Nor did they fail,

Punch.

He

The possibilities of the Sargasso Sea lie anywhere between non-existence and the wonders to be found in Mr. Crittenden Marriott's "The Isle of Dead Ships," but, after him what? chooses to suppose that all the wrecks of all the seas drift to the Sargasso, plough their way to the centre and stay there, "milling" slightly at times like a herd of cattle, but remaining sufficiently quiet to deceive new arrivals into the belief that they have found an island. There is no lack of food, for nearly all the new-comers bring it and there are tools of all sorts, and a submarine and a wireless telegraph apparatus are among the things which have drifted into this confusion of vessels of all centuries, when the heroine enters it in the companionship of a police officer and a convicted murderer. The author contrives to send her away in safety with a huge treasure in solid

gold and to amaze the reader with almost every successive page. The book seems like the response to a challenge simultaneously to outdo several compounders of impossible stories, but setting its geography aside, it is wellimagined and not easy to leave after once beginning to read it. J. B. Lippin cott Company.

Not many years ago it pleased a young novelist, so unlucky as to be born at a moment when American fiction was seeking an excuse for dolefulness, to write some novels exhibiting wheat as a species of ogre devour. ing the children of men; they were called strong books, and men took them very seriously. Now comes Mr. Herbert N. Casson and talks of wheat and of the man who made it possible to grow thousands of acres where one had been grown and he is as exult

Mr.

antly happy as the other man was firmly despondent, and the reason is not far to seek. He is writing of the real world as Providence working through Americans has made it. Mr. Frank Norris made the mistake of writing of his conception of the world as certain speculators and railway owners had striven to make it. Casson writes of Cyrus Hall McCormick, who not only invented the reaper but found the men to buy and use it, and it was in the latter industry that he was preeminent. To abbreviate his story as told by Mr. Casson is to belittle the varied genius evinced by the swiftly changing tactics with which he fought his rivals, and further, no one who reads the book will be grateful for having its bloom removed by such a summary. A. T. McClurg & Co.

Few are the conscientious teachers who have not been disgusted by the quality of the reading books now provided for the use of their classes, but disgust is too mild a word to apply to the emotions aroused by the operettas, cantatas, and dramas presented to them as suitable for the performance of sane children of sane parents. The ineffable twaddle and nonsense put forward for this purpose accomplishes the miracle of being sillier and more nonsensical than the Kindergarten songs, and to find a book, a whole book, of good, wholesome little plays behind which she and her pupils may retire announcing "No Simple Plays need apply" will rejoice the soul of every teacher. Such a volume, unequalled for years, is Miss Constance D'Arcy Mackay's "The House of the Heart and other Plays." Blank verse. prose and rhyme enter into their making, thus accustoming young performers to the changes in the best English dramas. The ten plays furnish at least one for each of the annual occasions on which a public performance is custom

ary and they are so varied in all details that each preparation will be agreeably novel. The lesson of each play is plain but is not too hastily announced. Henry Holt & Co.

Mr.

Mr. James Ford Rhodes has collected eighteen of his magazine articles, lectures, and occasional papers into a volume called "Historical Essays," and those who have no time to attempt the mastery of his weightier work may comfortably attack these briefer efforts and learn from them how history is now written in the United States and the difference betwen it and various works which pass for historical. Rhodes's subjects range all the way from "A New Estimate of Cromwell" to "Newspapers as Historical Sources," and in all one has that consciousness to which he owns himself subject in reading Macaulay, the consciousness of being in company with a man who reads many books. The biographical criticism of the volume, essays on Gibbon, Lecky, Green, Gardiner, Spencer Walpole show the author's predilections without his definite words, and constant reminders in quotation, reference and allusion, maintain the agreeable impression. The papers on history and the historian, although to be judged only by scholars, instruct the layman agreeably and fill him with the pleasant consciousness that if ever his work should be done, and he should be able to read as he pleases, there is a wide realm of knowledge waiting for him in the American history of which Mr. Rhodes has written so much, and in which his brilliant example has stimulated others to write. Macmillan Company.

The title of Mr. Homer Lea's "The Valor of Ignorance" seems intended to prick that amazing national vanity which would meet broadside and shell with the chorus of the national anthem, and expect the world in arms to be ter

rified by mass meetings and resolutions. Mr. Lea's is no trifling work to be mastered in a few minutes, nor is it one to be set aside unread. It bristles with statistics, and precedents, and carefully worked calculations, and it meets sentimentalities with the coldest and most prosaic common sense and the wisdom of the fathers. To these it adds introductions by Lieut.-Gen. Adna R. Chaffee and Major-General A. P. Story and as it was completed about the time that the Portsmouth treaty was signed, it can hardly be called a hastily produced book. Its illustrations are charts uncomfortably possible of aspect, showing with what ease Japan might take possession of unguarded coasts, and what almost insuperable difficulties would attend any attempt to dislodge her. The text makes a plain statement of the scope and aims of that Japanese patriotism so gracefully patronized by the unimaginative white man, so respected and yet so dreaded by those who perceive that in the very fineness and nobility of its quality, lies its deadliness to the nation that stands in the way of Nippon's glory. Mr. Lea compares the strength of the Japanese army, especially in the matter of trained and experienced officers, with that of the American army and other comparisons he makes, not too flattering to American pride. The book is too solid and serious immediately to become the prey of that popular babble which blights everything touched by it and it may possibly effect as much for the army as Captain Mahan's first book effected for the navy. Certainly no thoughtful reader will remain unimpressed by it. Harper & Bros.

The name of John Davis is familiar to readers of American history who are addicted to the careful perusal of footnotes, for it is to him that the chroniclers of 1798-1802 are indebted for

many a touch as to manners and customs and from his pages also came the story of early Virginia as it was once accepted; he also recorded the story of Logan, the Virginian rebellion against the Massachusetts glorification of Franklin, and firmly established the tradition of Southern hospitality. Davis was about twenty-two years of age when he landed in New York with the intention of cultivating literature on such oatmeal as might offer itself, and of teaching in private families. He was fairly well fitted for the task, having made some progress in Greek, "looked into every writer of the Julian and Augustan age," studied French from his early youth and "neglected no idiom from Bunyan to Bolingbroke." He published six books in New York and he played the part of tutor both in New York and in the Southern States, before he returned to England in 1803, and between that time and 1817 he issued five others in this country, and in 1803 he put forth in London, Dublin, New York, and Bristol his "Travels of Four Years and a Half in the United States of America, 1798, 1799, 1800, 1801 and 1802." This last is now reprinted in a library edition bound in gray boards with paper label, and reproducing the print and title page of the original, and with an introduction and notes by A. J. Morrison. The author, although no fulsome eulogist, was fair minded and only over sensitiveness could find him captious. He was inclined to expect pastoral innocence and to excuse roughness among the untaught, but he had small patience with the pretentious. He wrote because dissatisfied with the accounts of earlier visitors, but he frankly confessed occasionally "making his own panegyric," and the twentieth century reader will find him an honest-hearted kindly young gentleman. Henry Holt & Co.