his book would give a child lover of flowers and plants the best of training and suggest to him as much work as would suffice for a life time. The author's two earlier books make a full equipment for the outdoor gardener: if also provided with this, the plant lover need ask no addition to her library. J. B. Lippincott Company.

Mr. Edward A. Steiner's "The Immigrant Tide, its Ebb and Flow," is not absolutely unique in its spirit, but its author belongs to a very small group, the men who are defending the undesirable immigrant against those unable to see that his wish to enter this country is equivalent to the right to enter in and dwell here. Without attempt ing to decide which of the disputants is in the right, it is good to note that when Mr. Steiner journeys with the immigrants he ministers tenderly to them, especially to the children and that he gave himself and his time most lavishly to the two tasks undertaken by him, in writing this book, that of showing how the returned immigrant affects his people, and that of interpreting the relation and attitude of the various races towards our institutions and their influence upon them. To this end he has travelled much in Southern and South Eastern Europe and he has associated familiarly with the immigrant in this country and with his American contemners, and he detects many a flaw in the accusations brought against the new comer. His book lacks method and is less effective than it would be if properly arranged, but it is worth the study of all Americans and especially of the perfectly self-satisfied. Fleming H. Revell & Co.

Among conservative theologians of to-day no one, perhaps, holds a higher place than Dr. James Orr of Glasgow. His discussion of "The Problem of the Old Testament considered with refer

ence to Recent Criticism," published two or three years ago, is much the keenest and most convincing reply to the more radical of the higher critics which has appeared; and his later work "The Bible Under Trial," although less consecutive and comprehensive, was marked by the same acumen and the same occasional flavor of Scotch humor. His latest book, "Side-Lights on Christian Doctrine" (A. C. Armstrong & Son), contains a series of addresses given at various Bible schools and conferences in this country on the author's visit two years ago. They are studies of the gravest and most fundamental theological questions,-the names and attributes of God, the Trinity of God, creation and Providence, man and sin, Christ and salvation, the Spirit in salvation, and eternity and its issues. These are treated from the conservative point of view with admirable force and lucidity and with a strength of personal conviction which gives them a strong appeal.

The six little plays which Miss Beulah Marie Dix includes in her pretty volume entitled "Alison's Lad" are matter to bring a believer in the New Drama and the Destiny of the New Dramatist to despair. The painfully misunderstood wives, the husbands with birds of prey gnawing at their hearts, the parents who eye their offspring askance are mercifully absent; so is the crawling, dragging, trailing action that would take forty years to put a girdle around a flour barrel. Instead one has groups of soldiers almost face to face with death but looking him bravely in the eyes, two or three good villains and six well-constructed little plots. Moreover the end of none of the plays is revealed until the last word is spoken, and the stage effect would be excellent. The dialogue is conducted in phrases musical when necessary but as a rule terse and effective. The au

thor says that the plays are not too difficult for amateurs; she might have added that they give sufficient opportunities for the genius of the most highly endowed and long practised actors. Henry Holt & Co.

Mr. George Edward Woodberry's eight lectures on "Poetic Energy," delivered before the Lowell Institute, Boston, in 1906, were among the chief literary events of the winter, but discourses of the sort to which they belong are not truly or properly appreciated by the ear. The smooth flow of the English; the good logic of the argument; the definite nature of the characterization in the six discourses on individual authors could indeed be perceived but it is by reading, not by listening, that one discerns the value of these perfectly independent pieces of criticism. Published in book form, the lectures are entitled "The Inspiration of Poetry," the first is called "Poetic Madness," and the last, "Inspiration." The authors separately criticized are Marlowe, Camoens, Byron, Gray, Tasso and Lucretius, a company in which the bond of union seems to be that passages of their works so strikingly exhibit the quality of inspiration, the mysterious possession temporarily exalting a poet above himself, that it is discernible even to persons quite devoid of critical ability. Examination will show that the group has been selected with great shrewdness, and an attempt to find six more ilustrative of inspiration will probably end in failure. The effect of the eight lectures is that of perfect unity. The Macmillan Company.

To know in precisely what words an observer describes him to a third person is a privilege unsought by the modest wise man, but he may receive something resembling it from the American edition of the lectures delivered in

France on the Hyde foundation. The latest published course, that delivered in 1908-1909 by Professor Henry Van Dyke, appears as "The Spirit of America." There is no kinship between "The Spirit of America," and Mr. Rudyard Kipling's "The American Spirit," and yet both are real; the Englishman sees the working power of the race; the American sees the truly directing power, often invisible but always potent, and he perceives its ancestry and its growth. A little space he gives to the droll mutual misapprehension of America and Europe, and then describes and defines the soul of the American people. The titles of the following discourses are Self Reliance and the Republic, Fair Play and Democracy, Will Power, Work and Wealth, Common Order and Social Co-operation, Personal Development and Education, Self Expression and Literature and in their pages there is nothing droll, nothing frivolous, and nothing even superficially ill-natured. The truth is that in selecting Dr. Van Dyke to deliver this course of lectures, Harvard chose a specimen of that rare type, the gentle American. He is influential because he is gentle; and for the same reason he understands and he tells the truth. There may be stronger men in the college faculties, but there is none more trusted by the country in general. France it is to be hoped accepted his statements as proved. His own countrymen should study them thoroughly. The Macmillan Company.

