common indulgence calling for nothing but an easy chair. Morley's advice always to read with a pen in your hand, which would have been the better if it had referred to the margin instead of to a note-book, falls on barren soil. The exertion of plain reading is enough, and there is no time for making notes. Strangely too there is a prejudice against an occupied margin. Most readers want the whole book to themselves and deal impatiently with any casual acquaintance they may make. It is difficult to understand this. Reading is a cold and lonely business without some marginal companion.

Dr. William Morton Payne's little monograph on "Björnstjerne Björnson," (A. C. McClurg & Co.) was written substantially as now published, eight years ago, as a tribute to the great Norwe gian upon his seventieth birthday. It is a thoughtful and well-considered survey of Björnson's life and writings, to which the recent death of the subject lends especial interest and timeliness.

The "Modernist" who writes "Letters to His Holiness, Pope Pius X" (The Open Court Publishing Co.) does not disclose his identity, possibly for prudential reasons; but there seems to be no reason to doubt that he is what he professes to be, a priest of the Catholic church, who is out of accord with that church not only in matters of administration and discipline but in graver matters of faith. He has accepted many of the conclusions of the more radical higher critics of the Scriptures, and his utterances are those not merely of criticism but of revolt.

The new edition of "The Woman Who Spends," by Bertha June Richardson Lucas, with its introduction by Ellen H. Richards, is an uncommonly attractive, readable and helpful little book. Mrs. Lucas writes in a thoroughly modern spirit, with frequent references to economics, biology and sociology, and with a blending of abstract and concrete that is both forcible and persuasive. To the original chapters on Sight and Vision, Vital Needs, Imitation versus Independence, Choice, Satisfaction and Responsibility, the present volume adds a piquant seventh-"How"-in which the writer pleads, with amusing personal reminiscences, for the use of the daily account book. Whitcomb and Barrows, Bos

ton.

"The Meddlings of Eve" as related by Mr. W. J. Hopkins relate the love stories of three young women to whom not only Eve but Adam act as guardian angels. The author's careful simplicity and charming humor give the book

For some reason American and English travellers in Spain always make their books exegetical; simple admiration suffices for some countries, discriminating praise for others, horrified comment for others, but Spain must be explained, and so many have been the explanations that any reader may find one to please him. The special merit of the explanation given by Mr. C. Bogue Luffmann in his "Quiet Days in Spain" is that it is given after the second of two prolonged journeys separated by an interval of fourteen years spent in Australia, and is therefore not the work of a novice, nor yet of a world-weary creature desirous of finding an outpost of Paris at every turn in the road. Mr. Luffmann might furnish Mr. Howells with the background for a Spanish novel, so closely does he confine his attention to the simply living classes, the unlearned, the untitled, the classes to which nothing uncommon happens, to which Spain is the world, and their own province or possibly their own village the inhabitants of the world. Vineyard laborers toiling for their rations and microscopic pay, and begging to be put on half or quarter rations in order to take home what they save; keepers of lodgings; servants; shopkeepers; market-folk; peasants; a casual priest are the personages he brings forward. One gentlewoman and her household, and the employer of the

vineyard laborers he does indeed exhibit, but chiefly for the sake of showing their humbler attendants. It is the frugality; the industry; the uprightness; the sense of honor; the contentment of the Spaniard; his honesty; his careful respect for his own standards of courtesy; his benevolence upon which Mr. Luffmann dwells and in contemplating him and contrasting him and the modern man unfortunately born ouside of Spain, eager for money, afraid of poverty, enslaved by custom, unsupported by conviction of his own merit, he becomes wroth with the world in general. But in the process he brings Spain very near to one's imagination, nearer than those who discourse of her past as the key to her present, or dwell entirely on her religion and politics. Poor, proud. and honorable is his explanation of Spain. E. P. Dutton & Co.

Poe's account of the writing of "The Raven" with its statement of the principles upon which any one may write something similar is not seriously accepted either by the critic or by the psychologist, although its interest as showing what Poe chose to present as his belief is undeniable; and there is danger that Mr. Hudson Maxim's "The Science of Poetry and the Philosophy of Language" will be no more seriously regarded. Making it a heavy octavo protects it from indolent triflers who read for pastime only, but the roots of the belief that the production of poetry is not a matter controlled by the will spread so wide that even the serious and well informed may doubt Mr. Maxim's perfect good faith. His preface should remove such doubt. He conceives that man may resolve into its original elements any construction made by man and reassemble those ele ments at will, and he uses the latest psychological discoveries and analyses to account for the elements styled inspirational by poets ignorant of the

connection between their five senses and their mental apparatus; and produces an unbroken succession of links between the wish to write poetry and the production of a literary tissue resembling it. He invents more than one useful literary term which it is to be hoped may escape the deadly misuse of the newspaper humorists, and incidentally he utters so much common sense and expresses so much originality in a manner so original that it is also to be hoped that his work may be read and considered by all truly interested in his subject. Funk & Wagnalls.

