The Duke of Wellington was mobbed and stoned in 1830 and again in 1832, when the King also was stoned and the Queen was hissed. Parliamentary reform was demanded, but obtained only after. a long struggle. Social reforms were also agitated. The condition of children in factories, where they had to work fifteen or even eighteen hours a day, was exposed, and the evil at last corrected by the Factories Act. In 1831 and 1832 the cholera carried off 59,457 persons in the kingdom; and the popular suspicion that the bodies of the victims were used for dissection led to riots in which the houses of surgeons, and the hospitals were attacked.

A great variety of other subjects are similarly discussed and illustrated-the food and the table customs, the clubs, theatres and other amusements, the posting arrangements, mail-coaches and stagecoaches, the omnibuses and cabs, the duelling, the smuggling, the flogging in the army and navy, the schools-it was the time when Dotheboys Hall was in its glory, the newspapers-a copy of The Times cost seven-pence, the stamp duty being nearly four-pence, the painters, sculptors and literary men, and a multitude of other matters that we cannot take space to enumerate. Among the illustrations are many showing the feminine fashions of successive years. On the whole, the volume is an extremely interesting and valuable supplement to the formal histories of the period, depicting the social life, manners and customs in a singularly graphic and impressive manner.-Critic.

THE CENTURY OF LOUIS XIV; ITS ART, ITS IDEAS. By Emile Bourgeois. While Voltaire was at the court of Frederick the Great, 1750-53, he wrote and published a compact little volume called "Le Siècle de Louis XIV," which M. Bourgeois has made in these latter days the basis of a magnificent tome. He takes the Great

Century from the frame in which it was placed by Voltaire in order to restore its values and perspective and make it comprehensible to our age, which so delights to be put in sympathy with the great men and events of the past. The restoration is very skilful, and we cannot regret the new lines and hues which M. Bourgeois' erudition has enabled him to add.

He drops, as probably Voltaire would have been pleased to do, the preliminary chapters recounting chiefly the campaign of the great Condé, and retains of the war records only the sad story of internecine strife consequent on the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The illustrations are of the widest possible range, including reproduction of the works of painters, sculptors and engravers from public and private collections, and even such popular prints, drawings for almanacs, caricatures and fashion plates as may fully show the round of life of the grand siecle.

The century is not inappropriately named after Louis XIV, even when it is studied, as in later chapters, in Italy, Germany and England, since through his great minister, Colbert, the Grand Monarque kept his touch upon the great men of all Europe. He loved splendor, magnificence, profusion in everything. He turned his taste into a maxim from policy, and wholly inspired his court with it. Where Voltaire has perhaps softened too much the shadows of this picture, M. Bourgeois makes use of the stinging verities of La Bruyère and Saint-Simon, which certainly escape that impeachment. On the one hand we read of the proud and lofty gallantry which belong to the Spanish mind and manner (brought to the French court by Anne of Austria), united in exquisite courtesy with "the grace, gentleness, and becoming freedom which exist in France alone," of the dress, broidered gold upon gold and set with gems; of the balls and masques and pageants and appartements, or king's reunions, where the King and Queen laid

aside their greatness to take part in the play. On the other hand we read the masterly description of Saint-Simon of the ways of these courtiers who came to this royal hotel (Versailles) by the king's orders to people it and to lose their fortunes, their dignity and their independence there; of the cold in those magnificent halls, where wine froze at the banquets, and of the court like an edifice built of marble," by which it is meant that it was composed of men who were very hard, but highly polished. "It is

a country," he adds, "where joy is visible but false, and grief is hidden but real." We see, too, the play at these appartements, "with its violent anger, oaths, despair," and consequent theft, from which even the diamond buckle on the King's hat was not secure.

One receives the most vivid impression of the subject; and, taken in connection with the illustrations and the emendations of M. Bourgeois, the reader will find the book simply fascinating.-Independent.

The Osterhout Library News-Letter speaks in most favorable terms of The Great Round World, which we have recently added to our own Reading Room list. It is a children's paper, published weekly, which gives the most important news of the week in an intelligible, simple way, so that children can understand and enjoy it. It is thought that it will be valuable in connection with school work on topics of the day. There are so few really good juvenile periodicals that all librarians and many parents will welcome anything new and good in this depart

ment.

"MAN'S INHUMANITY TO MAN MAKES COUNTLESS THOUSANDS MOURN."

