pleases them only because they are perfectly certain that they are only playing a part, and can resume at will their interrupted task and hide themselves in the distant haze of pomp and misery.

BROWNING UNDER FIRE.

Mr. Philip Wicksteed contributes a study of Robert Browning which, in spite of much cordial appreciation of the poet's worth, will be remembered chiefly for its onslaught on Browning's accuracy. He speaks of the poet's "indifference to fact." He "cares less than other poets even for facts of nature." "Combined indefiniteness of statement and neglect of fact is habitual with Browning." The same habit appears in Browning's "contempt for historical facts." "Sordello" is pronounced "one huge anachronism." After alluding to Browning's extraordinary breadth of sympathy, which makes us conceive ourselves capable of the greatest heights and lowest depths of human possibilities, the writer declares there is often moral exaltation, but seldom ethical enthusiasm, or even sound moral indignation, in Browning's work. There is even "absence of anything approaching to social enthusiasm. There is no resentment of social wrong, no vision of the kingdom of heaven on earth."

WR

THE FORTNIGHTLY REVIEW.

RITING in the Fortnightly for January, Mr. Ernest Newman prophesies great things concerning Richard Strauss, who, he says, is the creator of a new order of things in music and the founder of a new type of art. The real Strauss is only to be seen in his later works. Mr. Newman says:

"Tschaikowsky brought the last new shudder into music, Strauss has endowed it with a new simplicity. It is this, indeed, that makes him Strauss; for, paradoxical as it may seem, this builder of colossal tonepoems, this wielder of the mightiest orchestral language ever yet spoken, this Mad Mullah of harmony, is what he is because he has dared to throw over almost all the conventions that have clustered round the art in the last two hundred years. He is complex because he is simple; he appears so terribly artificial because he is absolutely natural; he is called sophisticated because he casts aside all artifice and speaks like the natural musical man."

THE NEW ORDEAL OF THE COMMONS.

Mr. T. H. S. Escott glances backward over the history of Parliament, and records the way in which the House of Commons has triumphed over its various enemies; and then discusses the question whether it is now destined to succumb to the encroachments of the present ministerial majority. The struggle through which it is now passing is proving a severer trial to the House than any of its earlier conflicts.

"Whatever, in the seventeenth century, on the part of the apostates to the king was denounced as arrogant and tyrannical by the managers of the House is, one hears, tamely borne at the hands of the two despots now controlling St. Stephen's-Mr. Balfour and Mr. Chamberlain."

THE DECAY OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN ELEPHANT. Mr. H. A. Bryden writes a brief paper upon what he calls "The Long Tragedy of Extermination." The story of the downfall of the South African elephant is replete

with life, movement, and excitement. For two hundred and fifty years the mightiest of mammals has been pursued with unrelenting vigor. Until two hundred and fifty years ago, he had held his own with ease against assailants who had no firearms; since then he has been hunted down with such severity that elephants have practically ceased to exist south of the Zambesi. There are two or three protected herds near the south coast of Cape Colony. There is one troop in Khama's country, and a few elephants still maintain a precarious existence in Rhodesia. These are the sole remnants of the innumerable herds that sixty or seventy years ago roamed in freedom over the African interior.

THEATRICAL SUBVENTIONS.

Mr. William Archer writes on "The Rise of Theatrical Subventions." The three great provincial cities of France-Lyons, Marseilles, and Bordeaux-built great theaters in the eighteenth century and let them to managers who failed. The rent gradually fell, until it vanished altogether at the beginning of the nineteenth century. But even when the theater is granted free, the managers cannot make it pay, so the era of subsidies began. In Marseilles, the theatrical subvention is $54,000 a year; in Bordeaux, $21,600; in Lyons, about $12,500. The chief cause of this necessity for heavy subsidies is the great expense entailed by the production of opera. The municipal dramatic theater in Lyons, instead of receiving a subsidy, pays a rent of $5,000 a year to the city. In Germany, the towns are splendidly supplied with theaters, which keep in view a moderately high artistic ideal.

