are barred from taxing personal property, and commerce and industry. They are limited to land taxes only a resource already overburdened by the imperial Government. Note in this a device of the bureaucracy to render self-government unpopular by making it burdensome.

În spite of hampering conditions these bodies have greatly extended their resources, though these are yet far behind. They have effected much for public instruction and sanitation, though ever hindered by a hostile system of bureaucratic inspection, and with which they are forbidden to interfere. Whenever, in these and other regards, the zemstvos have aspired for added power or liberty, they have been ruthlessly snubbed by the central Government.

The emphasis of the executive power over the legislative, which we have observed all the way through is to be expected when we view the nearness in time to the long period of absolutism, of these initial tendencies toward the democracy to be.

Since the cities will probably be represented in the national assembly, we may here review the advance of municipal liberty. This advance had its beginning long before the establishment of the nobiliary assemblies, and antedated by twelve years the attempt of the nobles to set up an aristocratic constitution. Peter the Great created the "Municipal Chambers" in 1718. This body, chosen, from the burghers, was entrusted with the control of the police, the collection of the taxes, and the city adminstration proper. It was afterwards discontinued and again restored.

In 1785, the same year in which she granted the nobiliary assemblies, Catherine the Great gave the cities a corporate organization and new elective institutions. The voters were grouped according to rank and condition. The delegates were elected from each separate

group, but sat jointly in the duma. This amounted to a lowering of the suffrage.

Alexander II. withdrew the corporate organization in 1870, and substituted a property qualification in place of the class elections. The citizens were grouped in three catagories, according to taxes paid.

The nobles were included not because they were noble as under the old arrangement, but because they were taxpayers. The taxpayers of each group chose electors; the electors of each group in turn chose the delegates to the duma as follows: the large taxpayers chose one-third; the middle-raters, another third; and the small taxpayers, the remaining third. Observe that, the new arrangement preserved the group system; and that the suffrage was not equal as regards the voters of each group.

In some towns the lower group controlled, apparently enabled to do so by the apathy of the others. In the larger cities, notably St. Petersburg, the influence of the merchant class preponderated with the result that much corruption attended municipal administration.

To remedy these practices, Alexander III abolished the group system in 1892. Real estate holders and the heads of commercial houses and industrial establishments are recognized as voters. Aside from these, the pecuniary qualifications were so raised as to retract the suffrage from many of the small taxpayers. However, it is equal suffrage for those who still hold it, which it was not before. Strange enough, professional men, government employees, teachers, artists, literary men, retired army officers and persons living on incomes continue disenfranchised. This probably results from the working of the qualification of holding property within the city limits. The constituency is rated at one representative to five hundred or one

are named by a primary system, direct but cumbersome. There is no limit to the number of candidates for each office, but the law requires an absolute majority for an election. The practice is that many candidates aspire for the same office. In this way the full council cannot be elected. The Minister of the interior chooses the remainder from the outgoing duma, should such failure occur.

The tenure of office is four years. The sessions of the duma are not periodic, but are convoked by the Mayor as necessity prompts or on the demand of a fixed number of members. The sessions are frequent in the large cities, but infrequent in the the provincial towns. Though the sessions are public, their proceedings are published only under censor. Since the numerous membership of the duma burdens deliberation, that body delegates its power to an executive board, subject however to their approval. In practice, the Mayor acting with the executive board, is able to foil the duma.

The duma, like the zemstvo, is hampered by the lack of resource, its taxing power is limited to real estate and licenses. As with other Russian political institutions which look toward popular rule, the municipal governments are ever under the strict supervision of the bureaucracy.

To sum up: We have seen that Russian absolutism culminated under Peter the Great; and that the bureaucracy thus developed, afterward slightly weakened the autocracy to the gain of the former. The nobles, we have seen, attempted an aristocratic constitution in 1730, but failed. It was shown that the great Catherine created the nobiliary assemblies in 1785. Municipal liberty, it was pointed out, had its beginning in 1718 in the establish

en

ment of the "Municipal Chambers" by Peter I; that in 1785 it was enlarged by Catherine the Great. That these liberties were further larged and extended in 1870 under Alexander II; and that the changes made in 1892, though they retracted the suffrage from many, gave to those retaining it a more direct suffrage than before. The emancipation and enfranchisement of the serfs in 1861, it was stated, developed the village and volost democracies. The introduction of the zemstvos in 1864 forms the immediate precursor of the national assembly now in prospect. We view in these successive changes the advance to a more extended suffrage as to the number of voters, and to larger and more extended powers of citizenship.

