city and by virtue of his good habits, received incredible favors, promotions, and successes. -Still less representative of the best class of boys' books is Joe Wayring at Home,' which narrates the boating adventures of a group of rich lads, whose fathers treat them to unlimited supplies of boats, canoes, rods, rifles, etc., and who have to contest the possession of these in rough and tumble fights with a malevolent vagrant who haunts the woods where they camp and fish. We fancy, however, that boys would enjoy this book; and it would not hurt them especially.- -Little Miss Weezy is a story of a little one's sayings and doings, after the manner of "Little Prudy." It suffers by comparison with that perennially lifelike and charming child's classic, but is quite pretty. Little Miss Weezy, whose real name was Louisa, is evidently a veritable baby, though we do not believe that all her performances were strictly and closely copied from life.

The Queen of the Pirate Isle is a child's story by Bret Harte. It does not "come to much" when it is done, but in the doing it is exceedingly clever, and shows an almost feminine knowledge and appreciation of children in some of their little ways. We are sorry to say, however, that the real has been abandoned for the dramatic in the case of Wan Lee; and Miss Kate Greenaway, whose illustrations (in colors) are scattered through the book in a very pleasing fashion, has-with more excuse than Mr. Harte-made him as far from the fact, in the narrow-faced, shrewd little image that stands for the ten-year-old Chinese boy, whose round visage and innocent expression are so uniformly to be noticed in Chinatown. It would have been both cheap and easy to have obtained a few photographs of these, even in far away London.- -A series of six little books about animals, published in 1868 by Mrs. Sanborn Tenney, is now reissued by Lee & Shepard. The six are devoted respectively to Quadrupeds; Birds; Fishes and Reptiles; Bees, Butterflies, and other Insects; Sea Shells and River Shells; Sea Urchins, Starfishes, and Corals. They are thus intended to initiate the child naturally into the classification of animal life. The series bears the title Young Folks' Pictures and Stories of Animals, but it is not suitable for any but very young folks, for the style is of the simplest, such as is addressed to little children,

Joe Wayring at Home. By Harry Castlemon. Philadelphia: Porter & Coates.

2Little Miss Weezy. By Penn Shirley. Boston: Lee & Shepard. 1886. For sale in San Francisco by Samuel Carson & Co.

3The Queen of the Pirate Isle. By Bret Harte. Illustrated by Kate Greenaway. New York and Boston: Houghton, Millin & Co. 1887. For sale in San Francisco by Chilion Beach.

Young Folks' Pictures and Stories of Animals. For Home and School. By Mrs. Sanborn Tenney. Boston: Lee & Shepard. 1886. For sale in San Francisco by Samuel Carson & Co.

These twelve papers are dedicated " to the memory of her in whose sick-chamber, the Beulah of her household, these stories of the past were told, and but for whose request they would not have been printed nor even written down." By way of preface the author disclaims the assumption that it is a learned work. He "simply tried to imitate the child who peers through an opened door, and charmed by a glimpse of the wonders within the garden, calls others to come and see." His work is more than merely this, however, for his fine faculty of graphic description makes the reader see, as if before the open door, while like one full of the subjects of his vision, he tells the historic stories of the early cities, impressing upon the reader's mind some thing or things most characteristic of each one, and doing it all in such an enlightened, calm, and uncontroversial spirit that, though you may suspect you would be his opponent if he were in the least belligerent, he finishes the paper long before you weary of it. The cities are those of the very old world, known to us as the early locations of the beginnings of religions, each chosen as he says, "either because its history appears to illustrate pointedly some utterance of Christ, or because the manner in which it aided in preparing for the New Jeruselain is obvious." The religious purpose is not thrust forward, however and is no more apparent in the narrative substance of each paper, than in entertaining profane history. The subjects are Ur, which he somewhat fancifully calls the City of Saints; Nineveh, the City of Soldiers ; Babylon, the City of Sensualists; Memphis, the City of the Dead; Alexandria, the City of the Creedmakers; Petra, the City of Shams; Damascus, the City of Substance; Tyre, the City of Merchants; Athens, the City of Culture; Rome, the City of the Law-givers; Samaria, the City of Politicians; Susa, the City of the Satraps; Jerusalem, the City of the Pharisees; New Jerusalem, I, the City of God, II, the King.