TH

THE NATIONAL REVIEW.

HE longest and, in some respects, the weightiest article in the National Review for January is that which Sir H. D. le Marchant, late chairman of the East and West India Dock Company, contributes on the subject of the Port of London. It is a vigorous plea for the dock companies and a protest against the expropriation on the part of the public authorities. The dock companies put forward as an alternative a suggestion that there should be one supreme port authority for controlling the waterways, but that the dock companies should continue to exist with mandatory powers of raising revenue,-that is to say, with liberty to raise rates. In return, they would accept a limitation of dividend, be willing to accept the jurisdiction of the railway commissioners, and undertake to provide the requisite accommodation.

IS ENGLAND IN DANGER OF WAR?

THE VACATION SCHOOL AT JENA.

One of the pleasantest papers in the Review is that which Miss Dodd contributes concerning the vacation course which is given at Jena University. The vacation course is an international summer meeting, in which men and women from all parts of the Continent assemble to spend three weeks in studying the German language, natural science, literature, and pedagogy. Three years ago, there were not twenty students; last year, there were 275, who attended 26 classes, while instruction was given by 21 professors. There were 18 English at Jena last year, 7 Japanese, and 3 Dutchmen.

OTHER ARTICLES.

There is a rather interesting paper for collectors of bric-a-brac upon prices brought by antique furniture in the salesrooms. The writer records the fact that at the Duke of Leeds' salesrooms, in 1901, a pair of commodes of oak of the Louis XV. period sold for $75,000.

An anonymous writer describes Johannesburg as it is to-day. "Her one great danger," he says, "is that her ablest element may continue alien, treating the city as a caravansary, and return to Europe as soon as its ambition is satisfied."

THE

THE WESTMINSTER REVIEW.

HE Westminster Review for January opens with a paper by Mr. W. J. Corbet entitled "The Skeleton at the Feast," which deals with the alarming increase of lunacy in the British Isles. He gives figures showing that since 1859 the number of registered lunatics has increased by no less than 100,739. Mr. Corbet pleads for an international conference of qualified persons to consider the matter of a remedy. Heredity is the chief cause of the increase. Mr. Corbet cites a number of authorities who declare that there is no way to retard the increase except by the sterilization of all lunatics. At present, persons tainted by lunacy who are supposed to be cured marry, and in one case known to Mr. Corbet a whole family of ten children inherited the disease, and had to be put under restraint. The garnering of the lunatic poor in vast asylums where they are so well cared for that they soon become outwardly sane, and are released to transmit the disease to others, is, says Mr. Corbet, the root of the evil.

THE DECLINE OF ENTHUSIASM.

Mr. J. G. Alger, in his retrospect of " Middle Class Culture in the Fifties," remarks upon the change in public sentiment:

"People half a century ago were full of admiration for persons and things. Palmerston and Lord John, as Russell was always styled, enjoyed more popularity than was ever possessed by Beaconsfield or Gladstone, and Lord Salisbury notoriously lacked it. There was also an unbounded confidence in the results of the diffusion of education, the circulation of newspapers, and the extension of the franchise, which has not been realized. Liberals, in particular, glowed, moreover, with sympathy for oppressed nationalities,-for Hungary, which Kossuth's residence in England stimulated; for dismembered Poland, which found an ardent parliamentary champion in Lord Dudley Stuart, and for American slaves. Fugitive slaves, indeed, thrilled large audiences with their experiences, and, I suspect, in some cases, made a good trade of lecturing. Newspa

pers now tell us, indeed, much more of foreign countries, but we feel less interest in them. We have really, in the scramble for Africa and other territories, become more insular in our sentiments. We are no longer such good lovers or good haters. A Marshal Haynau would now run little danger of mobbing by brewers' draymen, but would simply be stared at. A Garibaldi would no longer have a fervid welcome."

