record is as complete in this case as in either of the others. The previous works treated of trees and shrubs and his present one, while dealing with a more humble produce of the soil, the vines, is no less important nor is the subject less fascinating, less worthy of attention. The book follows its predecessors in its form of presenting its information, having simple, concise descriptions of the vines, their fruit and flowers, and giving such botanical hints as will enable the close student to follow the subject further than the wayside observer will care to do. The volume is prefaced with a list of families and of genera, and three guides containing complete descriptions of (1) flowers, (2) leaves, (3) fruit, by means of which identification should, in most cases, be easy, the guide to be used depending upon the time of the year. The book is written in scientific but not technical language, and fully illustrated from original sketches. Hartford Post.

An American Gentlewoman.

Martha Washington. By Anne Hollingsworth Wharton. With portrait. Women of Colonial and Revolutionary Times. 306 pp. Indexed. 12mo, 90 cents; by mail, $1.01.

Miss Wharton tells a story of Mrs. Martha Washington and James Peale, the artist, which supplies just the right key to the character of her subject. Peale had a sitting appointed for him by Mrs. Washington at seven o'clock one morning, but feared to present himself at that hour. He took a stroll before ringing the door bell. Mrs. Washington reminded him that he was late, and he explained his hesitation about disturbing her at such an early hour. "Whereupon the energetic little lady assured him that she had already attended family worship, given Miss Custis a music lesson, and read the newspaper while she was waiting for him." The episode draws the curtain from her entire life, which is seen to be that of a typical woman of the period. Whether as the Widow Custis or the wife of the President, her mode of existence was the same. She held a high place in the social world of that time and she knew it, but she had no fashionable foibles. Life for her was a thing of duties, of seriousness, and the portrait Miss Wharton presents is that of an ideal American gentlewoman, unaffected by any of the pomps and ceremonies in which she inevi- · tably shared as the wife of her husband. In fact, it is just this simplicity of hers which constitutes her claim upon our interest. She was not otherwise a notable figure. But this book shows with delightful clearness that Martha Washington had all the housewifely virtues, that she was an embodiment of common-sense and kindliness, and that the dignity

by which she was distinguished sprang from no commanding qualities, from no identification of her nature with the tendencies of public life, but simply from the training and experience of a woman accustomed to the best social life of Virginia at a time when that life had a certain provincial distinction. She was herself a provincial to the core.

One of the best things about Miss Wharton's book is its convincing demonstration of Martha Washington's patriotism. There, at least, she was a noble if not a spectacular figure. Beside the fame of her husband she seems a colorless woman, and, if the truth is told, she was such a woman; but it is not necessary to deny to her qualities of notable unselfishness and courage. In 1774, when Washington was leaving for the Congress in Philadelphia, his friends Patrick Henry and Edmund Pendleton were at Mount Vernon for a day and a night. Pendleton wrote to a friend soon after: "I was much pleased with Mrs. Washington and her spirit. She seemed ready to make any sacrifice, and was cheerful, though I know she felt anxious.

She

After the war had begun, when Washington and his wife were separated by distances that in those days were serious indeed, there was talk of the possibility that Mrs. Washington might be abducted by the enemy, and she was advised to retire some miles into the country. She was persuaded finally to take the precaution, but she was absent only one night. had no fear and was impatient to go to her husband's camp. Once there, as we have seen, she threw herself into the spirit of the Revolution with tact as well as with enthu siasm, and she seems to have impressed every one with a sense of her wise and generous loyalty. Hence she figures during the war and during her husband's Presidency as exactly the helpmeet he required, as exactly the woman for the position to which she had been called. Had she possessed genius, individuality, she might have impressed herself upon American history in some striking way. Being what she was, she appeals to us always as a subsidiary individual, touching the imagination in minor, subsidiary ways. Yet it must not be supposed that she was without a certain decisive spirit. She had, really, a very clear notion of what was fitting under most circumstances, and, for all her placidity, she invariably held her own.

