Buddhism is decided in a curious fashion. When the time for reincarnation arrives (ie., on the death of a Dalai Lama), search is made among certain families for a child in which the spirit is reincarnated. Narrowing the selection down to three by the consultation of omens, they bring the three babies to the temple, and draw lots for them. The unsuccessful ones are rewarded by a sum of money; the unfortunate successful one takes up his residence at Potala."

JOHN RUSKIN'S INDEX EXPURGATORIUS.

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HITHERTO unpublished letter which John Ruskin addressed to Mr. E. T. Cook when he was assistant editor of the Pall Mall Gazette has been brought to light by Mr. W. T. Stead and published in Success for January. Mr. Cook brought out in those days a "Pall Mall Extra," suggested by Sir John Lubbock's list of the best hundred books. He sent the list to Mr. Ruskin, who returned it scored through and blotted. "Putting my pen lightly through the needless and blottesquely through the rubbish and poison of Sir John's list, I leave enough for a life's liberal reading and choice for any true worker's loyal reading."

head clerk could not write a better one, if he had the vanity to waste his time on it.

"2.-Confessions of St. Augustine.'-Because religious people nearly always think too much. about themselves; and there are many saints whom it is much more desirable to know-the history of St. Patrick to begin with-especially in modern times.

"3.-John Stuart Mill.-Sir John Lubbock ought to have known that his day is over.

"4.-Charles Kingsley.-Because his sentiment is false and his tragedy frightful. People who buy cheap clothes are not punished in real life by catching fevers; social inequalities are not to be redressed by tailors falling in love with bishops' daughters, or gamekeepers with squires'; and the story of Hypatia is the most ghastly in Christian tradition, and should forever have been left in silence.

“5.—Darwin.—Because it is every man's duty to know what he is, and not to think of the embryo he was, nor the skeleton that he should be. Because, too, Darwin has a mortal fascination for all vainly curious and idly speculative persons, and has collected in the train of him every impudent imbecility in Europe, like a dim comet wagging its useless tail of phosphorescent nothing across the steadfast stars.

"6.-Gibbon.-Primarily, none but the malignant and the weak study the decline and fall of either state or organism. Dissolution and putrescence are alike common and unclean in all things; any wretch or simpleton may observe for himself, and experience in himself, the process of ruin; but good men study, and wise men describe, only the growth and standing of things. -not their decay.

"For the rest, Gibbon's is the worst English that was ever written by an educated Englishman. Having no imagination, and little logic, he is alike incapable either of picturesqueness or wit; his epithets are malicious without point, sonorous without weight, and have no office but to make a flat sentence turgid. "7.-Voltaire.

His work is, in comparison with good literature, what nitric acid is to wine, and sulphuretted hydrogen to air. Literary chemists cannot but take account of the sting and stench of him, but he has no place in the library of a thoughtful scholar. Every man of sense knows more of the world than Voltaire can tell him; and what he wishes to express of such knowledge he will say without a snarl."

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THE CENTURY MAGAZINE.

HE opening article of the March Century, by Mr. Ray Stannard Baker, entitled "The Great Northwest," is another reminder that the geographical expression "Northwest," as used in the United States, has quite a different meaning from what it had a quarter of a century ago. To the Eastern reader, at that time the word would have indicated pretty nearly the whole region of country lying west of the Great Lakes and north of the Missouri and Ohio rivers. At the present time, however, the term is quite sharply limited, and, as used in Mr. Baker's article, applies only to the country west of the Rocky Mountains and north of California. The changes in that country during the last two or three decades have been rapid, and what was true of the "boom" towns of the eighties and other transitory phases of settlement by no means holds good to-day. Much fresh and interesting information is brought out in Mr. Baker's article, especially in his descriptions of the agricultural possibilities of the States of Oregon and Washington. For example, in the region between the Cascade Mountains and the Rockies, a large territory in eastern Washington, northeastern Oregon, and northwestern Idaho is tilled by the process that has come to be known as "dry farming." In this region, there is double the rainfall of most of the arid Northwest, though the total precipitation is only a small fraction of that in western Washington. Within a few years, this country has developed one of the most important wheat centers in the United States. The soil is rich, raising without fertilization as much as thirtyfive bushels to the acre, though Mr. Baker says that the country is often so dry that it seems as if the fields must blow away in dust. In some regions, water must be hauled for miles, often by railroad, for culinary purposes. Spokane, with a population of 36,000, is the center of this agricultural district.

THE IMMIGRATION PROBLEM.

