treating of a matter which has been so abundantly discussed in recent years, but it is undeniable that the determination of the true meaning, applications, and limitations of the idea of evolution is one of the chief aims of philosophical thought. That the coming philosophy of evolution must be theistic is ably demonstrated in the treatise before us. GEORGE B. STEVENS.

SCRIPTURES, HEBREW AND CHRISTIAN* is the title of an edition of the Sacred Scriptures of Christendom which is to be complete in three volumes. Vol. I., issued two years since, covers Hebrew History to the Exile. The present volume embraces, as its chief contents, the Psalms, Prophets, and the Old Testament Wisdom. The remaining volume, which is in preparation, will contain the New Testament. Vol. II. is composed of six parts whose titles are as follows: "History of the Jews from the Exile to Nehemiah;" "Hebrew Legislation ;" "Hebrew Tales ;" "Hebrew Prophecy ;" "Hebrew Poetry;" "Hebrew Wisdom." The plan of this work is unique. It is a new grouping, according to chronological and logical relations, of the matter of Sacred Scripture. It might be called a new canon for the student. The most important portions of the Old Testament are here arranged according to historical order and grouped according to the class of literature to which they belong and presented in new and felicitous translations. The book is a real contribution to the apparatus for a more thorough popular study of the Bible. The student has here the Biblical matter pure and simple, but he has it grouped for him by competent scholars, so that he can associate and compare kindred specimens of literature, and can read many of the Psalms and Prophecies in connection with the narratives of the historical events to which they refer or allude. This is a great advantage. If, when the Old Testament is to be studied, intelligent teachers in our Sunday schools could take this edition of the Biblical literature and conduct their classes along the course of Hebrew history and literature in its orderly progress, how much better would it be than is the present plan of studying here and there a passage which has no connection with what precedes or follows. Popular Bible study sadly needs to be made more comprehensive and consecutive. The use of these volumes could be made a valuable means to that end. GEORGE B. STEVENS.

*Scriptures, Hebrew and Christian, arranged and edited by EDWARD T. BARTLETT, D.D., and JOHN P. PETERS, PH.D., Professors in the Protestant Episcopal Divinity School in Philadelphia. Vol. II., Hebrew Literature. G. P. Putnam's Son's, New York and London, 1889. pp. 582. $1.50 per volume.

NEW ENGLANDER

AND

YALE REVIEW.

No. CCXXIX.

APRIL, 1889.

ARTICLE I.-BRYCE ON AMERICAN LEGISLATION.

The American Commonwealth. By JAMES BRYCE, Author of the "Holy Roman Empire," M. P. for Aberdeen. In two volumes. London: MacMillan & Co., and New York. 1888. 8vo, pp. xx. 750, 743.

PROFESSOR BRYCE has brought to this work on the American Commonwealth two things not often united in a critic of our institutions, an extensive and exact acquaintance with history, and that familiarity with practical politics which comes only from actual contact with it, in important official positions. He is a close observer, but does not weary the reader with too much particularity of detail. It is a fault of Englishmen, he owns, in book-making to try to cover the whole ground with equal minuteness, and it is a fault from which he has kept himself free. And, on the other hand, this self-distrust which withheld him from giving careful attention to many matters

which are really intelligible only to Americans, has limited the generalizations which he draws to comparatively narrow bounds. It is not however because he had formed few. "When I first visited America," he says, "eighteen years ago, I brought home a swarm of bold generalizations. Half of them were thrown overboard after a second visit in 1881. Of the half that remained some were dropped into the Atlantic when I returned across it after a third visit in 1883-84; and although the two latter journeys gave birth to some new views, these views are fewer and more discreetly cautious than their departed sisters of 1870."

One of the earliest which he puts forward is that "parties have been organized far more elaborately in the United States than anywhere else in the world, and have passed more completely under the control of a professional class."

It may be doubted whether this is true except as to national politics, and the government of our great cities. The rule of the political "boss" is generally felt in inverse proportion to the territory he seeks to cover, but as regards our Presidential elections, it must be owned that the machinery by which they are evolved is supplied less by law than by party usage. The device of the electoral college, which the framers of our Constitution fondly imagined would frustrate every attempt to subordinate the will of the individual elector to that of any aggregation of individuals, has proved inadequate to cope with the power of the caucus and the press, the railroad and the telegraph.

