Geneva is justly proud of its fine new primary schools: in addition to the latest improvements in educational appliances, each has a large gymnasium fitted with complete Swedish apparatus, a museum with various historical, geographical, and industrial illustrations ready for the use of the teacher, excellent douche rooms, where about two dozen children can have simultaneously a warm sponge bath followed by a douche; each class has this once a week and, although it is not compulsory, the greater number of the children take advantage of it. In each of the primary schools I visited in this canton there is also a refectory, where free dinners and teas are given by a private society; there is a special cook and a good kitchen next to the dining room, about a hundred out of fifteen hundred children stay every day, meat is supplied three times a week, and soup, vegetables, and dessert the other days. It was a delightful sight to see the small children enjoying an excellent dinner, waited upon by half-a-dozen men who voluntarily give up an hour or more every day to this good work. There are also classes gardiennes, held in winter from 11 to 1.30 and after 4 o'clock, for children whose parents have to be away from home during the day. These classes are free. The children have talks on interesting subjects, singing, sewing, gymnastic exercises and games; they are also taken to museums and other places of interest. In both Geneva and Lausanne a system of mutualité scolaire has been introduced and is much encouraged. A small payment is made every week. I saw children of seven years and upwards march gravely to the teacher's desk and hand in their fifteen or twenty centimes. There can be no doubt that this is an excellent system for promoting habits of thrift both in parents and children.

The secondary schools differ in their curricula and organization a good deal. Girls generally enter these after six years in a primary school; they have to take an entrance examination or, in some cases, are tried for three months in the lowest class in the secondary school and are sent back if they are found unfit for the work.

All

This

The Mädchen Realschule at St. Gall ranks very high among the Töchterschulen of Switzerland, and is the only secondary school which is absolutely free. The fine modern building has a system of ventilation by which the air in a classroom is renewed several times in each hour without opening the windows; this is far in advance of the ventilation in most of the schools, where the rooms are often overheated and only aired between the lessons. At St. Gall a girl in the Upper Division is not expected to take all the subjects, but to do some thorough work in a few. This is unusual: at most schools specializing is not encouraged. It was on this principle that the school was reorganized in 1907, and the Director says that the results are already surprising. In the Upper Division there are three parallel sections-Literar, Handel, Hauswirtschaft. the afternoons are free-i.e., open to optional courses. is made possible by reducing the usual 50 minutes' lesson to one of 45 minutes, and thus getting five lessons into the morning. The lower forms generally have only four lessons in the morning, two afternoons free, and one afternoon for compulsory gymnastics besides the usual two lessons for gymnastics. Practical work in the physical and chemical laboratory has been introduced into all the higher forms, and the Director hopes to have it in the second class of the Lower Division next term. He also hopes to add a training college to the Literar-Abteilung. This is to differ from the other Seminarien in having a longer course and more practical work not only in the ordinary classes, but in household work and in the teaching in the infant schools. It is interesting to see in the changes in this school a rapprochement to our modern English ideas.

In all the schools the largest proportion of time is given to the mother tongue. This includes geography and history, grammar, composition and literature, and sometimes pedagogy

and the history of art. In the lower forms geography and history are often taken together as Heimatkunde, special attention being paid to the canton. Each child has a tourist cantonal map and is taught to read it intelligently.

These

lessons are made the opportunity for teaching patriotism and love of country; in some schools this is further inculcated by a weekly lesson on instruction civique.

The average Swiss girl is more or less bilingual; consequently, the three or four hours per week devoted to the less familiar language produce very much better results than would be possible in this country. The oral method is of course the natural one, and presents little difficulty. English is generally begun at the age of fourteen, and facility in conversation is quickly acquired, no doubt partly because the girls are often brought into contact with English tourists. Latin has no place in the time-table in the secondary schools in Bern and St. Gall; two hours per week are given to it in the Ecole Supérieure at Neuchâtel. At Geneva, where it is essential for the certificate which enables a girl to become a student at the University, the short three years' course was found so inadequate that a few girls attended the boys' college for further instruction. A special course has now been arranged in the upper forms under conditions similar to those prevailing in Zurich and Lausanne, where also it is generally studied only by those who intend to take a full University course.