The subject of European immigration to the United States is discussed in a group of three articles. The picturesque phases of the matter are treated in a characteristic sketch by Jacob A. Riis, entitled "In the Gateway of Nations." Mr. Riis graphically describes the experiences of the immigrant as he lands at Ellis Island and is put through the various formalities preliminary to admission as a prospective citizen of the great republic.

M. Gustav Michaud analyzes the complex question of races with a view to determining some of the features of the coming American type. Prof. Franklin Giddings, commenting on the statistics brought out by Mr. Michaud, reminds us that the English people, at the time when the early settlements were made in this country, was itself the product of a racial admixture quite as startling as that which is foretold with regard to the United States, and which, in fact, we are now witnessing. WHY CAPITAL SHOULD "ORGANIZE."

Apropos of recent issues between labor and capital, Mr. Herman Justi raises the question whether there is not at the present time, after all, greater need of an organization on capital's side than on labor's. He makes

a sharp distinction between organized labor and consolidated capital. This distinction clearly appears whenever there is a conflict between unorganized capital and organized labor; that is to say, capital may have been consolidated without any system having been created which insures the united action of the capitalists in a time of conflict with their laborers. The recent anthracite strike, for example, showed the owners of the mines to be really at war with one another on various points, while the miners' union presented a united front.

OTHER ARTICLES.

Prof. William H. Pickering states what has been done during the past fifteen years by way of securing sites for American observatories in localities where the atmosphere is "steady." By steadiness of the atmosphere Professor Pickering means the absence of wavering, such as is indicated by the shimmer in the air seen in looking at an object across a hot stove, or along a railroad track on a hot summer day. Sites of this character have been secured in Jamaica, Peru, and in a few localities in the United States, such as the top of Pike's Peak and Flagstaff, Arizona.

Mr. George Buchanan Fife tells the wonderful story of the American Tobacco Trust.

Prof. Justin H. Smith, in his series of articles on "The Prologue of the American Revolution," gives a detailed account of Montgomery's struggle for Quebec, with numerous illustrations.

Mr. Will Paine contributes an interesting description of the Chicago Board of Trade, which he insists is really a national institution as a "clearing-house of opinion."

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HARPER'S.

HE March Harper's is almost entirely devoted to fiction and other contributions of an æsthetic nature. Exceptions are the second installment of Mr. Thomas A. Janvier's "Dutch Founding of New York," "Recent Discoveries in the Forum," by G. Boni, and "Our American Tyrol," a pleasant description of the Vermont and New Hampshire mountain regions and their homely types. The number opens with Mr. Edwin A. Abbey's illustrations for " Richard II.," printed in a "Critical Comment" by no less than Algernon Charles Swinburne. The poet dares to say just what is good and bad in this first historic play of the young Shakespeare, and considers the play's greatest interest to be in "the obvious evidence which it gives of the struggle between the worse and better genius of its author." Mr. Swinburne thinks that this first essay of Shakespeare's into historical drama shows even more imperfections than "Romeo and Juliet," the first tragedy.

This number of Harper's is rich in fiction and imaginative illustration. Besides the chapter in Mrs. Ward's novel, "Lady Rose's Daughter," there is the second part of Maurice Hewlett's new tale, "Buondelmonte," and capital short stories by Norman Duncan, Margaret Sutton Briscoe, Herman Whitaker, and others.

In the "Editor's Study," Mr. H. M. Alden, the veteran editor of Harper's, discusses the touchiness of magazine contributors concerning suggestions of changes in their manuscripts, 'and agrees with Mr. Howells that

it is chiefly the second-rate young author somewhat spoiled by a little quickly earned popularity that shows the greatest horror at any tampering with his most trivial sentences. Mr. Alden says, and no one is a better authority, that the best literary workmen welcome suggestions of changes in their works, and tells of one author who contributed to Harper's for forty years without ever furnishing a short story that was not susceptible to easy improvement.

Prof. Stewart Culin's "America the Cradle of Asia" is quoted from in another department.

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SCRIBNER'S MAGAZINE.

USTICE DAVID J. BREWER writes in the March Scribner's of "The Supreme Court of the United States," and of the great importance the work of that body has for our present and future national life. The questions of most vital import that the complexities of modern life have brought before this supreme tribunal are divided by Justice Brewer into four main groups: first, those growing out of the controversies between labor and capital; second, those affecting the relative powers of the nation and the States; third, those arising out of our new possessions, and fourth, those which will come because our relations to all other nations "have grown to be so close and will surely in crease in intimacy."

