56th Psalm "the dove of the distant terebinths," while the wellknown sentence, "Oh, that I had wings like a dove," is to be found in the preceding psalm, to which it is clear the title properly belongs. It is a small matter, but it is well to be right even in little things.

SOCIOLOGY, POLITICS, AND JURISPRUDENCE.

Law in Daily Life,1 a collection of legal questions connected with the ordinary events of every-day life, is a translation from the German of Rud von Shering, with Notes and Additions by Dr. Goudy, Regius Professor of Civil Law in the University of Oxford. "In daily life," says Von Shering in his Preface, "many legal relations and legal transactions arise, which, owing to the insignificance of the object involved in them, hardly ever lead to an action, but which for all that may be applied with great utility to purposes of legal education, because they give to beginners the opportunity of contemplating with a legal eye the ordinary occurrences of life." In rendering this collection accessible to English students, Dr. Goudy has supplied a work of the utmost practical utility. The study of law is naturally repellent to beginners. By illustrating principles of law by homely cases, the attention of the student is assisted, and his interest aroused. To illustrate a legal proposition by some leading case involving extremely complicated business transactions of which the student can have no knowledge or even conception, is really to throw unnecessary obstacles in his way. In this book will be found a store of most interesting questions bearing upon the incidents of our daily life, such as travelling by land or sea, staying at an inn, dining at a restaurant, building a house, dealing with tradesmen and the Post Office-questions bearing upon the principles and doctrines of possession, property, contract, and tort. experience," says Dr. Goudy of nearly twenty years as a law examiner, has taught me that for testing the knowledge of candidates for degrees, scholarships, &c, there is nothing so satisfactory as setting concrete questions to be answered." For such questions, he adds, the services of the "coach" or crammer are of little if any use.

"An

Law in Daily Life. A Collection of Legal Questions connected with the Ordinary Events of Every-Day Life. From the German of Rud. von Shering. With Notes and Additions by Henry Goudy. D. C. L., Regius Professor of Civil Law in the University of Oxford. Oxford: At the Clarendon Press. 1904.

We agree, but to the genuine tutor or the self-taught student they will prove invaluable.

We have recently had occasion to speak of the want of moral training especially in our elementary schools, which pursue a system of so-called education with such assurant complacency. In Education through the Imagination1 Miss Margaret McMillan reminds us of another want, not confined to popular education, although there are some bright exceptions, such for instance as Bedulas in Hampshire. As Professor Dewar recently said, "the failure of elementary education up to the present was a failure to develop and train the imagination of the children of the masses." The learning of facts and of formal arts, the training of verbal memory, the discipline of the class-room and school may be good things in their way. It is slowly beginning to be recognised that mere mechanical skill for instance, however good in its way, is not enough. If we are to maintain our place in modern civilisation, we require in our trade not merely the "skilled" artiean, but a man possessed of enterprise, insight, initiative-in a word, imagination. The average man, the so-called practical person, avoids imagination as if it were a deadly sin, a faculty only to be indulged in by artists, and hysterical and semi-lunatic individuals. Without the imaginative faculty no great work has ever been accomplished. "There are Tories," exclaimed Tyndal, "even in science who regard imagination as a faculty to be feared and avoided rather than employed." It is in the elementary schools that this faculty must be assisted and encouraged. At present it is being deadened and killed. "Education as at present conducted," said Professor Boyd Hawkins recently, "is killing the insatiable curiosity of children. All children have faculties of investigation that would teach them much, if they are not dulled by education." There is much chatter, as Miss McMillan points out, in the press and on the platform, about popular education, but few understand the true aim or the proper methods of education. This book is a real contribution to the study of this great question, and worthy to rank with the works of Froebel, Herbart and Spencer, upon the same problems.

In The Scholar Citizen 2 Mr. James Philpott claims to have found the solution of the education problem. His solution is very simple but somewhat drastic. He desires to abolish State control, and to establish Free Trade in education. We quite agree with his strictures upon the present system of primary education. It is physically, mentally, and morally defective. But a reformer should take the line of least resistance. We have had Free Trade in The exploitation of education.

education, and a sorry business it is.

1 Education through the Imagination. By Margaret McMillan. London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co., Ltd. 1904.

2 The Scholar-Citizen: The Education Problem Solved. By James Philpott. Newcastle-on-Tyne: T. & G. Allan. 1904.

cannot be tolerated. In our opinion a reform of the present system is more feasible, and when we have got rid of religious controversy, and the present control by the Church, a scheme of education of which Mr. Philpott would approve will become an accomplished fact.

What to Read is the title of a pamphlet by Mr. John M. Robertson, which is the substance of an address delivered before the Tyneside Sunday Lecture Society. Mr. Robertson, recognising that people must be interested and their curiosity excited if they are to be induced to sit down and read steadily, is in favour of attaining this end by a judicious selection of fiction.

In the Trans-Isthmian Canal-A Study in American Diplomatic History (1825-1904).2 Dr. Charles Henry Huberich tells the history of the part played by the Panama Canal in the policy of the United States. At first the Government favoured the construction of the Canal as a private enterprise free to the use of all nations, and uncontrolled by any. The second line of policy inaugurated by Mr. Seward, and carried to its height by Mr. Blaine and Mr. Frelinghuysen, advocated its construction by private enterprise but subject to control by the United States. The third and present policy is that of a governmental enterprise, and under the sole and entire control of the United States. This in Dr. Huberich's opinion is the best solution, and one which assures the success of the undertaking. Whether Europe will acquiesce in America's exclusive control, time alone he says will show.

