Aytoun
Two forgotten
will raise in many no answering rec-
ollection. “The Bon Gualtier Bal-
lads” have hardly survived the half-century, and
“The Course of Time” has had even a shorter life.
Yet Mrs. Masson’s volume on these two “Famous
Scots” (imported by Scribner) is worth reading
for all that. It is a book which is more interesting
on account of the considerations it gives rise to, than
on account of the facts it details. These two men
may be said to be a typical pair: the one, a poor
and hard-working Scotch ploughboy student, work-
ing at divinity and literature by the hardest toils,
and reaching fame and position only a short season
before his death; the other, the well-to-do man of
literary tastes and inclinations, passing a pleasant
and appreciated life as contributor to “Black-
wood's" and professor of belles-lettres. By all proper
expectation, the former should be the real genius
whose poetic fire still shines for the delectation of
lovers of letters, and the latter should be merely the
literary man of the hour whose productions have
closely followed him into obscurity. The fact is,
however, that the hard-working genius and the well-
to-do litterateur are both forgotten, one almost as
thoroughly as the other, with the odds against the
genius. It is curious how often poetic justice is
foiled. In spite of the prosaic harshness of destiny,
Mrs. Masson's book is, as we have said, pleasant to
turn over. We might think her a bit frivolous in
her manner of dealing with so sacred a topic as a
man of genius; still, this is better than taking the
matter too seriously. Beside the frivolities and the
necessities of her narrative, she often turns a good
phrase on her own account—“the opal wonders of
the Western Highlands,” for instance.
men of letters.
When we last wrote of Mrs. Meynell,
as we remember, we regretted a little
that her work was becoming better
known. Literary likings have three phases: first,
they are enthusiasms; then, cults; then, fashions.
All literary likings do not go through these three
phases. The “Rubaiyat,” however, is a very per-
fect instance of all: first, in the seventies, when it
was the passion of a few individuals; then, in the
eighties, when it was the esoteric possession of various
coteries; now, in the nineties, when it has become
an ordinary drawing-room dissipation. Mr. Kipling,
however, skipped the second stage, and some people
Mrs. Meynell's
new volume.
have skipped the first as well. Browning will never
reach the third, and Landor will never get even to
the second. To return to Mrs. Meynell, who is on
the border-land between a sincere enthusiasm and a
cult. In certain circles it is getting necessary to
“know "Mrs. Meynell,— meaning, of course, her
writings; and we regret that pleasure in Mrs.
Meynell's essays should become compulsory. Mrs.
Meynell is an essayist of a high order. She does
not sit among pigeonholes, like Miss Repplier, and
decoct the choice treasure of her cells; nor drop
bunches of artificial grass about the floors of modern
salons, like Miss Guiney. She has her own mode
of distinction, a mode that we tried to describe some
time ago. It is a mode that demands something of
reader as well as writer, demands not more than
it gives, certainly, but more than do most of the
recent essays which are too often only the weekly
wool-gathering of some mind that has wandered
much in literature and life. We said, some years
since, that the interest in Mrs. Meynell's essays lay
largely in the temperament that they conveyed, in
their quality. We think that this may be said of
“The Spirit of Place” (John Lane); nor does it
seem to us that the quality has changed in the last
few years, or that its mode of expression has become
less delicate and sure.
BRIEFER MENTION.
The “Cambridge” Milton (Houghton) is uniform
with the other poets included in this favorite and inex-
pensive edition — that is, it forms a single volume with
double-columned pages, has a portrait frontispiece, a
compact body of notes, and an introductory essay. The
latter, as well as the editing in general, comes from Mr.
William Vaughan Moody, who has also provided prose
translations of the Latin poems. Mr. Moody's intro-
duction, considered both as biography and criticism, is
an excellent piece of work.
Mr. George Burton Adams's handbook of European
History (Macmillan) should be of great value to teach-
ers of history, for it contains in concise form just the
material required in outlining for students the supple-
mentary reading necessary in each epoch. The work is not
in itself sufficiently expanded to be used as a text-book,
—indeed, it was not the author's intention that it should
be so used, - but taken as a basis for a lecture course,
or for the seminary method of study, it will serve as the
best of guides. It is particularly strong in well-selected
references to such works in English, or in translation,
as are easily obtainable, at small expense, by any school
or college library.
The following French texts are of recent publication:
Augier et Sandeau’s “Le Gendre de M. Poirier” (Holt),
edited by Dr. Stuart Symington; a “Précis de l’His-
toire de France" (Macmillan), by Professor Alcée
Fortier; and an abbreviated “Histoire de Gil Blas de
Santillane " (Heath), prepared by Professors Adolphe
Cohn and Robert Sanderson. An Italian text is Gol-
doni's “Un Curioso Accidente” (Heath), edited by Dr.