The teaching of science appears to have made a great advance during the last few years, and its educational value is more fully recognized. Nature study is taught in all the lower and in many of the upper classes; in some cases Nature books, with questions for each day of each month, with spaces opposite for the answers, are used; the questions refer to trees, flowers, birds, &c., and to easy points in mathematical and physical geography. In the upper forms physics and hygiene are taught in the winter, alternating with botany and chemistry in the summer.

The work done in mathematics is slight. Geometry, algebra, and elementary trigonometry are taken in some of the upper divisions; in the lower divisions the standard of the arithmetic is somewhat low. In the primary schools an elementary course of practical geometry is combined with arithmetic.

A good deal of time is devoted to needlework, gymnastics, and singing. In many of the schools the drill-sergeant has been replaced by a mistress trained in Swedish methods, and a proper costume has been introduced. Two hours per week are generally allotted both to gymnastics and singing. The latter lesson is exceedingly popular with all the girls, and they read quite difficult part-songs with ease and accuracy.

The religious question seems to present little difficulty in Switzerland; differences of faith are recognized and respected. Religious instruction is not obligatory (though in Fribourg permission for exemption is required), and the method of providing it varies in the different cantons. In Geneva the pastors and priests give lessons out of regular school hours, but the greater number of the children attend. The same system prevails in Neuchâtel. In St. Gall, Bern, and Vaud religion" has a place in the curriculum; in the latter canton it is taught by the regular teachers. At the Ecole Vinet, Lausanne-a semi-public school resembling very closely an English high school-the elder girls, after a course on the books of the Bible, take one on Church history.

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In

In the secondary schools nearly all the higher work is taken by men, often University professors. In French-speaking Switzerland it is customary for the class mistress to sit in the room during the lessons to keep order, and for the master to address the girls in a formal way. It is interesting to see the difference in the German-speaking schools. Here, apparently, the master is allowed to settle matters of discipline for himself and to call the girls by their Christian names. all subjects there is much less written work than in our English schools; a great deal more attention consequently is given to oral class-work, with very happy results. Monosyllabic answers are practically unknown, and it is quite common for a girl to give an intelligent clear answer of considerable length, with a total absence of that self-consciousness and hesitation which are so often the characteristic of the English schoolgirl when she gets up to answer in class. Marks are awarded on this class-work, but it is of course impossible to test more than about one-third of the class in a single lesson. In some cases

the girl takes her own mark-book up to the desk immediately she has finished answering. The class is encouraged to criticize; this keeps the girls on the alert, but one sometimes misses the general air of brightness and keenness that is induced by short quick questioning.

Homework does not seem to receive quite so much attention as in this country. In the Monbijou Mädchenschule in Bern the lower classes are not expected to do written homework, on the ground that it may lead to the children getting help, or to overwork, or to trouble between home and school. The only work allowed to be done at home is corrections or a little learning which the brighter girls can do without. In the upper school two to three hours' homework is expected, but there is no check on this, and it seems to be generally the custom for the girls to spend as much longer as they like. In the Ecole Vinet at Lausanne the homework is carefully marked each day in a register; all the preparation given must be done even if it take longer than the allotted time. If a girl is unable to do it, she must give up one language or go down to a lower form.