The light is dim over Ur of the Chaldees, and the lens of history can scarcely descry the site where four thousand years before Christ, it existed in all its activity, with its houses and palaces, its temples, observatories, and libraries, wherein was preserved a vast body of literature and written

5 Ancient Cities. From the Dawn to the Daylight. By William Burnet Wright. Boston and New York: Hougliton, Miffin & Co. 1886. For sale in San Francisco by Chilion Beach.

laws. The city was six miles west of the Euphrates, and more than a hundred west of the Persian Gulf. Fragments of burnt clay, bricks, and tiles, covered with curious markings, first told the traveler its location, and later learning read these markings as inscriptions in a language which can now be read almost as accurately as Hebrew or Greek. It was from Ur that Abraham with Terah his father, emigrated to the land of Canaan, on which journey they halted in Haran, and there remained till Terah died. Ur was the capital of Chaldæa, and the Moon God was its patron Deity. "The name of the Deity," says this author "was Sin, and his worship, spreading at a early date from Ur through Arabia, appears to have given its name to the most sacred mountain known to history, Sinai, or the Mount of Sin."

The author writes of these cities with the freshness and personal interest of a traveler, who had gone over these spots, and what he tells is so full of entertainment that the laudable curiosity of the reader is instigated to seek for more that may be elsewhere learned.

Documents Illustrative of American History.'

Teachers and students of United States History have been desiring a full collection of documents representing the various stages of our colonial and national growth. Bishop Stubbs's "Select Charters Illustrative of English Constitutional History" have afforded an admirable example of the service that some scholarly and critical mind must eventually render to the study of our political and constitutional development. Mr. Howard W. Preston seems to have modeled the title and the arrangement of his book after Stubbs' work, but, unfortuately the resemblance does not go much farther.

Mr. Preston's selections may be somewhat loosely classified in three groups: one, relating to the Colonial Charters; another, covering the Revolu

1 Documents Illustrative of American History. 16061863. With introductions and references. By Howard W. Preston. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1886. For sale in San Francisco by Samuel Carson & Co.

tionary period and the formation of a national Union; third, illustrating the evolution of a State's right to secede. All the documents that he has chosen are worthy of their place, but his sins of omission are serious. He is to be commended for inserting the Articles of the New England Confederation of 1643, a tidemark that has been too often overlooked, but why should we not have those portions of the English Navigation Acts that affected colonial commerce? The enforcement of the Navigation Act had a closer connection with the separation from the mother country than all the charters of all the colonies. We miss also the Stamp Act of 1765, and the "Four Intollerable Acts" of 1774. The period between 1787 and the Civil War is most scantily represented. The Alien and Sedition Laws and the various formulations of the Secession theory can afford no adequate idea of the documentary history of that time. A book of this sort that does not include a single decision of the United States Supreme Court, has fallen far short of its mark. Can our history be "illustrated" without the decisions of John Marshall, and the reports of Alexander Hamilton?

Mr. Preston has not chosen to give his work a perspective. He has not brought into view the great political and social movements that found expression in these documentary forms. His selections are strung rapidly along on a very slender thread of introductory matter. We think this an error of judgment. A preface that consists of a few dates and references and a quotation from Bancroft, can do but little good. Mr. Preston's work, however, will be welcomed until something better appears. It is, at least, a

step in the right direction. Poore's "Charters and Constitutions," is too bulky for class use, and an acquaintance with Mr. Preston's volume will show how indispensable such a publication might become, if it were conceived and elaborated in a scholarly manner.

coon), while the tenants acquired the right of cultivation through the contribution of military taxes. In those chivalrous and romantic ages in which military exploits and gallant deeds were esteemed more highly than services in civil and social affairs, the agricultural class was the one that suffered most. Oppression was not infrequent, and even violence sometimes occurred. But the farmers bore their burdens patiently, and improved their holdings diligently, appearing to feel even as tenants an interest and ownership in the soil.

The secret of this spirit on the part of the farming class is to be sought in one redeeming feature of our feudalism, namely, that the tenant was seldom evicted from his land. To be sure, the legal right of ownership was in the hands of the military landlord; but that right was no more stable than the right of cultivation possessed by the farming class. The vicissitudes of political and military affairs might reduce the landlord to a penniless and landless wanderer but the right of occupation on the tenant's part would not be questioned throughout all changes of landlords, provided taxes were duly paid to whomsoever they were due to. Thus the cultivators of the soil were practically, after all, the owners of the soil still; except that they could not alienate their holdings. Their holdings were almost a family estate, inasmuch as they admitted of inheritance, whether its character were that of primogeniture, ultimogeniture, or gavelkind.

It was to this private-property-like tenure that the agriculture of Japan owed its continued prosperity throughout the entire feudal period. Arthur Young, an English agricultural economist, rightly said: "Give a small proprietor a strip of rock and he will make it into a garden. The magic of property turns sand into gold." So likewise the stable elements in the land tenure of Japan turned marshes and swamps into a golden rice field, even after the free yeo

manry of old Japan had nominally ceased to exist.

