murder and sudden death a la fin de siècle. In all save its phrasing-for we grant Mr. Vance a gift of expression both graphic and unhackneyed-Cynthia-of-the-Minute is inferior to The Brass Bowl and The Private War, the two novels which gave him a name with which to conjure the devotees of "the latest fiction."

Memories and Impressions. By Ford Madox Hueffer. Harper & Brothers. $1.60 net.

Mr. Hueffer evidently has a very good memory. And from it he gleans a very bad impression. For with a flippantly informal humor he has advised us to write Pre-Raphaelitism with a small P and a smaller R. The Rossettis, Ruskin, Morris, Swinburne, Burne-Jones et al. are portrayed here with that fatal familiarity which breeds contempt. Mr. Hueffer touches dignity with the magic wand of humor-a humor that springs an intimate knowledge of the men discussed-and presto! it is no more.

A consoling book to read, this. As the tremendous minority fall, the microscopic majority rises. However, it is not a book to be taken too seriously. Mr. Hueffer presents chiefly the human side of this group, and the presentation is genuinely amusing. From the standpoint of scholarship the book is good, but not remarkable. It is interesting to note that Mr. Hueffer bears out the opinion of one of our Yale professors, that Christina Rossetti was the greatest of the Pre-Raphaelites. In general the author is good humoredly out of sympathy with their movement, and seems to accept the radically changed spirit of the present century with a smile and a shrug of the shoulders.

With regard to life and literature Mr. Hueffer sums up his position in this typical manner: "Life is good nowadays; but art is very bitter. That is why, though the light whirls and blazes still over Piccadilly, this book has become a jeremiad. For upon the one side I love life; on the other hand, Hokusai in the later years of his life was accustomed to subscribe himself 'The Old Man Mad About Painting.' So I may humbly write myself down a man getting on for forty, a little mad about good letters. For the world is a good place, but the letters that I try to stand up for are about to die. Will any take their place? Who knows?"

E. N. H.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

Tom, Dick, and Harry are going abroad this summer, and are going to travel by boat, rail, coach, and auto. I also am going to Europe, but I shall voyage on my piano. My passage money will be invested in scores, and instead of paying damnable restaurateurs for their tiresome turbot and indigestible Kalbsbraten, I shall wax great on the food of the gods.

The passage eastward will be played out of the first act of "Tristan," for the listless, uneventful sea will allow a fine crossing. To the return voyage the "Ocean" Symphony of Rubenstein and the "Flying Dutchman" Overture will give the true Septembrian tang. Plymouth harbor, with its veils of mist rising on the shrill green of lawn-covered slopes, will float into view on the strains of the "Pastorale," and the music of César Franck will evoke the sombre walls of cloistered Oxford, audible with dreams of medieval things, with hopeless, unworldly enthusiasms. The lower Rhine is Schumann's E flat Symphony; the movement rubricated "Feierlich" will conjure up the pomp and ritual of the archepiscopal mass at Cologne. At the Drachenfels the rippled murmur of the Rhine daughters will be pierced by the leaping, exuberant flames surging around young Siegfriedand late in the day the royal trumpets of the Götterdämmerung immolation will announce the setting of the sun. Afterwards, the life and art of the good burghers of Munich will become explicit in the "Sinfonia Domestica." But I shall not be entirely dependent on classic music to take me out of the stagnant August weather. A barrel-organ languidly singing the vulgarest of airs beneath my window can transport me to autumnal fields, to vistas umbrageous with yellowed foliage, to the whole despairing region of fall.—And I have still another refuge east of the sun and west of the moon. Do you know the painting I love-the "Sommertag" of Böcklin? It is a place of quiet breathing, of happy aspiration, deep in the thither side of life. It is always afternoon there, far removed from overflowing ripeness, from sullen heat; the cool light comes from a blue sky washed with tiny clouds. Through the flower-pied meadow the clear stream moves quietly; by its margent arise stately poplars, and there are boys bathing. And when I am lost therein, a blazing firmament cannot oppress me.

P. L. R.

FOWNES
GLOVES-

The way they're made has
a good deal to do with the
way they wear.