The girls generally seem keen on their work; they certainly have fewer counter attractions than their English sisters. Organized games are unknown. At one school a proposal to start a hockey club, emanating from the small English element in the school, was rejected by the Director and the majority of the teachers on the ground that it would interfere with work. The girls have no societies such as our natural history and literary clubs, charity guilds, &c. The great event of the year is the annual school excursion into the mountains. In winter skating and tobogganing parties are occasionally organized, but the general tenor of a Swiss schoolgirl's life is far more even and unexciting than is that of an English girl. One feels that a mean between the two might perhaps be better for each. Certainly the Swiss girl has not the opportunity of gaining or exercising powers of organization that our varied school life gives, nor has she its public spirit, and she misses much by being brought into contact so little with girls outside her own form. One reason for this is that hardly any of the schools have a large assembly hall, so that it is rarely possible for the head to address all the girls together; also they cannot have prayers in common. One feels, too, that the fact that every public school, with the exception of the Ecole Vinet, is ruled by a man, and that most of the teachers in the upper forms are men, though it takes nothing from the efficiency of the school, does mean a loss to the girls in that they cannot have quite the same sympathetic help and inspiration that an experienced woman might give.

The practical nature of Swiss education is seen in the variety of schools for training in special branches of work. At Neuchâtel, in the famous Ecole de Commerce, there is a section for girls over fifteen in which a three or four years' course can be taken by those who are going into business or who wish to become clerks or accountants. The chief subjects taught are languages, commercial arithmetic and geography, book-keeping in all its branches, and mercantile law.

In many towns one finds an Ecole Professionnelle et Ménagère for pupils who have had six years in a primary school or are thirteen years of age. There are courses in geometrical drawing, dressmaking, embroidery, laundry work, housekeeping, cookery, and gymnastics. These schools are generally free. In Neuchâtel a new system has been introduced by which the pupils share in the profits on the sale of their work. The course is generally for two years; after this they can take a third year of apprenticeship for a special trade or enter the fourth year of the secondary school. In Geneva there is an Ecole des Arts Industrielles; the school is free. There are classes in design, wood-carving, modelling in clay, sculpture, copper and brass work, &c. Here, and in the drawing lessons in the other schools, a special attempt is made to cultivate the artistic sense in view of the industries characteristic of the city.

Girls preparing for teaching in primary schools are generally trained in the Seminarien of the secondary schools. Lausanne, however, possesses a very fine Ecole Normale under a

distinguished educationist. Here both girls and youths are trained, but the classes are not mixed. The theory of education is taught very thoroughly and there is much practical work in the school attached to the college. There is no system of training for secondary teachers. All the Universities are open to women, and many foreigners take advantage of this; but very few Swiss girls read for a full University course, no doubt largely because there is so little chance of their getting advanced teaching work in a secondary school. The majority of Swiss girls, if they have not to earn their own living, leave school at sixteen or seventeen, and live quietly at home till they marry. Those of the more cultured class often attend single courses at the University, but the number who enter as regular students is very small.

These remarks are necessarily somewhat disjointed: it is difficult to compress into a small space such a wide subject. The general impression one gets from a study of Swiss education is that the whole system is the result of very careful thought and organization; that the needs of the various localities, whether literary, industrial, or agricultural, are steadily kept in view; and that no effort is spared by the different educational authorities in the furtherance of this all-important work.

SAFE NOVELS.

Helianthus. By OUIDA. (бs. Macmillan.)

amorous

The publishers have exercised a wise discretion in producing this posthumous and unfinished novel as it was left by the author. We refreshed our memory by turning to "Ouida" in the Times Book Club catalogue, and found: "A gushing, highly coloured romance. harem in Park Lane. . . decorated with luxurious upholstery magnificent language and cookery. A garish romance scenes... full rein to her sensuous imagination (our price 2s. 8d.)." With this warning before us, we can still recommend "Helianthus" as a Safe Novel. There is love-making in it, but the love is as chaste and cold as the moonbeams that play about Endymion on Latmos. There is a Court, the chief actors are princes and ministers of State, but there is little of marble halls and no highfalutin. A democratic heirapparent to a usurper--such, in a word, is the plot, and we are not sure whether the absence of a dénouement does not help the novel as a work of art. The knot is so skilfully contrived that it must have been cut, not untied. There are flaws that might well have been corrected in proof-demie-vierge; Gallian hymn of revolution; ventre à terre in a sense of cringing.

