sparkle seemed to revel in dull women; most of us would have politely concealed a yawn during a long conversation with the beautiful Mrs. Vesey, and hardly proved polite enough completely to conceal the same involuntary tendency if we had to endure much of the society of that most loved Eliza Draper.

Still Sterne never was really in love with any of them, for he only trifled with love. He was a born sentimentalist, and to him literature owes alike the type and the word. It was over sentiment that he could wax enthusiastic, and it was his sentimentalism that provided the subjective aspect of the man and the writer. He gave us characters that will be immortal so long as literature exists: Uncle Toby, the Widow Wadman, Le Fèvre, Corporal Trim, the innkeeper's daughter, the lady at the door of the Remise --all these will be remembered, and will be read as companions to the more John Bullish creations of Henry Fielding. And yet it is not so much who Sterne depicts as what he feels about his characters that provides the elfish interest. He plays with them, moralizes over them, has just the spice of the preacher to give body to the meanderings of the sentimentalist, and withal he serves up the literary dish flavored with the flavor of his own individuality; and so we see how he is

The Outlook.

the literary stepfather of R. L. Stevenson, and how Thackeray, Carlyle, Meredith, and a host of lesser men have trod on the winding path of which he was the pioneer.

The indelicacy of Sterne is the only eroticism, except that of Shakespeare, tolerated by English moralists. The saving grace of humor it is that makes them alike innocuous. No one was ever led astray by any passage in Shakespeare; no one seriously heeds any of the Ariel-like triflings with naughtiness of Sterne. That Sterne's mind may have been worse than his pen is possible, but his impropriety is not full-blooded enough to raise 21 blush; whereas his pathos is far more effective than that of Dickens, even though it occasionally lapses into mawkish effeminacy. Mr. Sichel has cleverly handled the elusiveness of everything connected with his curious hero. Sterne is unique, a creature of contrasts, a man who took nothing seriously, least of all himself, though he always meant well and had genuine paternal affection for his dowdy daughter. It is appropriate that there should not be a dull page in the appreciation of the least dull writer of any epoch. Alone among the books of this spring, Mr. Sichel's Sterne has claims to be regarded as literature.

W. L. M.

Mr. Robert Russell Benedict's "The Mystery of Hamlet" is written with the excellent motive of discovering the best and highest elements and motives in the most discussed character in Shakespearean drama, and if it disclose nothing definite, it at least stimulates meditation on a worthy subject and reviews a great number of varied opinions of its phases, and this is much to accom

plish at a moment when the world is mostly desirous to be excused from meditating at all. Both the critical and the summarizing passages of the ten papers composing the volume are written with care and elegance. J. B. Lippincott Company.

Interest in missionary work can scarcely be upon the decline when

is the remarkable record of the series of volumes issued by the Central Committee on the United Study of Missions, and published by the Macmillan Company. The latest volume in the series "Western Women in Eastern Lands," by Helen Barrett Montgomery, is an outline study of woman's work in foreign missions for the last fifty years. It is a rapid and vivid sketch not only of what has been accomplished in foreign missionary fields, but of the changes which have been brought about coincidently in the sphere and activities of women in this country.

Fenwick's

Miss Frances De Wolf "The Arch Satirist" is a story enlightening to the man who fondly supposes that women judge women by men's rules, or that women treat one another according to men's precepts. It exhib its a heroine altogether admirable except in a determination to sacrifice herself to her utterly worthless stepbrother; and a clear-eyed, coldhearted student of humanity who, having placed herself advantageously by a well-considered marriage, extracts whatsoever she desires not only from her husband. but from the world in general by seeking it judiciously, and is altogether comfortable and, as she understands the word, happy.

These two are friends and allies, and over against them the author sets two cattish women, a domestic pussy and a lynx, both evidently studied from life, and the men of the tale, the honest girl's lover, the husband of the clever woman, the step-brother, a rich man who loves the girl, and another desirable husband, are sore bewildered. The ending is happy but it is preceded by an exciting chain of events, and throughout the story the conversations

are remarkably good, not too literary for probability but witty and animated, and intensely American in manner but couched in good idiomatic English. Lothrop, Lee and Shepard Co.