The world does move, if slowly, and while we still see in border warfare the frontiersman or soldier, with generations of civilization and training behind him, let slip all his traditions of justice and gentleness and emulate and surpass the cruelty and barbarity of the savage he is trying to dispossess, still such things can no longer be done in a corner, and there are powerful voices raised in condemnation of the deeds that are done in the name of law and order.

OLIVE SCHREINER.

Olive Schreiner's Trooper Peter Halket to show all men what is done in South Africa, in the greed for land and gold, under the English and Dutch rule. Indignant protest against cruelty from man. to man, or man to beast, is heard in every book Miss Schreiner has written. This feeling is the groundwork of the pessimism of her absorbing, hopeless Story of an African Farm, it is the basis of the sadness of her beautiful Dreams, and it is the raison d'etre of Trooper Peter Halket.

This book, The Story of an African farm, and Miss Schreiner's admirable essays, Stray Thoughts on South Africa, published in the Fortnightly Review, give the most vivid pictures and accurate studies of South African life yet written.

It is curious to trace the changes in the religious feeling of Miss Schreiner's successive books. In all of them she is seeking after God; in the last one she seems to have found the solution of her doubts.

The profound inwardness, the austere sincerity of Etienne Pivert de Senancour's principal work, Obermann, the delicate feeling for nature which it exhibits, and the melancholy eloquence of many passages of it, have attracted and charmed some of the most remarkable spirits of this century, such as George Sand and Sainte-Beuve, and will probably always find a certain number of spirits whom they touch and interest.

The influence of Rousseau, and certain affinities with more famous and fortunate authors of his own day-Chateaubriand and Madame de Staël-are everywhere visible in Senancour. But though, like these eminent personages, he may be called a sentimental writer, and though Obermann, a collection of letters from Switzerland treating almost entirely of nature and the human soul, may be called a work of sentiment, Senancour has a gravity and severity which dis

tinguish him from all other writers of the sentimental school. The world is with him in his solitude far less than it is with them; of all writers he is the most perfectly isolated and the least attitudinizing. His chief work, too, has a value and power of its own, apart from these merits of its author. The stir of all the main forces, by which modern life is and has been impelled, lives in the letters of Obermann; the dissolving agencies of the eighteenth century, the fiery storm of the French Revolution, the first faint promise and dawn of that new world which our own time is but now fully bringing to light-all these are to be felt, almost to be touched, there. To me, indeed, it will always seem that the impressiveness of this production can hardly be rated too high.-Matthew Arnold.

Although the autobiography of John G. Paton has reached the fifth edition, it is not too late to call attention to it. It is of interest not only as a missionary work and the life of an exceptionally determined character, but as an entertaining picture of life on the New Hebrides when they were in their most barbaric stage. The experiences of Dr. Paton during his work among the natives are old in a natural, easy manner, at times pathetic and often humorous. The narrow escapes from his cannibal associates were so wonderful that the biography has been appropriately called a second Robinson Crusoe.

The heather kindles toward the light,
The whin is frankincense and flame.
And be it for strife or be it for love
The falcon quickens as the dove
When earth is touched from heaven above
With joy that knows no name.
And glad in spirit and sad in soul
With dream and doubt of days that roll
As waves that race and find no goal
Rode on by bush and brake and bole

A northern child of earth and sea.
The pride of life before him lay
Radiant: the heavens of night and day
Shone less than shone before his way,

His ways and days to be.

And all his life of blood and breath
Sang out within him; time and death
Were even as words a dreamer saith
When sleep within him slackeneth,

And light and life and spring were one.
The steed between his knees that sprang,
The moors and woods that shone and sang,
The hours where through the spring's breath
rang,

Seemed ageless as the sun.

Along the wandering ways of Tyne,

By beech and birch and thorn that shine
And laugh when life's requickening wine
Makes night and noon and dawn divine,
And stirs in all the veins of spring,
And past the brightening banks of Tees,
He rode as one that breathes and sees
A sun more blithe, a merrier breeze,
A life that hails him king.

The King Arthur of this poem is not the piece of passionless perfection (to yield to Mr. Swinburne's own weakness) that Guinevere, in Tennyson's Idylls, found too lofty "for human nature's daily food," but is a very human character, who yields quite readily to anger and who is slow to forgive.