OTHER ARTICLES.

Karl Blind contributes a couple of pages on "The Germans in the United States;" C. F. Adams writes on "Labor and Capital," and Alexander Mackendrick on "Religion and Morality."

THE MONTHLY REVIEW.

HE Monthly Review for January opens with an "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," on the controversy between Sir Edward Clarke and Mr. Gosse.

THE STATE AND EDUCATION.

Dr. Goldwin Smith contributes a paper entitled "Shall the State Educate?" from which we extract the following practical suggestion to the British Government :

"It is, perhaps, a necessary consequence of the system which makes every great measure the result of a struggle between parties that little or no use is made in politics of cautious experiment. Great systems are established for the whole nation without trial, and past recall. There is apparently no reason why in this case the whole country should be at once and irrevocably settled on the same plan. One or two counties might be permitted to try the voluntary system, with licenses for the opening of schools, government inspection, examination by the inspectors on secular subjects, and a moderate per capita allowance for the pupils who passed it. Little harm could be done by such an experiment; little good would be postponed; and a useful comparison might be made."

Dr. Smith criticises state education on the ground that it has an inherent tendency to bureaucracy. He says that in educating the whole population on an ambitious scale we may be educating them out of manual labor and domestic service. In America, both these departments of labor are supplied from abroad. Dr. Smith thinks the advantages of coeducation of the sexes are very doubtful. He foresees danger in the modern tendency to regard state education merely as an instrument of industrial salvation.

NAVAL INTELLIGENCE.

Lieut. Carlyon Bellairs writes some severe criticisms on the British Naval Intelligence Department. He points out that Great Britain accredits the same naval attaché to Russia and Italy, while the naval attaché at Washington, near the Atlantic seaboard, is accredited to Japan as well. Obsolete regulations are issued which make England the laughing-stock of the world. No official records of modern naval fights are issued to British officers. The disease is one of overstrain at the admiralty. The intelligence department is undermanned. The sea lords need to be understudied by other officers and relieved of much of their routine work. Altogether, the present organization of the navy is a peace organization.

THE AGE OF THE WORLD.

Sir Edward Fry continues his paper on "The Age of the Inhabited World." He gives a great many instances of sudden variation in plants and animals under change of environment and other conditions, and points out that in all probability, even where variation of species has been gradual, it has gone on at different speeds, and was much more rapid when the earth received more heat from the sun. New species may therefore have been formed much more rapidly than is generally supposed, and therefore the enormous period of time which evolutionists require for the development of

ΤΗ

LA REVUE.

modern species may not really be needed. If this be so, the biologists may be brought into agreement with the physicists as to the space of time needed for the formation of the modern world.

OTHER ARTICLES.

Dr. A. N. Jannaris writes on "The Fourth Gospel and St. John the Apostle," discussing the question who wrote the Fourth Gospel. He comes to the conclusion that St. John was really the author. Mr. Arthur Morrison's illustrated articles on "The Painters of Japan' are continued. There is an interesting series of letters written in 1857 from Delhi during the Indian Mutiny.

HE first number of La Revue for December opens with a new account of the loss of Lorraine, compiled from unpublished memoirs of Marshal MacMahon and General de Cissey.

Dr. Félix Regnault writes on "Suggestion in Education." He says that suggestion may be practised, not only on persons in hypnotic sleep, but also upon persons who are awake and in a normal condition, and particularly upon children, who cannot resist the influence by reflection or judgment. But ordinary hypnotic suggestion may be employed with advantage to uproot inveterate bad habits. Dr. Regnault cites a number of practitioners who employed hypnotic suggestion successfully to correct the vices of idiots. He says that Dr. Edgar Berillon has proved by the experience of fifteen years that hypnotic suggestion is efficacious, innocuous, and that its cures are durable. The bad habit of biting the nails, so common among children, has been cured in this way. The child is hypnotized and seated in a chair; the doctor seizes its hand, holds it firmly, and says: "Try to put your hand to your mouth and bite your nails. You see it is impossible," and so on, the exercise being repeated. When the child in a normal condition attempts to bite its nails, it feels the pressure of the preventing hand and is unable to do

So.