There is a charming account of the coronation of the Czar Alexander III. in the letters of Mary King Waddington, the French ambassadress, concluded in this number. A picturesque contribution by E. C. Peixotto describes the "Marionettes and Puppet Shows" of the past and present, and there are several excellent stories.

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M'CLURE'S. MAGAZINE.

ROM Mr. Samuel E. Moffett's article on "The War on the Locomotive," in McClure's for March, we have already quoted at some length in another department. In the same number, Mr. Frank H. Spearman gives a sketch of John L. Whitman, the jailer of the Cook County Jail at Chicago, in which are confined more prisoners awaiting trial than in any other jail in the world. Jailer Whitman, by the repeated exhibition of kindness to the inmates,-but of "the kind of kindness that compels," as Mr. Spearman puts it,—has won the confidence of all the prisoners to a remarkable degree. More than once Whitman's life has been protected by his prisoners, and those the men with the worst records. One feature of his administration of the jail has been the series of entertainments given to the prisoners, who have themselves formed an association to take charge of such entertainments, and have given it the name of the John L. Whitman Moral Improvement Association. At the time of President McKinley's assassination, the prisoners assembled and expressed by resolution their horror and detestation of the act, and at the hour of his burial they gathered in their chapel and stood silent, with bowed heads, during the five minutes when business and industry all over the country were suspended.

WILL ST. LOUIS REDEEM HERSELF? Following up the article which appeared in McClure's for October last under the title "Tweed Days in St. Louis," Mr. Lincoln Steffens contributes a paper to the March number on "The Shamelessness of St. Louis." He relates all the recent movements of the boodlers in

that city, and concludes with some pessimistic paragraphs on the supineness of the people. In April, the city votes for municipal legislators, and since the municipal assembly has been the scene of most of the corruption, it would seem that boodling would surely be an issue at that election. But Mr. Steffens hazards no prediction. He was in the city in January, and states that at that time the politicians were planning to keep this issue out of the election, their scheme being to combine on one ticket,-that is to say, each group of leaders was to nominate half the nominees, who were to be on the same ticket, making no contest at all, and, "to avoid suspicion, these nominations were to be exceptionally,— yes, remarkably,-good."

ANOTHER CHAPTER OF THE STANDARD OIL.

Miss Ida M. Tarbell continues her narrative of the successive steps by which the Standard Oil Trust was built up on the ruins of its competitors. In the main, it is a story of quiet absorption of the independent re fineries by the Standard, with occasional episodes like that of the Pennsylvania's fight. The period covered in this installment includes the years 1874-78. So strong had the monopoly become at this time that there was an almost superstitious fear of resistance to any proposals to lease or to sell that might come from it. A proposal from Mr. Rockefeller was regarded popularly as little better than a command to "stand and deliver."

THE COSMOPOLITAN.

IN Marco York City police comunis

IN the March Cosmopolitan, Col. Avery D. Andrews,

sioners, writes an account of his recent observations on the police systems of Europe. Comparing the cities of London, Paris, and New York, Colonel Andrews finds that the proportion of police to population is 1 to every 307 in Paris, 1 to every 408 in London, and 1 to every 458 in New York. Comparing proportions of police to areas, he finds that in Paris there are 266 policemen to each square mile, in London 23 to each square mile, and New York 25. The great area of the metropolitan police district of London contains many rural communities, as does the present metropolitan district of New York, and perhaps a comparison with Paris is hardly fair.

THE SELECTION OF A HOME.

Prof. Clarence A. Martin, of Cornell University, contributes a paper dealing with the somewhat complex problem of the location of a home. It is clearly brought out in Professor Martin's article that, other things being equal, his preference is decidedly for elevated building sites. He has scant patience with those people who, appreciating neither sanitary science nor art in the location of a home, have built their houses on low, flat, sodden plains, "with the low-water mark anywhere from two to six feet below the surface of the earth, and the high-water mark anywhere from the surface of the lawns to the level of the first floor." Professor Martin mentions a city,-which we take to be Ithaca, N. Y., the seat of Cornell University,-which, he says, is surrounded by fine building sites with perfect drainage, commanding magnificent views over miles of hills, lake, and valley, well shaded by good forest trees of oak, maple, elm, pine, and hemlock, which had been to a good extent neglected by the people who it might be supposed would be the first to choose them. The lots are not only much larger than those in the valley, but

cost in the open market considerably less. What Professor Martin says of this city is undoubtedly true of hundreds of American towns and villages. Most of the people prefer to live in the valleys.

VON LENBACH, THE PAINTER.

