letters and other marks of reference, -is not the indictment really formidable? The Revised Version has done something toward the correction of this by employing paragraph divisions for the prose and parallelism for the poetic portions; still, much remains to be done, and will remain, perhaps, so long as the public insists on having a whole body of literature crowded into a single volume. Meanwhile, as a practical exemplification of his literary views, Professor Moulton is engaged in editing a charming series of handy volumes,' in which the reader can judge for himself how much the simple expedient of modern attractive printing, the text being arranged in fitting prose or verse form, put in stanzas or couplets as needed, indented, divided, and numbered according to sense of subject or type of discourse, will do toward making the Bible its own lucid interpreter. The result fully justifies us in calling our author's work light-bringing. If, in taking up one of these volumes, the familiar text seems at first strangely unfamiliar, the strangeness is all on the side of the attractive, the natural, the clear; it is like taking off a husk of austerity and ecclesiasticism, and finding that the Bible is a book for the fireside no less than for the pulpit. Nor do its dignity and sanctity suffer in the least thereby. One observation by way of criticism may here be made: the marks of the shop, the sedulous naming of sonnets and epigrams, essays and proverb clusters, seem unduly to cumber the text, which, as in the run of modern books, could be trusted to the printer's resource to secure its sufficient rights; and thus appeal is too insistently made to the technical literary student rather than to the general reader, for whom the Bible, as a book of universal literature, is presumably designed. It would be a pity,

1 The Modern Reader's Bible. A Series of Works from the Sacred Scriptures presented in Modern Literary Form. Edited, with Introductions and Notes, by RICHARD G. MOULTON, VOL. LXXVII. NO. 463.

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however, to let this infelicity crowd these little manuals back into the class of specialist books; it is so greatly overborne by the substantial aid that the series, supported by the textbook of theory, is rendering to the cause of Biblical interpretation and criticism.

While the study of the literary forms of the Bible as evolved and finished supplies important aid and reassurance from one side, the present emergency of Biblical study calls also for something more fundamental. Far greater than the pain of perusing an unorganized literature is the pain of contemplating an unfinished, apparently unmotived history; and especially if the history is one with which we have always felt our own destiny to be vitally connected. And in the exacting work of tracing connections of ancient books with the course of obscure events men so naturally become absorbed in the records of some ancient Stationers' Hall, so subsist on dates and editions and allusions, that, to the ordinary reader, their work is swallowed up in the scoriæ of the publisher; it fails of that light, that guidance, in which the history and the literature assume character and organism. All these things may be getting out indispensable material for a luminous interpretation to come; but after all, critics and historians must from all their excursions of learning come back sooner or later to the truth that a phenomenon, historical or literary, can be really interpreted only in its own spirit, not in some other spirit scientifically applied from without. An important contribution to this spiritual, sympathetic interpretation of the history which, in its vast reaches for mankind, is "the one phenomenon in all the world most deserving of study " lies before us in the late Dr. Coyle's volume of E. D. Rand lectures.2 The object of this volume is to trace the evoluM. A., Ph. D. New York and London: Macmillan & Co. 1895.

2 The Spirit in Literature and Life. The E. D. Rand Lectures in Iowa College for the

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tion of the Hebrew spirit, as a distinctive national energy, from its obscure beginnings in Moses and the patriarchs, through those Old Testament ages during which it makes a history of marked individuality and vitalizes a literature the most remarkable in the world; then as it becomes embodied in a Man who, "evidently through the quickening of that spirit, was fitted to stand at the centre and summit of the world's development, and able to take and hold his place there, and to compel history henceforth to revolve around him ;" then, still onward, as going forth from him this Hebrew spirit becomes a world-spirit, stamped with his individuality, and progressively conforming the world's ongoings to itself. Such is its theme, great enough for an epic pen. And the treatment, although, covering so vast a ground, it has in the nature of the case to be compendious, is full of luminous insight and sanity. It reveals the spiritual vista which so attracts the higher critic and lends nobility to the obscure details of his research; it traces with sympathetic hand the spiritual thread which guides the way through the nebulous ages of prophetic, legislative, didactic, and devotional literature. Thus it may be regarded as a serviceable guidebook for the times.