J. D. M. Ford, who also edits a Spanish text of “El Si
de las Miñas” (Ginn), by Moratin.


404
[June 16,
THE DIAL
LITERARY NOTES.
Messrs. B. H. Sanborn & Co. publish a school edition
of “The Ancient Mariner,” edited by Dr. John Phelps
Fruit.
Mr. Moses Grant Daniell has edited for Messrs. Ginn
& Co. a school edition of Macaulay’s “Lays of Ancient
Rome.”
“Scotland's Share in Civilizing the World,” by the
Rev. Canon Mackenzie, is a recent publication of the
Fleming H. Revell Co.
The Macmillan Co. send us “Bible Stories” from the
New Testament, edited by Mr. R. G. Moulton, and pub-
lished in “The Modern Reader's Bible.”
A “Glossary to Accompany “Departmental Ditties’
as written by Rudyard Kipling” is the title of a small
book just published by Messrs. M. F. Mansfield and
A. Wessels.
“Retrospects and Prospects” (Scribner) is a posthu-
mous volume of miscellaneous essays by Sidney Lanier,
collected from various sources, and primarily historical
in their interest.
“The Athenian Archons of the Third and Second
Centuries before Christ,” by Mr. William Scott Fergu-
son, appears as Volume X. of the “Cornell Studies in
Classical Philology,” published by the Macmillan Co.
“The Metaphor: A Study in the Psychology of
Rhetoric,” by Miss Gertrude Buck, is published by the
Ann Arbor Inland Press, in the series of “Contributions
to Rhetorical Theory,” edited by Professor Fred Newton
Scott.
“A History of the American Nation” (Appleton), by
Professor Andrew C. McLaughlin, is a text book of a
highly satisfactory sort, intended for secondary schools.
It comes down to the war in the Philippines, and is
copiously illustrated with maps and portraits.
Mr. L. G. Bugbee sends us pamphlet reprints of two
papers on Texas history. “Slavery in Early Texas”
first appeared in the “Political Science Quarterly” and
“Some Difficulties of a Texas Empresario” in the pub-
lications of the Southern History Association. Both are
interesting and important contributions to the annals of
the State.
A paper on “International Courts of Arbitration,
written in 1874 by Thomas Balch of Philadelphia, and
published in the London “Law Magazine and Review,”
has now, owing to the renewed timeliness of its theme,
been reissued in book form by Messrs. Henry T. Coates
& Co., and edited by Mr. Thomas Willing Balch, a son
of the author.
Burke's “Conciliation” speech, edited by Mr. Sidney
Carleton Newsom; Goldsmith’s “Vicar of Wakefield,”
edited by Mr. Henry W. Boynton; and Dryden's “Pala-
mon and Arcite,” edited by Mr. Percival Chubb, are
recent additions to the Messrs. Macmillan's series of
“Pocket English Classics.”
The proceedings of the Chicago anti-imperialist meet-
ing of April 30 have just been published in a pamphlet
of about fifty pages, and constitute an impressive and
weighty statement of the reasons which have impelled
the larger part of the sober-minded public to protest
against the war in the Philippine Islands. The addresses
of President Rogers, Bishop Spaulding, Professor
Laughlin, and the other speakers, are given in full, and
the whole is issued as the first of a series of “Liberty
Tracts” to be published by the Central Anti-Imperialist
League. Copies of the pamphlet may be obtained from
Mr. Edwin Burritt Smith, 415 First National Bank
Building, Chicago.
In speaking of the new edition of Baedeker's “United
States” (Scribner), we find that we hardly did justice
to the revisions that have been made since the first edi-
tion was published. They include six new maps and
plans, new railway routes, revised statements of Mexi-
can and Alaskan routes, an extended bibliography, and
an account of Greater New York. On the other hand, the
vigilance of the editor has not been sufficient to avoid
an occasional slip, such as the naming at the head of the
list of Chicago hotels and restaurants of an establish-
ment that ceased to exist some two years ago.
LIST OF NEW BOOKS.
[The following list, containing 68 titles, includes books
received by THE DIAL since its last issue.]
GENERAL LITERATURE.
Shakespeare in France under the Ancient Régime. By
J. J. Jusserand. Illus., large 8vo, gilt top, uncut, pp. 496.
G. P. Putnam's Sons. $6.
Wordsworth and the Coleridges. With Other Memories,
Literary and Political. By Ellis Yarnall. 8vo,
gilt top, uncut, pp. 331. Macmillan Co. $3.
A History of Bohemian Literature. By Francis, Count
Lützow. 12mo, pp. 425. “Literatures of the World.”
