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but not the appetite of the populace for signs and wonders. Our own aeroplanes have, of course, become a familiar enough sight, but we do not see them at such fell work. That a thing in the sky, not much bigger than a bird, should be able to work havoc in a town thousands of feet below it is a phenomenon to strike both pity and fear into momentary abeyance. We are inclined to think that the wonders of the world strike the very young less than they strike the mature. They have not lived in a world which denied the possibility of what has now happened. Their memory does not carry them back to a time when such happenings were regarded by the oldfashioned as impossible, or by the more open-minded as very far off. In the young curiosity takes the place of astonishment. Watch children at a conjurer's entertainment. They would like to find out how he does it, but the marvel does not strike them. The sight of the familiar rabbit is greeted with more cheers than the most wonderful examples of sleight-ofThe Spectator.

hand. Youth longs for experience, but is often fearfully shocked by it. The sights they have risked their lives to see make a nerve-shattering impression upon them. In many ways they are more sympathetic than the old. "What fearful things are in the world," they say to themselves in horror. They cannot add, as their elders do: "But that grim knowledge is nothing new; it has been with us for years." With the curiosity of the good young goes an ardent desire to be of service. The old realize their own unimportance or impotence against

fate.

In considering the facts and emotions which may explain the form of gallantry which the civilian population of London seem always ready to evince one cannot leave out of count the attraction of the tragic, which shows far more in the uneducated than the educated. It has something to do with the spirit of art, which finds other outlets in the learned. It has roots, too, which we dare not dig up, somewhere in a savage past.

Observator.

BOOKS AND AUTHORS.

"Russia of Yesterday and Tomorrow" by Baroness Souiny (The Century Co.) is not a history, or a political study, but a vivid and intimate description of Russia and the Russians as seen from the inside, by one who is herself a Russian, yet who has a knowledge of other countries and peoples wide enough to admit of just estimates and comparisons. She writes with ease and confidence, sometimes lightly and humorously, sometimes with almost dramatic force, of the plots and counterplots which went on in court circles, of the spies and conspirators in high offices, of the Grand Duke Nicholas and the reasons for his dismissal, of Count

Witte and his political strategy, of Rasputin and his mysterious influence, of the widening gulf between the Tsar and the Russian people, and of the great upheaval which, almost in a single day, overthrew the Romanoff dynasty, sent the Tsar and Tsarina to prison, and brought Russia to a state of near-anarchy. Timely and illuminating, and of absorbing interest from the first chapter to the last, the book is an important contribution to the history of the period, and an aid to the understanding of the Russia of yesterday, even though it leaves the Russia of tomorrow a subject of doubt and conjecture. There are sixteen illustrations from photographs.

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Entered as Second Class Mail Matter at Boston, Mass.

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II. The Dawn of the Air Age. By Claude
Grahame-White and Harry Harper CONTEMPORARY REVIEW

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FORTNIGHTLY REVIEW 474
CORNHILL MAGAZINE 483
CHAMBERS'S JOURNAL 488

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FOR SIX DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, THE LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage, to any part of the United States. To Canada the postage is 50 cents per annum.

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