Such investigation as here comes to expression we may regard as a mark of the advancing and broadening spirit continually at work in the inquiries of our age. If it does not take, it at least foreshadows the step ahead which is to be taken when the critical evidence is all in and construction supervenes. The historical spirit has had its day of light and power; but unless something is added, men's interest in the past may easily grow beyond what is vital, and run to seed in antiquarianism. Meanwhile, a new kind of inquiry is taking possession Year 1894. By JOHN PATTERSON COYLE, D. D. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1896.

of the thinking world, the sociological; and as soon as its search-light is turned upon ancient history, forthwith a new coloring, hitherto undreamed of, begins to suffuse the long-past interests, enterprises, institutions of man in society. The author of this book is a student, not of exegesis, but of sociology; the book is the result of his endeavor to adjust the Hebrew history to that awakening consciousness which is gaining the floor for the immediate future, the consciousness of men walking in the suffusion of a common spirit and working out a common destiny. So the old martyr's prediction is verified anew; and as each new generation comes to view the world in a new light, the light breaking forth from the old record evinces its identity therewith.

A noteworthy feature of Dr. Coyle's thought is that it occupies a plane higher than the higher criticism. It moves on that table-land where the Biblical consciousness of the conservative and of the radical critic alike may see eye to eye. Questions of the relative order of prophetism and legalism, of the developmental stages in the history of codes, liturgies, historical records, and books of wisdom, become of quite secondary importance in the contemplation of an energy which was confessedly vital in some fitting way before history or literature was made; they become mere questions of detail,, not tests of faith. It is the same with our author's attitude toward the schools and methods of the day. He postulates no supernaturalism to offend the rationalist, no leaps of pietistic faith to invalidate a scientist's conclusions. To study the Hebrew spirit as a phenomenon of history is as legitimate a research as to study the scientific spirit or the roman

It aims at a broad and self-justifying interpretation of facts; which latter it presents with a bent, indeed, distinctly apologetic and irenic, with an almost too serene optimism, but with no invasion of the historical method. The facts are

there: piety and faith may draw their own conclusion; so may science and rational philosophy.

For a book of this kind the author's modest disclaimer of scholarly endowment, as put forth in the preface, is less disturbing than would to him appear. To be sure, oceans of reading, meditation, and verification are only too meagre for the details of so vast a research; and traces of unseasoned assertion, of the lack of first-hand testing, may here and there be found. But it is doubtful if the most abysmal scholarship would have done so well. It is not to the lifelong resident in a picturesque region that we go for a description of it; it is to one who, coming from elsewhere, has discovered it, and has not forgotten the rapture and surprise of his discovery. An expert is often the man least fitted to open a sub

ject comprehensively. He has got along so far in it that his wonder at the whole is swallowed up in his interest in details; we need the man in whom the wonder is still fresh, and for whom conversance with minutiæ has not obscured the perspective of the subject, to give the illuminating compendious view. The main question is, whether he has the real heart of the matter; and of the answer to this question, in the case before us, there can be little uncertainty. More scholarship would, on the whole, while perhaps sharpening or correcting many a detail, but substantiate his main results the more. In truth, one feels, on laying down the book, that this course of thought might not inaptly stand as a kind of programme to which specializing scholarship might adjust its processes and results.

Fiction. The Men of the Moss-Hags, being a History of Adventures taken from the Papers of William Gordon of Earlstoun in Galloway, and told over again by S. R. Crockett. (Macmillan.) Mr. Crockett is often at his very best in this chronicle of the Covenanting days, and though a writer "born of the hill-folk" cannot be other than a partisan, he is so in no ill sense. He strives, with some measure of success, to deal justly with Claverhouse, and William Gordon is neither a zealot nor a fanatic, which fact makes his strong and vivid but unexaggerated narrative infinitely the more effective. As pathetic as the story of the child martyr Willie, in The Raiders, is the episode of the terrified but steadfast children in this book, while such sketches as the winter's-night ride of the hero and his cousin into Edinburgh and their escape therefrom, to give no further instances, are in an unusual degree forcible and impressive. Mr. Crockett is so full of his subject that he overcrowds his tale with incidents, so that his personages, though they do not lack vitality, in

