down on it, let it go, and follow its flight until he finds its hive and honey. In brief, as the author says, he will find abundance and live at ease where a white man would starve. Dr Ramsay Smith's book should certainly be read with that preceding it in this review, as it is bright, witty, well-informed, and yet has a serious import; for repeatedly he draws attention to the fact that civilisation and its clothing mean deterioration, with disease and death, to the sometimes noble savage. His photograph of Nildally of the Murray River, the bearded lady, is almost too curious to be believed.

From the general to the particular; from anthropological details to historic principles. The assertion that the Constitution of this Kingdom and the Dominions associated there with is not written' is but partially true; for, in fact, it is expressed in thousands of documents-statutes, decrees and resolutions of Parliament. This point is demonstrated in a useful little book, 'Some Historical Principles of the Constitution' (Philip Allan), written by Mr Kenneth Pickthorn. Although the author has to quote the authorities and show, through this political crisis or that, how a further constitutional principle was established, he has managed to secure a lucid brevity for his large subject, packing a deal of information into moderate space. Through the changes wrought by Parliament and the gradual, modifying interpretations of laws in the Courts, the British Constitution is usefully elastic and capable of convenient transformation to meet a new necessity, as often was required during the War; thereby, showing an advantage over that of the United States where, once written down, the Constitution is as iron, inflexible, almost unamendable, and therefore liable to evasions, as the recent addition to it relating to Prohibition seems to show. Mr Pickthorn traces the development of the British Constitution from the beginning of our national settlement, and leads up to the sovereignty and 'omnicompetence' of Parliament, with the responsibility of ministers, acting through cabinet government, and the general rule of law. How the power once in the sole possession of the monarch has gradually been distributed over the electorate, although he remains the recognised chief, is well brought out in a volume which

is at once free from fine writing' and from that easy, opposite bugbear, blue-bookishness.

Since the 'nineties, when the Rev. Charles Sheldon produced 'In His Steps,' and Mr W. T. Stead followed with 'If Christ Came to Chicago,' and gave a mild sensation to the gossips of the religious world, America, in particular, has provided a number of books emphasising, in a free and familiar manner, the human aspects of Jesus of Nazareth. Mr Bruce Barton's 'The Man Nobody Knows' (Constable) follows in that fashion. Its earlier part is excellent, as it brings out admirably that side of the personality of Christ which superstition and a morbid religiousness have implicitly denied him-his joy of life, his laughter, qualities which he must have possessed if he were to win, as he did win, the hearts of the children and of the everyday multitude. Hosannah could never have been sung to a killjoy. But such texts as 'Jesus wept,' with no corresponding statement of his having laughed, and the tremendous story of the Crucifixion, bringing out the tragedy, agony, and grief, have tended to deepen the apparent darkness of his earthly life. Mr Barton is able to show, through such episodes as the turning of the water into wine at the marriage in Cana (by the way, with such an example confronting them, how can the Fundamentalists of Tennessee be Prohibitionist ?) that here was a sociable and joyous spirit, far removed in his ordinary hours from the Man of Sorrows. The second part of the book is not so excellent; for the author, in his evident admiration for 'push,' suggests that Jesus often was cheap. He details the headlines of an imaginary Capernaum News,' which tell sensationally of the healings of the sick and the restoration of the dead. No, that will not do. To talk of Christ as an 'outdoor man' is permissible; but the chapter entitled 'His Advertisements,' making him out to be a provider of 'stunts,' is to misunderstand as well as to belittle the sublimest being who has walked this earth. Joy, yes; but not vulgarity.

A volume of graceful expression and entertaining thought, which should not be overlooked, as is easily possible through its not encouraging title, is 'Forgotten Lyrics of the Eighteenth Century' (Witherby), compiled and commented on by Mr Oswald Doughty. Of Vol. 245.-No. 486,

2 F

all periods of time none was more sophisticated and sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought than those hundred years; and the poetic gladness, the inspiration, out of which the songs of the heart arise, is little likely to spring when the mind of man is too knowing. It was the age of reason, of industrial revolution; a period of frank inquiry, combined with a hidden dread, into the mysteries and inexorable realities surrounding this mortal life. Although the lovely sincerities of William Blake, as his 'Songs of Innocence,' sang themselves into permanence in that century, they were rather the exceptions than the rule, as, indeed, was he, that poet, with his visionary genius and passion of flame. The lyrics of the age, like the headgear and costumes, were carefully ordered and artificial. They belonged to the cult of the peruke and went with the nice conduct of a clouded cane, as well as with the convention, the affectation, the sentimentality, which made every young woman a shepherdess, a rogue in porcelain. Damon or Colin was for ever sighing, though never dying, whatever he may have said, for Chloe and Phyllis and Daphne. Here is a characteristic stanza, a specimen of myriads of the kind:

And you, my companion so dear,
Who sorrow to see me betrayed,
Whatever I suffer, forbear,

Forbear to accuse the false maid.