"Each time," says Dr. Regnault, "the hand is raised, the child feels in the forearm a sensation which prevents further movement." Kleptomania is cured in a similar way. Dr. Regnault says that the practice of hypnotic cure should, however, only be practised when dealing with morbid cases.

THE RIVALRY OF BERLIN AND MUNICH.

M. Jean Chantavoine writes on "The Two Germanies" the Germany of the north and the Germany of the south-which are represented, respectively, by Berlin and Munich. He characterizes the attitude of Berlin to Munich as one of aggressive bad humor. The Prussians desire that their capital should be in fact, as well as in right, the imperial city. Politically, they have achieved this end, and they are now attempting to centralize all the intellectual and artistic activity of the federated monarchies in order to play the part in Germany which Paris plays in France, a part which Paris, indeed, has had more than one occasion to regret. M. Chantavoine argues that for Germany's own sake this much-desired concentration would be a bad thing. Berlin may remain the first of German capitals, but if she becomes sole capital it will result in a loss of life and strength for the empire, which will finally injure Prussia herself.

IN

REVUE DE PARIS.

N the December numbers of the Revue de Paris, out of fourteen articles, five are of a more or less historical character, while only two can in any way claim to deal with current events.

Mme. Judith Gautier continues her interesting recollections of her famous father and of his friends, and she gives vivid word pictures of two great artists, Grisi and Mario. The former, a devoted mother, never allowed her children to be kissed and petted by strangers. She considered that a child has a right to its individuality as much as a grown-up person, and remembered the repugnance and annoyance with which she had, as a child, herself received unwelcomed attentions.

THE LAWS OF SWITZERLAND.

Little Switzerland owns a longer civil code than almost any country in Europe; indeed, every canton has its own legislation, and only now is some effort being made to unify the code. Among the proposed new laws, a considerable number deal with the vexed question of matrimony. Following France in this matter, the Switzer cannot marry, or indeed become engaged, without receiving permission from his parents; but whereas in France it becomes increasingly difficult each year for a workman and a workwoman to become legally joined in matrimony, owing to the number of family papers, certificates of death, etc., which have to be produced, in Switzerland vexatious hindrances of this kind are as much as possible made away with, and when the wouldbe wedded pair are poor all this trouble is undertaken on their behalf by the municipal authorities of their town or village. The Swiss law has long permitted divorce, but in the case of the guilty party the judge may pass a decree by which he or she cannot marry again during a space of time mounting to three years.

LONDON THEATERS IN SHAKESPEARE'S DAY. M. Jusserand, the French ambassador, who has given up so much time to medieval England, describes in picturesque language the London theaters as they must have appeared to Shakespeare. The tiny London of that day had quite a number of playhouses, but wandering players often performed in the great halls of country houses and in the kitchens of inns. The Londoner seems to have always been a playgoer, for at a time when Paris had only one theater London had four fine playhouses, as well as innumerable private theaters. Roughly speaking, the Elizabethan could enjoy the play by paying sixpence for the best places and a penny for the least good. Often there was no roof, and accordingly, in wet weather the unfortunate actors played to empty benches.

