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Government, the railways, and the great industrial companies, and in the problems that those relations produce. But all these vital and urgent issues Mr. Taft reserves for treatment by the agency of Special Messages to Congress. He may be right in so doing or he may be wrong. But it is clear that his delay in taking up a plain and definite stand on the Roosevelt policies has spread something like consternation among the Radicals. For ourselves we thoroughly believe that Mr. Taft intends to do the best he can to assert the supremacy of national over private interests, but we question The Outlook.

whether he is going quite the best way to work. He counts, it is clear, upon overcoming the Conservative opposition not by force but by persuasion. It seems a highly speculative undertaking, though we should not care to prophesy positively that it will fail. What however is beyond doubt is that the Radical Republicans of the Middle West are in a state of sullen disaffection, that the party is threatened with a more formidable schism than any it has yet known, and that to stave off a Democratic victory in 1912 it may be necessary to summon Mr. Roosevelt once more to the leadership.

BOOKS AND AUTHORS

Mr. John Brayshaw Kayes' "The Trial of Christ" is a reverent attempt to tell the story of Our Lord's trial in verse, and it is impressively accomplished. Those not familiar with the forms of legal procedure in the Jerusalem of His time will find that it really casts light upon incidents which they have not understood. From habit, beginning in childhood, most laymen allow the non-essentials of the New Testament narrative to pass unchallenged, sure that they are true, and clinging as they read to the central meaning of the whole, to the aspect and speech of the wonderful central Figure, but as explanation of these non-essentials comes to them from Mr. Kaye's pages they will find that great gain comes also, and will be duly grateful to him. Sherman French & Co.

"The Garden in the Wilderness" announces itself as by "A Hermit," flings a nasturtium spray in scarlet and gold outline across its cover, gives itself a jacket and end papers veiled by blossoming trees and then discourses

about that garden. The illustrations are wonderful photographs of garden and copse, and the text describes the loveliness of the garden all around the year, also it deals in wise advice such as bidding one to sow Japanese morning-glories and verbenas in a box under the stove, and allow the heat to coax them upward; it suggests ways to persuade the birds to come to those who love them, and to devour crumbs; and lays the most enticing plans. The least touch of humor, the humor of the happily married pervades it. Baker Taylor Co.

Two uncommonly good "Noels" make Mr. Thomas Walsh's "The Prison Ships" an excellent book of poems for Christmas, for good Noels are rare; but in its time the name-poem of the book was made to be read at the dedicatory exercises of the Prison Ship martyrs monument on Fort Greene, Washington Park, Brooklyn. The men of the prison ships have waited long but not in vain for their bard, and Mr. Walsh's subject has raised his

work to a higher level than it ordinarily assumes. It is always good, and the book is one to keep carefully and re-read many times, but with the thought of those that died in mean cankering tortures, ignoble miseries, the verse assumes another sort of dignity and the ode becomes something to be compared with the great civil war odes, a memorial of the passion of patriotism. Sherman French & Co.

The very little volume containing the "Dorian Days" of Justice Wendell Phillips Stafford is happily entitled, for it has the Dorian's own charm and so very Greek are most of its pages that it would be easier to believe the verses translations, rather than to accept them as the work of a grave American jurist. Not since Arnold died has any English verse so truly Greek as "The Death of Helen" come from an English-writing pen, and if any say that half its charm is reflected from memories of actual Greek, one may point to other verses lacking all such factitious aid, and yet truly Greek. In the latter part of the volume are a few love poems and here one "Gloria Victis," if there were none other would bear witness that the knightly touch may to-day be given to the strings of the lute as truly as when it came from Blondel's hand. The Macmillan Company.

A brief preface signed only with initials, affixed to Sara King Wiley's "Dante and Beatrice," half reveals and half conceals the author's fascinating figure and sends one to the play. Here Mrs. Drummond (Sara King Wiley) had concentrated the essence of years of study of Dante, his time, and his Florence, and had so planned a few additions to the true story of the singer and the woman whom he loved that they seemed equally true. This, the author's last work, was still in her hands when she yielded to death, but

it is quite complete, and none but she could discern the unfinished window in the tower which she had builded so well and wisely. Scholarship and genius here combine in the production of a piece of work far surpassing anything of its author's, and fit to be placed very high among the productions of those who have honored themselves in honoring Dante. The Macmillan Company.