Our author had a difficult task before her, to make tangible and sympathetic a woman who was not in herself a strongly marked figure, a woman who was not essentially interesting, or, by virtue of her own qualities alone, important. The task has been well performed. A monograph on Mrs. Washington has been needed, and we have it here, written with animation and with skill. N. Y. Tribune.

in it the novel of life in a revolutionary South

American State

for which we have long been waiting, and, furthermore, he has made it a revelation of his finest gifts. His originality and skill in the construction of a brief story have long since been recognized; his animation and accuracy in descriptive narrative have won him a wide and faithful public; but he has done enough work of an unsatisfactory nature to give the reader pause when it has come to acknowledging in him a veritable master

of the art of fic- Charles Scribner's Sons. tion. He is such

men life-like and convincing, he has painted in Mme. Alvarez just the sort of ambitious woman who might be expected to stand at the centre of such a crisis as that in the affairs of Olancho which is here described, and the background is fitted to the actors, the scene is absolutely vivid and deluding. We are made to participate in the events which have given

From "Soldiers of Fortune."

a master in "Soldiers of Fortune." His defects have disappeared. The cocksure mannerisms and what might be called the color of an inveterate commonplaceness have both been escaped. What is presented between the covers of this delightful novel is the work of a mature romancer, writing out of a full mind and sure of his ground. From all points of view it is a good book. In that relation alone, to which reference has been made above, in its interpretation of the tone and movement of a South American State, in its characteristic condition of fermentation, we are persuaded that it is unusually sympathetic and exact. The reader is not left to cultivate an impulse of doubt. The whole thing moves with such artless celerity. Perhaps a President in the tropics does not play such a tortuous game as that of the Alvarez of the present story; perhaps the new dictator in the field is less of the melodramatic individual than we find Mr. Davis's Mendoza; but he has certainly made these two

a new power to the novelist's pen, and there is not a page in the book which fails of its effect.

Possibly that last observation should be qualified. On page 150 the hero, Clay, indulges in a spasm of self-pity which is hardly worthy of him. But to note this is really to pay a tribute to the general excellence of the author's work, for it would be impossible to resent the lapse if Mr. Davis had not kept the hero so true to himself in every other episode of the story. Clay is a man who could be consistent, who could be undeviatingly strong and admirable, without being a prig. He fills the stage with the aplomb of a man who is almost an Admirable Chrichton, but he never ceases to be a man, he is always interesting, always sympathetic. Hitherto Mr. Davis has done well in sketching rather obvious types of the Van Bibber or Gallegher sort, but he has drawn in Clay a figure genuine clean through, and with that touch of individuality about him which makes

a personage in fiction remembered for his own sake instead of as a type. The other actors in the drama are individualized too. The amiable millionaire, with his love for his family and his shrewd business faculty; his serenely impeccable daughter, Alice, and her impetuous but more lovable sister, Hope, are all bodied forth distinctly, and the men who surround Clay are equally well presented. They are all flung into an adventure the thrill of which Mr. Davis has communicated to his pages as though without an effort, and the book is closed with a feeling of complete satisfaction. N. Y. Tribune.

A New Blackstone. Commentaries on the Laws of England. In four books. By Sir William Blackstone. With notes selected from the editions of Archbold, Christian, Coleridge, Chitty, Stewart, Kerr and others; and in addition, notes and references to all text books and decisions wherein the Commentaries have been cited, and all statutes modifying the text. By Sir William Draper Lewis. Quarto, two volumes, sheep, $10.00; four volumes, sheep, $12.00; four volumes, three-quarters morocco, $15.00. It is now a hundred and thirty years since Blackstone gave to the world his immortal Commentaries on the Common Law of England, yet they remain the foundation for the study of the law to day. Such men as Coleridge, Chitty, Stewart and Kerr have spent the best years of their life in re-editing and re-annotating the Commentaries-each new edition in seeming answer to new demands. In 1831 Judge Reed, of Carlisle, Pa., edited an abridgment applicable to Pennsylvania alone, but the work was not destined to wide favor. In 1859 Judge Sharswood edited the Commentaries in an excellent and seemingly satisfactory way, but the lapse of nearly forty years has necessitated still further editing, and the work has been most ably done by Professor William Draper Lewis, Ph. D., Dean of the Faculty of the Law Department of the University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Lewis, in his preface to the new edition,

says:

Many editions of Blackstone's Commentaries have been published, both in this country and in England, since the death of the learned author. My apology for adding another to the list is my desire to accomplish in the notes certain things not heretofore attempted, and also my belief that the time has come when accumulated experience makes it possible to select what is best from the mass of notes left by my predecessors.

