enlightened, even an educated, view of things beautiful, whether in Nature or Art, is so obviously essential that it should hardly have needed this massive tome to point that truth. Yet how little, comparatively, is the general mind able really to appreciate the picturesque! It may be better equipped for doing so in these talkative days than was the case when Burke wrote his Essays on the Sublime and Beautiful, but that it is necessary is shown by the noisy homage often offered to the cheap and trivial, the ordinary and the nasty; not only in architecture, landscape, and artistic gardening, but in every form of art. Therefore, Mr Hussey's book deserves its blessing. The Scholartis Press have done well in reprinting R. A. Willmott's 'A Journal of Summer Time in the Country,' for it is a work comforting to read in the literary rush and haste of to-day. The author was a clergyman of contemplative spirit who died in the early 'sixties. He loved Nature and good books, and had the gift of carrying on to his readers much of his own enjoyment of those treasuries of life. It is a pity that the publishers, who otherwise have produced a handsome volume, have not provided index, table of contents, or running-headings to pages; with the result that to search for a particular passage, as one is sometimes bound to do in a work of this character, is less hopeful than to look for the needle which somehow strayed into the proverbial pottle of hay.

What is to be said of a book which endeavours to compress infinity within a compass of some fourteen thousand words? Yet that is precisely what Dr I. Harris has tried to do in 'Immortality' (Williams & Norgate), Of course, the task was impossible. At the same time any honest thinker, who can put into print thoughts on the mysteries of which this world of mankind is a centre, is to be commended when his spirit and aim are as admirable as those of Dr Harris. Necessarily, he leaves innumerable questions untouched, with many loose threads, and begs any number of questions; but the main objection to his theme is that he argues too confidently over the perfect mechanism of the universe. If recent developments in geometrical science have taught anything it is that to be absolute over spatial truths is absurd; but Dr Harris speaks with an

assurance which at once startles and disarms. His particular purpose may be found in the assertion that "The supreme need of the moment is a creed in harmony with modern progress; a creed which shall percolate into all sections of the community, and become a living pulsating force.' True; and the idea of Immortality may be regarded as an expression of the end to which such a creed should tend. But any fourteen thousand words can be merely the hors-d'œuvre to a feast covering worlds, for his subject really is immeasurable.

We prefer the modesty of Mr G. F. Wates, who in a number of volumes has been expressing the wonder felt by a common-sense man over the mysteries of life and time. He has, in short, been working out for himself a religion of thought and heart, of insight and charity, which takes from the leading creeds such truths as are helpful; and applies them to our complex civilisation. 'All for the Golden Age' (Allen & Unwin) is the courageous and hopeful title of his latest book; and although no Pope, Archbishop, Imaum, Rabbi, or whatyou-please would accept all that he says, the book can be commended for its modesty, honesty, and real endeavour to smooth the difficult pathways for those who, observing the work of the Churches, still find it hard to believe.

And with this volume might helpfully be read a small book, which easily may creep into the pocket, 'The God of Love' (Williams & Norgate), by the Rev. Ernest Walder. It analyses with imagination as well as care, and with regard also to the appreciation of their teachings to this present day, the Epistles of St John, the beloved disciple. The author has some admirable things to say of the relations with Divinity, if so it may be tersely put, of Thomas Hardy, Mr Bernard Shaw, and Mr Wells. The frank paganism of the first of these he repudiates; but of the others, interestingly and a little surprisingly he says that 'Shaw has played his part nobly, but Wells' greatest work is still to come.'

Almost throughout his spirited little book, 'Laughing' (Jarrolds), Mr Martin Armstrong talks good and jolly sense; but there comes a point where he falls into the Chestertonian weakness of question-begging paradox. He refers, for instance, to William Blake, of all people, as a

sense.

'profoundly normal man,' as contra-distinct from that highly abnormal creature,' the man-in-the-street, and is not able thereafter to recover his poise of pleasantcommon He goes on to talk of the desirableness not only of bottled laughter, but of a clause being added to the Prayer-book praying for the most sacred gift of laughter, to be followed at once by the priestly injunction to 'Let us laugh'; forgetting that whether it be 'the snirt, the snicker, the giggle, the chuckle, the chortle, the cachinnation, or the guffaw,' laughter must be spontaneous, sincere, and with good reason spent, or it is more than nothing. How displeasing is empty laughter, the mouthy noise which is the louder for the shallower mind! So that Mr Armstrong's theme tends to run away with him ; but in its earlier and controlled four-fifths, it canters along gaily and does the heart good.

INDEX

TO THE

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH VOLUME OF THE
QUARTERLY REVIEW.

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