If any survive of those who refused to see any great advance in art or morality in Bret Harte's introduction of the lost woman into American fiction, they must wonder at the changes wrought by forty years. Now, when such a woman appears in the novel or short story of the West, her chance of marrying the hero is rather better than that of a blameless heroine if the latter be tactless, or rigid in her theories of

life, and this is true even if the hero be an honest man, and except in his matrimonial ideals a gentleman, as Mr. Rex Beach's "The Silver Horde" bears witness. When, as in Mr. Charles Tenney Jackson's "The Day of Souls," the hero is a gambler, a man capable of every species of dishonesty in ward politics, a man whose daily life blends extravagant expenditure with incredible sordidness in details, the event does not shock, but seems entirely natural. Neither man nor woman being fit for matrimony in the estimation of any Christian church, or in the opinion of any sociologist or psychologist, their marriage is less to be regretted than the alliance of either one with a decent person, although dangerous to the State both as giving a bad example, and as affording the possibility of producing degenerate offspring. Granting this tendency to emphasize all physical unpleasantness, the reader with no taste for unvarnished ugliness can but wonder why the book was written, and must marvel at the author's evident satisfaction with the man and woman whom he leaves on the brink of marriage. He puts forward this pair as representing San Francisco and all America, a theory not likely to be found agreeable by either. It is one thing to be merciful to a repentant sinner; it is quite another to worship her or to make her the object of respectful admiration. Bobbs-Merrill Co.

According to the American theorizer in child management, according to the American teacher and the American novelist the average American parent suffers from general atrophy often localized in the spinal vertebræ. With juvenile courts, curfews, probation visitors, public playgrounds, the American flag, sand-heaps, kindergarteners, supplementary reading, a daily meal provided by the city,

the police, educational centres, free medical advice and nursing, the abolition of corporal punishment, the introduction of free rides, and fire drills, all assembled to aid him, he is unable to keep one small child in decent, respectful subjection, much less to instruct him in proper behavior, least of all to make him a good citizen. For this cause do all manner of clubs hold meetings, whereat wondrous papers are read, and for this cause is a book like Mrs. Josephine Daskam Bacon's "The Biography of a Boy" written. The meetings are comically dull; the book is comically clever, and true to life-to the life of the American father and mother who try to be all things to all men, and leave their children to be governed by everybody but themselves. Mrs. Bacon's stories of children have shown that her eyes are open to the absurdity of certain phases of modern pedagogy: "The Biography of a Boy" shows her acquaintance with certain current absurdities of parental behavior. The "Boy's" mother practices farming and stock-breeding; is interested in civic matters; thinks of everything but her son who thinks for himself, waxes insolent and entirely insubordinate and is left under the influence of a boy's camp, which is expected to fit him for a school kept by a man who can govern boys. It must not be thought that the mother is anything but well-intentioned, and she is superficially agreeable in spite of her maternal inefficiency; or that the boy is any more objectionable than any living creature untaught in obedience and self-sacrifice must be. His elders have never granted him his sacred right to the benefit of their experience; he cannot learn the world by himself and so the boys' camp and the boarding school for him! His story is both interesting and profitable. Harper & Brothers.

GRANDMOTHER'S GARDEN.

Over the mountains and over the sea, In the land where we never again shall be,

There lieth a garden of long ago, Where children played that we used to

know.

There is no magic of brush or peu

Can picture the wonders we met with then,

When we left in the town our schoolbook lore,

In Grandmother's Garden to stand once more.

The roses we plucked to our hearts' content

But they died to our wistful wonderment!

And the prim box-borders that smelt

So sweet

When crushed by our wandering childish feet!

And the hedge of beech that walled us in,

With the bit near the house that was all worn thin,

Where Grandfather stood to smoke at night

With a friend in his garden out of sight.

Grandmother's Garden! Can't you see, Right in the middle, the cherry-tree, With the cherries hanging, big and red?

But the blackbirds had first bite, we said!

And the bough where we sat when tired of play,

With a book on our knees and our thoughts away,

Past the sheltering hills, to the wide,

wide sea,

Till Grandmother called us back-to

tea?

Grandmother's Garden! Yesterday

I stood in a southern garden gay, Where on smooth lawns went stately by

Proud peacocks with their strident

cry;

Where the sun blazed down on the fruit-trees tall

THE COMBATANTS.

Just in the shade of the arena's gate, They trooped and paused; and to the ranks of eyes

That questioned ere they drove them on to fate,

Steel-swift, steel-steady, did their answers rise

"I fight to break the tyranny I hate!" "I come to tear the veil from ancient lies!"

"I seize the odds! Let others share the prize!"

"I fail, that some may conquer, soon or late!"

But one who bore, within that radiant line,

A look as cool as joy, as firm as pain, And touched his sword, as some rapt village swain

Touches the cup that holds his wedding-wine,

Spoke not, until they urged: "What aim is thine?"

"I fight, that none may ever fight again !" G. M. Hort.

The Nation.