His philosophy is chiefly to be found in his poetry, and that poetry is not for the hasty reader. Something of the obscurity of his prose style crept into his verse, and his pipe did not bear long "the happy country tone" of "Love in the Valley." Yet no work of our day so amply repays study. His lines are surcharged with thought, often subtle and difficult thought, but there are many moments when the close argument ceases and the pure poetic magic takes its place. The first article in Mr. Meredith's philosophy is that the world is ruled by law. In that wonderful sonnet, "Lucifer in Starlight," he glorifies "the army of unalterable law" in the spirit of Milton. Cowards and weaklings must pay the price and suffer, for life is not a thing given but a thing to be won. Nature is careless of us and our ways unless we are of use to her. Others in our generation have held this doctrine, but too often they have fallen, like Mr. Hardy in his Dynasts, into a barren fatalism. But Mr. Meredith is an optimist, and believes that the universe is on the side of man's moral strivings. He believes in the regeneration of the world by man, and in the high destiny of humanity. In one of his most famous sonnets he compares the world to a drunken peasant staggering home from the inn to his cottage light, making wide circuits, but always getting nearer. Our line of advance is spiral, he says: we go wildly roundabout, but we are always getting upwards, and though we seem to be still in the same spot, the level is higher. But the first condition of progress is that we accept the earth and do not beat our wings in the void. We must clear our eyes and see ourselves as we are, kin both to the brutes and to the stars. Mr. George Trevelyan in his admirable study of Mr. Meredith's poetry has pointed out that whenever an unknown "she" is apostrophized, we may take this as meaning Mother

Earth. This conception is the key of his philosophy. It is the world which God made and which His laws govern; man is a part of it, and, as such, subject to natural laws, but he is also the key of the whole. He is close to the beasts and the wild things of Nature, and if he forgets his kinship he will become a vain dreamer. Mr. Meredith would have us always keep in mind the pit whence we were digged, and love the common earth as our mother, for it is only by the path of our common humanity that we can rise to higher things. Melampus, the wise physician, goes through the world healing men, and his power of healing comes just from his kinship to Nature, his

Simple love of the things That glide in grasses and rubble of woody wreck.

Here is an optimism of the old heroic kind. The world must be faced in all its grimness, for it is part of us, and we cannot escape. But we can make its alienness friendly, and transform its harshness by our love. Its inexorable laws become perfect freedom to those who understand its service. He calls upon mankind to give up tinsel gods and the whole kingdom of makebelieve, to come into the fresh air and see things as they are, since the only optimism worth having is that which is more frank and merciless than any pessimism. "Neither shall they say, Lo here! or lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you." The common earth, this rough, intractable, savage place, is the only soil on which we can build Jerusalem. Such a creed is too natural for naturalism, too spiritual for asceticism. It blinks nothing. and yet hopes and believes all things. To-day, when the fashionable philosophy of life is one of thin sentiment. when men tend to strip morality of rigor, and dally idly with weakness and revolt, it is impossible to overpraise

every note in it from April bird-song to the thunderous dirge of the sea. One remembers his magical landscapes (for no novelist has ever had greater power of reproducing the atmosphere of a scene), his Alpine glens and pastures, his English meadows in high summer, his spring woodlands, his sea pictures, and a thousand sketches of town and country. One remembers his interest in every phase of the human comedy, whether it were sport, or politics, or boyish escapades, or old wine, or sound scholarship or the generous dreams of youth. Above all one remembers that gallery of figures, most of whom are now part of our national heritage. Mr. Meredith has drawn every type of English man and woman and boy and girl, so that his novels are like the "Canterbury Tales," the true history of an age. We can only say of him, as Dryden said of Chaucer, "Here is God's plenty."

Mr. Valerian Paget's translation of "The Revelation to the Monk of Evesham Abbey" is the first to be made although the Revelation was published in 1196. The Monk lay insensible two days and two nights and awoke to weep his fate in returning to earthly life after seeing Purgatory and Paradise. His description of both is vivid and so direct that the purgatorial horrors are much too impressive for comfort, even to-day. Those who fancy that the Calvinists originally discovered the subject of pains and penalties after death, will find that the Monk not only forestalled them, but set a standard of painful writing to which they never attained. The only existing copy of the original is in the British Museum and has been the subject of elaborate discussion and comment by Professor Ar

ber, whom Mr. Paget quotes at length. The translation is entirely free both from archaisms and from words distorted for the moment by current misuse, and as it helps the ear to realize a vision of the Monk, so do the type and decoration of the book bring his time before the eye, for, although they are not precisely those of the first books ever printed in English they are not of the present day. There are still pious souls who will take comfort in the book, but its value as a literary and historical monument is its strongest claim to attention. It should on no account be put into the hands of a nervous person or of a timid Christian. The men of the twelfth century were stronger in body, or weaker in imagination than their sensitive sons. The John McBride Co., New York.

Some forty years ago Mr. James Parton wrote an Atlantic article on Chicago and came near terrifying many of his readers by his account of the swift changes by which the city had grown from huts on the bare prairie into a hive of industries old and new, a home for an ambitious independent people, indifferent to the East; persuaded that the world was theirs for the taking, and that they knew how to take it. The reality of to-day makes even the predictions of the enthusiastic Parton seem poor and dull, and the chronicle of its growth may be found in "The Story of the Great Lakes," by Professor Edward Channing and Marion F. Lansing. With it are scores of other chronicles all as remarkable, beginning in the days when the plumed soldiers of France and the black-gowned Jesuits came to the Laurentian region; rehearsing the story told at length by Parkman; and then plunging into the fairy tale of mines, forests, cattle, grain, all the natural, cultivated, and manufactured sources whence have come the lake cities. The chapters on canals and on lake shipping are equally amazing, although free from any touch of exaggeration. The authors have the rare ability to show the fine side of mere magnitude, a quality too often vulgarized by injudicious boasters unable to express the manner in which it affects them. This book, besides its value as a piece of genuine literature, will be the greatest of aids to teachers and parents, and the teacher who insists upon having it in the school library, the father who buys it for his bright boy, will accomplish a good work. The Macmillan Co.

When Dr. Dio Lewis opened his gymnasium classes for women some fortyfive years ago, even he hardly foresaw the present state of affairs, and both the parents and the pupils of his time

would have been shocked at the thought of team work. To-day, athletics for women are a matter of course, and the only open questions are methods and motives. "Athletic Games in the Education of women," by Miss Gertrude Dudley and Miss Frances A. Kellor is an effort to show wherein sports are wastefully used, and wherein they are improperly used, and how conditions may be improved. Miss Dudley has had long experience in teaching; Miss Kellor wide knowledge of the effects resultant from learning various subjects, and their book is valuable. The conservative parent and teacher will be surprised to find the authors in accord with him, both in disapproval of what he calls tomboyishness and in their insistence upon the value of quiet demeanor not only in shaping the pupil's mind, but also in adding to the efficiency of a team, and to the spectacular beauty of a game. The first "Part" of the three composing the book is entitled "Value of Athletic Games." and its opening chapter affords excellent reading for girls in colleges and high schools. In the second part, Athletics in Secondary Schools, in Universities, and in political and social organizations are considered and also competitive and public games. The authors favor the English treatment of the subject, rather than that which until lately had entire possession of the field in the United States, but is now disputed. In Part Three, basket ball, baseball, and hockey are discussed in detail, and a chapter is given to general training and contests, and thus the entire field is covered. The book will both interest and benefit girl-students and the members of associations and clubs, although meant rather for instructors and guardians, and will long be counted among the beneficial forces in the education of women. Henry Holt & Co.