A FEW VOLUMES OF ESSAYS AND CRITICISM. "Shakespeare and His Forerunners," by Sidney Lanier (Scribners), is an excellent example of the rejuvenation of an old theme in the hands of a writer whose literary enthusiasms are genuine and spontaneous. Although now for the first time printed (with the exception of a few stray chapters that recently appeared in the magazines), this presentation of Shakespeare as the culmination of the Elizabethan era was given by Mr. Lanier at Baltimore in the form of two series of lectures in the winter of 1879-80. The vital quality so characteristic of all that Mr. Lanier wrote is here notable for its intensity. The poets and poetry of the Elizabethan age were very real to him, and it was to him a delight to picture the times when our English literature was coming to its full power, and especially to trace the growth of the master spirit of that masterful age. So completely had he made this theme his own, that when he came to lecture on it there was a delightful freedom from convention and routine. It was as if he were speaking out of his own intimate and personal knowledge of the subject. This it was that gave life to what he had to say. The lectures comprised in the present beautiful two-volume edition are accounted among the most important of Mr. Lanier's prose works. Much has been done by the publishers to make the volumes attractive. The illustrations are abundant, well executed, and in many instances reproduced from rare originals. All in all, the work has a unique and permanent value.

The Rev. Stopford A. Brooke's study of "The Poetry of Robert Browning" (Crowell) will command general attention, treating, as it does, of a poet who has always ranked preeminent in his calling as a thinker, and comprising, as it does, the matured views of one of the sanest and most capable of modern English critics. Mr. Brooke is as well known in America as in England, chiefly through the publication of his manuals and summaries of English literature, and also, more recently, through his critical estimate of the poet Tennyson. The opening chapter of the present work is a contrast of Browning with Tennyson. By adopting this method of presentation, the author has been able to set forth the more distinctly the peculiar elements in Browning's poetry, which he discusses more fully in the subsequent treatment.

REV. STOPFORD A. BROOKE.

Mr. Henry H. Bonnell has written "Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, Jane Austen: Studies in Their Works" (Longmans). These studies are especially concerned with the philosophic attitudes of the writers in ques

the nineteenth century stood for what was most significant and permanent in American culture, and her pen pictures of those Boston worthies of other days are most attractive.

In "The World Beautiful in Books" (Boston: Little, Brown & Co.), Miss Whiting has set forth her theories of literary values with great clearness. The writer's fond belief, like that of Mr. Howells, that life and literature are closely related one to the other, has given character to her treatment of literary themes. In this little book, the attempt is made to bring the reader into touch with much of the best writing and thinking of our time. In many ways, the book is an inspiring one, likely to do much good by way of cultivating a taste

for the best literature.

Prof. Richard Burton's "Forces in Fiction" (Indianapolis Bowen, Merrill & Co.) deals with the most modern phases of several literary problems, such as "The Cult of the Historical Romance," "The Love Motive in Modern Fiction," "The Development of Technique in the Drama," and "The Essay as Mood and Form."

Those readers who may desire less elaborate treatment of the subject than is afforded by the works of the late Dr. Moses Coit Tyler will find in "American Literature in Its Colonial and National Periods," by Prof. Lorenzo Sears (Boston: Little, Brown & Co.), an excellent epitome, well adapted, from the point of view of entertainment as well as of matter-of-fact instruction, to serve as a popular history of American letters. Professor Sears has made a judicious selection of representative authors, and by mention of these men and their works he makes apparent the development of

literature in this country from the efforts of the earliest colonists down to the work of the latter-day novelists, historians, and poets. The subject of oratory also receives in this work more attention than is customarily accorded it in books of similar scope.

Two of the text-books of American literature recently prepared for use in schools and colleges are significant as showing the rapid progress made in late years in the scientific study of the subject. Dr. J. W. Aber nethy's "American Literature" (New York: Maynard, Merrill & Co.) not only presents a systematic plan of study, but is so arranged as to serve admirably as a guide-book to the most important biographical and critical material having to do with our national literature. Unusually liberal treatment is accorded to our modern writers, and a prominence in some degree according with the interest and value of the subject is given to Southern literature. A chapter is also devoted to the historians represented by Bancroft, Prescott, Motley, and Parkman.

A brief but carefully elaborated work on a similar plan is comprised in Prof. William C. Lawton's "Introduction to the Study of American Literature" (New York: Globe School Book Company). The biographical treatment required by the author's plan might reasonably have demanded more ample space, but this limitation is largely offset by the numerous references to standard histories and biographies which are incorporated in the text.

