These honorable names show the injustice of the aspersion cast on the Order of Knaves by the familiar rhyme:

The Queen of Hearts, she made some tarts,

All on a summer's day;

The Knave of Hearts, he stole those tarts,

And took them all away.

"Knave" is, of course, the German "Knabe," the noble, knightly boy attending on the King and Queen. Chaucer speaks, by the way, of a "knave-child," and a "maid-child."

The marks of the suits have varied greatly since the introduction of cards into Europe. There existed in the fifteenth century cards with the truly delightful signs of Hares, Parroquets, Pinks, and Columbines, though these were never very widely used. The German signs are Bells, Leaves, Hearts and Acorns. In Italy, until the sixteenth century, as in Spain till the present day, the signs used were Swords, Cups, Clubs, and Money-Spade, Coppe, Bastoni, Danari; or in Spanish, Espadas, Copas, Bastor, Oros. Our "Clubs" and "Spades" are the names for the suits of "Bastoni" and "Spade," affixed to the marks of the French cards. The "Trèfle," trefoil, clover, was originally the "Fleur." In Italy it is still called "Fiore."

There were many names for the dif

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ferent cards, and much lore about them, known to the old leisured players. То give one instance mentioned by Charles Lamb. He speaks of "the pretty antic habits, like heralds in a procession-the gay triumph-assuring scarlets-the contrasting deadly-killing sables the 'hoary majesty of spades' -Pam in his glory," "Pam" is an old name for the Knave of Clubs. Old-fashioned players always called the Four of Clubs "the devil's bed-post." "Hob Collingwood" is said to have been a North-country name for the Four of Hearts, though the writer has never heard it. At modern bridge parties one never hears such old sayings as "there's luck under the deuce, but none under the tray." The very terms "deuce" and "tray" survive but faintly, and are ready to vanish away. The writer remembers an old lady with whom the expression "Deuce and Tray" was a continual exclamation. "Deuce and Tray!" she would cry out, "I've lost my snuff-box." It appears improbable that any quaint superstition, any fanciful imagery, any leisurely, proverbial wisdom will ever gather round the game of bridge, which seems a pastime more suited to hard and mercenary spirits than to the "Utopian Rabelaisian Christians" of whom Elia writes.

The Pragmatists have been having their own way lately in this country, and the manifest disposition of many of their readers to submit to their slightly overwhelming manner would excuse Professor Albert Schinz's "Anti-Pragmatism" if it needed any excuse. Being rather in the nature of a rebuttal of an attack, its necessity will be admitted by all who find the ob

ject of atttack of any consequence, and as they happen to be nothing else than the matters of the greatest importance to the human race it is evident that no rational being can neglect anything concerning them. It should be said, however, that unless the reader is acquainted with the work of Professor William James and his friends he will find the more abstract parts of the

work of little interest, because they refute doctrines which would not suggest themselves to him, although he will greatly enjoy those dealing with concrete questions. The French edition has been widely read and this translation will probably be equally well received.

Small, Maynard & Co.

The mysteries available for use in fiction are infinite in number and it is not surprising that so many of those figuring in last year's novels were original. It seems as if this year might be equally fortunate for readers, if one judge from Mr. Anthony Partridge's "Passers-by." The author's "The Kingdom of Earth" issued last year was remarkably well schemed, but "Passers-by," although dealing with less exalted persons and suggesting no portraits is more intricately devised. It would be difficult to state its plot in few words, and no one of the personages knows all its ramifications; they hold every character fast and with the exception of a melodramatic detective, all of them are new. Those who remain at the close, although not altogether impeccable, are worthy of the good fortune granted them by the author, but their careers have been so unusual, that when one sees them comfortably established one is tempted to re-read the book to see how it was managed. Mr. Partridge's future stories will be matters of pleasant expectation. Little, Brown & Co.

The Rev. Dr. Robert Forman Horton, for the last thirty years minister of the Congregational Church in Lyndehurst Road, Hampstead, Eng., is perhaps not very widely known in the United States outside of his own denomination of Christians, but in his "Great Issues," just published, there are some chapters which, if issued separately, as they should be for the sake of possible readers of little lei

sure, would make him famous. In the former half of the volume he discusses various topics for which one suspects that he has little enduring care; myths, politics, socialism among them; perhaps even science seems petty to him compared to the emotions with which he must have written his last two chapters "Life and "Death"; and "Theology," "Art," and "Literature" preceding them are not much less powerful. Those who are inclined to think that Christianity is losing its influence, should read the pages in which Dr. Horton describes the last moments of certain saints below as they passed to join the communion of the saints above. The small volume must make its mark on the religious life of the year unless prevented by some great perversity of events, but that last chapter should be made a tract teaching after Addison's text "See how a Christian can die." Macmillan Company.