This brings us to the national assembly, the latest transition in this recession from absolutism. It comes with the promise of a more extended suffrage for the people, and of enactive legislative powers for itself. The question arises, the influence of what class will dominate in the deliberations of this body, when the present wave of feeling subsides? The influence of the nobility is passing. The preponderant influence of the merchant class in the large cities, together with the fact that the influence of this element on the imperial government, limiting the zemstvos to land. taxation, strongly indicates that the class rule that Russia is soon to know is that of the commercial order. We may expect the national assembly steadily to pursue the extension of the legislative powers of the zemstvos and dumas as well as its own. Along this line are sure to follow the parliamentary struggles incident to the shifting of governmental emphasis from the executive to the legislative side as progression moves along toward democracy.

A

N important contribution to
American historic literature

has been made in the publication of "The Letters and Addresses of Thomas Jefferson," under the joint editorship of William B. Parker, lecturer in English at Columbia University, and Jonas Viles, assistant professor of history at the University of Missouri.

The book is an extremely valuable one for the average reader, being a handy compendium of the writings, published and unpublished of the great American, and giving in convenient form a presentation of Jefferson's ideas and principles. Letters written by him on such subjects as the control of the Mississippi, the constitutionality of a national bank, on slavery, on party lines, on the Louisiana purchase, on the public debt, on the obligations and discomforts of public office, on local government, and many other matters of permanent public interest, are of themselves enduring literary riches. His resolutions on the alien and sedition laws, his views on the relations with England, on public ownership, and other subjects, are things to be read with interest and studied with care by every citizen concerned in his country's welfare as well as by the publicist. There are several writings on matters of philosophy, religion, ethics and other abstract subjects which are worthy of deep attention.

The edition is based to a large extent upon the complete works of Jefferson, published under the auspices of the Jefferson Memorial Society.

The Unit Book Pub. Co., N. Y.

"The Storm Signal" is the title of a novel of Southern life after the Civil War, by Gustave F. Mertins, well illustrated by Arthur I. Keller. It deals with the relations between the whites of the South and the negroes, with lynching, with the peculiar social conditions that resulted from the war, and the passions, superstitions and ambitions of both races. The book is well written, full of stirring scenes and episodes, and is a good word-picture of real, latter-day life in the the southern United States.

Bobbs-Merrill Co., Indianapolis.

"Bubbles" is the appropriate name given to a little book written by Stanley Mayall, and it makes good its name. It is not a story. It is just a collection of-well, of bubbles. The bubbles are little rhymes of the kind that may be memorized and sprung at jolly little Bohemian dinners and suppers, where levity reigns, where one may enjoy some of the nonsense that is "relished by the wisest men." It aspires to nothing more than thislively, sprightly doggerel, for light hearted merry makers. Its frontispiece, for example, has this:

"The bottle seeks the young man's brain,

The bad girl would his pockets drain,

The parson hankers for his soul, The devil grins-and orders coal." Mayhew Publishing Co., Boston.

ambitious but impecunious young men to make a living while they are getting a higher education. That the author is qualified to give advice on the subject is demonstrated by the fact that when he went first to college his worldly possessions consisted of the clothes he wore and the sum of $9.27 in cash. He got through in good shape. Some of the industries suggested to the youth who would work his way through college on his Own resources are repairing gasoline stoves, selling breakfast foods, repairing bicycles, acting as pastor, washing dishes, soliciting orders for underwear, working as night clerk in a hotel, peeling potatoes, repairing tinware, delivering milk, doing mending, lecturing, delivering trunks, doing janitor work, soliciting advertisements, agency for mail order house, and other expedients as varied and contrasting as they are ingenious.

The University Press, Ann Arbor, Mich.

Knowles. From Plutarch, Socrates, Cicero, to Shakespeare, Tennyson, Sir Walter Scott, from Emerson, Walt Whitman, Ruskin, to Roosevelt, Kipling and other writers of the present day, the authorships of the various ideas, ideals, aphorisms, epigrams and verses cover a wide field. In his introduction to the volume the editor says: "American literature is fearfully in need of the note of courage. We are confronted with the paradox that this most buoyant of peoples has little in its literature suggestive of the triumphant democracy from which it sprang." The deficit made good by the book at hand. H. M. Caldwell Co., Boston.

The books of Agnes and Egerton Castle always have a subtle, enticing and fascinating flavor of their own, and "The Heart of Lady Anne" is no exception to this rule. It is the story of a frivolous, petted, spoiled beauty of a young wife, seemingly without the deeper womanly emotions, until love for her husband gradually develops her character into something nobler, and opens her eyes.

It is written in delightful, oldworld style, with all the romance, chivalry, frivolity, and intrigue of the "good old days."

It is exquisitely printed and illustrated, and can be considered as one of the prettiest little volumes issued during the holiday season.

Frederick A. Stokes Co., Publishers, New York.

A quarter of a million copies of a single book (not fiction) is the remarkable record of a little volume by Anna R. Brown Lindsay, entitled "What is Worth While." It was first published by Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., in 1893, and has been reprinted in constantly increasing editions until it has now reached the 250th thousand mark. And the end is not yet.