Mr. Crewe's Career. By WINSTON CHURCHILL. (6s. Macmillan.) Any one who has read "Coniston" will open this book with the expectation of many hours' pleasant reading before him; and he will not be disappointed. Moreover, let us say at once that the style, that essential element of a good book, is cultivated and easy, with scarcely a single Americanism to spoil it for the English ear. The plot, or perhaps we should say the theme, hinges on the conscience of the Honourable Hilary Vane, leader of the Railway "Machine" in a New England state. He belongs to a past generation, one which accepted corrupt "bosses" and railway politicians as necessary and even righteous institutions. His son, Austen, feels that the time has come for better things, and is looked upon as the leader of the reform party in the State. But he is generous enough to spare his father any public opposition, however much this may spoil his own career. Mr. Crewe, who is of the dominating type, tries to engineer this situation to further his personal ambition, and one really chuckles at his failure. All these elements are combined in the description of the struggle for the governorship, which Mr. Churchill makes as thrilling as the Woodchurch session in "Coniston." But no summary can reproduce the interest of the characters, or Mr. Churchill's really brilliant descriptions of events and situations. And perhaps the best claim of this book to attention is that it is intensely true to life. Every minor actor, even from Old Tom Gaylord to the "Duke" of Putnam, becomes a personal acquaintance. Moreover, unlike Thackeray, he can draw a woman with as much power and charm as he can a man. One cannot help falling in love with Victoria, if only for her good nature and singleminded honesty. Some may object to a novel with a purpose, and that purpose political, but it in no way spoils the scheme of the book, and is said to have exercised a considerable influence in the recent elections in America.

REVIEWS AND MINOR NOTICES.

A Course of (10s. 6d.

The Constitutional History of England. Lectures delivered by F. W. MAITLAND. net. Cambridge University Press.)

These lectures were written during the years 1887-8, and are almost exactly contemporary with the late Prof. Maitland's first great work, "Bracton's Note Book." This fact is noteworthy. The lectures, in the medieval portion (pages 1-236) betray the influence of that careful and profound study of medieval law-books which gave new life to English history. Speaking generally, we may say that all the important conclusions of Maitland's later work are foreshadowed in these lectures. Moreover, and this is still more important, the method of treatment inspired by the author's realistic imagination is exemplified in a way which beginners can understand. It is saying little to agree that this book is the best text-book upon English constitutional history that has yet appeared. Mr. Fisher has done us still more service than the publication of a good text-book by allowing students and teachers to see how Maitland correlated all his various learning of medieval institutions into a living and intelligible whole. Only a man of immense historical power could have succeeded in doing this so early in his career.

Since Maitland realized how the local and central administration worked, he had no difficulty in producing a picture in which every line is properly emphasized according to its value. Thus, in order to understand the royal control of justice, it is necessary to know precisely what the jury of presentment or inquiry was, and also to see the importance of legal fictions about felony and the King's peace even in the twelfth century. Matter which usually finds a place in a foot-note or an appendix is used to weld together an argument always concrete, yet never hasty or inconclusive. As a result Maitland never hesitates to pursue a subject to its logical close, and, by showing us the custom or traditions of the present, to reveal more clearly the significance of the past. A few words of explanation give us the limits of a vague theme which would otherwise lose its importance by imposing upon the mind of the reader. The brief survey of English legal literature in the years after the Conquest (page 8), the discussion of the qualifications for attendance at the county court, with the political effects involved (pages 86-88), the contrast between Bracton's and Austin's theory of sovereignty (page 101), the account of the prerogative procedure of the royal Frankish courts (pages 121-2), the pursuit through the centuries of the appeal and the indictment (page 128 and elsewhere), and of the privileges of peerage (pages 169-172)-all are instances of these good qualities.