This, however, was almost the only thing in which they failed to forecast the development of their work with some degree of precision. After all deductions, says Mr. Bryce, the Constitution of the United States ranks above every other known to history "for the intrinsic excellence of its scheme, its adaptation to the circumstances of the people, the simplicity, brevity, and precision of its language, its judicious mixture of definiteness in principle with elasticity in details." No small part of its merits he ascribes to its accepting as its model in general the Constitutions already adopted and in use in the several States. So far as it followed them it had a settled experience to rely on, but "nearly every provision that has

worked badly is one which the Convention for want of a precedent, was obliged to devise for itself."

The book deals with so many subjects, and with all so well that it would be impossible to review it with any thoroughness in the limits of a single Article. We turn, therefore, to its treatment of one matter, as to which the author was peculiarly fitted to observe and judge, from his familiarity with British parliamentary institutions.

In his chapters on the Senate and "The House at Work," he gives the best picture of the actual methods of legislation at Washington which has yet been sketched, and to these are afterwards added a clear and full description of our State legislatures.

Our plan of equal State representation in the Senate he pronounces the best of any of the methods now in use, in constitutional governments, for giving a distinct as well as natural character to the upper house of the legislative assembly.

Italy," he says, "has a Senate composed of persons nominated by the Crown. The Prussian House of Lords is partly nominated, partly hereditary, partly elective. The Spanish Senators are partly hereditary, partly official, partly elective. In the Germanic Empire, the Federal Council consists of delegates of the several kingdoms and principalities. France appoints her senators by indirect election. In England the members of the House of Lords now sit by hereditary right; and those who propose to reconstruct that ancient body are at their wits end to discover some plan by which it may be strengthened, and made practically useful, without such a direct election as that by which members are chosen to the House of Commons. The American plan, which is older than any of those in use on the European continent, is also better, because it is not only simple, but natural, i. e., grounded on and consonant with the political conditions of America."

The provision in favor of senators of a six years' term has given them, he thinks, a great advantage over members of the house in facilitating their chances of re-election, and the fact that their terms end in such a way that two-thirds of the Senate has always been at least four years in office has created "a

set of traditions and a corporate spirit, which have tended to form habits of dignity and self-respect."

Perhaps in speaking of this result as an incidental one, he hardly gives sufficient consideration to the fact that the Senate is an eternal body, which never dies. It is the same Senate to-day, that existed a hundred years ago. Each House of Representatives begins as a new organization, and adopts new rules. The rules of the Senate remain the same from session to session, without any form of re-adoption. This continuity of existence necessarily produces a sentiment of solidarity, which has a marked effect on their modes of proceeding.

For a quarter of a century, and until driven to it by increasing numbers, the Senate had no standing committees, and it is due to this, in part, no doubt, that no joint standing committees have ever been constituted by the two houses, according to the familiar plan in many of our States. The Senate met, at first, as a "congress of ambassadors," representing the Congress of the Confederation much more nearly than did the lower house. It represented a different constituency, and it might well look at many public questions in a different way.

If, therefore, a petition is to be sent in to Congress a separate paper must be addressed to each House. If a measure is proposed, it must be advocated or opposed before different committees, one of which often reports in its favor, and the other against it. The time of the promoters or opponents of a bill is rather wastefully expended, in such double hearings; but as the least legislation is commonly the best, the public may not suffer much loss in the end.

The general aspect of the Senate in session, says Mr. Bryce, is not so much that "of a popular assembly as of a diplomatic congress." It "seldom wears that air of listless vacuity and superannuated indolence, which the House of Lords presents on all but a few nights of every session.” . . . . "As respects ability, the Senate cannot be profitably compared with the English House of Lords, because that assembly consists of some twenty eminent men and as many ordinary men attending regularly, with a multitude of undistinguished persons who, though members, are only occasional visitors, and take no real share in the deliberations."