the excellences of Miss Conyngton's work. The Macmillan Company.

The publication, in one season, and within a few weeks of each other, of two books so nearly identical in title as Dr. Stalker's "The Ethic of Jesus" and President Henry C. King's "The Ethics of Jesus" cannot fail to be a little confusing both to booksellers and bookbuyers; but it serves to show the increasing attention which is being given to this subject, and it affords an interesting opportunity for a comparison of views. Dr. Stalker's work was reviewed in The Living Age for January 8th. President King's book, which is published by the Macmillan Company, is less comprehensive than Dr. Stalker's and is different in form, but agrees with it in its general conclusions. It was given, in substance, in six lectures last year upon the William Belden Noble foundation at Harvard University, and is somewhat marred for the general reader by the close analysis, skeleton outlines, text-groupings and occasional repetitions incident to its original presentation. President King confines his survey even more strictly than Dr. Stalker to the synoptic gospels, but his method of analysis is different. He passes under review, first, the twelve passages which Schmiedel describes as "the foundation pillars" of a really scientific life of Jesus; next the "doubly-attested sayings" which Burkitt catalogues, which inIclude the words of Christ found in the common source of Matthew and Luke as well as in Mark; and then, in order, the ethical passages found in the two oldest sources, those peculiar to either Matthew or Luke and those contained in the sermon on the mount. The volume appears in Professor Shailer's series of "New Testament Handbooks."

Mr. William Lyon Phelps in his "Essays on Modern Novelists" (The Mac

millan Co.) writes with gravity and no sentimentalism except possibly in the case of Mark Twain, whose position in American letters he rates somewhat higher than the critics are disposed to set it, calling him "our foremost American writer." To consider Mark Twain's work as a novelist is to assume unnecessary trouble. Of the other authors of whom Mr. Phelps writes, Mr. Howells is the only American, and in his case the critic's vision is undimmed by the glare of publicity cast upon his author in recent years, and he estimates and compares his earlier and later work with entire indifference to the mandate proclaiming the superiority of his later manner to that by which he won his early readers. Bjornsterne Bjornson, Henryk Sienkiewicz and Herman Sudermann are so generally read in translation as to be forces in American life but Mr. Phelps estimates them as one familiar with European literature, some of which he incidentally criticizes, and here again one finds him quietly unmoved by loud proclamations as to the amazing merit of foreign gentlemen with a mission to reform American morals, and to inform the American mind. Mr. De Morgan, Mr. Hardy, Mr. Ollivant, Mr. Kipling and Mrs. Ward, with Blackmore and Stevenson are his English subjects and the last two are by no means left undisturbed in their niches as popular idols. In Mr. De Morgan he recognizes the one novelist in that group of contemporary writers who have recently begun to produce work evidently the effect of deep religious feeling, and he compares the various characters of his group of novels. The spontaneous freshness and liveliness of the work will give it additional influence among the undergraduates whom it would naturally attract, and will be agreeable to older readers. It is to be hoped that the book will not be neglected in any of the educational

institutions in which the novel is regarded as a matter in which the young have a right to guidance. The complete lists of books written by the authors discussed is an excellent feature, and one cannot but trust that future critics will imitate Mr. Phelps in introducing similar lists into their books.

Mr. Hartley Burr Alexander's "Odes on the Generations of Man" is announced as "marked by dignity of theme, splendor of imagery, and varied music in rhythm and phrase," and the statement is perfectly true. The poem has nine divisions, a Prelude, a Postlude, five Odes and two Interludes. The genesis and development of man and his approach to his high destiny are the subjects. How they are treated is best shown by the citation of this passage describing the resurrection of the heathen gods:

They arise

From the dark burials of the nations: From plain and mountain, from desert

and from field

Like ghostly monarchs from a tomb long sealed,

They arise

These living dead, mid echoing sound Of olden supplications:

Isis and her lord Osiris bound

In mummying cerements;
Thoth, of the hawklike head,
Bearing the mystic Book that read

Unto the living the secrets of the dead;
And out of the Orient, the azure queen,
Astarte of the skies, serene

Above her horned altars, with the

sweet

Of myrrh and frankincense.

And the multitudinous bleat

Of bullocks honored, she of Ind,

Kali, the black passing like a wind
With blight and pestilence;

And the giant ape, red Hanuman her mate,

"Awake! for the white pillared porches
Of dawn are flung open to-day!
And the jubilant voices of morning
With laughter and boisterous warning,
On, on through the azuring arches
Summon away!"

The spirit of Arnold and Swinburne, the Greek tranquility of one, the Greek keenness of the other are not Mr. Alexander's however. He is of to-day, of the age which tries to gather all the past, and to bring it into a perspective, with reference to understanding the present. Yet he sings of the spirit as it nears its time for release from the "too mortal sense,"

The leaven

Of beauty within the spirit burning
Summons her ever higher,—

Yea as the stars inspire

The plangent waves that leap with ceaseless yearning

Sonorously to heaven."

This is poetry. Baker & Taylor Company.

The Constitution is on trial. As I write, the jury of the nation is considering its verdict, and in a few days the cause célèbre, Lords versus Commons, will have been decided. The peers broke with precedent and took the "revolutionary step" of referring a Finance The Commons disBill to the people. puted their right, and reluctantly beBut it is came parties to the action. to be for the last time. The Radicals have had enough of it. A Chamber which dares to appeal from them to the people from whom they are supposed to derive their authority, must go-always supposing the people should give them the necessary new lease of official life. The Lords, they say, are out of touch with the democratic spirit of the time. They are a privileged body. They have presumed upon powers which exist but must not be exercised. Progress, whatever that may mean, is impossible if this hereditary pretension is to stand. That the peers have not rejected a measure which they could not in conscience be expected to endorse; that they, the assumed enemies of the people, should have insisted on consulting the people, is too much for the Radical-Socialist mind. If ever a privileged body took a step which would commend itself to the opposing force it surely is this. Why object? Obviously, if the Lords are beaten-and they took the risk well knowing what the consequences of defeat must be then the way will be clear for all Radical-Socialist schemes. The dreams of the visionary will indeed have come within the compass of practical politics.

The peers, as a matter of sober fact, have proved themselves much better democrats than any member of the Government or of the Government ma

more

Winston

jority. They are prepared to abide by the will of the people as it may be declared at the polls in this January, 1910. They were not prepared to accept without inquiry the Radical-Socialist pretence in 1909 at interpreting the will of the people as expressed in resolution 1906. Could democratic than that be taken? And why in the name of democracy should the Lords pass such a Budget as that of 1909 without taking the view of less partial judges than Mr. Asquith, Mr. Lloyd George, and Mr. Churchill? It was aimed at interests which the Radical-Socialist hates, always has hated, always will hate. Landowners and license-holders are his peculiar aversions. If in the process of crushing both he crushed others innocent of any offence which could be brought home to either, what matter? The State would come into its own the more quickly. On the showing of those twin exponents of vituperative statesmanship, Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. Winston Churchill, the Lords threw out the Budget because it touched their pockets and their privileges. To put the action of the peers on the lowest ground of self-interest, why should they not defer the passage of a measure which hits them financially as well as others? A cardinal principle of democracy is that there shall be no taxation without representation, and that the people alone shall tax the people. Judge the Lords by that principle. They are called upon by the Commons, as they have been called upon again and again recently, to pass a financial measure aimed avowedly at themselves.

They are to endorse, without

a voice in the matter, the financial expedients devised by their enemies, and if they dare say that the measure is un