unheroic than Denham. For the dull brutality of Denham's self-absorption, of her incomprehensions and indifferences, approaches a kind of grandeur. There is something of Stonehenge about it. One takes it or leaves it, as the queer saying is. But Daisy is a coward and a liar; and primarily she is a snob. To Daisy belonged that last meanness which has warped so many bourgeois natures from Beau Brummel's to George Meredith's.' Daisy's one possible appeal to sympathy lies in the fact that she is genuinely in love and obviously headed for serious trouble; but one feels no acuteness of pity for her, except perhaps when she is taken by Raymond, the scientist, on that bleak and bitter bird walk to Burnham Beeches. For here, as Raymond shows the inhumanity to man of your true bird student, and as Daphne, that hardy little tweed-andleather comrade, all responsiveness, all passionate interest in birds, sinks into the weakling Daisy, shivering, aching, rebelling with the fury of the wretched and ignored, the reader aches and rebels too.

Daisy and Daphne, it is needless to say, shows much penetration; and, even with its occasional lapses from Miss Macaulay's best wit, it is immensely funny. One ventures to assert that the little girl Cary, that self-sufficient and perspicacious child who contributes so much to Daisy's undoing, has no duplicate among the shrewder childhood of fiction; and Daisy's mother is a creation none the less full of savor for being vaguely reminiscent. Mrs. Arthur is a woman not to be downed. She is robustly cheerful over her daughter's illegitimacy, and she shows the same resilience after being cut to the core of her jolly, vulgar heart by the revelation of Daisy's panic lest her London friends encounter her breezy parent from East Sheen. It is characteristic of the author that the really moving scene in which Mrs. Arthur, hustled 'hugger-mugger' into the bedroom of the London flat, overhears Daisy explaining her away to guests is followed rather than preceded by the easeful tea-drinking scene in East Sheen that shows Mrs. Arthur tincturing her cup with a sturdier drop, and listening, so good-natured and so unmoved, to her sister's expostulations. For there is no doubt whatever that, as the years pass, Mrs. Arthur will be more and more an unvenerable and mortifying mother; and the vivacious Miss Macaulay has the artist's conscience.

One who has a fancy for a comfortable glass of milk will not be pleased with ginger ale, and he who is minded to carol with Pippa should not read Miss Macaulay. For her special talent lies in her gay portrayal of a world somewhat askew.

ETHEL WALLACE HAWKINS

Tammany Hall, by M. R. Werner. New York: Doubleday, Doran & Co. 1928. 8vo. xxi+586 pp. Illus. $5.00.

THE publication of Mr. M. R. Werner's Tammany Hall has stirred sharp controversy, par

ticularly among the journalist critics of New York City. Curiously enough, most of these critics — Democrats and Republicans alike— are indignant over what they term the ill treatment which Tammany has received at the hands of the historian. They revive the good deeds of the wigwam, point out that these good deeds have small place in the volume, and hurry to the conclusion that Mr. Werner has written a campaign document to be laid before the public on the eve of Tammany's most ambitious bid for power.

I think that the intelligent critical attitude toward the book lies in another direction. Let us agree that this is not a complete or a thoroughly unbiased history of Tammany Hall. Let us agree that contemporary political organizations have often indulged in similar crimes. Let us even agree that inaccuracies creep into the text here and there. The fact remains that in Mr. Werner's book we discover with striking effect the depths of depravity into which an uncontrolled political machine may sink. We find out approximately what happened to honor and to government on the three or four occasions when one particular organization achieved outright authority.

Reading this book, a melancholy pageant streams past the eye. In all of their uncomely stature, one sees the bosses who have, in their successive reigns, despoiled a city. Tweed lives again gross, cruel, greedy, vulgar. He robs the people of their wealth, and then, beaten and close to death, whimpers out a confession of his wrongs. Croker stares from the pages cold and strong and unscrupulous. He steals the elections by brute force, thugging his way into command, directing the decisions of the courts which he has purchased. Under the command of such men, we see the press sprawl, fight a little, and in one or two directions sell itself out bodily.

The sins of these men are set out in such forthright detail that they take on a faint splendor. One almost admires their tremendous audacity, their contempt for the herd which watches their crimes and then attempts to build monuments in their honor. But for the lesser figures no such perverse admiration is stirred. The spectacle provided by these fellows - by the simpering A. Oakey Hall, a clown in the mayor's chair; by the infamous Judge Barnard; by Richard B. Connolly, the comptroller; by Peter B. Sweeny; by Hugh J. Grant, another mayor this spectacle is degrading. The world perhaps no longer would endure a Tweed or a Croker. Such fellows belong to a breed which faded out with the fading of the inflated nineteenth century. In this day they would destroy themselves by their own fraudulent immensity. But the lesser characters, sly, retiring, secretive, where their masters were bold the type is eternal. It is good to be warned against them..