Another agrarian feature of Japan, (and one peculiar to that country), was that Japan never had a servile class of people, even in the darkest and gloomiest periods of feudal despotism. The institution of slavery was considered essential by most ancient peoples. Aristotle said: "When the shuttle would move of itself and plectra of themselves strike the lyre, we should need no more slaves." For the stoic Greeks, slavery furnished leisure to contemplate the sublime questions of philosophy and the universe; for the warlike Romans, it furnished hands to the cultivation of the public domain and the great estates. But the agrarian history of Japan never reveals to us its existence in any period of the national history. began its career as a free nation and with a free yeomanry. As the distinguished German professor, Doctor Wilhelm Roscher, says: "With the rise of agriculture, there arose simultaneously the relations of home, homestead, and fatherland." So this blesssed occupation of our forefathers gave them that home and country loving spirit, which is the distinctive characteristic of the Japanese yeomanry of the present day.

Japan

The separation of the two distinctive classes, then, under the feudal régime of the twelfth century, involved nothing but the division of labor as expounded by Adam Smith, the father of the English school of political economy. Then it fell to the share of the agricultural class to provide that the earth should receive the seed and multiply its fruit; that the increasing population should be provided with the means of subsistence; while it became the duty of the military class to care for civil and military affairs.

In those days rents were determined by custom; competition had no play. The tenants were free and independent. For this and other reasons, the position of the landlords in Japan was quite different from

that of the English aristocracy in Great Britain and Ireland. There the people now complain of the absorption of rents by the great landlords. So has arisen recently that wild scheme of "the nationalization of land." Sound writers like Sir James like Sir James Caird speak mournfully of the constant decrease of small holdings and the constant increase of great estates. John Stuart Mill speaks of the appropriation by the state of the unearned increment of the soil-that is, the profit of the landlords resulting not from any exertion or sacrifice on their part, but simply from mere accidental circumstances or the enhancement of the value of land, as the margin of cultivation extends to the inferior grade of the soil, with increase of population. Again, Professor Fawcett speaks of free trade in land, which means unrestricted transfer of landed property, as the remedy for the existing abuses in the land laws of England. No scheme or proposition has ever thus far been able to solve the complicated problem of the English agrarian administration, which is the survival of the worst traits of the Norman feudalism. So to-day the land question is playing a great rôle on the arena of the politics of Westminister. Fortunately for Japan, its feudalism has left no such bad results as in England. So far as the land tenure is concerned, almost every trace of feudalism has now disappeared.

It was an historical growth, and of an indigenous character, receiving no foreign elements, and therefore adapted itself to the needs of the people. The regulation of rents by custom made them independent of enhancement in the value of the landed property, and therefore if there was any " unearned increment" it went to the cultivators of the soil, and not to the landlords.

The rents were thus properly taxes-the contribution of the farmers to the state for the support of its institutions and for the protection of life and property. The agricultural class understood it in this light, and

cheerfully paid them as their share in the public burdens-corresponding to the Roman tributum, or the military tax, which was the essential support of the state.

It is, then, no wonder that agriculture has been held in so high esteem in Japan. It has been the foundation of the national wealth. It has been the sinew of national strength. It has been also the center of every kind of industry. Cato the Elder called agriculture "divine vocation." Our statesmen regarded it with no less veneration than did the old Roman. Again, as the laws of Lycurgus and Solon were based upon the landed property, and as the laws of Licinius and the Gracchi were passed in the interests of the small peasantry, so every wise economic law of Japan turned upon the pivot of agrarian interests. The French economists and statesmen of the eighteenth century, especially Quesnay and Turgot, upheld the doctrine that agriculture is the only source of wealth. The essence of their doctrine was always that of our statesmen. Thus agriculture, held in such high esteem, and under such a fostering care, was handed down to us from time immemorial, until the feudal system was abolished, only fifteen years ago—in 1871.

ent.

I have dwelt thus long upon the agrarian system of the past. Let us now briefly see what kind of agriculture Japan has at presOne word suffices to define Japanese agriculture. It is this: The agriculture of Japan is an intensive farming based upon the experiences of ages. An intensive farming is that kind in which a farmer cultivates a small piece of ground, and cultivates it thoroughly and up to the fullest capacity of the soil. method of farming. spare any amount of labor when it contributes to the thoroughness of cultivation. It is very true that there is a tendency in which the land is subject to the so-called "law of diminishing return." That is to say that the land produces, up to a certain

This is exactly our Our farmers do not