noying; but when people talk more gravely and simply-as notably, in Gladys's most serious talk with Schonberg-they touch the deep chords of human life, and the result is noble and sweet.

We have, also, new editions of Mrs. Jackson's two "No Name" novels, Mercy Philbrick's Choice and Hetty's Strange Story. It is in these two stories, especially in Mercy Philbrick's Choice, that one may find proof amounting to practical certainty of the authorship of the Saxe Holm stories. They bear evidence enough of having been written by some one of more than ordinary mind 1 Mercy Philbrick's Choice. By Helen Jackson, " H." Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1886. For sale in San Francisco by Samuel Carson & Co.

H.

2 Hetty's Strange Story. By Helen Jackson, "H. H."

Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1886. For sale in San Francisco by Samuel Carson & Co.

and feeling, and they are not commonplace books; but they express their author at her weakest. There is a subtle betrayal of autobiography about them—not in incident, but in character. One cannot resist the feeling that Mercy and Stephen and Hetty are all drawn from something in the author's consciousness of herself, as she was, or as she would have liked to be from one or another side of her complex nature and aspirations. The people surrounding them— Stephen's and Mercy's mothers, for instance, -seem to be, not copies from any individuals she had known, but personifications of the effect that had been produced on her by people in some specific cases. Hetty's Strange Story has less of this personality about it, and is therefore the better book of

the two.

ENGLAND is just passing from the preliminary to the second phase of what will undoubtedly prove the most important chapter of her political experience in this century. It is hard to feel sure at this distance exactly which are right, among the wise and upright men now holding so diverse opinions as to the Irish question. Sympathy in this country turns naturally to Mr. Gladstone. His personal grandeur, his liberal views, the peculiar sympathy that exists between him and the middle classes, his eloquence, have all created a strong admiration for him here; and there has always been here, too, a general sympathy with the desires of Ireland. Of course much of this has been factitious, for political and newspaper countingroom purposes; and there has not been wanting a great dislike to the Irish as a people, on the part of very many of our native Americans. Yet even the original American blood, which has felt keenly some want of adaptation in the Kelt of its cherished plan of government by voluntary coöperation, has always been ready to remember that we, too, were once held in reluctant subordination by England. Sympathy with Ireland has been stronger than antagonism. When Gladstone and the Irish cause, therefore, are at one, there has been-all political pretence aside -an even eager desire for his success. That in principle he is right-that the Irish demand for some sort of autonomy is just, and that the establishment of freer and more cordial relations between Ireland and the imperial government is absolutely necessary

is almost self-evident. That a parliament at Dublin is the best way to achieve this, we Americans are disposed to think; because we admire Gladstone, who advocates it, and because it is the form in which the. Irish wish to have local self-government, and it is in harmony with our traditions to believe that any people knows best what it wants in its local institutions. But it will not do to toss aside too lightly the opposition of such men as Hartington, Matthew Arnold, and Herbert Spencer. The opposition of Salisbury and the Tories amounts to nothing, as far as American opinion is concerned; because we knew before that their ideals of government were different from ours, and that they are, therefore, reasoning from premises we do not admit. The opposition of Chamberlain and his followers does not carry weight in itself, either. The protest of wealth and privilege against all extensions of equal right is to be expected. But the protest of the educated classes is not to be lightly put into the same category as that of "wealth, rank, privilege." The educated classes have often before been the very strength and mainspring of political reform and political justice. It is true that Professor Tyndall's or Professor Huxley's disapproval counts for little, because there is no reason why scientific specialists should be good judges in complex questions of statecraft. But men like Arnold, Spencer, and Dicey come under a different category. They are, in one form or another, sociologists, and it would be as much their business

to set Mr. Gladstone ght on a sociological point as Mr. Huxley's to set him right on the point of the order of organic evolution, were it not that Mr. Gladstone is himself a sociologist of no mean attainments. He stands almost alone against the judgment of many men like these-men Liberal in principle, candid and open-minded to new doctrine, strongly disposed to the just and righteous in government. John Morley and Professor Bryce are with him, almost alone of the literary class. Of the old Liberal leaders, not one agrees with him. Hartington, Goschen, Bright, are all in protest, and Roseberry, Morley, and Bryce--new names in Liberal leadership--are his lieutenants. On the other hand, this secession of old names and appearance of new may well mean that the future leaders, instead of those of a past day, are with the party. And the objections of Hartington, Dicey, Arnold, and Goschen are now before the thoughtful Americans, and do not impress them as conclusive. It is quite possible that a more limited autonomy than Mr. Gladstone proposes would be better for Ireland; but the fact that a home parliament is the form in which Ireland wants that local government which it is conceded she should have in some form, seems to us a sufficient reason why she should have it. Our federal experience has given us faith in the ability of any section to attend to its own affairs. We are disposed to think it is better in the long run that they should be somewhat illmanaged at home, than well-managed from abroad.

MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S talk of federation has inspired a good deal of delight in this country. It is so very flattering to picture the mother country copying our young institutions that the statesmen of the American press have not failed to call her attention to the advantages of the system, with much kindly condescension. That federation would be a very pretty arrangement of the British Empire seems obvious. But it seems equally obvious that nations do not change their ground-plan overnight, in any such flippant fashion as our newspaper statesmen advise Mr. Gladstone. To use the federation plan now, in the matter of Ireland, would involve changes in the British constitution that might need a hundred years to work themselves out naturally. Our paper instrument is apt to deceive us as to the real nature of a constitution, and to make us forget that the most important parts cannot be made, but must grow. Our federal system was not made by the Continental Congress; it had been growing for more than one hundred and fifty years, out of the necessities of the case. Our written constitution merely recorded and systematized, in this respect, what had already become our constitution by a stronger law. Mr. Gladstone's answer to the talk of federation-" That may come sometime"-is probably all that could or should be said on the subject now.

Choson: The Land of the Morning Calm.1 KOREA is full of interest, especially for Californians, who have heard of its gold-bearing mountains, waiting for the prospector. A little while ago, no one knew anything for certain about the great peninsula between the Yellow Sea and the Sea of Japan, but now so much has been written on the subject that Korea is no longer mysterious. We know much of its history, its art, its language and literature, and of the leading topographical features of the empire, from the rocky height of the Island of Quelpart, to the ancient "Wall of Stakes," and the sacred "Ever-white Mountain." The "Land of the Morning Calm," the "Land of Sunrise," the "Land of the Tiger-flag," is the bridge over which the Japanese passed to their islands.

The notes of every careful traveler in Korea are of importance. Mr. Lowell's book presents a very attractive appearance, with its illustrations from photographs and nature, maps and drawings. The literary quality is so very uneven, and at times so crude, that it is hard to refrain from a sweeping condemnation. Only a sociologist can fully appreciate the absurdity of the chapters upon the oriental mind, such as "The Triad of Principles, the Patriarchal System, and the Quality of Impersonality." They are so jaunty, ignorant, and almost presumptuous, that one is led to doubt the reality of other portions of the book. The level of these sage reflections is about the level of a high school essay. Mr. Lowell spent a winter at Soul, the capital, as the guest of the Korean king. His opportunities were magnificent, but a well-trained journalist could have written half of this volume without a sight of the country. Some of the notes on Korean myths are highly interesting, especially that of the Korean Rip Van Winkle, a woodman, who found four old men in the mountains playing a "game of go," and emptying "flagons of sul." They offered him a cup, and after draining it, he started home, only to find that a hundred years had passed in the magic draught. Descriptions of "Soul by Night," of the architecture, landscape gardening, and palaces, form a more useful part of the book. But the unpleasant intrusion of Mr. Lowell's personality into many paragraphs is the most glaring fault of his book. We have never read a book of travels more thoroughly marred by a persistent egotism. Little asides about the author's likes and dislikes fill whole pages. It is Korea and the Koreans that we wish to hear about, not Mr. Percival Lowell, and we are forced to sum

1 Choson: The Land of the Morning Calm. A Sketch of Korea. By Percival Lowell, late Foreign Secretary to the Corean Special Mission. Boston: Ticknor & Co. 1886.