Though through the wide world I should range,
'Tis in vain from my fortune to fly;

'Twas hers to be false and to change,
'Tis mine to be constant and die.'

But, of course, he did not die. Lovers did not easily even damp their amorous feet in the 18th century; for, with all the foppishness and the poetic sighings, it was an age of excellent roast beef and bottles of red wine, admirable preservatives against the green sicknesses of love. Mr Doughty asserts that in their appreciation of nature the poets were far behind the painters of the time-Constable, Gainsborough, and Wilson. Possibly; but he must not compare the 'forgotten' with the established. Burns and Cowper were lyrical poets of that century who for treatment of nature and the

human heart are worthy to be co-mates of the painters he names, and even a little more so.

It is to be regretted that Mr H. B. Cotterill did not live to witness the publication of his elaborate, wellinformed, and bounteously illustrated History of Art' (Harrap); for no small measure of the reward of the devoted student comes with the actual launching of the enterprise. To see the dear labour of years in its completed glory, challenging the enjoyment and the thoughts of men--it is better than rubies. Well, that has been denied to him; but he had the satisfaction of knowing, from the success of the first volume, that the work was already accepted as of high standard in workmanship and authority. Its scope is comprehensive. To describe and illustrate the growth and development of Art, from the achievements in architecture, painting, and sculpture of ancient Egypt, Babylonia, and Assyria, until the middle of the 19th century; traversing continents and having regard to such important artistic eras as the Greek, the Roman, the Italian; with the extraordinary influence of the Church intervening, to dominate, inspire, and sometimes mislead the workers in the arts; passing through the national schools of Spain, France, Holland, Germany, and England, with a supplementary impression of what Asia was doing indirectly to help forward the artistic culture of the West, entailed a prodigious endeavour, which Mr Cotterill realised successfully. He has marshalled his instances admirably, has written his text with point and grace and a restraint rarely broken. Indeed, on the few occasions that he has erred through falling into a flippancy, it is the more noticeable because of the dignity and charm of his general utterance, as when, in describing the garish exterior of Milan Cathedral, he compares it to a Liszt fantasia in white marble,' which is extravagant, and in treating, with an undue want of sympathy, Goya's brilliant gift of satire, revealing the brute within the man,' he instances a similar tendency in a 'well-known British painter of to-day.' True as the fact may be; why, in this placid and large-minded review of the age-long history of Art, drag in the pygmies?-especially as one result of his massive survey is that, while it brings out the greatness and infinite beauty of the works of the

past, it implicitly destroys the claims to consideration of the noisy little people, the trumpeting modernists, who endeavour to disguise their incompetence under an appearance of eccentricity.

Two novels. The Old Ladies' (Macmillan) is in Mr Hugh Walpole's lesser style. He has painted a simple picture in quiet colours on a small canvas, and the result is attractive. The story belongs to the department of his fiction which he calls Scenes from Provincial Life,' and is placed in Polchester, the city of his Cathedral.' The ladies are three, septuagenarian ; the only occupants of sets of rooms in a decayed house, where they suffer the loneliness and privations of respectable poverty, and yet are well looked after by Mrs Bloxham, a charwoman of a type unusual to fiction, though not to life. Generally, the charladies of a novelist's invention are tiresome; being either determinately comic or stupid; but Mrs Bloxham is a human, natural angel of the house, the kindly guardian of the old ladies. Without her what would they have done? -Mrs Amorest, the faded widow of a feckless poet, whose only son is away until at the right moment he returns to bring relief; Mrs Payne, the villainess of the piece, whose vulgarity of soul and inherited charlatanry make her a thing of crude terror to the third of this trio, Miss Beringer. A naughty creature is that Agatha Payne, greedy and violent of mind, though excused to the charitable reader because we are told that she was somewhat queer in the head. She had inherited, possibly from a gypsy forefather, a passion for colour, and to procure a piece of red amber, the dearest treasure of poor May Beringer, she plays unpleasant pranks, using card-tricks and tappings on the wall to terrify the old spinster. It is rather a pity that Mr Walpole, when devising his story, did not compel her in the hour of her answering panic to restore to the corpse the treasure which her greed and cruelty had procured. One slip he must correct in a new impression. The Carpenter's Shop' was painted by Millais, and not by Holman Hunt.

The second novel is written by the Countess Russell, under her familiar nom-de-plume. Her gifts of subtle comedy, of gentle irony, and delectable character-drawing, while deserving the widespread appreciation they