terest the reader less than the many moving accidents in which they are the actors. - Sir Quixote of the Moors, being some Account of an Episode in the Life of the Sieur de Rohaine, by John Buchan. (Holt.) The Sieur de Rohaine is, we suspect, a near kinsman of some of Mr. Weyman's heroes, but is not on that account a less agreeable acquaintance. It was a rather whimsical fancy to place this gentleman of France amongst the Covenanters, but the fragment of his story is very well told, and will probably be found all too brief by most readRed Rowans, by Mrs. F. A. Steel. (Macmillan.) We have heretofore known Mrs. Steel as a novelist of Anglo-Indian life, a field in which only one writer can outrank her; but in this story she does not leave her native land, where at present she must meet not a few well-equipped competitors. It is pleasant to find that she holds her own as bravely in the misty West Highlands as in the glow and color of the Punjab, nor do we think that she has ever shown in character-drawing a firmer or

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truer hand. For the sincerity of feeling, the insight, and the sanity which are to be found in this book we are so grateful that we are not disposed to criticise the later complications of the plot, -entanglements which are summarily, if effectively, cut by the final catastrophe, which the majority of readers will be likely to find needlessly tragic; feeling, perhaps, that the author is responsible for the event, rather than inevitable fate. A Set of Rogues, their Wicked Conspiracy and a True Account of their Travels and Adventures, by Frank Barrett. (Macmillan.) Le Sage and Defoe have been Mr. Barrett's masters in the construction and telling of this story, and he has proved himself no inapt pupil. Three merry rogues, players reduced to great straits by the long closing of the theatres during the Great Plague, are persuaded by the wiles of an astute Spaniard to personate the rightful owner of a rich estate and her friends, the said owner being a prisoner amongst the Moors. To study these new parts they are obliged to travel in Spain, as the characters of a picaresque novel should; and throughout the author shows a lively invention, and, as a narrator, has the right touch of realism and is invariably entertaining. He also assumes the later seventeenth-century manner and style with a somewhat unusual degree of success.

Centuries Apart, by Edward T. Bouvé. With illustrations by W. St. John Harper. (Little, Brown & Co.) Colonel Bouvé set himself a rather difficult task when he introduced a party of nineteenth-century Americans into the England of Henry VII., and it must be confessed that he is only moderately successful. His way of bringing about this combination of elements is an ingenious one, and no small part of the interest of the tale is due to that. The details are for the most part very well carried out, but certain points are left unexplained; as, for instance, why a nation of Englishmen had remained the same in customs and speech for three centuries and a half, a state of things which their seclusion from the world on an unknown and inaccessible island would hardly account for entirely. Colonel Bouvé naturally makes the most of his opportunity to show the differences between modern and mediæval warfare by a detailed and interesting description of a battle with the SouthEnglish, in which, be it said, the Americans

are not the aggressors. Of course the book has its love-story, and the tragedy is necessary to its verisimilitude. The unusual conditions are handled with moderation and reserve throughout, and the narrative has an air of reality. On the Point, a Summer Idyl, by Nathan Haskell Dole. Illustrated. (Joseph Knight Co., Boston.) A very mild little story, which seems to be pointless, in spite of its title. Bullet and Shell, a Soldier's Romance, by George F. Williams. Illustrated from Sketches among the Actual Scenes, by Edwin Forbes. (Fords, Howard, & Hulbert.) A reissue of a popular war book containing more fact than fiction, with letters of introduction from General Sherman and General McClellan. -The Artificial Mother, a Marital Fancy, by G. H. P. (Putnams.) It turns out to be nothing but a dream, after all. — The Doom of the Holy City, by Lydia Hoyt.Farmer. (Randolph.) An historical romance, dealing with the destruction of Jerusalem and the lives of certain early Christian martyrs. — Aunt Belindy's Points of View, and a Modern Mrs. Malaprop, Typical Character Sketches, by Lydia Hoyt Farmer. (The Merriam Co., New York.) In the conventional Yankee of such books as the Widow Bedott Papers Mrs. Farmer has essayed a comment on topics which come under discussion at women's clubs. — An Initial Experience, and Other Stories, edited by Captain Charles King. (Lippincott.) A dozen soldier stories: the one which gives the title to the book by the editor; the others by seven different writers, most of them officers of the United States army. Messrs. Estes & Lauriat have issued, in an attractive little volume, two characteristic short stories by Laura E. Richards: Jim of Hellas, or In Durance Vile, and Bethesda Pool. – Her Majesty, a Romance of To-Day, by Elizabeth Knight Tompkins. (Putnams.) - Mrs. W. K. Clifford's The Last Touches, and Other Stories, and Mr. Crawford's A Tale of a Lonely Parish, are reissued as the tenth and eleventh numbers of Macmillan's Novelists' Library.

