highly respectable fictional year, but scarcely of striking brilliance. Among its leading features we note, not without satisfaction, the further decline of historical

a

the moribund fashionable novel. In this connection we ought to mention Mrs. Atherton's spirited and admirable attempt to inaugurate new historical convention in "The Conqueror." We have ceased to expect work from either Mr. Meredith or Mr. Hardy, but we have the right to say that no year is complete without novels by Mr. Joseph Conrad and Mr. George Gissing. The untimely deaths of one of the most promising novelists of England and one of the most promising novelists in America-George Douglas Brown and Frank Norrishave unhappily to be recorded.

There is roystering, rollicking fun, and the true Irish humor and brogue in the account of "A Patrick Day's Hunt" for which Martin Ross furnishes the text and E. O. Somerville the illustrations. The narrative is vivacious, and the pictures,-eight of which are colored plates-are capital studies of Irish types. The volume is published as an oblong folio,-a form slightly inconvenient to hold, but giving more scope to the artist than a smalier page could have done. There is a real Irish humor; and there is a manufactured article. This is the real thing. E. P. Dutton & Co.

The author of "Laddie" and "Miss Toosey's Mission" may always count on her circle of readers for a welcome in which the warmth is almost that of personal affection. But her latest story, "Faithful," the study of a

character in which unselfishness is developed to a morbid degree-though the moral is pointed with the blending of sympathy and shrewd commou sense which marks all her work, is not up to her best level. Nor is "Ward's Cross," the second story in the volume. Little, Brown & Co.

Delicate, graceful, charming-adjectives crowd to the lips of the grateful reader who lays down the slender little green-and-white volume, "Bayou Triste," refreshed by his hour spent with the bright, young mistress of the Louisiana plantation, listening to her stories of the picturesque life about her. They are sometimes deliciously droll, their pathos never sinks to sentimentality, they are not overloaded with dialect, and they are told in a light, easy style that fits them admirably. The writer, Josephine Hamilton

Nicholls, is a welcome addition to the widening group of sympathetic interpreters of Southern life. A. S. Barnes & Co.

To his painstaking use of detail, as well as to his familiarity with his subject, B. F. Benson's stories of the Civil War owe their almost unrivalled popularity among its veterans. Minute descriptions of the dispositions of troops and their lines of march are illustrated by diagrams and maps which add greatly to the pleasure of the reader with a taste for military technicalities. The fictitious half of the narrative, too, is always ingeniously planned. In "Bayard's Courier," (The Macmillan Co.) Mr. Benson imagines twin brothers-separated from infancy and ignorant even of each other's existence-one serving with Stuart's cavalry and the other on Pleasanton's staff, and the plot turns on the confusion of identity resulting from the resemblance between them. The book will be as successful as its predecessors.

There has been perhaps sufficient discussion of the bearing of the newer religious thought of the day upon doctrine; its effect upon life and conduct has been less considered. This is the subject to which Dr. George Albert Coe addresses himself in the volume "The Religion of a Mature Mind" (Fleming H. Revell Co.) The author's familiarity with the scientific aspects of the subject does not blind him, as it seems to have blinded many, to its spiritual aspects. The religion of a mature mind which he describes finds a place for authority, for assurance, for the Divine fatherhood, for prayer, for the experimental test of religious truth, and for a personal knowledge of Christ. The terminology is not that of the old orthodoxy, but the essence of religion is here.

The period which groups three such striking figures as Richard Coeur de Leon, Saladin and the Old Man of the Mountains, is an inviting one for the writer of historical fiction, and Nevill Myers Meakin has made effective use of the material which it offers so lavishly in the story which he names "The Assassins." Its hero is a follower of the dreaded Sheikh, under vow to kill Saladin, and volunteering in the Saracen army for that purpose, and the plot turns upon the conflict between his loyalty to his Order-strengthened by his love for one of the charming houris in that mock paradise in which he has passed a season of preparation for his mission-and his growing admiration for Saladin, and horror of treachery to him. Ingeniously planned, and full of picturesque incident and detail, the story is one of the most readable of its type. Henry Holt & Co.

One of the most amusing books of the season is "The Disentanglers," (Longmans, Green & Co.) in which Andrew Lang narrates, with apologies to Sherlock Holmes, the Adventures of two clever, young Englishmen, wellborn but impecunious, who establish a confidential agency for breaking off undesirable marriages, advertising to act in behalf of "Parents, Guardians, Children and Others," and effecting the disentanglement of the amorous by the counter-fascinations of carefully-selected agents, the agents being themselves "immune" by prior attachments of their own. The filling in of this ingenious plot gives Mr. Lang opportunity for some characteristic satire on modern life and manners, the Anti-vaccinationist, the American Heiress, the Lady Lecturer and the Munificent Millionaire figuring conspicuously among the victims of his ridicule. Though united by a thread of narrative, many of the Adventures can be enjoyed in

dependently of the rest, and the volume is a capital one to take up at odd moments.

