this criticism on our "popular" government:

"The example of the United States, by the occasional ostracism of estimable citizens and the corruption of many of its professional politicians, abundantly shows what bad results may ensue even when the mass of a community merits our esteem.”

especially interesting historical papers, on "Jacobinism" and Sorel's "Europe and the French Revolution." The latter is an excellent condensation of a remarkable book, on which it would be pleasant to dwell. The essay on Jacobinism is a review of several books, but

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In the United States wealth [as an interest] tends to be absolutely crushed by the incidence of taxation.”

As regards the functions of the State, Dr. Mivart makes no definite contribution to this important question. Modernly speaking, he partakes of the character of both the individualist and the collectivist; but more accurately considered, he seems to belong historically to the palmy days of the Holy Roman Empire. He offers the general ethical conception of the State as making the goods of life possible to all individuals; but how far this is to be done by the direct action of government, is left largely to the imagination of the reader. Free compulsory education he regards as opposed to a sound political economy; but asserts, what to many would seem a far more unsound principle, that "The individual as a member of the State is not bound to tolerate, rather is he absolutely bound to repress, expressions and actions on the part of individuals, which actions or expressions he has good grounds for certainly knowing are the manifestations of bad volition and not of conscientious convictions," etc. He also declares that the State, for its own preservation, as a means to moral, not merely material good, may even, "with extreme reluctance and as the last resort, justly exercise pressure on consciences.” It is impossible to do more than mention several other very questionable doctrines - namely, that the waste of noble intellects in uncongenial and exhausting labor is not a moral loss to society; that limitation of births is not to be approved because of the beneficial effects on character to members of large families (one thinks of the conditions of existence among the classes which most habitually have unlimited families), and that armed rebellion against the State is never justifiable. But there is one saying of Dr. Mivart's in this connection which is a true word of wisdom, containing the largest promise of good for the future: "Each day advances the movement which transforms the process of civilization from an unconscious evolution to a fully self-conscious and deliberate development."

Little space is left in which to notice two

"French Revolution." Dr. Mivart's prejudices lead him to be uncritical of its accuracy, so that he repeats Taine's error, pointed out by Dr. Charles K. Adams, of attributing all the misery of the Reign of Terror" chiefly to the Revolutionary leaders: whereas, it was rooted

in those relations of the different classes which the nobility and clergy had persistently refused to change."

It is not quite fair, perhaps, to look for much literary merit in a work devoted to abstract thought: though the writings of Schopenhauer and Professor Fiske occur at once as proof that philosophy and excellence of form are by no means incompatible. But it might certainly be justly required of Dr. Mivart that he should pay a little more attention to the architectonics of the sentence.

Caird's Essays on Philosophy and Literature.

MARIAN MEAD.

BRIEFS ON NEW BOOKS.

THE two volumes of " Essays on Philosophy and Literature" (Macmillan), by Professor Edward Caird, of Glasgow, invite the attention of thoughtful readers. Volume I. contains papers, mostly magazine reprints, on Dante, Rousseau, Wordsworth, Goethe, Carlyle, and "The Problem of Philosophy at the Present Time"; Volume II. contains reprints of the author's excellent articles in the Encyclopædia Britannica on "Cartesianism" and

Metaphysic." The trend of these essays is what one would expect, or rather what one would ask, from a distinguished Professor of Moral Philosophy, -something quite different, in a word, from the desultory though delightful chat of the Lamb and Hazlitt order. The threshed-out straw of personal gossip is left untouched, and there is little discussion of matters of pure literary form. On the other hand, philosophical bearings and affiliations are clearly brought out; and in the thoughtful papers on Goethe and Wordsworth the author endeavors to indicate the sources of, and, so far as possible, to give direct expression to, those deeper intimations in their verse, that "breath and finer spirit of all knowledge," wherein great poetry often forestalls and always transcends science, and by virtue of which, as Matthew Arnold said, its future is immense. We do not, of course, mean