A sketch of von Lenbach, the Bavarian artist who painted numerous portraits of Bismarck, is contributed by Louise Parks Richards. Von Lenbach, it seems, became a member of the Bismarck family circle. "Hitherto Bismarck had been an almost impossible man to the approach of a painter, his restless energies precluding the possibility of posing for an artist except in the most exceptional cases. The rapid strokes of von Lenbach, however, dissipated his antipathy against the ordeal of sitting. Besides, the open, unabashed, independent personality of the artist interested him."

OTHER ARTICLES.

Mr. Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen (2d) writes on "Beauty in the Modern Chorus," Mrs. Wilson Woodrow on "The Woman of Fifty," and President Charles F. Thwing on the profession of insurance. The second of Lord Wolseley's studies of the young Napoleon, and a chapter of Herbert G. Wells' on "Mankind in the Making," devoted to the subject of schooling, are other features of this number. We have quoted elsewhere from a sketch of Mr. James B. Dill, by William J. Boies.

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FRANK LESLIE'S MONTHLY.

R. EARL MAYO'S article on "The Tobacco War," in the March Frank Leslie's, is quoted from in another department. The number opens with an account of the discoveries made by the government scientific expeditions aboard the U. S. S. Albatross by W. E. Meehan. A dramatic incident was the deep-sea soundings about one hundred miles from Guam, where the tough wire rope went down 28,878 feet before touching bottom. This is just about the height of Mount Everett,-about five and a half miles. Mr. Meehan tells of extraordinary finds of manganese on the red-clay bottom of the Pacific. This valuable mineral occurs in a pure state, in the form of nodules and disks, some of them as large as cannon bails.

Mr. Frederick Street gives a description of the "Dismal Swamp," the vast waste of spongy, thickly overgrown black soil that begins within twenty miles of Norfolk, Va., and extends twenty-five miles into North Carolina. This interesting wilderness was the favorite refuge of runaway slaves during and before the war, and it is still the best chance for escaped criminals. Its eight hundred square miles of area is as inaccessible and little known as in the days of Washington, who laid out a route through it. In the center of the wilderness is Lake Drummond, three miles long and two miles wide. The waterways flowing from this pond offer the only means of access to the heart of the swamp. A company has been formed to reclaim a large portion of this waste area.

vidual effort," he says, "is the great factor of success in an undertaking of this kind. Improvement, like charity, should begin at home before it undertakes the broader work of the community." He advocates the planting of our native trees and shrubs on the village lots, gives the preference to hardy plants for decorating the home grounds, and lays especial stress on the lawn. In her paper on "Intellectual Communism," Sara Yorke Stevenson dilates on the tax levied upon public men, and men and women in general who have achieved distinction of some kind, in the shape of requests to give opinions or advice, or to deliver addresses on the most heterogeneous subjects. She denounces the prevalent practice of indiscriminate public speaking, not only as a wasteful drain upon the intellectual energy of the speaker, but as tending to induce superficiality both in the speaker and the listeners.

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EVERYBODY'S MAGAZINE.

HE most noteworthy article in Everybody's Magazine for March is Chalmers Roberts' paper on "Joseph Chamberlain: A Study of the Man and His Place in English Politics." A career like Chamberlain's could be possible only in England, "where it seems the accepted thing that a man's age shall thoroughly contradict his youth. He was first of all a pronounced Little Englander, opposed to all manner of expansion. In the late seventies, he bitterly opposed the Zulu war against Cetewayo. He opposed the policy of a confederated British South Africa. A year or two later, he was denouncing the British occupation of Egypt. In regard to the Transvaal, he strongly opposed annexation in 1877, but he was bound to accept it upon entering office with Gladstone, as the British foreign policy is supposed to be continuous.

When he accepted the colonial secretaryship, his imperialistic tendencies were already well developed. The growth of the feeling for a united empire "can be traced in a long series of acts of the colonial secretary, beginning further back than the great council of colonial premiers, which he originated and over which he presided so successfully during the Diamond Jubilee, through the war for the support of the colony in South Africa, so wonderfully upheld by the sister colonies, down to the consummation of Australian federation." Mr. Chamberlain "does not shine conspicuously as a diplomatist He has in the last few years successfully angered almost every Continental nation, and is hated accordingly. But he always has a good word for the United States, and has done his best to see that good feeling is maintained between the two countries."

OTHER ARTICLES.