THE Rev. Dr. John De Witt, of the American Old Testament Revision Company, troubled by the amount of compromise necessary to the committee between exact rendering of the original and preservation of familiar phrasing, offers his own rendering of the Book of Psalms, in which he has been freed from the King James version. The poetical form is used. The rendering is a dignified one, and very interesting. Woman in Music is devoted chiefly to woman's record as an inspirer of music-that is, to the loves and admirations of the great composers, and not to her own works in music. A preliminary chapter explains frankly that this is necessary, because there is really nothing to be said about woman in music as a creator. Some rather intelligent speculation is devoted to this curious deficiency in musical creativeness. We incline to think Mr. Upton touches on the true solution, when he says it is probably for the very reason that she is emotional by temperament, that she cannot use this highly exact and formal means of expression of emotion. "The emotion is a part of herself, and is as natural to her as breathing"; she cannot stand off and look at it as a painter at a lancscape, and put it into a form of expression which is, in reality, "not only an art, but an exact science . . . mercilessly logical and unrelentingly mathematical." He goes on to suggest, it is true, that this rigid mathematics is in itself outside of woman's rôle; but the admission of women to equal competition in college and university courses with men, has revealed an even conspicuous power in them for the lines of heavy mathematical or philosophical thought. Indeed, there had been before sufficient indication of a repressed tendency of this sort, forcing itself to sight in exceptional cases. Associated with the expression of emotion, however, mathematics may very reasonably be conjectured alien to the temperamental habits of women. author suggests, again, that the struggle of composers for success has generally been so terrible as almost to exclude women from it; and also that they usually come from the humbler classes, in which girls are trained to drudgery alone. It may be added that the countries in which alone any inspiration or intellectual power is encouraged in women, chance to be the unmusical ones. A list of women who have 2 A New Rendering of the Psalms. By John De Witt, D.D. New York: Funk & Wagnalls. 1886.

The

3 Woman in Music. By George P. Upton. Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co. 1886.

composed at all in this century emphasizes this, by giving eight names, out of seventeen in all, to England. English Hymns' may be described as a brief encyclopedia of our English hymns and hymn-writers. The compiler, S. W. Duffield, is the translator of numerous hymns, and is the son of Rev. George Duffield, who wrote "Stand up, stand up for Jesus." The book contains a great deal of curious and interesting lore, brought together from many sources; as for instance, the sketch of John Berridge, of whom this story is told: Being much tormented with housekeepers, he thought of taking a wife; but opening the Bible for counsel, "probably in the old fashion of the Sortes Virgiliana, he found the text, 'Thou shalt not take thee a wife," " and therefore remained a bachelor. It can hardly be said that all included in this book are hymns, as for instance-as the compiler himself suggests the poem, "If you cannot on the Ocean," by Mrs. Gates, sister of C. P. Huntington. Neither can it be said that the story of Lincoln given with it has any connection with the subject. Some other irrelevant things would much better have been left untold, as the controversy between Toplady nda Wesley.

The Fight for Missouri.2

THIS is a book of rare merit. It covers a limited period of history, but deals with matters pregnant with the fate of the nation. In the desperate struggle for the preservation of the Union, the adhesion of Missouri to the national cause more than offset the disaster and disgrace of Bull Run. In the beginning

1 English Hymns. Their Authors and History. By Samuel Willoughby Duffield. New York: Funk & Wagnalls. 1886. For sale by Phillips & Hunt.

2 The Fight for Missouri. By Thomas L. Snead. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1886.

of 1861, our author was the editor and proprietor of a secession newspaper in St. Louis, and took a permanent part in the effort to disrupt the Union. Now, after the lapse of twenty-five years, he tells the story of the struggle, from the election of Lincoln to the battle of Wilson's Creek, on the part of himself, Governor Jackson, Lieutenant-Governor Reynolds, and other States-rights leaders, backed by a large part of the people of the State, to carry Missouri out of the Union. How and why they failed is made clearly to appear. It is the finest tribute to General Lyon and Frank P. Blair yet written, for it is the tribute of an honorable foe, who admits that every scheme and every plan formed by the Secessionists of Missouri were divined and frustrated by the penetration and resolute courage of these two men. No man can rise from its perusal without feeling profound respect and admiration for General Lyon. Our obligations to him are indeed great, and no men are more conscious of it than the foes whom he foiled. To him and to Blair belong the principal credit of saving Missouri to the Union. General Sterling Price was originally strongly opposed to secession, but the claims of blood and association were too strong for him, when he saw that war was inevitable, and like Lee, he drew his sword but reluctantly, for the defense, as he thought, of kindred and country. His noble, generous character and magnificent courage receive fitting eulogy from our author. The battle of Wilson's Creek, coming so shortly after Bull Run, showed the metal of which our northern soldiers were made, and is here graphically, and no doubt accurately, described. Impartiality, as near as it is possible to attain, careful work, personal knowledge, and a pleasant style, commend the work of our author to his countrymen.