Mr. Aaron Martin Crane's "A Search after Ultimate Truth" is a serious work, so highly condensed that it must be read slowly, and including so many veins of thought that the simply religious, the theologian, the psychologist and the metaphysician are almost equally interested in its study. It has no connection with his "Right and Wrong Thinking" but those who know that excellent book will be glad to find in its successor the same clearness of style, and the same methodical arrangement of thought. The book may almost be called a life work, for it has occupied the author for many years and he has submitted all thought, interesting and valuable to him to the touchstone of its inherent portion of the divine perfection, not contenting himself until each item has been brought into harmonious relations with the whole. In Part Seventh which summarizes and applies everything preceding it, the reader in haste may find the substance of the book, but having read it he will hardly be content until he has scanned the foregoing pages. This will be no task for a day or a week and the book will probably be slow in coming to its own. It should be understood that it is purely Christian in intention, offering no substitutes for the Bible and the church, and is not to be confused with any of the ordinary works offered to a generation seeking after a sign. Lothrop, Lee and Shepard Co.

In Miss Josephine Tozier's "Susan in Sicily" the novel almost conceals the guide book which is the foundation of all the volumes of the "Little Pilgrimage Series" and yet the reader will find

himself the richer by a mass of varied information after he has completed its perusal, for Susan not only reveals her charming self in her letters but displays many a view of Sicily as seen by the owner of a "Tessera," a species of glorified railway ticket which saves seventy per cent. of the regular fare. An Irishman would be tempted to buy three and to make ten per cent. profit but Susan's aunt is moderate in her economies and takes but one of these valuable passports for her niece who sees Syracuse, Taormina, Girgenti, Messina, Palermo and unnumbered things in the included spaces, enjoying uncommon opportunities to mingle in Italian family life and equally sympathizing with the natives and with her fellow travellers, English and American. The description of the earthquake and the subsequent horrors is left to an Italian pen, which relates it with great simplicity and yet impressively sets forth the unique state of mind produced by the instantaneous ruin of the city and the death of thousands of its people. The two photographs illustrating the chapter devoted to this subject, are among the best produced and the other pictures are happily chosen, and even in the great flock of descriptive books produced since the earthquake, "Susan in Sicily" will remain in the mind as eminently clever and valuable to ordinary readers. is not meant for scholars or explorers but for those desirous of a clear vision of a beautiful and interesting land. L. C. Page & Co.

It

Mr. Ray Stannard Baker's "The Spiritual Unrest" was written partly to collect the evidence for Professor William James's statement that "a wave of religious activity analogous in some respects to the spread of early Christianity, Buddhism and Mohammedism is passing over our American world,"

and with due allowance given to the phrase "in some respects" it will be found to contain such evidence. It is noteworthy however that neither Buddhism nor Mohammedism has been diffused by men manifesting their faith by declaring that its authorized expounders did not understand it and that they themselves were making some valuable additions to its theory and some efficacious measures to its policy. One of the disciples did indeed suggest that Our Lord's treatment of the world was not in accordance with the highest principles as they appeared to the disciple, but painful circumstances prevented him from becoming an apostle, and diffusing his doctrine of the superiority of almsgiving to manifestations of reverence to God. The real "wave" seems to those within the church, whether clerical or lay, to be the appearance of books and sermons staunchly orthodox in every way, and the movements conducted by men too busy in manifesting their belief to seek or desire aid to understand it at the hands of those who partly reject it. Mr. Baker considers the case of Trinity Church in a spirit oddly akin to that of the crude infidelity of the late Georgian and earliest Victorian days and with an assumption of superiority nothing less than comical, but his figures and statements are valuable whatsoever his inferences may be, and this is true of the entire book, which discusses the Protestant church, the position of the Jews, the slum and its reformers, healing the sick, the "faith" of the "unchurched." that is to say of the clubs that under various names gather men, women and children under their wings to give them substitutes for church and home. and lastly it tells of "The New Christianity" which means to be pious by and by but at present aims at pleasant evenings with no alcoholic assistance. Frederick A. Stokes Co.