D. Appleton & Co. $1.50.
Old Cambridge. By Thomas Wentworth Higginson. 12mo,
ilt top, uncut, pp. 203. “National Studies in American
tters.” Macmillan Co. $1.25.
Masques and Mummers: Essays on the Theatre of Here
and Now. By Charles Frederic Nirdlinger. 12mo, gilt top,
uncut, pp. 370. DeWitt Publishing House.
The Solitary Summer. By the author of “Elizabeth and
her German Garden.” 12mo, gilt top, uncut, pp. 190.
Macmillan Co. $1.50.
A Life for Liberty: Anti-Slavery and Other Letters of Sallie
Holley. Edited, with Introductory Chapters, by John
White Chadwick. Illus., 12mo, gilt top, uncut, pp. 292.
G. P. Putnam's Sons. $1.50.
Testimony of the Sonnets as to the Authorship of the
Shakespearian Plays and Poems. By Jesse Johnson.
12mo, gilt top, pp. 100. G. P. Putnam's Sons.
BIOGRAPHY AND MEMOIRS.
The Life of Henry A. Wise of Virginia, 1806–1876. By
his grandson, the late Barton H. Wise. With portrait,
large 8vo, gilt top, uncut, pp. 434. Macmillan Co. $3.
The College Warden. By Henry A. Fairbairn, M.A. Illus.,
12mo, pp. 154. Thomas Whittaker. $1.
HISTORY.
The Story of Nuremberg. By Cecil Headlam; illus. by
Miss H. M. James. 16mo, gilt top, uncut, pp. 303. “Me-
diaeval Towns.” Macmillan Co. $1.50.
The Rescue of Cuba: An Episode in the Growth of Free
Government. By Andrew S. Draper, LL.D. Illus., 12mo,
pp. 186. Silver, Burdett & Co. $1.
The Dreyfus Story. By Richard W. Hale.
pp. 68. Small, Maynard & Co. 50 cents.
NEW EDITIONS OF STANDARD LITERATURE.
Plutarch's Lives. Englished by Sir Thomas North. Vol.
IV.; with photogravure frontispiece, 24mo, gilt top, uncut,
pp. 371. "Temple Classics.” Macmillan Co. -50 cts.
POETRY AND VERSE.
Poems of Nature and Life. By John Witt Randall; edited
by Francis Ellingwood Abbott; with Introduction on the
Randall Family. With portraits, large 8vo, gilt top,
uncut, pp. 566. Boston: George H. Ellis.
War is Kind. By Stephen Crane; with drawings by Will
Bradley. 8vo, uncut, pp. 96. F. A. Stokes Co. $2.50.
18mo, uncut,


1899.] THE
DIAL 405
An Epic of the Soul. 8vo, gilt top, uncut, pp. 80. Thomas
Whittaker. $1. net. -
When Love is Lord. By Tom Hall.
pp. 108. F. A. Stokes Co. $1.
24mo, gilt top,
FICTION.
The Market-Place. By Harold Frederic. Illus., 12mo,
pp. 401. F. A. Stokes Co. $1.50.
The Awkward Age. By Henry James.
Harper & Brothers. $1.50.
Idylls of the Sea. By Frank T. Bullen, F.R.G.S. 12mo,
pp. 266. D. Appleton & Co. $1.25.
A Dash for a Throne. By Arthur W. Marchmont. Illus.,
12mo, pp. 352. New Amsterdam Book Co. $1.25.
Tristram Lacy; or, The Individualist. By W. H. Mallock.
12mo, gilt top, uncut, pp. 432. Macmillan Co. $1.50.
The Paths of the Prudent: A Comedy. By J. S. Fletcher.
Illus., 12mo, pp. 309. L. C. Page & Co. $1.50.
The Launching of a Man. By Stanley Waterloo.
gilt top, pp. 285. Rand, McNally & Co. $1.25.
Across the Campus: A Story of College Life. By Caroline
M. Fuller. 12mo, pp. 441. Charles Scribner's Sons. $1.50.
Madame Izan: A Tourist Story. By Mrs. Campbell-Praed.
12mo, pp. 331. D. Appleton & Co. $1.; paper, 50 cts.
A Village Ophelia. By Anne Reeve Aldrich. 12mo, gilt
top, uncut, pp. 188. G. W. Dillingham Co. $1.25.
A Civilian Attaché: A Story of a Frontier Army Post. By
Helen Dawes Brown. 18mo, gilt top, uncut, pp. 161.
Charles Scribner's Sons. 75 cts.
TRAVEL AND DESCRIPTION.
A Thousand Days in the Arctic. By Frederick G. Jackson;
with Preface by Admiral Sir F. Leopold McClintock, R.N.
Illus., large 8vo, gilt top, uncut, pp. 940. Harper &
Brothers. $6.
