dition to American learning. J. B. Lippincott Co.

as

Of making many books on Rome there is indeed no end, but with due deference to the Preacher, study of them does not seem to be a weariness to the flesh. Here is the first volume of Dr. Leonard A. Magnus's "Sittengeschritche Roms" published in translation "Roman Life and Manners under the Early Empire," in its seventh enlarged edition, with the second volume announced for publication early in 1909, and evidently it has not lacked readers. The City, The Court, The Three Estates, Roman Society, Means of Communication, and Touring under the Empire are the chapter heads, and under each is matter marvellously condensed. The most surprising thing about the book is the number of statements applicable to any great city of to-day, and reminding one of the Preacher's other statement,-"There is nothing new under the sun." A sympathetic strike; blocking the streets with booths; denunciations of transparent clothing for women; advertisements of quack medicine; the story of the schoolboy who "wasn't doing anything" and was recommended to take his cuffing "for next time," are yesterday's gossip, in spite of the centuries. The book deserves all its editions, and this one will probably vanish before the coming of the new volume. E. P. Dutton & Co.

1

Dr. Drake's industry has made so many of the interesting subjects of Boston history its object that the title of Miss Mary Carline Crawford's "St. Botolph's Town" by no means suggests the bulk of interesting information to be derived from its pages. In her preface, the author says that Colonial history did not interest her in her school days, because so many persons were presented only as their careers

touched New England, and hence appeared only as puppets with tiresome dates attached; and her endeavor is to show what manner of men came to the Colonies, and what was their behavior after they went thence, or while they remained. Portraits of Smith, Winthrop, Cotton, Vane, Endicott, Cromwell, who meant to come, Williams, Saltonstall, the Mathers, Andros, Stoughton, Frankland, and of Franklin in an uncommonly gracious mood, are among those which illustrate the book, and pictures of fine colonial mansions and of some humble birthplaces are set at intervals. The text is agreeably written, and the author's earlier books describing minor phases of her subject have qualified her to view it in so many aspects that the chronicle is A uncommonly well proportioned. cover emblazoned with appropriate design and a map of Boston in 1722 must be reckoned among the minor merits of a valuable book. L. C. Page & Co.

The plot of "Corrie Who?" the latest variation of the story of the changeling, seems to be quite new, but to explain its novelty is to spoil it for future readers. Given a lion-hunting old woman, with a young and pretty "paid companion" and an eccentric, timid sister forming part of her household, and let her be profoundly moved by the discovery that the companion is exploring remote regions of New York for houses of a certain type and what is to be inferred? Nothing very definite surely, and nothing is to be made of the succession of small, odd events that follow, during her search, and the reader is kept in ignorance to the last moment, for it is the illogical ignorance of a selfish woman that turns the lives of the characters aside from their natural course, and its very foolishness conceals it. The reader can see that the hero and heroine make a pretty

and a good contrast to the scheming old woman and her sister, and the dishonest uncle who links together all the persons in the little comedy, and if the youth be less active than the ordinary New Yorker, he is none the less a fine fellow. Mr. George Brehm really aids one's imagination by his beautiful portrait of the heroine, and his atrocious picture of the villain. He excels in drawing eyes that haunt one, long after one has turned the page upon them. Small, Maynard & Co.

morrow men would still visit the place beneath which lay Jacob's pillow and the spot immortalized in Addison's lovely words. The volume has five colored illustrations and a great number of photographs, all original, and sketches in the text show many a precious small bit. The chapters are so arranged that it is possible for a traveller to follow in the author's footsteps if he choose, but the real place to read him is among one's own books, for the reading will enrich a surprising number of them with marginal notes to be a delight in future days. Little, Brown & Co.

Mr. Henry C. Shelley's "Untrodden English Ways" is not to be classed with books about England written by the travelled American, but rather with those of Mr. Edward Thomas and other English journalists who, stepping a little aside from the beaten track, have shown their countrymen unsuspected beauties in their island home; but he is no imitator. They, writing for their own countrymen, have aimed at beauty of style, and at the discovery of the picturesque. He, writing for Americans, has striven to revive the memories clinging about every clod and pebble of his native earth. Mr. Kipling puts Sussex associations into story form; Mr Shelley wanders about the island, straying into a city now and then, and calls up the ghosts of their past, to tell their own tale. Keble, Keats, Dick Turpin, Cromwell, Burke, Waller, "Little Billee," Queen Mary, the beautiful Stuart of England, not the grim Tudor, Thackeray, Isaac Watts are only the beginning of the long list, of whose haunts he speaks, making each a place to be noted for future pilgrimages. His method seems preferable to that of the Englishmen who discourse on natural beauties, for a new railway or a landslip may in a moment destroy the subject of their eloquence, but the memory of humanity survives even such changes. If an earthquake whelmed Westminster to