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to imply that Professor Caird approaches Goethe in the spirit of Mr. Donnelly, or that he mistakes "The Excursion" for a rebus or a quadratic equation. To the lover of poetry as poetry, whose ears may perhaps still tingle with Professor Huxley's vigorous epithet "sensual caterwauling," it is a cheering thing to find a severe thinker" like Professor Caird holding that "in poetry the form is the first thing. Its function is pure expression for its own sake, and the consideration of what is expressed must be secondary. The Muses would undoubtedly prefer a good bacchanalian song to Zachary Boyd's metrical version of the Bible." Still (the author observes, touching the "old quarrel of poets and philosophers" of which Plato speaks), while it is far from desirable that poetry should ever become a criticism of life,' except in the sense in which beauty is always a criticism upon ugliness," "there is undoubtedly a point-and that, indeed, the highest point in both-in which they [poets and philosophers] come into close relations with each other. Hence, at least in the case of the greatest poets, we are driven by a kind of necessity to ask what was their philosophy." Professor Caird rates Wordsworth high: "There is no poet who is more distinctly unique and of his own kind, no poet the annihilation of whose works would more obviously deprive us of a definite and original vein of sentiment. . . . When Wordsworth is at his best he stands quite on a level with the very highest." In the paper on Carlyle the author notes, what we do not remember to have seen emphasized before, the masterful influence upon the "clothes philosopher" of Fichte's idealism. His debt to the fantastic Richter, upon whom he founded himself and from whose strange literary conglomerate he made no scruple of carrying off bodily various tempting crotchets and verbal turns, is barely noted. Professor Caird is one of the leaders in the movement tending to rehabilitate, or perhaps we may say, to naturalize, philosophy proper, as distinguished from orthodox British empiricism, in England; and, even in the literary essays, his metaphysical habit of thinking makes him at times a little hard for unmetaphysical readers to follow. The exertion required is, however, well repaid. The articles on "Cartesianism" (covering the systems of Des Cartes, Spinoza, and Malebranche) and "Metaphysic" display the same rare turn for exposition that makes the author's admirable book on Kant the best in the English language.

Homeric stars and the Homeric animals, the Homeric trees and flowers and magic herbs, the metals, the amber, the ivory and the ultramarine which furnish the weapons of Homer's heroes and the decorations of his heroines, and gives us Homeric bills of fare without leaving "so much as a dish of beans to the imagination." In a prefatory chapter she discusses "Homer as a poet and a problem." She knows what the critics have said of him and how the translators have ravaged him. She gives her illustrative quotations now in Chapman's vigorous version, now in Tennyson's, now in Lord Derby's, now in Mr. Way's, now in her own not unequal English. As to the personality of Homer, she seems not quite sure whether the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey be one man or two, or a guild of wandering bards, or the author, as Grote thought, of a central Achilleid about which like legends had been encrusted, or a critical editor who had worked prehistoric ballads into a semi-consistent whole.

A judicial view of the American Colonial Era.

THE "Colonial Era," by Professor Fisher, of Yale University, is the first volume of a new American History Series, published by Scribner's Sons. The other volumes of the series are to be written by Prof. Sloane of Princeton, President Walker of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Professor Burgess of Columbia University (two volumes). Professor Fisher has given us a very compact and readable account of the period ending with the year 1756. He divides the era into the period ending with 1688 and the period from then to 1756, and within each of these divisions he treats each colony by itself, with the exception that New England is considered more as a whole. Doubtless the reason for this plan is the difficulty of finding any unity in the colonies at the time of which he writes; but the result is to leave the reader with a somewhat disconnected impression of the subject, and with a knowledge of the names and deeds of the various colonial governors rather than of the deeper elements of colonial life. Perhaps the fundamental fact of the early history of our country is the differentiation of the three sections, New England, the Middle Region, and the South. The unity of the subject lies rather in England than on this continent, and by more attention to the English basis of the period, and to the fundamental economic and social factors in the history of these various sections, a newer view of the subject might have been presented. By following the time-honored mode of procedure, however, Professor Fisher has contented himself with a more or less annalistic method of treatment. The distinctly valuable features of the book lie in its judicious presentation of the religious history of the period. As was to be expected from the Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Yale, the author deals with the Puritans in a sympathetic manner, and is disposed to extenuate some of the actions for which they have been criti

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A father and daughter in the Swiss Highlands.