Highways and Byways in Donegal and Antrim. By
Stephen Gwynn; illus. by Hugh Thomson. 8vo, gilt top,
uncut, pp. 319. Macmillan Co. $2.
Contemporary Spain as Shown by her Novelists: A Com-
pilation. By Mary Wright Plummer; with Introduction
by Edward E. Hale, Jr. 16mo, pp. 200. New York:
Truslove, Hanson & Comba. $1.25.
In Afric's Forest and Jungle; or, Six Years among the
Yorubans. By Rev. R. H. Stone. Illus., 12mo, pp. 282.
F. H. Revell Co. $1.
Everything about our New Possessions: A Handy Book
on Cuba, Porto Rico, Hawaii, and the Philippines. By
Thomas J. Vivian and Ruel P. Smith. 12mo, pp. 182.
R. F. Fenno & Co. 60 cts.
POLITICS AND SOCIOLOGY.
The Break-up of China. With an Account of its Present
Commerce. Currency, Waterways, Armies, Railways, Pol-
itics, and Future Prospects. By Lord Charles Beresford.
With portraits and maps, large 8vo, pp. 491. Harper &
Brothers. $3.
Outline of Practical Sociology, with Special Reference to
American Conditions. By Carroll D. Wright, LL.D.
12mo, pp. 431. “American Citizen Series.” Longmans,
Green, & Co. $2.
PHILOSOPHY AND ETHICS.
A Theory of Reality: An Essay in Metaphysical System
upon the Basis of Human Cognitive Experience. By
George Trumbull Ladd. Large 8vo, pp. 556. Charles
Scribner's Sons. $4.
A System of Ethics. By Friedrich Paulsen; edited and
trans., with the author's sanction, by Frank Thilly. Large
8vo, pp. 723. Charles Scribner's Sons. $3, net.
The Psychology of Reasoning: Based on Experimental
Researches in Hypnotism. By Alfred Binet; trans. from
the second French edition by Adam Gowans Whyte, B.Sc.
12mo, pp. 191. Open Court Publishing Co. 75 cts.
SCIENCE,
Vital Science. By Robert Walter, M.D.
J. B. Lippincott Co. $1.50.
Harvard Studies in Classical Philology. Edited by a
Committee of the Classical Instructors of Harvard Univ.
Vol. IX. With portraits, 8vo, pp. 174. Ginn & Co. $1.50.
The Athenian Archons of the Third and Second Centuries
before Christ. By William Scott Ferguson, A.M. 8vo,
pp. 99. “Cornell Studies in Classical Philology.” Mac-
millan Co. 75 cts.
12mo, pp. 457.
12mo,
12mo, pp. 319.
REFERENCE. -
The International Year Book: A Compendium of the
World's Progress for 1898. Edited by Frank Moore Colby,
M.A., and Harry Thurston Peck, Ph.D. Illus., large 8vo,
pp. 932. Dodd, Mead & Co. $3.
A Glossary to Accompany “Departmental Ditties” as Writ-
ten by Rudyard Kipling. 12mo, gilt top, uncut, pp. 63.
M. F. Mansfield & A. Wessels. 75 cts. net.
BOOKS FOR THE YOUNG.
Cadet Standish of the St. Louis: A Story of our Naval
Campaign in Cuban Waters. By William Drysdale. Illus.,
12mo, pp. 354. W. A. Wilde & Co. $1.50.
When Boston Braved the King: A Story of Tea-Party
Times. By William E. Barton. Illus., 12mo, pp. 314.
W. A. Wilde & Co. $1.50.
A Daughter of the West: The Story of an American
Princess. By Evelyn Raymond. Illus., 12mo, pp. 347.
W. A. Wilde & Co. $1.50.
Fate of the Black Eagle, and Other Stories. By Russell D.
Smith. 12mo, pp. 274. F. Tennyson Neely. $1.
Bible Stories (New Testament). Edited by Richard G.
Moulton, M.A. 24mo, uncut, pp. 130. “Modern Reader's
Bible.” Macmillan Co. 50 cts.
EDUCATION.—BOOKS FOR SCHOOL AND
COLLEGE.
Experimental Study of Children. By Arthur MacDonald.
Illus., 8vo, pp. 400. Washington: Government Printing
Office. Paper.
Composition and Rhetoric for Schools. By Robert Her-
rick, A.B., and Lindsay Todd Damon, A.B. 12mo, pp. 466.
Scott, Foresman & Co. $1.20.
A History of the American Nation. By Andrew C. Mc-
Laughlin. Illus., 12mo, pp. 587. “Twentieth Century
Series.” D. Appleton & Co. $1.40.
The Essentials of Geometry. By Webster Wells, S.B.
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