are remarkably well told, in a vivid, direct style in which the narrative and descriptive are admirably blended. Perhaps the most interesting of all is "The Guardian of the Flock"-the tragedy of the outlaw sheep-dog. Little, Brown & Co.

A. C. McClurg & Co. publish a holiday edition, from new plates, and with illustrations in color by Florence Scovel Shinn, of Gulielma Zollinger's charming story, "The Widow O'Callaghan's Boys." To those who love boys, the popularity of a book like this is one of the brightest signs of the times. As a story of boy-life of today it could scarcely be improved. The Widow herself is of the shrewd, sensible, cheery type, but her portrait is drawn without that touch of burlesque or melodrama which has marred so many in recent fiction; her seven boys, of ages from fifteen down, are natural, hearty fellows; and their experiences, though they make absorbing reading, all fall within the bounds of everyday possibility. Thoroughly wholesome and stimulating in its moral tone, the book will delight any boy from eight to twelve, and it will delight his father and mother to see him reading

it.

One of the most striking "first novels" of recent years is published by A. C. McClurg & Co., from the pen of Will Lillibridge. The opening chapters of "Ben Blair" introduce the lonely boy who is to be its hero beside his dying mother, in a desolate cabin on the South Dakota plains, and the succession of stirring incidents that follow is given dignity as well as unity by the resolute purpose of the man grown to avenge her on the scoundrel who had abandoned her. The story reaches its climax in Ben Blair's solitary pursuit of the horse thief whom he suspects to be the object of his hate,

and the fifty odd pages which describe the trail and capture are among the very best of their kind. The romance which furnishes the secondary interest of the book leads the hero to city life, where the writer draws too strongly the contrast by which he means to point a wholesome moral and loses, somewhat, his hold on his reader. But continued work like that in the first two thirds of the book will ensure Mr. Lillibridge a place in the front rank of novelists of the West.

The volume of addresses and lectures to which Professor William P. Trent of Columbia University gives the title of its opening paper, "Greatness in Literature," is of unusual interest and value to the thoughtful reader, be he amateur or professional. Discussing earnestly, candidly, and with a marked direction toward practical result, such topics as the true standard of greatness in literature, the relation of criticism to faith, the worth of the popular judgment in art, the love of poetry as a qualification for teaching English, the antagonism between scientists and men of letters and the need for more catholicity among educators, Professor Trent's tone is that of one who aims to convince rather than to entertain, but he has not been able to deny himself an epigram now and then, and his pages are full of temptations to the borrower. The paper on "Teaching Literature," which considers methods and details and suggests the possibility of "sacrificing the spirit while we examine on the letter," will be read with special zest by teachers. Thomas Y. Crowell & Co.

In "Paradise" Alice Brown returns to those studies of rural life in which she won her first signal success. Uncle Jotham, counting his pulse in pleased anticipation of a heart spell; Ann Parsons, the nurse with a nat'ral gift;

Timothy Gale, who has been righteous for over forty year and is pretty nigh sick on't; Lindy, the light of love; Clary Dwight, dying in consumption, and her brother Malory, loyal in spite of himself to the reckless woman who has betrayed his honor-all these are rural types, comic or tragic, though depicted with that rare gift which makes each individual. But the central figure, Barbara, the conjurer's niece, with the purity and simplicity of her nature strangely touched by the faith of the astrologer and the palmist-Barbara seems a creature of another sphere, the sphere of fancy, of the ideal. The captious may question her right to be, in this region of realism, but her lover, Nicholas the woodsman, and the old doctor with his visions and rhapsodies, are not unfit companions for her. Real or ideal, she throws a spell over the reader-the spell of a being radiant, exquisite with love and hope. Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

Of close and compact interest is the slender volume in which Houghton, Mifflin & Co. publish two lectures delivered by Henry James during his recent visit to this country. The address to the graduating class of Bryn Mawr, on "The Question of Our Speech," attracted much attention at the time, by its sharp criticism of the press and public schools, but the candid reader must admit the force of its strictures and regret only that they could not have reached a still larger audience. The lecture on "Balzac,” delivered first before the Contemporary Club of Philadelphia, is a masterpiece of analysis and appreciation, full of brilliant, quotable sentences. Passages of special note are the comparison between Balzac and Zola, the contrast-in point of "that respect for the liberty of the subject" which Mr. James "would be willing to name as the great sign painter of the first or

Houghton, Mifflin & Co. begin a second series of biographies of American Statesmen with a life of James Gillespie Blaine by Mr. Edward Stanwood. Subject and author are well chosen: subject, because of all the men prominent in public affairs in the period subsequent to the civil war, to which this series is to be devoted, there is no figure more picturesque nor one which moved through events more dramatic than Mr. Blaine: and author, because Mr. Stanwood not only has the qualification of personal friendship and intimate acquaintance,-a qualification which in a biographer not infrequently is disastrous, but those of sincerity, calm judgment, and a clear and dispassionate style. He has also the faculty of condensation, without which it would be hopeless for any one to undertake adequately even to outline a career so varied, so brilliant, and, in a certain sense so tragic as that of Mr. Blaine, within less than four hundred pages of moderate size and legible typography. This difficult task Mr. Stanwood has done, and he has done it well; and incidentally, he has summarized the political history of the period within which Mr. Blaine's aetivities were included. The time has not yet come for the final word regarding Mr. Blaine; for his vigorous and impressive personality has not yet receded far enough into the past; but in the meantime Mr. Stanwood's biography will be accepted as a candid and symmetrical presentation of its subject.