1 What to Read: Suggestions for the Better Utilisation of Public Libraries. By John M. Robertson. London: Watts & Co. 1904.

2 The Trans-Isthmian Canal: A Study in American Diplomatic History (1825-1904). By Charles Henry Huberich, D.C.L. Austin, Texas, U.S. 1004.

HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY.

Russia,1 by Professor W. R. Morfill, after passing through five editions since its appearance in 1890, has now entered on its sixthrevised to date, and with supplementary chapters, additional illustrations, and special war map-which brings the story of that vast empire down to the eve of its war with Japan. It would be superfluous to dilate on the merits of a work such as this, which has already found signal favour with a public that is beginning to realise the importance of accurate knowledge concerning the ethnography, literature, and history of our old allies, who stood shoulder to shoulder with us in our struggle against Napoleon. It was to Elizabeth of England that Ivan the Terrible looked for shelter in the event of his expulsion from the empire. Professor Morfill, whose authority to treat of Slavonic subjects is undisputed at home and abroad, has studiously avoided the common error of viewing Russia through English spectacles. His book should, therefore, serve as a powerful antidote against much pernicious claptrap on the part of a press that abuses its privileges by pandering to the blind prejudices of "the man in the street."

The Life of His Majesty William the Second, German Emperor,2 by Dr. W. Jacks, begins most appropriately with a brilliant sketch of the Hohenzollerns. It is the work of an enthusiast whom the electric personality of the German Emperor has converted into a hero-worshipper. Dr. Jacks sees in him the reincarnation of the Great Elector, from whom he only differs in respect of ultra-sensitiveness to press criticisms-an inheritance, doubtless, from the days when he was under Bismarck's influence. It must be admitted that no ruler in modern times has more closely identified himself with the moral and material interests of his subjects than William II. has done since he reached the age of political discretion. We therefore not only pardon the enthusiasm of his biographer, but share it, at any rate whilst under the spell of his eloquence.

A vivid impression of Europe as it was before the Thirty Years' War desolated Germany, and of the time between the defeat of the Spanish Armada and the sailing of the "Mayflower," may be gained by the perusal of Shakespeare's Europe: Unpublished Chapters of

1 Russia. War Edition. By W. R. Morfill, M.A., F.B.A. (Professor of Russian and the other Slavonic Languages in the University of Oxford). Story of the Nations Series. London: T. Fisher Unwin. 1904.

2 The Life of His Majesty William the Second, German Emperor. By William Jacks, LL.D. Glasgow: James Macle hose & Son. 1904.

Fynes Moryson's Itinerary,1 now edited by Mr. Charles Hughes, from a MS. in the possession of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Fynes Moryson, Fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge, was seized with a passion for travelling: in the course of two journeys he traversed "the twelve dominions of Germany, Bohmerland, Switzerland, Netherland, Denmark, Poland, Italy, Turkey, France, England, Scotland, and Ireland." His first journey began in May, 1591, and ended in March 1595; his second-on which he was accompanied by his brother Henry, who died that summer near Antioch-began in 1596 and ended, so far as the Continent is concerned, in July, 1597. At Rome he made the acquaintance of Cardinals Allen and Bellarmine; at Geneva that of Theodore Beza. He had a sturdy hatred of "Poperie," and a tolerance for all men, except Turks and Irish priests. He was a good linguist, speaking French, German, Italian, and Latin. Although a contemporary of Shakespeare, whose junior he was by only two years, he makes no allusion to any member of the "Mermaid" club-an irritating omission which stamps him as a Philistine. Mr. Hughes has certainly done his work well, and great credit is due to his publishers for the handsome form in which they have produced this sumptuous and interesting volume.

According to Sir John Seeley, the historian is only concerned with man as a citizen, whereas Lord Acton has laid it down that history embraces ideas as much as events, and derives its best virtue from regions beyond the sphere of State. As to the comparative value of these opposing dicta, no discrepancy of opinion is at the present time likely to exist, and Mr. Herbert Paul has, in A History of Modern England,2 chosen the broader and only philosophic line of treatment. In his opinion, and also in ours, Sir Robert Peel's official career marks a turning-point in English history. Mr. Herbert Paul has divided his work, which will run into five volumes, into periods, not into subjects. Of the two volumes before us the first begins at 1846-an age, according to Disraeli, profoundly imaginative, poetical, and religious-and the second ends with the close of the Palmerstonian Era. Mr. Justin McCarthy's History of Our Own Times is, so far as we are aware, the only work professing to cover the same ground as the one before us; but the treatment is essentially different, and, in certain respects, each may be regarded as supplementary to the other. Mr. Paul has approached the subject in the spirit of a philosopher rather than that of a man of letters; nevertheless ample space is reserved for literature and religion. Perhaps no better example of his epigrammatic terseness of delineation can be shown than the following criticism of Charles

Shakespeare's Europe: Unpublished Chapters of Fynes Moryson's Itinerary. By Charles Hughes, B.A. (London). London: Sherrat & Hughes. 1904.

2 A History of Modern England. By Herbert Paul. Vols. I., II. London: Macmillan & Co. 1904.

VOL. 162.-No. 1.

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