"The more we study our constitution, whether in the present or the past, the less do we find it conform to any such plan as a philosopher might invent in his study" (page 197). To Maitland all forces, whether economic or social or intellectual, were equally external and practical. He was able to see the great effects of political theory upon historical development, just because he had no hard-and-fast system of his own. Even the legal doctrine of personality was upheld so strongly because it seemed to spring from, and meet, the needs of his time. Hence the lecturer preferred to take his stand at the end of periods of peaceful and impressive rule or of significant controversy, and then to compare what he saw with the view from other points of vantage. 'A moment of crisis, when, so to speak, our constitution is thrown out of gear, does not seem the best moment at which to halt in order that we may inquire what the constitution is' (page 165). Maitland chose the years 1307, 1509, 1625, 1702, 1887 for his various sketches of English public law.

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The most complete and exhaustive studies are the first and the last. The other three are more compressed, and in any other hands would have been jejune. As they are, they form an admirable introduction to Hallam, Prothero, Gardiner, and the innumerable commentors upon the seventeenth century. Similarly, the last long section prepares the way for the great work of our modern writers-Anson, Dicey, Lowell, Redlich,

and the Webbs. It is no hack-work summary; it is a philosophic statement by a great historian. Of course, there are signs of haste and incompleteness; except for the first part, the book is artistically imperfect, and more care and thought would have made it even less of a compilation. But we must be grateful for pages like those on the supremacy of king in Parliament under the Tudors (pages 251-255), the significance of Coke's career (pages 267 seqq.), the preliminary remarks upon colonial and imperial institutions (pages 330 seqq.), the statuory powers of the high officers at the present day (pages 415-21). Exception has been taken to some of Maitland's remarks-e.g., to the statement that Henry Spelman (1562–1641) introduced the feudal system into England (page 142). Such criticism is ungrounded; if a reader of ordinary wit has read the context, he will get from it new light on the theory that England was either the least or the most feudalized of lands. At any rate, no exception can be taken

to passages like this:

There is one term against which I wish to warn you, and that term is "the Crown." You will certainly read that the Crown does this and the Crown does that. As a matter of fact, we know that the crown does nothing but lie in the Tower of London to be gazed at by sight-seers. No; "the Crown" is a convenient cover for ignorance: it saves us from asking difficult questions, questions which can only be answered by study of the statute book. I do not deny that it is a convenient term, and you may have to use it; but I do say that you should never be content with it. If you are told that the Crown has this power or that power, do not be content until you know who legally has the power-Is it the King, is it one of his secretaries; is this power a prerogative power or is it the outcome of statute? This question is often an extremely difficult question, and one of the difficulties by which it is beset is worthy of explanation. (Page 418.)

The book has been edited by Mr. Herbert Fisher. On the whole, Prof. Maitland has been more fortunate in his editor than our other great historians. But we must complain of some arbitrary treatment. Mr. Fisher would have done a real service if he had given consistently references to later books which have appeared in the last twenty years. Unfortunately he uses his knowledge captiously. On page 150 we have an admirable note upon the way in which Maitland would probably have rewritten a certain sentence in 1908. On page 171 we have elaborate references to the modern authorities for the High Steward's Court. But, on the other hand, the first collection of a scutage in 1159 (page 13) is allowed to pass unquestioned. Maitland would have modified his remark about the "definiteness" of Edward I.'s days. (page 20) and corrected the narrative (page 146) which follows his admirable statement of the economic side of feudalism- -a very important piece of somewhat antiquated writing. The essays of M. Petit-Dutaillis must be read with this section. Also Prof. Pollard and Mr. Figgis have emphasized or modified some of the statements in the following sections.

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William Haig Brown, of Charterhouse. A short Biographical Memoir, written by some of his pupils, and edited by his son, HAROLD L. HAIG BROWN. (7s. 6d. net. Macmillan.)