We may reach the end of Mr. Werner's book with a very definite idea as to it worth. It is the true history of the evils that grew from machine

government, nothing more. It is a valuable touch of bitters in a political draught that is like to grow too fascinatingly sweet in the days that are upon us. It is a palliative to campaigning hysteria that might even invoke thought in the minds of men who vote. I do not think it is to be taken quite literally that men should hate and fear Tammany Hall because of it. Tammany Hall under Alfred E. Smith (a phase which is not mentioned in Mr. Werner's study) has mended its ways. It has made a bid for respectability, and the bid has not been unsuccessful. It has brought itself to the point where it may honorably ask for national recognition, without drawing forth our scornful laughter. We may even decide to give it this recognition, even to place the government of the Republic in its hands. But with Mr. Werner's story fresh in our minds we shall know that checkreins must be hitched very tightly here and there.

MORRIS MARKEY

Skyward, by Commander Richard E. Byrd. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1928. 8vo. xv+359 pp. Illus. $3.50.

THE subtitle of this well-named volume reads: 'Man's mastery of the air as shown by the brilliant flights of America's leading air explorer. His life, his thrilling adventures, his North Pole and transatlantic flights, together with his plans for conquering the Antarctic by air.'

This is a worthy successor to Lindbergh's We. It is divided into two parts which should appeal to diverse classes of readers. First, Commander Byrd's story of his life from the time when the desire to fly first got him. As with any worthwhile existence, this is naturally concerned with many discouragements and obstacles, both physical and political, and is as equally depressing and exhilarating as the flight of a plane over a city. My only criticism is of an excess of minimization and explaining away of accidents. Aviation has progressed too far for any such necessity. The narration of the various types of accidents in Chapter III is valuable and has not appeared before in any popular account of aviation.

The latter half of the book, dealing with the North Pole and the transatlantic flights, is of consummate interest. I wish this could have been enlarged into an entire volume, for even a popular work would not have felt the burden of many more details of preparation, equipment, and observation. Failing this, it is hoped that in succeeding editions there will be a bibliography of all the published matter, technical and otherwise, bearing on these two historic flights. The present account is as fascinating as its subject is original, and takes its place in the annals of human exploration with the achievement of Columbus.

The most valuable phase of this volume may be summed up in one of Byrd's sentences: 'Aviation's great enemy, "fog," is gradually being

conquered by radio, beacons, and direction finders, and amber-colored lights that will to some extent penetrate it. Until fog is thoroughly conquered the flyer must have sufficient goodweather predictions to evade it.' Commander Byrd's contributions to instrumental as opposed to, or rather supplementing, observational flying will never be forgotten. Without this, man could never be safe in the air except in full daylight and in sight of land.

His coming Antarctic flight, if correlated, as he plans, with the work of a corps of scientists, should hit the ceiling of aviation exploration. WILLIAM BEEBE

The Virgin Queene, by Harford Powel, Jr. Boston: Little, Brown & Co. (An Atlantic Monthly Press Publication.) 1928. 12mo. 255 pp. $2.00.

'I NEVER could see that it's a matter of life or death if some magazine reaches seventeen more dentists in Oklahoma than any other magazine.'

What would happen if the greatest advertising man of our time should allow such a dangerous heresy to come into his mind and even to cross his lips in the presence of an earnest underling? What would happen if the preeminent writer of simple, heartfelt platitudes should indulge, even for a moment, in the luxurious thought that there are better things in life than interpreting, for carefully counted millions of readers, the lofty ideals (and merchandising plans) of Perfection Electric, Nirvana Burial Abbey, Excelsior Secretarial College, Home Arts Magazine, Mother's Kisses, and Lazy-Lacquer? What if he should reflect that this loathsome work had now paid him enough to make him able to run away from it?

These questions Mr. Powel has put to himself and answered in a gay, witty, fast-moving novel. In the opening chapter of The Virgin Queene, Barnham Dunn apostatizes, hurls his typewriter to the floor of his Early American private office, tears up several thousand dollars' worth of his inimitably inspirational copy, and defies the standardized gods of advertising to strike him with their lightnings. Subsequently, with the awed acquiescence of his more practical partner, Barnham Dunn goes to England, buys an ancient manor in Warwickshire, and causes hilarious, highly improbable things to take place.

The principal event, from which the book takes its name, is a little joke that grows, by a combination of circumstances, into a gigantic hoax on the whole literate world. Under the influence of the Shakespeare country, and much reading of Shakespeare's works and about the times of Elizabeth, Barnham Dunn writes a play in the manner nay, in the very genius

of the Bard, and this play, through the plotting of an ex-officer in the British Army and a professional forger, is foisted first upon the scholars of Oxford and then upon all of civilization as a genuine Shakespearean manuscript.