In his "Evolution of Worlds," which is founded upon his course of lectures delivered early in the year before the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Professor Percival Lowell says that when he began the course he labored under the apprehension that an account of cosmic physics might be dull, but that it soon threatened to prove too startling. It is not particularly reassuring to find that the title of the last chapter in the book is "The Death of a World" for only deeper knowledge thau is the possession of the average man enables him to read the phrase without connecting with it something unpleasant for himself. But by way

of reassurance for the timid Mr. Lowell says that we are outgrowing ice ages and probably deluges. It is obvious that any pretense at summarizing the work would be entirely useless. It can only be said that it is illustrated by many striking pictures and diagrams and that its text is written in the author's usual clear and interesting style. The Macmillan Company.

"Vivette" was a very little book: it was published many years ago at a moment when Theophilus Thistle the twister of twists, took the place of Phoebus Apollo with the writers of English poetry and poetic prose. "Lady Mechante" is about twenty times the size of "Vivette" and it blends the style and matter of that book with suggestions of "Raffles," Mr. George Ade, Mr. Hereward Carrington, the modern

novel for manicure girls, and Mr. H. G. Wells with fragments of all the spiteful books written about American cities by dwellers in other American cities. The author of the two books, Mr. Gelett Burgess, calls the second a "farce in filigree," a "helter skelter rigámarole," and other hard names but evidently approves of it highly. Now, one thing writers of his school can do; they can retort most bitterly on any one expressing any but approving sentiments in regard to their work. Wherefore all that need be said of "My Lady Mechante" is that if taken in minute parts, it is highly agreeable. Frederick A. Stokes Company.

American

If Mr. Gilbert K. Chesterton and Mr. G. Bernard Shaw, and Mr. Max Beerbohm had not been born at such times and in such places that all three are in London at one time it would have been much better for them, but as matters stand, the ordinary daily and hourly forgets which is which. Mr. Chesterton is he who has just published a novel which is an allegory, of all things for a man to publish in a century too indolent to make out one meaning in a story book. Mr. Chesterton now publishes "Tremendous Trifles," a book of those brief editorial articles beginning anywhere and ending anywhere, to be found in all daily newspapers not conducted on principles of the strictest parsimony. Their secret is that the apparent subject is tacked to the real paper after it is finished and puzzles the reader who strives in vain to see the connection. Mr. Chesterton, a thoughtful and earnest person, almost invariably something to say, having thought about many subjects. In this book he seems to be especially moved to think about the flippant, the disrespectful of actualities and he frees his mind ageously and utters some wholesome truths. Dodd, Mead & Co.

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In the "Friendship Village Love Stories," Miss Zona Gale's new book, the good, kind souls seen in the earlier volume of the tales fall from grace a little, under the influence of a woman who "bosses," who tells everybody how to perform her simplest duties and is little short of unbearable even to one to whom she appears safely imprisoned in the book. The fall is the merest stumble and the kind creatures are so sorry and ashamed that their real goodness shines brighter than ever. The author introduces a charming new person, Little Child, to whom she talks bewitchingly and whom she makes the excuse for expounding some excellent theories on the education of little girls. This is remarkable, but the theories are not only good but practicable and one does not expect such a gift as that from a novelist. Miss Gale has once more demonstrated her skill in her field of the village, and if one express a wish that she would seek a new background, it is only because so many of the good backgrounds are serving such base purposes this year. Macmillan Company.