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Messrs. Harpers have added to their series of foreign novels Doña Perfecta, by Benito Pérez Galdós, admirably translated by Mary J. Serrano. The introduction is by Mr. Howells, who, while he finds the book a great novel, hardly thinks it realistic enough; but he also owns that perhaps, because it is transitional from the author's

earlier romantic work, "it will please the greater number who really never arrive anywhere, and who like to find themselves in good company en route." We agree with this judgment so far as to think that the majority of readers will find no lack of realism in the work. Messrs. Lippincott have brought out in uniform style English versions of Daudet's Fromont Junior and Risler Senior, translated by Edward Vizetelly, and Zola's A Love Episode (Une Page d'Amour), translated by Ernest Alfred Vizetelly, who also contributes an introduction. Each book is profusely illustrated : the first by George Roux, the second by E. Thévenot. Alfred de Musset's The Confession of a Child of the Century, translated by Kendall Warren, has been published by Messrs. Sergel & Co., Chicago, in their Medallion Series. A commendable addition to the Autonym Library is a translation of Cœurs Russes, by the Vicomte E. Melchior de Vogüé, to which the translator, Elisabeth L. Cary, has given the not inappropriate title Russian Portraits. She prefaces the book with a brief sketch of its author.

History and Biography. The Life and Letters of George John Romanes, written and edited by his wife. (Longmans.) A noble character shines forth from these letters, and that is the best offering a biography can make. The scientific suggestions which occur in the letters are admirable, and there are many delightful glimpses to be had of Romanes's associates, particularly of Darwin, to whom he stood in an affectionate and reverential attitude; but after all, the splendid devotion to truth shown by Romanes himself and the singlemindedness of his life are the great forces in character which glow in these pages and illuminate the track of a remarkable careel. Mrs. Romanes has been very frank with the reader, and he will thank her sincerely for allowing him to see so clearly the workings of Romanes's spirit, especially as regards his religious belief. The Life and Times of John Kettlewell, with Details of the History of the Nonjurors, by the Author of Nicholas Ferrar, His Household and His Friends. Edited, with an Introduction, by the Rev. T. T. Carter, M. A. (Longmans.) In reality a popular history of the Nonjurors, Kettlewell being used as a central figure. The book is well written

and steadily interesting, despite the fact that the position of the men it commemorates can make little appeal, either religiously or politically, to readers of to-day, the doctrines of divine right and passive obedience having passed out of the domain of actual belief and experience. Indeed, because of this we can the more heartily respect the simplicity and unworldliness of the best of these adherents of a lost cause; and after all, it is more to their personal qualities than to their public position that their exceedingly sympathetic annalist devotes himself. - The Oxford Church Movement, Sketches and Recollections, by the late G. Wakeling. With an Introduction by Earl Nelson. (Sonnenschein, London; Macmillan, New York.) This book is not a history of the Oxford Movement, properly so called, but rather some rambling recollections of the growth of ritualism in certain churches in London and the provinces, with sketches of various persons, clerical and lay, concerned therein, and it is enlivened by a moderate amount of decorous ecclesiastical gossip. The naïve and thoroughgoing partisanship of the writer gives the volume more a commemorative than a historical value. The book has no index nor even descriptive headings to the chapters, a serious omission in a work of the kind. Memoirs of Constant, First Valet de Chambre of the Emperor, on the Private Life of Napoleon, his Family and his Court. Translated by Elizabeth Gilbert Martin, with a Preface to the English edition by Imbert de SaintAmand. (Scribners.) The Napoleonic revival or craze, whichever it may be called, is of course responsible for the production - in excellent style, we may say of an English version of Constant's Memoirs, a book first published in 1830. But though the work has never before been especially presented to the English-reading world, we imagine that the part of that public interested in its hero will find the most noteworthy portions of the Memoirs not altogether unfamiliar, so largely have a legion of writers drawn upon this book for intimate details respecting the personal habits of the Emperor. Regarding military or state affairs, except in their spectacular aspects, the reminiscences of the valet naturally have no particular value. The most entertaining chapters in the Memoirs are