London Matriculation, and also a chapter on the Essentials of French Verse.

"There is nothing in artistic poetry quite akin to Aucassin and Nicolete," writes Mr. Andrew Lang in his Introduction to the sixth edition of that exquisite conte-fable, and we quite agree with him. Written in alternate prose and rhyme by some long-forgotten bard of Picardy, this love-story, palpitating with a passion that sets at naught the joys of heaven and the torments of hell, loses none of its fragrance in the antiquated English of its translator. With great skill he weaves into a ballad an incident in the text describing the flight of Nicolete. This poem appeared subsequent to the earliest edition, which, by the way, was far more costly than the present one and less handy too.

Messrs. De la Rue & Co. have added several novelties to their already excellent list of Diaries, the most notable being the Travellers' Index Diary, in which each month is indicated after the style of an address-book. We have never yet seen brought together in such a compact form, information invaluable to travellers, such as Poisons and their Antidotes, Comparison of English and Metrical Barometers, Measures of Réaumur, Centigrade, and Fahrenheit thermometers the different itineraries to important places, with cost, &c.; in fact, it supplies a long-felt want. Every traveller should at once provide himself with this admirable little Diary.

There have been few, if any, members of the Peerage who, in depth and diversity of scholarship, could bear comparison with the late Marquess of Bute. Besides being an enthusiastic student of the Semitic languages, his acquaintance with Continental vernaculars included Russian and Romaic. He read and wrote much on heraldry, ecclesiastical history and architecture, but will probably be best remembered by his translations of the Coptic Morning Service and the Roman Breviary-on which he laboured for more than nine years. His Essays on Home Subjects 3 comprise his Installation Address as Rector of St. Andrews (1893), and six papers, reprinted from the Scottish Review, on the following Celtic themes: Ancient Celtic Latin Hymns, The New Light upon St. Patrick, The Scottish Peerage, Parliament in Scotland, David Duke of Rothesay, and Brendan's Fabulous Voyage. The style of these Essays is uniformly good, but in Brendan's Fabulous Voyage one meets with passages of rare beauty. Lord Bute regarded the last-named work as a religious novel of the period, bearing something more than an accidental likeness to Lucian's Traveller's True Story, whilst the description of the

1 Aucassin and Nicolete. Done into English by Andrew Lang. London: David Nutt. 1904.

2 De la Rue & Co.'s Diaries and Calendars for 1905. Travellers' Diary. Illustrated. Flags of every nation.

Essays on Home Subjects. Paisley Alexander Gardner.

:

By John, third Marquess of Bute, K.T., LL.D. 1904.

Burning Islands suggests the Cyclopes and Una, as given in the Odyssey. In his opinion it is not impossible that its author may have heard Norseman's stories of the wonders of America. Although an ardent Home Ruler so far as Scotland was concerned, he was most anxious that the national movement should not in any way become mixed up with the discussion of the Irish Question. "People do not know that as a matter of fact the Union nearly beggared the population for several generations, and that the country is still bled annually at the rate of about £2 per head of the population in deference to a totally distinct dynastic question which happened to exist in the year 1704."

In Johnson: a Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland 1 Mr. E. J. Thomas has enriched the University Tutorial Series with an annotated edition of this famous Classic, accompanied by a biographical Introduction. Dr. Samuel Johnson visited the Highlands with Boswell in 1773, and his record of his impressions of his journey was published in the following year. He was a keen observer of nature, an enthusiastic admirer of antiquities and folklore, and not devoid of a certain sense of humour, as the following observation shows: "We had in our passage to Mull the company of a woman and her child, who had exhausted the charity of Col. The arrival of a beggar on an island is accounted a sinistrous event. Everybody considers that he shall have the less for what he gives away. Their alms, I believe, is generally oatmeal." Again, when describing the inhabitants of Rum, "who continued Papists for some time after their laird became a Protestant . . . till one Sunday, when they were going to Mass under the conduct of their patroness, Maclean met them on the way, gave one of them a blow on the head with a yellow stick . . . and drove them to the kirk, from which they have never since departed."

The House on the Hill,2 now admirably translated by Miss Jane Hutchinson, is the masterpiece of M. René Boylesve, one of the youngest and most promising of French novelists. It is a story, pleasant to read but hard to analyse, of middle-class life in Touraine, which has ever been the home of the French spirit in its most characteristic form. The author possesses the gift of putting his readers in sympathy with the creations of his genius-the people of the little town, in the square of which towered the majestic statue of Alfred de Vigney, gazing in calm despair at all the petty wrangling and jealousies at his feet.