Stephen French Whitman contributes a picturesque paper on the elephant-catchers of India. Elizabeth Robbins Pennell writes entertainingly on English culinary art in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. J. W. Ogden describes the "River Gamblers of Old Steamboat Days." Lillian Pettengill, a graduate of Mount Holyoke College, has the first of four articles, "Toilers of the Home," describing her experiences as a domestic servant. Interested in social questions, she undertook to "look upon the ups and downs of this particular dog-life from the dog's end of the chain." "The Autobiography of a Life Assurance Man" is the personal narrative of the vice-president of one of the largest life assurance companies. Booker T. Washing

ton has the fifth installment of his autobiographical paper, "Work with the Hands," describing the manual work at Tuskegee.

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THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

N the March Atlantic, President Arthur T. Hadley continues his discussion, begun last month, of "Academic Freedom in Theory and in Practice." So far from accepting the view that higher education must be controlled by the state in order to secure freedom of teaching, President Hadley holds that "the tendency to jeopardize the freedom of the teacher is probably more conspicuous among State universities than among endowed ones." It is conceded that the placing of the administration of the university in the hands of an independent board, as is done in many States, is a far better method than more direct control by governor or legislature; but, says President Hadley, "if the board is really independent, you have put the possibility of control as fully out of your hands as if it were a private corporation; and if you have not made it thus independent, you have the pretense of freedom without the reality."

A WORLD-LEGISLATURE.

The occasions for international conferences on various matters have been so frequent of late that Mr. Raymond L. Bridgman is able to make an argument of no little force and plausibility in favor of a world-legislature. He maintains that, as a matter of self-interest, the nations must soon have a permanent legislative body as a means of establishing regulations for the benefit of all. World-legislation has already occurred repeatedly, although no world-legislature has been organized. Special meetings have been held for special purposes. The only instance of absolute world-legislation thus far is that of the International Postal Union. The establishment of the Hague Court of Arbitration may also be regarded as an act of world-legislation, so far as the signatory nations were concerned. Mr. Bridgman's proposition involves the organization of a permanent system for dealing with all such international problems as now require the convening of separate bodies of delegates.

the principles of the Monroe Doctrine are "precedents as old as our government itself. They have been sanctified by unbroken usage, and have given direction to our foreign policy for more than a century. Every one of our Presidents, from the first to the present, who has ever had occasion to refer to it, has specifically reaffirmed it. Every one of the Latin-American republics has, at one time or another, and in some form or other, affirmatively supported it. Not one of the European powers has ever entered formal protest against it; on the contrary, all have acquiesced in it, and thus tacitly assented to it. It is, therefore, a valid part of the public law of this continent; and until abandoned by us, or until formally challenged by Europe, or until modified or abrogated by public treaty, it will continue to be recognized as part of the modern international code of the Christian world."

DEVELOPMENT OF THE DRAMATIC ART.

Concerning "The Art of the Dramatist," Prof. Brander Matthews says: "The drama is an art which has developed slowly and steadily, and which is still alive; its history has the same essential unity, the same continuity, that we are now beginning to see more clearly in the history of the whole world. Its principles, like the principles of every other art, are eternal and unchanging, whatever strange aspects the art may assume."

AGAINST THE ARMY CANTEEN.

Mrs. Lillian M. N. Stevens, president of the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union, replies to Dr. Seaman's argument for the restoration of the post canteen, from which we quoted in our February number. Mrs. Stevens cites the opinions of many army officers in support of her contention that the abolition of the canteen was a good thing. She declares that temperance advocates are well pleased with the result, thus far, of the non-beer exchange, but that the eighteen months' trial has been under the most unfavorable circumstances. Furthermore, substitutes for the canteen have not been established. No use has been made of the half-million dollars appropriated by Congress a year ago for libraries, amusement buildings, etc. These should have a trial before a decision to restore the canteen is reached.

THE INDUSTRIAL CRISIS IN THE PHILIPPINES.

Mr. Brewster Cameron, who represents the Philippine chambers of commerce, makes a strong argument for the establishment of the gold standard in the archipelago and for a further temporary reduction of the Dingley tariff. The fluctuations of the Mexican dollar have already caused enormous losses to the Government and to individual business men. As a concrete example of individual losses, Mr. Cameron cites the case of a prominent contractor at Manila who took a contract to build a hospital for a stipulated price in Mexican silver, to be paid upon the completion of the work. During the time necessarily occupied in the construction of the building, the depreciation of Mexican silver was so great that he lost $22,000, Mexican. Mr. Cameron urges the prompt adoption by Congress of the plans for currency reform embodied in Secretary Root's report for 1901. The disasters that have befallen the islands in the form of the rinderpest plague and the famine demand the immediate reduction of the tariff, as proposed in the bill that has already passed the House of Representatives. As a further measure of relief, Mr. Cameron calls for the repeal of the law of Congress limiting the