Mr. Wilder Goodwin suffers from two disadvantages as he comes before the readers of his "The Up Grade"; it is his first book, and he is the son of a successful writer; but before he arrives at his last page, both are forgotten. Stephen Loring, his hero, having from sheer lack of will-power flung away friends, fortune, temperate habits and the common decencies of life finds himself in Arizona, a miner entirely igno rant of mining, at the very moment when it is necessary that some one should save the life of his employer's daughter at the risk of his own. At this point, the reader of small experience prepares himself to lose interest. but his seniors settle down to be amused and they are, for it is by a novel road that the author makes his way to the inevitable wedding, and the hero's preparation is extraordinary. Metal more attractive, however, lies in the author's presentation of ugly

things; the details of mining; the sordid features of a low barroom; the drunkenness of a personage who should be attractive. Instead of following the fashion originated in the United States years before it was adopted by French novelists and emulous Russians and Spaniards, of using mean words and rough phrases while enumerating every disagreeable unessential, he describes them as pleasantly as if they were beautiful. The effect is really more impressive. One reads him without perceiving his strength until the book is closed and then finds that it has taken possession of the mind, and that one is still thinking of the hero and heroine. Mr. Goodwin still has opportunities for growth and improvement, but not many beginners attain such excellence by a first effort. Little, Brown & Co.

Dr. Richard Burton has drawn the poems for his "From the Book of Life" from many sources, from childish memories, recovering thence the touch of his mother's hand as she sat beside him in church, and "their spirits talked by silent tenderness"; the look of the wee sufferer in the children's hospital; the illusion of "The Doll's Hospital," where the dolls dance all night, and the next morning look as if they had not stirred, and from his remembrance of the two grown-up maidens whom he loved "when he was ten," and lost when they were betrothed. In the first poem, "The Ultimate Nation," he puts the old question as to the destiny of man, whether it be a perpetual cycle of rising and falling nations. or at last to see a city rise never to fall, never to be conquered because it makes God's ways its ways. "Ballade of the Brave" in spite of the limitations imposed by its form, is one of the finest things in the volume, one of those little poems which arouse youth and

Dr. Richard Burton's "Masters of the English Novel" covers the last two centuries with such fulness that it would be difficult to name a similarly comprehensive work of the same size. After comparing and defining fiction and the novel, the author gives three chapters to the eighteenth century; one to realism, typified by Jane Austen, one to romanticism, typified by Scott, and follows these by a study of French influence. Dickens, Thackeray and George Eliot, have their single chapter apiece, "Trollope and others" occupy one. Hardy and Meredith another and Stevenson another, and "The American contribution" and an Index close the book. Dr. Burton's criticism has nothing in common with the self-conscious matter called by that name in many English newspapers and reviews of to-day, nor is it the still more self-conscious would-be funny substance which smirks from the pages of some American magazines, rightfully calling itself light of touch and thanking Heaven that it has but two dimensions and no weight. Writing of

men and women whose standards were of an earlier time he adapts his spirit and manner to theirs, and although an occasional phrase shows that he is perfectly acquainted with the later writers, he refrains from bringing his subjects to the bar of their judgment. He compares Dickens with Thackeray; he does not debate as to the influence of the time-spirit on Dickens, or as to Thackeray's understanding of divine discontent or any other shibboleth. To read him is like a return to the solid commonsense of Maga and the Quarterly in the days before the effort to imitate Carlyle had led too many writers to prefer sound to sense. He places and classes his authors in such ways as to give the reader an agreeable sense of surveying the field of fiction and of taking refreshment from the prospect. Henry Holt & Co.

Mrs. Charles Alfred Post has a unique subject in her "The Life and Memoirs of Comte Regis de Trobriand, Major General in the Army of the United States" and if, through modesty she has not made the most of it, she has made so much that even 1909, year of great biographies, produced nothing more interesting and 1910, in which it leads off, is not likely to surpass it. Mrs. Post, "that should have been a boy," daughter to the first civilian of his race for hundreds of years, spent long hours of childhood and girlhood in happy conversation with her father, talking of war and deeds of valor, and in later life the two were so much together, and were such voluminous correspondents when separated that her mind is saturated with his memories. No fairy tale, she says, in her mind, equalled the adventures of her own people, and indeed, no fairy tale would need to go beyond them. Born in 1816, her father was in 1830 on the eve of taking up his duties as page to Charles

Tenth, a position by the way, accorded only to those able to show sixteen quarterings of noble ancestors without plebeian strain on both the father's and mother's side. His father however resigned his own position as commander at Toulouse, and removed his son from the Royal College at Rouen when Louis Philippe came to the throne, and went into private life. Mrs. Post tells the story of the years before he came to America in the most graphic fashion, and also the memories of many ancestors who lived during the Terror and in Napoleonic times; but in 1841, her father came to the United States and married Miss Mary Mason Jones of New York. Then came a year of travel in the old fashion with a private carriage at one's own command; a long sojourn in Venice followed, and then years of journalism and literary work in New York; of acting as bearer of despatches to France; of travelling with friends, each one an historic personage to-day, and so on until 1861 took the first civilian of his line into the American volunteer army to remain there until the end of the war, and to servefrom 1866 to 1879 in the regular army. The closing eighteen years of his life were divided between France and his adopted land, and devoted to intercourse with a multitude of friends. Mrs. Post uses scores of her father's letters to fill her pages but leaves the reader hungry for more. A brave, tried soldier, a brilliant writer, a musician of skill and learning, a man of extraordinary social charm, a patriot as devoted to the United States as any native of the soil, a perfect citizen, he furnishes his daughter with a subject to be envied. The volume is packed with good stories and anecdotes covering a half century in this country, and quite good enough to bear comparison with the earlier family traditions. E. P. Dutton & Co.