The figure of a scholar or a man of affairs not firmly secured in some treadmill upon which searchlight and camera may be turned at will so displeases the Elijahpograms and the Young Columbians, and their disapproval is so varied in its manifestations, and so blatant, that it is hard to determine exactly what the great body of the proletariat think of figures as unfamiliarly placed as Dr. Eliot and Mr. Roosevelt, but in regard to the former responsible citizens of all classes are at one in their thankfulness for any expression of his opinion which may come to them. Even if their theological prejudices oppose his, they are more than willing to listen to the results of his long experience and trained judgment, and the five essays contained in "The Durable Satisfactions of Life" will find eager and gratified readers. "The Religion of the Future," set last in the volume, is familiar; the address giving its title to the book was given to the students who entered Harvard five years ago; "The Happy Life" was read before Phillips-Exeter Academy but has since been rewritten; "John Gilley," a biography of a Maine farmer and fisherman, was a magazine article, and "Great Riches" is a little collection of thoughts to fortify the mind

against envy. Thomas Y. Crowell & Co.

There are ten papers in Professor William P. Trent's "Longfellow and Other Essays," those entitled "Longfellow," "Thoughts Occasioned by the Bi-Centenary of Dr. Johnson" and "The Tartarin Books and their Author" occupying about half the volume, and "Milton after Three Hundred Years" dealing with the poet whom Professor Trent says has for years meant more to him personally than any other man or writer has ever meant. This declaration taken by itself would serve to rereal its author as exceptional among Americans of his years, which do not yet number fifty, and the preferences indicated by the three other papers mentioned show a catholicity of spirit less common than most Americans like to believe. "The Heart of Midlothian" should please all Scott lovers, and "Thackeray's Verses" and "The Centenary of Poe" are delightfully sympathetic. "A Talk to Would-Be Teachers," the only paper not strictly literary in its scope, is such an address as the "would-be's" will seldom hear after they become actual teachers and, for their sins, hear superintendents "speak" at conventions. It exhorts the teacher to neglect no opportunity for creative work and not to forget that knowledge has responsibilities towards all phases of ignorance, and gives him a good retort for "Vox populi, Vox Dei," always a valuable possession. Thomas Y. Crowell & Co.

Under the title "Christianity and the Nations." Mr. Robert E. Speer, secretary of the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian church in the United States, groups the six lectures which he delivered early in the present year, on the Duff foundation, at Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen. These lectures, as the author

briefly outlines their scope in his preface, treat first, of the missionary duty and motives, second, the missionary aims and methods, third, the three great sets of problems involved in the relations of missions to the new na tional churches which they found, to politics and to the non-Christian religions, and lastly, of the relation of the missionary movement to the attainment of the hope of a united church and a united humanity. Mr. Speer is in no doubt as to the chief aim of missionary activity,-it is to make Christ personally known to the individual and personally accepted by him as a Saviour.

These lectures are written out of an unusually full experience, a wide range of observation and familiarity with missionary administration. They are earnest and helpful, sane and sensible, and there is something contagious in the enthusiasm which pervades them and which is fully in accord with the spirit of the student volunteers' movement, and the great international and interdenominational missionary conference recently held at Edinburgh. The Fleming H. Revell Co., publishers.

The publication of a seventh volume of Mr. J. N. Larned's "History for Ready Reference and Topical Reading" (Charles A. Nichols Co., Springfield, publishers) is an event of no ordinary interest. This supplementary volume, complete in itself, yet closely related to the original work, covers the last decade, from 1901 to 1910. a decade which has been crowded with important events in the world's history. Eight hundred large and closely printed pages are devoted to the record of these ten years, the material, as in the case of the original work and the earlier supplementary volume, being gathered

from the most authoritative sources. Especial attention is given to the great public questions now pressing

for solution: the reader who seeks information regarding the so-called "Trusts" will find it in the more than twenty pages which describe industrial and commercial combinations in this and other countries and the attempts to regulate them; the management of railways and their regulation by national and state legislation form a chapter of nearly equal length; forty pages are taken up with the subjects of labor organization, labor protection and labor remuneration; the preparation for war and the revolt against war fill thirtyfive pages with an invaluable summary of acts and discussion; and the treatment of such questions as municipal government, poverty under the law, race problems, crime and criminology and recent science and invention is equally comprehensive. The story of the great events of the decade,-the war between Russia and Japan, the establishment of a constitution and parliament in Russia, the political struggles in Great Britain, the separation of church and state in France, the revolutions in Turkey and Persia, the beginnings of constitutional government in China, the constitutional union of British South Africa and other epochmaking events is fully and picturesquely told. An entirely new feature of this volume is the addition of an appendix containing more than fifty comprehensive courses of historical study, so arranged that a reader may follow a subject intelligently through all the seven volumes and master it completely from beginning to end. Possessors of the earlier volumes of the work will need no suggestion as to the wisdom of placing this supplementary volume on their shelves; but it may be hoped that the surpassing interest and value of this volume may lead to the acquisition of the entire work by many readers and students not before. familiar with its scope.