In John Rigdon,3 by Mr. C. P. Plant, the hero, just returned

1 Johnson: a Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland. Edited by E. J. Thomas, M.A., St. Andrews, B.A., Lond. London: W. B. Clive. 1904.

2 The House on the Hill. A Story of French Country Life. By René Boylesve. Translated by Jane Hutchinson. London: David Nutt.

1904.

John Rigdon; or, the Irony of Fate. By Charles P. Plant. London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co. 1904.

from Oxford to Virginia, has every reason to be satisfied with his lot in life: he is young, rich, good-looking, and about to marry Eva Conyers, whom he has loved since he was a lad. Yet a sense of impending calamity, none the less keen because it was a figment of the brain, disturbed the first moments of accepted love. North and South had already taken sides on the subject of slavery, though the Civil War had not yet begun. Rigdon is startled by news from his lawyers that his father's next-of-kin had instituted a suit for his estate on the grounds that his mother was an unemancipated slave. Rigdon, whose betrothed at once engages herself to a nigger-driving sheriff, is consequently sold as a chattel to an English swindler, makes his escape, and becomes an Abolitionist desperado under the name of Captain Blackboy. After a series of exciting adventures he poisons himself to avoid capture, forty-eight hours before proof arrives that his mother, who had avoided slavery by committing suicide, was a Frenchwoman of good family. There is not a dull chapter in the book.

The gifted foundress of the Lyceum Club has given us a most interesting romance, which far surpasses any of her previous work. The interest in For Heart o' Gold1 does not flag from beginning to end. The style is incisive, fresh, and few writers of to-day can be said to possess to such a degree Miss Smedley's remarkable power of delineation of character. We wish it all the success it deserves.

King Arthur's Wood,2 written and illustrated by Mrs. Elizabeth Forbes, tells us how little Myles discovered in a cave a wonderful book that had once belonged to Merlin, but was then the property of the Little Brown Spirit of the Woodlands. The latter, as a reward to Myles for restoring this treasure, tells him the story of Sir Gareth of Orkney, and the Lady of the Castle Perilous. The story is one that should appeal to the juvenile mind that is not too sophisticated to be delighted with old-world romances. The illustrations of this sumptuous volume are examples of the highest art; of the twenty-eight plates, fourteen are in water-colours, the rest being charcoals. We heartily commend King Arthur's Wood to the attention of such as are in search of a Christmas present for a youthful friend or relation.

The study of the Irish language has latterly assumed considerable dimensions. Last year a session was held in Dublin for working at the rich literature which Ancient Erin can boast, far excelling in quantity, and much more imaginative than, Anglo-Saxon. One of the most successful workers in this new field is Professor Strachan, who edited, in conjunction with Dr. Stokes, Thesaurus Palæohibernicus, published at Cambridge. Selections from the Old Irish

1 For Heart o' Gold. By Constance Smedley. London: Harper Bros.

2 King Arthur's Wood. A Fairy Story. Written and Illustrated by Elizabeth Stanhope Forbes. London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co.

Glosses,1 by Professor John Strachan, is the title of a little work designed to help students in the study of the Old Irish verb, which is a very complicated matter, as it is in the Slavonic and nearly all the ancient Aryan languages. This book of selections will be a great boon to students, as providing many important passages for ready use in which the earliest verbal forms are furnished. This interesting language, even in its modern forms, has much to attract its syntax is preserved in Modern Irish almost as completely as in the Ancient. Much is being done for later forms by the Irish Texts Society, which, we are happy to say, is in a prosperous condition.

It will be easy to find suitable Christmas books, pictures, and puzzle picture-blocks which will give much pleasure to the little ones among all those brought out by Messrs. Nisbet.2 Among their numerous Calendars, perhaps the most artistic is the Gloria in Excelsis.

POETRY.

There is much in On Echoing Shores,3 by Mr. C. H. St. L. Russell, that reminds us at times of Mr. Austin Dobson's light and graceful verse. The title-poem is less to our liking than "Sweet and Twenty "a charming and scholarly Rondeau version of Horace's Vitos me similis, Chlöe.

1 Selections from the Old Irish Glosses. With Notes and Vocabulary. By John Strachan. Dublin. 1904.

2 Children's Gift Books and Calendars. London: Nisbet & Co. 1904.

3 On Echoing Shores and Other Verses. By C. H. St. L. Russell. Bristol: J. W. Arrowsmith. 1904.

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