cised; at the same time it cannot be said that he is at all extreme in his conclusions. It is in this field, particularly, that he seems to have made use of original material. The least valuable portions of the work are the early ones. He writes somewhat indefinitely of the relation of the mound-builders to the other Indians, but leaves the impression that he considers them to have been a distinct people a view not in accord with opinions of the best authorities. The settlements of the Norsemen were not on the eastern shore of Greenland, as the author says, but on the western. He is wrong again in saying that the erroneous representation that the mainland was discovered by Americus Vespuccius in 1497, resulted in the attaching of his name to the New World." This error is the less to be excused, since, even if Professor Fisher were not a student of the monographs upon this subject, the recent works of Winsor and Fiske should have set him right. It is at least doubtful whether he is correct in the assertion that "as long as Henry VIII. acknowledged the papacy, he had felt bound to respect the Pope's grant to Spain." The degree of respect paid to the papal division of the new discoveries, even by Catholic countries, was very moderate. In spite of these and similar slips, the work is on the whole accurate. MR. J. A. SYMONDS and his daughter Margaret have put into a volume some uncommonly piquant sketches of their "Life in the Swiss Highlands" (Macmillan & Co.) Perhaps the most noticeable peculiarity revealed by the authors-one a consumptive, the other a young girl-is an entire and delightful disregard for prudence or common-sense, when on adventure bound. And adventures with them are decidedly frequent, assuming such wild forms as tobogganing on glaciers in the High Alps; starting small avalanches, to ride them down-hill; coasting down sheer precipices on bundles of hay; or sleighing (quite needlessly) at the dead of night over passes where the snow lay thirty feet, the path was a mere thread bordered by abysses, and the postillion, trusting solely to the surer instinct of his horse, whispered (for fear of avalanches), "One false step-es ist mit uns um!" "Well, it was all a splendid experience," writes Miss Symonds; proceeding calmly to relate that "the next day we crossed eleven real big avalanches after Silvaplana, and had two upsets of the luggage-cart, otherwise quiet." The fresh and unconventional personality of this young woman is one of the most pleasing features of the book. The animal spirits and love of outdoor life common among highly-bred English| girls of the day are mingled in her with a rarer poetic feeling for Nature. She recalls Wordsworth's Lucy, "moulded by silent sympathy" with the spirit of the mountains, and finding in Nature "both law and impulse." It is, however, a Lucy rendered refreshingly human by a vigorous appetite, and a truly feminine predilection for "fig-jam sandwiches" as sequel to a stiff mountain-climb. Her

sketches, beyond their charm of girlish sprightliness, have an undeniable literary quality, evincing an admirable power of developing narrative. That called "Summer in the Prättigau" is as simple and lovely as the sweet mountain-girt orchard it describes. It is interesting to trace the marked intellectual family likeness between the father and daughter, and to compare the grace and freedom of the younger mind with the manly breadth of the mature thinker. "I have never been able," says Mr. Symonds (and here lies the secret of much of his power as a writer), "to take literature very seriously. Life seems so much graver, more important, more permanently interesting, than books." And it is a deep thought of life, a rich humanity indeed, which breathes in certain pages of the article on "Swiss Athletic Sports," and in the really wonderful description of a bell-ringing in that entitled "Winter Nights at Davos." Other interesting points in the book are some accounts of the natural history of avalanches and Swiss hotel-porters; as well as an historical sketch of Davos, formerly an elaborately-developed community, whose records. ought certainly to be worked up as a social and political study by some enterprising university student.

A companion to the Reveries of a Bachelor."

THE average married man, who reflects upon the details of his happiness, does it very much in the manner of Mr. Robert Grant's amusing "Reflections of a Married Man" (Scribner). The result is not, certainly, an important book, although it is that almost rarer thing, a pleasant one. It is altogether kindly, and playful and wholesome. If one would class it, he would put it on the shelf with "Prue and I" and the "Reveries of a Bachelor." Its humor is less imaginative than the Howadji's, less sentimental than Ik Marvel's. It is a little more of this present world than either. Yet it is a painting, not a photograph. The ideal element prevades it; one hardly thinks, he dreams a little over its pages. They do not incite laughter, but coax a frequent meditative smile. The reader will like his own wife better, noting the foibles of Mr. Grant's heroine. It is a book for a honeymoon, or for a hammock by a brookside. It might be read aloud by a camp-fire without unduly hastening bedtime.

A serviceable volume about Julius Cæsar.