Richard Bagot's fiction has always striking qualities, and his latest novel, "Donna Diana," is by far his best. In its background, and in the more sordid types, both social and ecclesiastical, which it portrays, it recalls "A Roman Mystery," but it rises to a much higher level, whether judged by the standards of art or ethics. Donna Diana, the beautiful ward of a Roman cardinal, destined by her family to the convent, is beloved by a manly young Englishman who meets her by chance at the house of a kinsman, and her fortune, in the keeping of the Cardinal, threatens to determine her fate.

Her por

trait, though but faintly outlined, is a charming one. But the central figure is the Cardinal's, and to his picture the artist has brought real talent. As a serious study of significant conditions, Mr. Bagot must expect his book to be criticised, but as a story it is sure of success. Longmans, Green & Co.

Easily the most important contribution of the present season to the literature of criticism is Mr. Stopford Brooke's monograph on "The Poetry of Robert Browning." It is possible to quarrel with some of its opinions, and even with occasional confusions and infelicities of style, which may be partly due to the fact that the eighteen chapters of this work were first delivered as lectures. But it is impossible to deny the breadth, poise and justice of the criticism, its clear insight, its glow of sympathetic feeling or the force and brilliancy of the style. The volume suggests, in purpose and in form of construction, Mr. Brooke's earlier volume on Tennyson, and the key-note is struck in the fine chapter, comparing and contrasting Tennyson and Browning, with which the book

AWAY.

My Heart's Desire, my Treasure, our wooing time was brief,

From the misty dawns of April to the fading of the leaf,

From the first clear cuckoo calling Till the harvest gold was falling, And my store of joy was garnered with the binding of the sheaf.

There came another lover, more swift than I, more strong,

He bore away my little love in middleof her song:

Silent, ah me! his wooing,
And silent his pursuing,

Silent he stretched his arms to her whodid not tarry long.

Anna Macmanus.

A BENEDICTION.

God bless thee, Sweet, to-night!
His angels, pure and white,

Their vigil keep while thou dost sleep

In peace till morning light!

God bless thee, Sweet, I pray,

Not only one short day;

Through all thy life, in joy or strife, God keep thee safe alway!

God bless thee, hold thee fast
When earthly days are past,

O'er death's dark sea thy Pilot be,
And guide thee Home at last!
Mary Farrah, L.L.A.

Good Words.

"LOVE AS A WANDERING MINSTREL CAME."

Love as a wandering minstrel cameCame on a sweet September day; Sang to my heart in words of flame, Carolling care away.

Love as a wandering minstrel went-
Went on a dark December day;
And e'en God's sunshine seemeth.
spent

In Life's eternal gray.

Wilfrid Wilson Gibson.

Pall Mall Magazine.

Though it be a truism to say that chronological divisions have no natural relation to the human events which take place in them, it is remarkable how often an epoch of thought or art appears to us as contained within a century. The coincidence is accidental and the accident takes accent from our temptation to show the feet of human change keeping step with the beats of time. But even if there were less of truth than there is in the suggested unison, it would still be convenient to shut off within the circumscription of a cycle the events contained in it, just as we are content to let a window make a framework to a section of landscape, even if the outline of a hillside may be curtailed, one stretch of woodland severed from another, or some reach of a river made to lose its continuity with the stream. Occasionally the severance works for fragment, but as often as not it involves a composition. So it is with history, and especially perhaps with the history of art; and at all events it is certain that in isolating thus the nineteenth century for the purpose of presenting the aspect of a cycle of English poetry, we do succeed in getting something like a com

* "The Victorian Anthology." Edited by Sir M. E. Grant Duff. London: Swan, Sonnenschein & Co. 1902.

plete picture. It may be said, not unfairly, that the birth of the century was contemporaneous with that of a new poetic era, and that its close saw the exhaustion of the movement which its opening happened to inaugurate; and, with this assumption, we may hope that it will not be uninteresting to pass in review, partly for the sake of chronicle, but partly also for appreciation, the names of those who have made the chief show in verse from 1801 to 1900. We may well begin with a reflection with which we might appropriately end: the work of the period has been a redemption; from slovenliness we have risen to style; from vagueness to precision; from levity to earnestness; from triviality to high purpose; from convention to reality in feeling and thought. And, without venturing upon what would be a wide disquisition, we will content ourselves with ascribing-as to two great parent causes the birth of so happy and so vast a change to the impulse of scientific discovery, and to the purifying fires kindled by the French Revolution. The great poetic outburst which illumined our Elizabethan era, and has continued without a lull, though with much variation in volume and quality of light, ever since, came at so mature a point in the literary development of