"The material used in the preparation of this edition may be divided into four classes. First, the published results of modern research

into the history of our law, such as the works of Maine, of Pollock and Maitland, and of Vinogradoff. Second, the statutes in England and the United States which modify the statements made in the text. Third, the notes of my predecessors. Fourth, the cases decided and the text-books published since Blackstone's day which have referred to him as authority. The fourth class of my material is, in my judgment, by far the most important."

The annotations are of great service to the student at law, but are of special advantage to the layman, who would inform himself of the growth of the laws of the English speaking people of the world. The translation of the law Latin used so freely by Justice Blackstone makes the Commentaries more easily understood by the layman. No work in the English language is of greater value than the Commentaries as an educator in logical, analytical reasoning, and one can read this work with delight if considered merely as a mental exercise entirely outside of its historical value, or as a preparation for the practice of the law." The reading of it will make no man his own lawyer; but it will teach him to think and possibly thereby to avoid legal pitfalls.

Says the Philadelphia Times: "The Commentaries remain unequaled and unexcelled. What lawyer can do without them? From the moment they introduce us to the profession of the law until we leave it they are a constant source of reference and satisfaction. Who ever consults them in vain? What other writer is comparable in beauty and style, or in vigor and lucidity of expression? It is that very charm which makes it difficult to believe that it is such a masterly expression of the law. A law book is supposed necessarily to be a dull book, full of involved sentences and undigested information, which it is only given. to the elect to understand; but here is a book intelligible to every layman, and forming part of the foundation of all liberal education.

A Brilliant Study of Sociology.

dexed.

Genesis of the Social Conscience: The Relation Between the Establishment of Christianity in Europe and the Social Question. By H. S. Nash. 309 pp. In12m0, $1.10; by mail, $1.24. Professor Nash's volume fulfils the promise of its title. It does more, indeed, for the author is something more and better than a mere epitomizer of other men's thoughts. Not only is his treatment of the great thesis which he has undertaken to discuss fresh and suggestive, but he shows himself to be a clear and original thinker. To say this is to say a great deal; for sociology, using the word in its broadest sense, is in many respects the great

question of this generation, and many of the most acute thinkers of the day have become at once its students and interpreters. It is no small praise therefore to say that Professor Nash need fear comparison with none who have preceded him. In luminous and epigrammatic statement, in compactness of thought and in a thorough mastery of the whole subject he ranks among the best writers on sociology who have appeared during the last twenty years, and we believe his book will come to b. recognized as one of the most valuable and helpful treatises in the language.

Its

He begins with a short syllabus of his line of thought. In the Mediterranean civilization the individual man for the first time became conscious that he had a soul. Christianity forced that thought through the lowest stratum of society until it reached the downmost man. monotheism co-ordinated and unified the spiritual goods of race, brought out the moral the unity of all men and put the universe at the service of God. Under the spell of this thought man came to be concerned not merely with the "is," but with the "may be" and the "ought to be." The personality of God made for the individuality and freedom of man. It banished fate, and with fate out of the way there was no longer any dead matter in the universe. The sense of sin soon came to be a part of the moral consciousness, and the sense of sin is the mortal foe of aristocracy. The luminous outlines of a Kingdom of God began to be discerned, and with it the idea of Humanity rose full and clear above the horizon. Duty was defined not as an insurance of present rights, but as an impulse that strove to create new rights. This involved a revolution in human val

ues.

PLATE I.

Individualism is the last sociological word of Christian civilization, for it means moralization. A man is moralized when he is taken to heart by the highest conscience to be found and brought under the influence of the highest ideal. Christianity taught the downmost man that by virtue of his individuality he was an integral part of the great plan of things, and ultimately forced the universal reason and con

The "is" no longer satisfied the heart of man; he pressed forward to attain unto the "ought to be," and, in doing so, lifted the whole race up to a higher conception of life and destiny. In a word, the establishment of Christianity created the reformer's conscience, made the world seem plastic to it, and gave to sociology that elemental man "of whom Rousseau preached, Burns and Wordsworth sang and for whose sake Kant did his deepest thinking.'

BARN SWALLOW.

TREE SWALLOW.

BANK SWALLOW.