Passing to the far broader field of English literature in general, an elementary "History of English Literature," by William Vaughn Moody and Robert Morss Lovett, of the University of Chicago (Scribners), is an attempt to present the history of English literature from the earliest times to our own day "in a historical scheme simple enough to be apprehended by young students, yet accurate and substantial enough to serve as a permanent basis for study, however far the subject is pursued." In developing the proportions of this book, the authors have assigned a full half of the space to the last two centuries, and much more to the nineteenth than to the eighteenth.

Among the special studies in this department, Mr. Lewis Einstein's volume on "The Italian Renaissance in England" (Macmillan) is worthy of notice. In this work, the author has endeavored to trace the Italian influence in England from the beginning of the fifteenth century until the death of Elizabeth. The author discerns three stages in the history of the Italian influence in England during this period. The first, extending to the end of the fifteenth century, was centered at the University of Oxford, and succeeded, after several attempts, in introducing the new classical and scientific learning of Italy into England, thereby laying the foundation for all future English scholarship; the second epoch was marked by the growth of Italian culture at court in the first half of the sixteenth century, while the third and last period witnessed the spread of Italian influence from the court to the people at large. The growth of Puritanism, however, fostered the moral and national reaction against Italy at this time.

"Standard English Prose" (Holt) is a collection of extracts from Bacon to Stevenson, selected and edited by Henry S. Pancoast. The compiler's plan required that the selections should as far as possible be complete in themselves, hence relatively a large amount of space is assigned to each writer. The work should prove of great value to the student of literature.

"The Beginnings of Poetry" is the title of a scholarly

work by Prof. Francis B. Gummere (Macmillan). The author's attempt in this volume is to trace the rise of poetry as a social institution. The writer's purpose, therefore, is not, in the main, to propound a theory or to establish canons of criticism, but rather to fill the office of historian.

Another writer whose point of view differs from that of most of those who have gone before him in his special field is Prof. Mark H. Liddell, who has written "An Introduction to the Study of English Poetry" (Doubleday, Page & Co.). Professor Liddell holds that language and literature present a field for scientific study much like that of economics or ethics, "inasmuch as the phenomena which they furnish are neither accidental nor capricious, but the result of the operation of certain fundamental laws as definite and formulable in the one case as in the other, provided one takes the trouble to investigate the phenomena in the scientific spirit." The author's attempts to formulate poetic phenomena in strictly scientific terms can hardly fail to interest the reader even if they do not invariably command assent.

In the field of European literature, perhaps the most important recent contribution in English is the second

volume of Professor Saintsbury's "History of Criticism and Literary Taste in Europe" (Dodd, Mead & Co.). This volume covers the period "from the Renaissance to the decline of eighteenth-century orthodoxy." One of the most noteworthy features of this work is the large proportion of space given to English critics. This is in accordance with Professor Saintsbury's expressed belief that the value and importance of English criticism are PROFESSOR GEORGE SAINTSBURY. far greater than has been usually admitted.

The chapter on "Elizabethan Criticism" and the survey "From Addison to Johnson" bear many evidences of the author's respect for the literature of his own land. It may not be generally known that Professor Saintsbury has been engaged for nearly thirty years in collecting the materials for his exhaustive work.

In "A Survey of Russian Literature" (Chautauqua Press), Miss Isabel F. Hapgood renders a distinct service to American readers, by disclosing to their view a field that has remained until this time almost unexplored. Miss Hapgood's method in this enterprise is to acquaint the reader with the views of Russian critics on their own national literature. Through this résumé of Russian criticism, in connection with the accompanying extracts from standard authors, the American student has at last a very good opportunity to gain at least an introduction to the great writers of a people too long neglected by our pushing Anglo-Saxon civilization.

In the second volume of the essays by George Brandes, entitled "Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature" (Macmillan), "The Romantic School in Germany" is treated. This volume affords the English