The very newest thing in poets is a young Japanese (recently discovered by Gelett Burgess, editor of The Lark), whose weird imaginings and riotous rhetoric have attracted the attention of literary critics. Yonehiro Noguchi is a slender lad of twenty years, with a fine, expressive face, large dark eyes and sensitive mouth; his only distinguishing Japanese characteristics being the scant eyelids,

the olive skin and the thatch of coarse black hair which typify the race. Living with Joaquin Miller, on his rocky hillside farm at Oakland, Cal., the young poet, both by environment and temperament, is a disciple of things weird and mystic. He is almost inaccessible to interviewers, and artists have tried in vain for an opportunity to sketch him. Restless, moody and sad as his own songs, he shrinks from notoriety for himself, though he is ambitious for the recog nition of his work. His favorite haunt is a rocky dell high up in a canon among the redwoods. "I like it," said hespeaking of this place, where he does most of his work-"I like it much better than down in the sunshine; down there you feel happy, but up here more sad, and you can meditate and mature. Byand-by I will build a cabin, and maybe stay up here all the time." Educated in Tokio, the lad has spent the last three years in California. He is well-read, familiar with the great English poets and fond of American work.-Critic.

Mrs. Wright's Tommy Anne is a book calculated to interest children in nature, and grown folks, too, will find themselves catching the author's enthusiasm. As for Tommy Anne herself, she is bound to

make friends wherever she is known. The more of such books as these, the better for the children. One Tommy Anne is worth a whole shelf of average juvenile literature.-The Month.

Vernon Lee's Renaissance fancies and studies is entirely on Italian art. I know there are those who do not rate Vernon Lee highly. To me she is delightful. She is often able to solve the historic question, "Why did this painter paint thus?" and the even more important question, "Ought I to admire hist painting?" or "Why do I admire it, tho' critics say I should not ? ? or ،، Why cannot I enthuse where so many have been

enthusiastic before?" Take for instance what she writes of the fascinating grace of Botticelli's ill-drawn figures. It is very acute criticism and good psychology. Or her clear and eloquent characterization of Italian Renaissance sculpture. It is admirable, and yet it justifies the title of the book, for it is full of what those who have not studied and enjoyed, and been puzzled by the charm of that marvellous sculpture will term "fancies." And I confess that in reading some of the other essays I have been inclined to say, "Very gracious fooling." But it is graceful and well worth reading.-C. A. Cutter in Library Jourual.

School and Home makes favorable mention of Mrs. Dana's Plants and their Children, recommending it as one of the best books on botany for the hands of teachers and for children above the second grade.

It also commends Morse's First Book of Zoology, saying that it describes the characters of vertebrates in an interesting.

way.

Mr Keasbey is associate professor of Political Science at Bryn-Mawr College. In a volume of six hundred pages, ninetenths of which is historical, he gives a narrative account of the various dreams, schemes, plans, expeditions, explorations and enterprises of four centuries, relating to a commercial route across the Isthmus, the only important result of which, thus far, has been the Panama Railway. This sketch includes and is in great part made up of an account of the diplomatic negotiations and treaties between the countries chiefly interested, and especially of the Clayton-Bulwer treaty. There is also a considerable collection of facts relating to the commercial aspect of the question. The Nation.

Maurice Jokai, the Hungarian novelist, poet, journalist and assayist, is now about.

seventy-seven years old, and has written. 230 volumes, mostly fiction. His versatility, imagination and invention are extraordinary. His latest novel (we think) is The Green Book, and it is not only a remarkable production for a man of his age, but seems to us actually the best of his novels which have been done into English. The subject is the Russia of 1825, and the plot is one of political and revolutionary intrigue. A pure and pretty love story is interwoven. The story never flags; the situations are often highly dramatic; there is a spice of fun; the call upon the emotions is never morbid or overstrained; there is nothing decadent and nothing stupid. The Russian poet Pushkin is the hero, and Alexander I is a leading character. Few novels of recent publication are better worth reading. Outlook.

GILBERT PARKER.

IT is perhaps not so generally known as it should be that Gilbert Parker, the young Canadian whose stories have delighted many of us since he began to be popular a few years ago, is a poet as well

as a novelist. His verses are to be seen now and again in the magazines, and a little volume of sonnets called "A Lover's

Diary" has found many readers and been through several editions. The following sonnet is among the best in the

book:

I loved my Art. I loved it when the tide
Was sweeping back my hopes upon the sand;
When I had missed the hollow of God's hand
Held over me, and there was none to guide.
I set my face towards it, raising high
My arm in token that I would be true
To all great motives, though I sorely knew
That there was one star wanting in my sky.

Touching the chords of many harmonies,
I needed one to make them all complete.
I heard it sound like thunder-gathered seas,
What time my soul knelt at my lady's feet.
And there transfigured in her light I grew
In stature to the work that poets do.