The novel written for the bookish, although a well-defined species is so limited in number that the bookish have no difficulty in reading each one of them as it comes, and Mr. E. V. Lucas's "Over Bemerton's" is so precisely adapted to their desires that long before the year is closed they will have fallen upon it and carried it off for that searching perusal of which only they know the delights. The very title-page has a motto exciting the curiosity of the man not so bookish as he wishes he was by its credit to "Observer's Corner"; each chapter head is a delight in itself, a long, tempting sentence promising excellent things in the space beneath, but giving no clue to the course of the story and in the very first chapter one finds Bemerton, second-hand bookseller, "with the suggestion of holy George Herbert in his name." At Bemerton's, the hero, Kent Falconer, buys “A Chinese Biographical Dictionary," paying two solid English pounds for it, and acquiring sufficient unfamiliar edifying literature to amuse him for many a long day, and also three "bed books" as Mr. Bemerton calls collections of good stories, and from these the most fascinating fragments are given and also bits of the

best of all knowledge, the perfectly useless. It is from one of these books that Kent learns that Philip Melancthon was brother to the great grandmother of Nicholas Mercator, maker of the maps that look as if they had gone under a garden roller. Also he reads of him who wrote "Farewell rewards and fairies" quoted again and again in Puck of Pook's Hill. It was Bishop Corbet of Oxford and Norwich and he wrote it in 1612, Pocahontas's year to the good American. While Kent is reading and occasionally tra velling, and pleasantly wasting his days he is unconsciously, but very evidently to the reader, playing the part of lover in a pretty little drama and when he is made aware of his state, the book ends with the quaintest chapter in modern fiction. This is not a story to take from a circulating library. It is a book to keep and read; perhaps even to use as a bed book when many readings have made it familiar. The Macmil. lan Co.

In Mr. Gordon Home's opinion, the Riviera is not properly appreciated by Englishmen, inasmuch as it is their habit to neglect everything East of Alassio, and in his "Along the Rivieras of France and Italy" he describes all the places along the coast from Marseilles to Pisa, omitting only a few towns near Genoa, made uninteresting by factories. Dividing his three hun. dred octavo pages into three sections, The Côte D'Azur, The Italian Riviera di Polente, and the Italian Riviera di Levante, he selects the most interesting parts of the history of each and

the most attractive legends, but chooses the subjects for his paintings and sketches chiefly with reference to their natural beauty, and even in his views of noble buildings or picturesque towns, subordinating their man-made attractiveness to wide sweeps of land

scape. He is careful, almost at the outset, to remind the reader that the sunshine is not always brilliant on the Rivieras and that there are days in which the prevalent grayness is duller than any effect to be found on Scottish shores, and thus he prevents the disappointment that might fall upon travellers unwarned that there are exceptions to the brilliant coloring of his pictures, of which twentyfive are reproduced in color, an equal number of text pictures in black and white showing places and objects of minor importance.

This volume is the first of a new series intended to perform the same office for countries and districts which the "Medieval Towns" series has performed for cities, and will be followed later by others describing Greece, Palestine and Egypt. The second volume issued almost simultaneously with the first, is entitled "Venetia and Northern Italy," and is written by Mr. Cecil Headlam, to whom Mr. Home dedicates his own book. The pictures in the second volume are his but nearly all the subjects are architectural or urban, and their subjects were evidently chosen by Mr. Headlam. The covered bridge at Pisa; the Ponte Lungo and the Towers at Bologna; Milan Cathedral; St. Mark's, Venice and the Piazza dei Cavalli, Piacenza; San Marino and the Campanile and Baptistry at Parma are among the pictures. Mr. Headlam, struck by the strong individuality of the Northern Italian cities has described a large number in the text, considerably abbreviating the space used by Mr. Home for each one, but not omitting the romantic stories of the Visconti, the Sforza and similar worthies, or the great artists to whom Italy owes so much, and his book, although diverse, harmonizes well with his friend's. The Macmillan Co.