not for an individual, but for a syndicate. In addition to his forthcoming book on "James the Sixth and the Gowrie Mystery" and his "Romance Book" for Christmas, he has written .a new novel, "The Disentanglers", which the Longmans have in press. His intervals of leisure he occupies with writing "At the Sign of the Ship" for the magazine which he edits, and with light and clever literary contributions to the daily and weekly press.

The duplication of titles continues to be an embarrassment both to authors and readers. The title of George Horton's novel, "Like Another Helen" appeared this summer in an English story of Indian life. Arthur Morrison's story "The Hole in the Wall" recalls Miss Alcott's "A Hole in the Wall." Mr. Henry James's title of "Passionate Pilgrim" has been borrowed by another writer, and was not original with Mr. James any way. Now it appears that the title of Mr. Crawford's forthcoming novel "Cecilia" repeats that of one published by Mr. S. V. Makower a few years ago, to say nothing of Fanny Burney's novel which was published in 1792. 1

1

Mr. Edward S. Morse's "Glimpses of China and Chinese Homes" (Little, Brown & Co.) is precisely what its name indicates, not a pretentious or even a very well-ordered study of China and the Chinese in their political or other serious aspects, but just a series of snap-shots of them in their streets and homes, taken by a hasty visitor, but one who knows well a cognate people, the Japanese, and is able to make interesting comparisons. Illustrated by the author's pen-and-ink drawings, these cheerful and rapid sketches have a vivid quality which makes them pleasing. The reader may get nearer to the real Chinaman in these few pages than by reading many

a more impressive and bulky vol

ume.

The attention attracted by that brilliant compromise between fact and fiction, "The Conqueror," gives special timeliness to the republication by the Macmillan Co. of an earlier book of Gertrude Atherton's, "Before the Gringo Came." Appearing now with revision and enlargement under the title of "In the Splendid, Idle Forties." these stories of Old California give vivid glimpses of that picturesque period when officers in United States blue-and-gold came to vie with Spanish caballeros for the smiles of their green-eyed señoritas. Distinctly of the romantic type, they are none the less true to the life which they portray.

In "The Heart of the Doctor" Houghton, Mifflin & Co. add another to their notable list of novels dealing with problems of philanthropy and economics. Its hero a laborious and resolute young doctor, working among the Italians in the "North End" of Boston, the book describes with the minuteness born of knowledge and sympathy the strange mingling of waste and industry, squalor and display, greed and self-sacrifice, superstition and faith, mirth and despair which mark that exotic life. The plot is not well knit, and the inevitable romance is of too conventional a type, but there is real talent in the story, and it will repay reading. Mabel G. Foster is its author.

The personal and critical elements are well combined in Thomas Wentworth Higginson's volume on Longfellow in the American Men of Letters series. (Houghton, Mifflin & Co.) Colonel Higginson, in his younger days, knew Longfellow in the relations of student and teacher at Harvard: later he was his neighbor and close friend

and a member of the same literary coterie. Reminiscence and personal impressions accordingly enchance the interest of his succinct narrative of Longfellow's life, and his estimate of his works. It might be thought that, by this time, all the sources of biographic material relating to Longfellow had been exhausted: but Colonel Higginson has been fortunate in gaining access to letters and unpublished early writings which throw new light on Longfellow's literary development. The book is of modest proportions, but it is sincere, sympathetic and deeply interesting.

The survey of contemporary relig ious life and activity which Mr. Willard Chamberlain Selleck presents in the volume entitled "The Spiritual Outlook" is tolerant, catholic and hopeful in a high degree. Protestantism and Roman Catholicism, orthodoxy and Unitarianism and Universalism, Christian Science and Christian socialism are impartially considered with a view to ascertaining the truth in each and measuring accurately the contribution of each to the religious progress of the time. But the examination is not uncritical: the author discerns faults and limitations as well as contributions to progress. He is full of the sense of God working in and through men, and is keenly sympathetic with whatever is religious in the old and true sense of binding human life and destiny to the Divine. His temper is reverent and his conclusions are sane. The book is published by Little, Brown & Co.

The second series of Bret Harte's "Condensed Novels" may or may not be so clever as the first: the comparison seems rather a futile one. They are at any rate very clever in

deed. Sherlock Holmes appears in them as Hemlock Jones": David Harum as "Dan'l Borem": and one of Anthony Hope's favorite characters figures as "Rupert the Resembler." It takes "Stories Three" to do justice to Rudyard Kipling, and each of them hits off some special characteristic. Perhaps the solemn fooling of Moo Kow, Miaow and the Man Cub is one of the best. Marie Corelli receives notice which will embarrass one who SO shrinks from publicity: and her masculine counterpart is beautifully dealt with in a story of "Golly and the Christian, or the Minx and the Manxman." Yet the humor in these delightful parodies is not caustic: it is all "good fun" and nothing more. Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

The critic of the Pall Mall Magazine, who writes under the title "As Others See Us" sums up somewhat caustically what he conceives to be the limitations of Mrs. Humphrey Ward, thus:

A laborious study of certain phases of life in Italy and of Italian character; a landscape constructed in mosaic; a scene in St. Peter's done as by a journalist of the highest order, but still a journalist; types of character, both English and American, of which the details are strictly correct but from which the vital spark is absent; a supreme, unremitting, indefatigable effort of conscience, in place of the spontaneity which the reader craves; stores of accumulated knowledge, with much of which you would joyfully dispense in exchange for one touch of the nature which makes the whole world akin; an art never quite concealing itself; an art from which the sense of effort is never absent; an art which seems ascetic in its struggle toward the ideal it never quite reaches,-such is the final word for the present of Mrs. Ward's literary craftsmanship.

The principle and purpose of the Education Bill, in which most people are agreed, are running some risk of being overlooked and even imperilled in the discussion of machinery and applications in which almost everybody has an opinion of his own. The Bill was begotten of a desire to meet a national emergency which has arisen from the defects of that part of national education in England which is comprised in public instruction. These defects have been long known to all those whose personal interests or official duties have made them familiar with the facts; they are just beginning to be appreciated by the people at large. The generation of British citizens which is growing up in England may inherit to the full the character and virtues of its ancestors; but, unless reform is very promptly undertaken, it will be less instructed than the people of European States, of America, and even of our own colonies. If it is true that the international rivalry of the future will be one of commerce and manufactures, the uninstructed nations will have to reconcile themselves to be the menial servants of the rest of the world, and to perform the lower and rougher operations of modern industry; while all those which require taste, skill, and in

vention, gradually fall into the hands of people who are better taught. If a race that aspires to exercise imperial influence in the world must possess knowledge as well as courage, and intelligence as well as wealth, the people of England must be content to see the British Empire decline, unless other citizens of the empire take up the task for which the lack of public instruction renders the people of England unequal. It is therefore no exaggeration to call the state of public instruction in England an emergency. The danger is imminent. There is no time to lose. Teachers and schools cannot be created in a moment by Act of Parliament. If all the authorities in England, the people, the parents, the Churches, the County and Municipal Councils, the central Government, set to work this day in earnest to improve public instruction, it would be years before the improved machinery could be got into working order, and our public instruction brought up to the level of that which has for many years already been possessed by our commercial and industrial rivals.

The chaos of English education has often been described with detailed figures and statistics, both in Parliament and elsewhere. The facts are