Miss Josephine Peabody has removed all the comic element from Browning's "The Pied-Piper of Hamelin town" in transforming it into her four act play "The Piper." The scene opens after the Piper, having driven away the rats, comes for his thousand guilders, and. being refused, leads away the children even to the little acolytes from the altar. The second act follows the children to the place where the Piper has hidden them; the third introduces an element entirely foreign to the poem; and the fourth portrays the anguish of the parents, the softening of the Piper's heart and the reappearance of the children, unchanged except that they are brighter of aspect and happier. The remodelling of the legend upon a theme of a higher order is very finely effected, and the little drama might well inter

est both childish performers and an audience of their friends. The interpolated element is managed with especial grace, and the whole play evinces that delicate imagination and that deep sympathy with childhood which we have learned to look for in Miss Peabody's verse. Everywhere it is sweet and graceful, and in places it reaches a high spiritual level. Houghton Mifflin Co.

Dr. James Stalker of Aberdeen has made more than one important contribution to the literature of theology, but he has given his readers nothing more luminous, more forceful or more inspiring than his latest volume, "The Ethic of Jesus." Taking the synoptic Gospels as the basis of his study, he has analyzed and grouped the teachings of Jesus touching the highest good,the summum bonum of the ancient philosophers, the animating force by which the goal is to be attained, and the path along which it is to be sought. Not to impose his own views or theories upon the reader, but to study the teachings of the Master and to draw from them lessons needed for to-day is Dr. Stalker's aim; and he pursues it of through chapter after chapter limpid and reverent prose, with a simplicity of style which engages and holds the attention of a lay reader, while the sincere and searching scholarship evinced must command the respect of the professional theologians. gument is closely knit, and the book will yield the best results to a reader who follows the author's thought from the first chapter to the last,--a task by no means onerous, and richly repaying the time required; but to readers who must read by snatches, separate chapters, such as those on "Repentance," "The Imitation of Christ" and "The Cross and Offences" will bring a quickened sense of the meaning of Je

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sus in passages which, by reason of their familiarity, have lost a part of their compelling appeal. A. C. Armstrong & Son.

What is as deceitful as a fashion plate? Another fashion plate. Even to-day, although one may accept the photographs distributed by certain dressmakers as perfectly representing the garments which they send forth, all moderately well-informed persons know that every artist who draws fashion figures endows each one with her own temperament and produces puppets as far from reality as so many Gibson girls. Therefore conditionally and conditionally only one accepts the pictures in Miss M. Edwardes's "Modes and Manners of the Nineteenth Century." The three volumes describe the period between 1790 and 1878. By comparison and elimination one may guess what was really worn, and the best French plates are often as accurate as photographs. Accordingly a general impression of the procession of the modes may be drawn from the book and that is valuable, and the pictures taken individually are very interesting. The modern portraits are excellent, being photographs, and among them is a rare picture of King Edward The text is just before his marriage.

a composite photograph rather than a succession of portraits that one perceives in it, and one is not shown how one style develops from its predecessor. One is not even told the originator of some garments having historical significance. One begins in the England of Queen Charlotte and comes down to the England on which the jersey will dawn the next summer, but between the two points confusion reigns. One must be content with admiring the oddity of the old styles, and the patience which has gathered the pictures. The beautiful little volumes amuse if they do not edify. E. P. Dutton & Co.

SEVENTH SERIES
VOLUME XLVI.

No. 3419 January 15, 1910

FROM BEGINNING
VOL. CCLXIV.

1.

CONTENTS

Belgium and the Reforms on the Congo. By Emile Vandervelde.
CONTEMPORARY REVIEW 131

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III.

As It Happened.

NINETEENTH CENTURY AND AFTER Book V. The Chances of the Sea. Chapter I. Tertium Quid. Chapter II. At Sea. By Ashton Hilliers. .

137

IV.

V.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

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153

161

165

(To be continued.) 142
Lord Halifax to His Daughter.
BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE
An Experiment in Growing Alpines. By A. C. Bartholemew
NATIONAL REVIEW
In and Out of Parliament. By Ian Malcolm CORNHILL MAGAZINE
The Twenty-Seventh Notch. By Militiaman"

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IX.

x.

XI.

XII.

XIII.

A Classical Contrast.

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THRUSH 176

SPECTATOR 184

SATURDAY REVIEW 186

The Ring of Faustus. By Eugene Lee-Hami ton

OUTLOOK 188

130

PUNCH 130 THRUSH 130 191

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