Mr. W. WARDE FOWLER, M.A., of Lincoln College, Oxford, has prepared for the "Heroes of the Nations Series" (Putnam) a serviceable volume to explain "to those who are comparatively unfamiliar with classical antiquity the place which Casar occupies in the history of the world." Mr. Fowler writes from a full knowledge of his subject, and in a simple, impressive, and popular manner, well suited to the readers addressed. His views of Cæsar's career are commended to the attention of all by the straightforward and impartial manner in which they are set forth. The author relies chiefly upon contemporary evidence (above all,

upon Cæsar and Cicero), to the exclusion of much that is said by later writers. He does not introduce the discussions of obscure points and the citations of authorities which might be admissible in a more extended and more critical biography. He states emphatically that Cæsar was neither the founder nor the organizer of the Roman Empire, nor were his conquests his greatest title to fame, neither was the fact that he tempered strong government with justice and humanity. Conquests had been made and administered with justice and humanity before his day. It was his distinction that he was the first Roman to apply what we should call scientific intelligence to the problems of government. The book is supplied by the publishers with a series of likenesses of Julius Cæsar and some of his great contemporaries, and also with maps and other illustrative material.

The life of an American College President.

THOMAS RAMBAUT, whose biography has been written by the Rev. Norman Fox and published by Fords, Howard and Hulbert, was a hard-working Baptist preacher and college president. Although born in Dublin, he was, as his biographer is very careful to inform us at some length in the chapter on "Ancestry," of noble French Huguenot extraction. Dr. Rambaut's first pastorate, of which we are given a charming picture, was at Robertville, South Carolina. It was in that golden age "befo' de wah," when the whites worshipped in the body of the church and their negroes filled the galleries. After a second pastorate at Savannah, Dr. Rambaut went into educational work, and was president first of Cherokee College, Georgia, and later of William Jewell College, Missouri. No matter to what religious denomination they may belong, these small and struggling Western colleges may all fitly be denominated president-killers; and it was not more than five years before Dr. Rambaut's health broke down under the strain of carrying forward work enough for three men. It was only after years of rest that he was able to resume work, and to enter upon successive pastorates at Brooklyn, Newark, and other places in the East. The story of his life, though told in a somewhat effusive and superficial manner, is that of an active and self-sacrificing devotion to the great causes of religion and education.

A plea for the
Organic Unity

of Christendom.

IN these days when men are doubting whether "a church termagant"

has not, cuckoo-like, thrust itself into the nest of the church militant, any honest effort toward the organic unity of Christendom is not without interest. It may prove a failure, and then we see what road is no thoroughfare. It may prove a partial success, and so suggest in what direction to turn for the future. It may not be very definable as either success or failure, and then it serves to keep attention awake and set investigators off, each on his own track, toward the desired goal. The Church Club of New York City has made its

contributory venture in three little volumes, published by Messrs. E. & J. B. Young & Co., of lectures by bishops and presbyters of the Protestant Episcopal Church. These volumes are entitled, respectively, ively, "History and Teachings of the Early Church," "The Church in the British Isles, from the Earliest Times to the Restoration," "The Church in the British Isles, Post-Restoration Period." Their connecting thread is "the Historic Episcopate." There are those who will fancy that the weight of the argument will most impress those already convinced of the conclusion, but the discussion will have its interest for others. Dr. Allen's paper on the Norman Church is noticeably fresh and striking.

Recreations of an old-fashioned Scholar.

IN Professor Shackford's posthumous volume of essays entitled "Social and Literary Papers" (Scribner) we have a pleasant suggestion of how an old-fashioned scholar amused himself reading and thinking for half a century. The modern scholar is for the most part over-absorbed in the technical part of his studies, and very likely the professor's pupils at Cornell may have thought his attention too alert in the matter of Greek particles. But here he drops his scholastic methods and indulges himself in broad human interests. He reads his Greek as less learned men read their English, not as a study of grammar, but from a delight in literature. His insight into the difficulties of Eschylus has only quickened his sensitive enjoyment of Shakespeare and Browning; he finds Pope Innocent XII. and King Lear as well worth studying as Prometheus. Human life is yet nearer to him than classical or romantic literature, and as he turns the pages of his Aristotle or his Plato he is ever glancing off to note the everyday wants and woes of his contemporaries and ever seeking to apply to modern social progress some of the old-time wisdom not yet obsolete. Culture does not always refine away the heart even of dons in the universities.

The folk-lore elements of

modern culture.