From "Bird-Life."

science to take cognizance of him. Thus the idea of God became the embodied and trans

figured desire of the race. "Into it as a supreme good the sanctified wishes of men have poured themselves. The deeper

Socialism of England and America is looking toward, if it has not already entered into, a religious phase. This is not a haphazard or passing attitude. The social and the religious consciousness are akin. If we strip religion of those features that make it a form of insur

ance, and then consider not its speculative explanations but its emotional forms, it yields two main elements for our examination: first, a sense of the whole of things, and, secondly, a feeling of admiration.

After showing how biblical monotheism unified the world and clothed the downmost man with the attributes of personality, the author goes on to show how, under Christianity, this great principle has been working itself out in history, until to-day all the idealizing forces of our time which touch to the quick the problem of man's life upon the earth have a common stake. The article of faith they stand or fall by is the sovereign worth of individuality. In all its vicissitudes, Christianity has ever stood for this idea, and only thus can it justify its claims to the allegiance of mankind. In spite of the occasional appearance of sacerdotalism, Christianity is the religion of the layman, and, therefore, of democracy. Under its inspiration the social question must ever be supreme. The social and ethical progress of the human race is its perpetual crusade. But the holy law to be redeemed is not hidden away in the mists of distance. Rather, it is under the feet of each peasant and day laborer. The idea of divine right is not dead, as is frequently asserted. But it has ceased to be the monopoly of kings, and has become the privilege of all, even the downmost man. N. Y. Tribune.

Bird-Life.

A Guide to the Study of Our Common Birds. By Frank M. Chapman, author of " Handbook of Birds of Eastern North America," etc. With seventy-five full-page plates and numerous text drawings. By Ernest Seton Thompson, author of "Art Anatomy of Animals," etc. 269 pp. Indexed. 12m0, $1.35; by mail, $1.48. "Bird-Life" is by a practical ornithologist, but it is simple and comprehensible. It is compact, pointed, clear. It has a large number of illustrations which help in identifying birds. It has chapters which tell succinctly about the natural history of birds, their forms, colors, habits, voices, calls and their place in nature and relation to man. There are many interesting suggestions to those who wish to become acquainted with the songsters, the birds of land and water. To all these interesting features must be added this, which is important and fundamental-the work is perfectly reliable. It is not the work of a halfinformed amateur, but it is written by one whose name is a guarantee of real worth. It is not a large book or an expensive one, and it commends itself in many ways. One good point is this the author uses every line to give information. He does not quote poetry,

bring in personal experiences, or go into raptures over his special favorites. His book is a straightforward and very compact guidebook to bird-land. Hartford Post.

Lithography.

ITS CHARMS AS AN ART AND SOME OF ITS FAMOUS NAMES.

Some Masters of Lithography. By Atherton Curtis. With twenty-two Photogravure Plates after Representative Lithographs. Quarto. 187 pp. $10.80; by mail, $11.16.

This is the first book of serious value published in English as the result of the recent revival of interest in the art discovered and perfected by Alois Senefelder a hundred years ago. It ought to prove extremely useful, for although it makes no pretence of covering the entire field of lithography, either in an historical or a critical manner, it brings together papers on some of the most remarkable masters of the art, and sets forth with sufficient fullness the claims of that art upon our admiration. Perhaps Mr. Curtis takes a more enthusiastic view of his subject than will be adopted by most of his readers. When he says of a certain print by James Duffield Harding that “it is worthy to stand beside the greatest landscapes that art has given us,'' and talks in the same reckless manner about many other lithographic productions, he only succeeds in leaving the impression that his ideas of true greatness in art are distorted. It is undoubtedly true that art may reach greatness and even grandeur as well within the limits of a coin as within those of a vast ecclesiastical structure; but lithography has clearly defined boundaries which it is useless to ignore, and it is possible to admire its beauties without tacitly assuming, as Mr. Curtis seems to assume, that triumphs of the most extraordinary character may be won in its practice. On the other hand, the reader who can make the proper deductions from these ardently written pages, will see that the author's heart is in the right place, that the drift of his praise is generally right, and that he has, for all his enthusiasm, shown in more than one instance unusual common sense. N. Y. Tribune.

Mr. Curtis writes sympathetically and with knowledge of an art that, for many years, has been too much neglected, and his criticism of the different masters is just, appreciative, and discriminating, while the photogravure reproductions, though not absolutely perfect, give as good an idea of the originals as can be obtained by any mechanical process. The collection, necessarily very limited, is yet a representative one; only the best original workers being included and one or more