stances under which the drama was written and the sources from which it was drawn.

From four quaint old volumes of monkish legends and miracle stories, published at Venice, Florence or Bologna in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Mrs. Francis Alexander has selected and translated into English more than one hundred and twenty of the choicest, grouping them under the general title "Il Libro D'Oro of Those Whose Names are Written in the Lamb's Book of Life." Read either as specimens of monkish literature or as the fruit of spiritual reflection and emotion these old tales have a singular interest and value. Little, Brown & Co.

Mr. Hamilton W. Mabie's latest volume, "The Great Word," might not unfairly be described as a sequence of delicate rhapsodies in praise of Love. But such a description would give an inadequate idea of the scope and purpose of the book. Although-Mr. Mabie would say because-its language is of the world of abstractions, ideals, visions, its influence is energizing and practical, and many a reader who takes it up idly for mere pleasure will lay it down with an unexpected sense of gratitude for quickened courage and resolve. The essays on "The Credibility of Love," "Love's Second Sight," and "The Steep Ascent" are especially rich in sane and wholesome suggestion. Dodd, Mead & Co.

Mr. Charles Ferris Gettemy tells "The True Story of Paul Revere" in a little monograph, which adds to a narrative of the famous ride, written after a comparison of various contemporary sources, a sketch of the patriot's earlier and later career down to his peaceful death in 1818. One incident in this ca

reer, the court-martial of Revere for alleged shortcomings in the ill-starred Penobscot expedition, is known to comparatively few of those who have been stirred by the story of the famous warning ride among the Middlesex villages and farms. To this day, it is difficult to determine how far, if at all, Paul Revere was blameworthy in this matter, and Mr. Gettemy chooses the wiser plan of placing the records at the service of the reader without essaying a judgment upon them. The book is illustrated with twelve full-page illustrations from photographs. Little, Brown & Co.

Lovers of sport and students of natural history have something new awaiting them in C. G. Schillings's "With Flashlight and Rifle," which Harper & Brothers publish in a translation from the German, made by Henry Zick, Ph.D. The author, who is both hunter and naturalist, spent years in tropical Africa, pursuing great and little game, attended by numerous assistants, and having for his object not the wanton destruction of wild life, but the close study of it, with the aid of the camera. The more than one hundred striking illustrations are all reproductions of photographs taken by the author, some in the ordinary way, but many at night, with the flashlight. The result is a vividness and accuracy impossible by any other method. Lions, rhinoceroses, elephants, leopards, hyenas, giraffes and other wild animals are thus pictured. The author describes his experiences with straightforward simplicity and unflagging interest. The book is unique in the absence of literary embroidery and the substitution of real experience for romance.

"The truth about Swinburne is the exact opposite of what has been widely and popularly thought; weak

ness, affectation, exotic foreignness, the traits of aestheticism in the debased sense of that word, are far from him; he is strong, he is genuine, he is English, bred with an European mind it is true like Shelley, like Gray and Milton, but in his own genius, temperament and the paths of his flight charged with the strength of England." So writes Professor George Edward Woodberry in the study of Swinburne which he contributes to the Contemporary Men of Letters Series. With brief biographical detail, he passes at once to an analysis of the poet's power, under the subdivisions of liberty, melody, passion, fate, nature, fame and love. The treatment is admirably adapted to the purpose of this serviceable and attractive series, and the illustrative extracts which fill nearly one fourth of the space are especially welcome in the case of an author so inadequately appreciated. McClure, Phillips & Co.

Not often does one meet criticism of such optimistic and inspiriting quality as that found in the volume of Professor George Edward Woodberry's Lowell Institute lectures on Race Power in Literature which McClure, Phillips & Co. publish under the title "The Torch." Its first four chapters are devoted to general principles-that mankind in the process of civilization stores up race-power, so that it is a continually growing fund, and that literature, pre-eminently, is such a store of spiritual race-power, with examples from mythology, chivalry, and the Scriptures as "sifted deposits of the past" and with a detailed analysis of the Titan myth as illustrating the use which poetry makes of such race-images and raceideas. In the remaining four, Spenser, Milton, Wordsworth and Shelley are studied, "not in their personality

but as race-exponents," with a view to proving their essential greatness and value due to the degree to which they availed themselves of the "race-store." While the book makes its strongest impression by its continuity of thought, it throws brilliant side-lights on a variety of related themes.

No one but Colonel Higginson could have written the delightful volume of reminiscent essays called "Part of a Man's Life" (Houghton, Mifflin & Co.) and this for two reasons: no other American has had his varied experience as reformer, soldier, lecturer and man of letters, and no other has the rare combination of a sunny temper, a sense of humor and an easy and limpid literary style. Colonel Higginson is now almost the only survivor of that whimsical group of reformers, the transcendentalists, and of that more effective and earnest group, the anti-slavery leaders. He held a commission in the Kansas "volunteers" of 1856: he led a black regiment in the civil war: and the chapter "Intensely Human," in these reminiscences, shows the old love of freedom and justice still active in his discussion of the "negro problem" of the past and present. He knew well the English and American men of letters who were best worth knowing during the latter half of the nineteenth century. He was one of the most popular speakers on the platform of the old "Lyceum" whose palmy days he describes in his chapter on "American Audiences." Of the experiences of this rich, varied and useful life, and of much else beside gathered from men and books, Col. Higginson writes always in the sunny and hopeful spirit which he claims, in the opening paper in the volume, as one of the distinguishing characteristics of Americans. The personal interest of the book is enhanced by many portraits and facsimiles of letters.

