English speaking traveller; but a study of more than one unfamiliar tribe; and in particular of the Buriats, whose language Curtin learned without books from a Russian speaking Buriat during the journey, in the casual way in which he learned anything which it pleased him to acquire; also the volume includes a valuable group of Mongol myths and folk-tales, and many curious photographs of subjects accessible only to one speaking Buriat. Small wonder that Dr. Charles W. Eliot is enthusiastic in praise of its author and that his Prefatory Note virtually bids the reader not to neglect the work, which is really essential to those who desire the best possible understanding of Curtin's monumental "The Mongols" and "The Mongols in Russia." To the last Mr. Curtin retained his power of swift study and his death robbed his fellow men of a mind enriched by sixty literatures. The race of intellectual giants persisted in him. Little, Brown & Co.

If there be any truth in the theory that ugliness is not a subject for art, Mr. Robert Hichens could hardly find a defence for his "Bella Donna," for his subject is an entirely mercenary evil woman at the moment when the toilet arts of the East and West combined cannot conceal the irremediable ugliness brought to her by the remorseless years. Not a spark of love, not an atom of tenderness, not a ray of charity, illumines her character from the moment when the husband who bought her divorces her and leaves her to obtain by her own unaided efforts the luxuries and beautiful things which she covets. She obtains them, and in the opening chapter of the book she is seen twenty years later, in pursuit of Nigel Armine, her junior by years, and a man of extraordinary purity of character and delicacy of sentiment, whom she promptly begins

to poison as soon as she discovers that he will not inherit his brother's title and lands, and that a rich Mohammedan Egyptian seems ready to lavish his wealth upon her. The Mohammedan treats her entirely according to her deserts and she is left utterly overwhelmed by misfortunes both great and petty. The four men in the story, the shallow little American doctor, the high-minded husband, the wise and noble Hebrew physician, even the brutally selfish Turco-Egyptian are very well done. J. B. Lippincott Company.

The subject of the late Signore Cesare Lombroso's "After Death-What?" was not seriously considered by him for the press, or for any form of publication, until a short time before his death, and the book was undertaken amid the protestations of his friends, who warned him that its publication might ruin the reputation earned by a life-time of scientific work and study, "But all this talk," he wrote in his preface, "did not make me hesitate for a single moment. I thought it my predestined end and way and my duty to crown a life passed in the struggle for great ideas by entering the lists for this desperate cause, the most hotly contested and perhaps most persistently mocked at idea of the times." In the light of these words and this eagerness the book seems indeed to crown his life. Hypnotic phenomena, the history of the Eusapia Palladino case and the experiments made with scientific instruments with her assistance open the book; mediums in general, and among savage tribes; limitations of the medium; ancient beliefs in regard to spirits; identity; doubles; haunted houses, spirit photographs, and lastly the biology of the spirits, are among the topics of the chapters. Signore Lombroso's own experiments and observations, conducted with infinite care and pains, are valuable, but some phenomena reported

to him as occurring in the United States and repeated by him are proved impostures, and the persecutions of which he thinks that certain mediums have been the subject are merely the natural man's manifestations of anger when he discovers that he has been cheated. Good fortune protected the Italian from an encounter even by report with the most notorious of all American mediums, but he accepts the Fox sisters at their own valuation and takes the closed double slate trick as evidence.

But the defects of the book are of little consequence. Here it is, a great man's last effort to serve the truth for which he lived; not a conclusive book, but a book aiming at a conclusion on a subject of infinite interest; a book as important as any yet published on the subject of psychical research. lustrated with many Small, Maynard & Co.

It is ilphotographs.

Two faults and two only are apparent in Mr. Ralph D. Paine's "Ships and Sailors of Old Salem"; first, it is barbarously heavy in hand; second, its index, although tolerably full, is hardly as minute as should be the index of a volume sure to be interesting to men of many minds, and of all ages. These objections are written first, in the certainty that they would not be written at all after contemplating the merits of the book long enough to enumerate a few of them. Salem is one of the American homes of romance, not because of the witchcraft legend, or of the many strong-hearted, bold theologians who have ruled her churches, but because of the harbor which has made her a nursery and home of seamen adventurers, of men whose existence is an unbroken romance from the very early moment in which they leave their homes to their reluctant last voyage thither from far off seas and havens. In the days of her glory there was no