Is it necessary to say more? Nothing, I think, except that Mr. Powel has written a novel that should find two publics: one that will take it as pure light-hearted satire, and another that will read it for its quick, bubbling story. Both will enjoy themselves, for to the former the improbabilities will appear as part of the fun, and to the latter they will not appear at all. Myself, I am a member of both these groups.

EDWARD HOPE

Stonewall Jackson, the Good Soldier, by Allen Tate. New York: Minton, Balch & Co. 8vo. xii+322 pp. Maps. Illus. $3.50.

If there is one thing reasonably certain in a doubtful world, it is that Lieutenant General Thomas Jonathan Jackson, sometime of the United States Army, later of the Confederate States Army, would have looked with pious disapproval upon what is called the 'modern' school of biography. He had fed his own infant mind upon the biographical endeavors of Parson Weems which were very different, to say the least; and there is a peculiar irony in Mr. Allen Tate's choice of this great but alarmingly solemn strategist as subject of a book which has all the modernistic earmarks. Yet it is a curious and perhaps unintended tribute to his greatness, both as a man and as a commander, that after his latest biographer has exploded a whole bagful of brilliance in the very latest and most approved manner, Jackson is still 'standing like a stone wall' in the place he has always held in American history. Indeed, he seems all the greater when the oddities of his character have been duly described.

This must not be taken as implying, however, that Mr. Tate has aspired to what is colloquially known as ‘debunking' Jackson. If he approaches with a twinkling eye the career of this stiffly pious and very literal-minded gentleman, he approaches with a respect that is all the more genuine for the twinkle.

The lively sense of humor and the sense of proportion, which are chief characteristics of this latest of the books about him, cannot be counted among Jackson's own merits. A military superior once bade him wait in his office, forgot about him, and went off for the night. In the morning he found Jackson still sitting there, bolt upright. Orders were orders. Again, Jackson appeared one sweltering spring day in winter uniform. His cadets inquired the reason. Orders once more were orders, no matter what everybody else was doing.

These anecdotes are, to be sure, not highly important, but they are revealing. They help to explain the rigid sense of duty in big things and little which held Jackson's brigade firm at Bull Run when others broke. And that — not to mention the way they brighten up his book is Mr. Tate's justification for including them, and a dozen others of the same sort. Writing with the assumption that Jackson, if he had lived,

might have won the war for the Confederacy, Mr. Tate can hardly be accused of underestimating his hero. He gives just enough personal background of this kind to make Jackson, the man, intelligible; and then plunges into the story of his battles.

As a nontechnical strategic study, Mr. Tate's book would be admirable were it not for abominable maps, on which it is not always possible to trace the campaigns that he describes. He also commits some errors of taste- and probably of fact in certain disparaging references to Lincoln.

One small detail, however, reveals the author's uncanny subtlety. He has ascertained that across the river, opposite one of Jackson's boyhood haunts, there really was a grove of shade trees. And Jackson's mind, he thinks, flashed back to these as he lay dying in the field hospital at Guiney Station. Thus he explains the last words: 'Let's cross over the river and rest in the shade of the trees.'

The strange poignancy and humanness of this are typical of the book as a whole.

JOHN BAKELESS

The Greene Murder Case, by S. S. Van Dine, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1928. 12mo. 388 pp. $2.00.

SUPPOSE one takes it for granted that the detective story is not the highest form of fiction. It is, of course, too inelastic and too artificial for that. It is essentially too much of a crossword puzzle. Nevertheless, the demands it necessarily puts upon its author, and the limitations under which he must labor, induce the exhibition in any such narrative of a peculiarly high technical skill, which makes the appearance of a firstrate detective or mystery story very much of a rarity on the usual publishers' lists. Indeed, often not for many seasons, in spite of the increasing production of mystery fiction so beloved by the tired business man, does one encounter a perfectly balanced and wrought product that leaves a reader satisfied when the book is finally closed.

That shadowy author, Mr. S. S. Van Dine, as mysterious in his obvious nom de plume as the dilettante detective, Philo Vance, of whom he is the modest biographer, would seem to have touched such an achievement in his latest history, The Greene Murder Case. It would, even, seem that The Greene Murder Case will take its place among the volumes close to the summit of Mr. Van Dine's exacting craft, not far removed, indeed, from the marvelous doings of Sherlock Holmes and his obtuse Dr. Watson.

As in every good detective story, the murderer in the baffling tragedy of Mr. Van Dine's neurotic New York family makes an early appearance on the page, mingling mildly with the usual innocent characters, all of whom the reader, rendered gullible by elusive phrases, may suspect as connected with the crime. As in every detective story, the appearance of the culprit,