A book of extraordinary interest is Miss Katharine A. Carl's "With the Empress Dowager." (The Century Company.) It is a study of the inuer life of the Chinese court and of the personality and characteristics of the Empress Dowager, written after eleven months of residence at the court and of intimate daily association with the Empress. Miss Carl's admission to the court was for the purpose of painting the Empress. She executed, in fact, four portraits of that redoubtable personage, three of which are now in China, while the fourth, a gift from the Empress to the American people, was exhibited at St. Louis and is now in the national Museum at Washington. Miss Carl ate at the royal table, walked and talked freely with the woman to whom most contemporary observers have attributed such malign qualities, and brought away from her strange experiences the most agreeable impressions and memories. She found the Empress "the most fascinating personality” it had ever been her good fortune to meet, and she depicts her as kindly, remarkably young-looking, with a winning smile and the most gentle ways. The book is written with great simplicity and directness, and adds to its personal study of the Empress and her court detailed information regarding Chinese customs and ways of thought. Incidentally it throws light upon the political questions regarding which the Emperor and the Empress Dowager are at cross purposes. There are twenty or more illustrations, including portraits of the Empress Dowager and the young empress, and views of the palace and of court scenes.

The Academy calls to mind the fact that an English Academy of Letters came near being founded some years before the French Academy was established. The originator of the scheme, Mr. Edmund Bolton, in 1617, being introduced to the King by the Marquis of Buckingham, presented a formal petition for "a Corporation Royal to be founded under the title of King James his Academe or College of Honor," proposing, as he put it, "to convert the Castle Royal of Windsor, or, if not Windsor, what other place his Majesty shall be pleased to appoint to an English Olympus." The King approved. It was arranged that the Academy should have a mortmain of £200 a year, and the details of its construction were settled. These are interesting. There were to be three classes of members: Tutelaries, Auxiliaries, and Essentials. The first-named were to be the Knights of the Garter, the Lord Chancellor, and the Chancellors of the Universities. The Auxiliaries were to be "selected from the flower of the nobility." The Essentials were to be men of letters. Their chief duty was to be to "authorize all books and writings which were to go forth in print which did not ex professo handle theological arguments, and to give to the vulgar people indexes expurgatory and expunctory upon all books of secular learning printed in English never otherwise to be public again.” That James I. would have founded this Academy if he had lived, seems certain; but Charles I., when he succeeded to the throne, showed less interest in the scheme. "It was too good for the times," he said, and let the project drop.

A book of extraordinary interest is Miss Katharine A. Carl's "With the Empress Dowager." (The Century Company.) It is a study of the inuer life of the Chinese court and of the personality and characteristics of the Empress Dowager, written after eleven months of residence at the court and of intimate daily association with the Empress. Miss Carl's admission to the court was for the purpose of painting the Empress. She executed, in fact, four portraits of that redoubtable personage, three of which are now in China, while the fourth, a gift from the Empress to the American people, was exhibited at St. Louis and is now in the national Museum at Washington. Miss Carl ate at the royal table, walked and talked freely with the woman to whom most contemporary observers have attributed such malign qualities, and brought away from her strange experiences the most agreeable impressions and memories. She found the Empress "the most fascinating personality" it had ever been her good fortune to meet, and she depicts her as kindly, remarkably young-looking, with a winning smile and the most gentle ways. The book is written with great simplicity and directness, and adds to its personal study of the Empress and her court detailed information regarding Chinese customs and ways of thought. Incidentally it throws light upon the political questions regarding which the Emperor and the Empress Dowager are at cross purposes. There are twenty or more illustrations, including portraits of the Empress Dowager and the young empress, and views of the palace and of court scenes.

The Academy calls to mind the fact that an English Academy of Letters came near being founded some years before the French Academy was established. The originator of the scheme, Mr. Edmund Bolton, in 1617, being introduced to the King by the Marquis of Buckingham, presented a formal petition for "a Corporation Royal to be founded under the title of King James his Academe or College of Honor," proposing, as he put it, "to convert the Castle Royal of Windsor, or, if not Windsor, what other place his Majesty shall be pleased to appoint to an English Olympus." The King approved. It was arranged that the Academy should have a mortmain of £200 a year, and the details of its construction were settled. These are interesting. There were to be three classes of members: Tutelaries, Auxiliaries, and Essentials. The first-named were to be the Knights of the Garter, the Lord Chancellor, and the Chancellors of the Universities. The Auxiliaries were to be "selected from the flower of the nobility." The Essentials were to be men of letters. Their chief duty was to be to "authorize all books and writings which were to go forth in print which did not ex professo haudle theological arguments, and to give to the vulgar people indexes expurgatory and expunctory upon all books of secular learning printed in English never otherwise to be public again." That James I. would have founded this Academy if he had lived, seems certain; but Charles I., when he sucIceeded to the throne, showed less interest in the scheme. "It was too good for the times," he said, and let the project drop.