foreign desirable thing not to be found in the deep holds unloaded upon her wharves, and even to this day her ancient houses abound in costly finishing, furniture and other spoil of Ormuz and of Ind. Mr. Paine is an enthusiast, and warmly sets forth the doings of the old shipmasters and supercargoes; the shrewd and daring owners, and the hardly less shrewd and clever common seamen who performed their bidding. The Derby vessels, equally swift to outstrip the carriers of the official despatches notifying England of the day of Concord and Lexington, and to bring the news of peace when the long war was ended; the Crowninshield Cleopatra, the home of the former merchant captain, passing from port to port making her presence everywhere a holiday because of her quaint beauty and luxury, and her swiftness and other seaworthy qualities; the tragedy of the Friendship, her crew murdered by Malays and the avenging attack of Downes in the Potomac; the story of the Amity, English schooner taken off the Spanish Main, by mutineers who sailed her into Salem Harbor to meet the gaze of her astonished captain, guest of Elias Hasket Derby, whose Grand Turk had picked up the open boat into which the mutineers had thrown their officer. Of course her recapture followed, as much of course as that all the crew to whom Bowditch taught navigation for their pleasure and his should become captains; that sort of thing was always. happening in Salem, and Mr. Paine covers close on 700 royal octavo pages with them, writing of all with infectious enjoyment and pride in the behavior of such Americans. He writes for the elders, but the economical parent or librarian will do well to substitute his book for the entire collection of juvenile nautical literature for the season: it contains more stories and better stories. The Outing Company.

THE GREAT MAGICIAN. Although the boughs be bare, and the

bent trees

Stretch out gaunt arms against a leaden sky;

Although the dreary landscape seem to lie

Beneath the hand of death, and the soft breeze

Of summer-time across the upland leas Be changed into a weary, haunting cry

Of storm-wind calling storm-wind to draw nigh

And rend to shreds our poor, frail refuges

Yet, through the gloom, Love comes, to touch my hand,

To bid me raise mine eyes, since he stood there

Waiting to still my fears, and make the land

Look like a garden of the Lord; so fair,

That, lo! red roses clothe the desert strand

Sweet summer's flowers-although the boughs be bare.

Chambers's Journal.

Kate Mellersh.

John Drinkwater.

The result of the New York Mayoralty election a few weeks ago was on the whole an encouragement to those who have refused to believe that the American experiment in democracy is eternally incompatible with good municipal government. Tammany, it is true, succeeded in carrying the Mayoralty, but it carried none of the minor offices, and for the next four years, having lost the control both of the purse and of the machinery of criminal prosecutions, its opportunities for graft and boodle, for blackmail and corruption, will be severely truncated. Even if the new Mayor elects to play the familiar Tammany game, his scope for doing so will be uniquely limited. He is in office, but there are many ways in which he is not in power. There remains to him, no doubt, the right of appointing the magistrates who preside over the lower courts and the right of appointing, and of dismissing at a moment's notice and without reason assigned, the Commissioner of Police. Both these privileges have been used in the past, and can still be used, to fill the Bench with political henchmen and to turn the police force into an instrument for raising revenue by the protection of vice and crime. But so long as all the appropriations for carrying on the city government have to be made through a Board exclusively manned by antiTammany representatives, and so long as the District Attorney is an official who looks upon the people and not upon the "machine” as his client, even a Mayor of the Tweed or Van Wyck type, one whose intentions and policy are wholly predatory, must find himself comparatively powerless for harm. There is some reason, moreover, for thinking that Mr. Gaynor will not prove

Mayor of this type. Though

put forward as the Tammany candidate, he has never been a member of the "organization," and though he might fairly be described as that least pleasing of all the products of democracy, a sensational, notoriety-hunting, semi-political, and wholly unjudicial judge, he is also, oddly enough, a man of sincerity and independence, whose "respectability" was Tammany's greatest asset in the recent campaign. Whether the advantage of having him off the Bench is outweighed by the disadvantage of having him in the City Hall is a point that, not being a New Yorker, I do not feel called upon to decide. I think, however, that, so far as his erratic and explosive temperament and his lack of anything in the nature of administrative experience will allow him, he means to do well, and I shall not even be surprised if, making in part a virtue of necessity, he cuts himself clear of all Tammany influences and throws himself into the arms of his Reforming colleagues.

The outlook, therefore, till 1913, is about as bright as any New York has known for sixty years and more. What makes it all the more auspicious is that the substantial defeat of Tammany was effected in spite of the absence of any very glaring scandals. Given sufficiently stimulating revelations of sufficiently gross iniquities, given also a genuine union of all the anti-Tammany forces, it has often in the past proved possible for the "good citizens" to snatch a narrow victory. But at the last election—and this although Tammany had been in office for six consecutive years-the Reformers were by no means so abundantly supplied as usual with the material for an indictment of Tammany rule. The material, no doubt, existed, but except