THERE are three paths along which curious minds are travelling back to the reconstruction of the prehistoric ages. Two of them, archæology and philology, though recently opened, are already well-worn. The third, folklore, is now for the first time attempted. In a little volume in Appletons" Modern Science Series," entitled "Ethnology in Folklore," Mr. George Lawrence Gomme, the president of the Folklore Society, undertakes to set forth the principles by which "the peasant and local elements in modern culture" may be classified, and to trace the ethnological results. He reaches the conclusion that side by side with modern industrial and scientific and literary England lies a prehistoric England visible in the obscure usages and superstitions of the peasant class; and the further conclusion that these are a survival not from our Aryan ancestors, but from unknown pre-Aryan

races whom they conquered and displaced. Mr. Gomme has "blazed" a path. Later investigators will decide whether it leads into a swamp or a farviewing mountain top. Meanwhile, there are interesting glimpses to be had all along the road.

THE publishers of the excellent A boon to and indispensable Bohn's LibraGoethe Students. ries" (Macmillan & Company) have rendered a real service to students of German literature by issuing in a single volume the original text of Goethe's "Faust" (Part I.), and the literal prose rendering of Abraham Hayward-pronounced by Matthew Arnold the best "because "the most straightforward,"-together with Hayward's useful Appendices and Prefaces, "A General Survey of the Faust Legend" by C. H. Bucheim, and "A List of Books for the Study of Faust." The editor, Dr. Bucheim of King's College, London, has carefully revised Hayward's not altogether trustworthy work, simplifying his rather pedantic prose, pruning away irrelevant notes and adding new ones where needed. For the convenience of the student, the original text and the translation are set opposite each other on alternate pages, and the reference numbers to the notes are inserted in the translation. The editing is thorough and the arrangement practical; and we commend Dr. Bucheim's work to students wishing to enter upon a conscientious study of one of the greatest poems of all

of all others who took part in the anti-slavery movement, in order to exalt himself and Mr. Eli Thayer. John Brown, Jim Lane, and President Lincoln share alike the vials of Robinson's wrath ;' James Redpath, F. B. Sanborn, and other historians of the movement, likewise come in for their portion. The newspapers of the day are largely drawn upon for material to pad out the book to double its proper dimensions. The future historian of the movement will have to search long in this bushel of chaff before he finds the kernels of sound and un

prejudiced information it unquestionably contains; for the book is not only garrulous but one-sided.

BRIEFER MENTION.

CATHCART'S" Literary Reader" has been for a long time one of the best reading books for advanced pupils. It has now been still further improved by a new introduction, several new chapters, and by more extended notices of the writers from whom the selections are taken. The book is thus adapted more than ever to serve as an introduction to English literature. (American Book Co.)

"BROWNING'S Criticism of Life," by William F. Revell, and "Walt Whitman," by William Clarke, are two volumes of the "Dilettante Library " (Macmillan). The former consists of chapters upon Browning's religious thought and philosophy of conduct, rather vaguely put, and leading to nothing very definite. The latter is one of the most careful and appreciative studies of its subject yet made, both quotations and comments being in good taste and suggestive. Americans will wince at Mr. Clarke's handling of our civilization, and it is not in all respects quite just, but it makes wholesome reading.

EACH one of Mr. Howells's inimitable farces seems more delightful than its predecessors, and “A Letter of Introduction" (Harpers) is simply irresistible in its mirth-provoking qualities. The central figure is that of the travelling Englishman who waxes enthusiastic about everything that seems to him peculiarly American, and invariably sees a joke within five minutes or so of its enunciation.

England" (Macvolume of hardly This sketch is at

GOLDWIN SMITH'S "A Trip to millan) has been reissued in a neat more than vest pocket dimensions. times so weighty in its suggestiveness that it has a considerable element of permanent value. It well illustrates the difference between what the cultivated observer and the ordinary traveller see in their surround

UNDER the title, "An Edinburgh Eleven" (Lovell, Coryell & Co.), J. M. Barrie has drawn an amusing series of "pencil portraits from college life.” His student experiences at Edinburgh gave him a distinguished series of subjects to draw upon, for his gallery includes Robert Louis Stevenson, Lord Rosebery, and Professors Blackie, Sellar, and Tait.

CHAMBERS'S Encyclopædia, in its rewritten form, is approaching completion, the ninth volume, extending well through the letter S, being just published (Lippincott). Maps of Russia, Scotland, and Spain are included, and a great variety of specially prepared arti