Testi

This biography has been compiled for Carthusians, and to them it will mostly appeal. The editor has avoided the danger he foresaw of presenting a composite photograph, a blurred picture, as he expresses it. The work resembles rather those sketches of distinguished men that appear in illustrated journals in which every portrait, from the photographed babe in arms to the presentation full-length in oils, is reproduced. Here the crude photograph is the record of Haig Brown's first mastership at Kennington School. monials are duller than a Blue Book, and we are spared none. The presentation of an Indian cadetship "for the youth of the school who may surpass his fellows in merit and learning" is a "munificent exercise of patronage," and the fine old crusted repartee-"rowing in the same boat, but not with the same sculls "—is given as an instance of impromptu wit. The following chapter by Dr. Macan on the removal of the school is of very different calibre. It tells the inner history of that famous exodus with particulars that the official chronicler was prevented by modesty from giving. Haig

Brown was a diplomatist in the best sense of the word, content to keep out of sight while he pulled the wires and made his Governors dance to his tune. The Governors were timid and short-sighted. They let themselves be overreached in their bargain with the Merchant Taylors' Company; they bought half the estate at Godalming when the whole, even if it had not been required for school purposes, must have' proved a good investment; they were careless of drainage, and, later on, they allowed masters to build and own houses, thus creating vested rights to the serious detriment of the commonweal. It is easy to be wise after the event, and the share of blame that attaches to Haig Brown, be it great or small, cannot obscure the merit which is almost wholly his of refounding a great school on a site unsurpassed in England. Against the stale joke to which we have referred, we may set an instance of ready wit recorded by Dr. Macan. When, as a selected candidate, Haig Brown was being heckled by one of the Governors and asked whether he would not be the first "schoolmaster" who had not been a boy in the school, he promptly replied: What, then, sir, of Nicholas Gray?" Now Nicholas Gray had been the very incumbent of the post in the year of grace 1614. We may add one happy sally not recorded in the Memoir. A neighbour once besought Haig Brown to use his influence with the Rector of Godalming. His seat in the parish church was under a direct draught, which gave him rheumatism in the shoulder. To whom Haig Brown, You exaggerate my influence, but if I approach the Rector I should like first to know whether there is any particular member of the congregation with whom you wish to effect an exchange."

66

66

To return to the volume. Next to Dr. Macan's, the most interesting chapter is that contributed by Mr. J. G. D. Campbell on Scholastic Work as Head Master." Question was raised at his death whether he was the last of the old generation of head masters or a pioneer of the new order, but not even Mr. Campbell would claim Haig Brown as a John the Baptist. He neither wore camel's hair nor fed on locusts. A Liberal Unionist he might well be called, and his impassiveness, his genuine humour, his laisser faire built a golden bridge between the old and new. But essentially he was an old-fashioned Tory, a classic of the classics. He entertained the Head Masters' Conference, but, as Mr. Campbell tells us, he looked on the meeting as a farcical entertainment. He allowed a modicum of science teaching, but he drew the line at the sixth form. He wholly disbelieved in the training of teachers." He fed them with a faithful and true heart and ruled them prudently with all his powers" (the verse is applied to him by Sir Arthur Stokes), but he never would hold a masters' meeting.

Pestalozzi: an Account of His Life and Work.

By H. HOLMAN. (3s. net. Longmans.)

So much has been written, even in English, about Pestalozzi that it may be doubted whether there is much to his glory to be added-unless it be a discriminating English version of some of his still inaccessible works. We do not all read German nowadays, and a translation of the "Swan's Song" would perhaps do more than anything else to keep a great memory and a great inspiration alive.

The almost tragic story of the life is never old, and Mr. Holman-to whom Pestalozzi is both Hero and Geniusretells it with much charm. But the aim of the book is "to set forth as clearly as possible what Pestalozzi thought, wrote, and did, and not to expound what the writer of this book thinks of what Pestalozzi thought, wrote, and did." That aim has been faithfully kept in view, and yet to the present reviewer the chief value of the book seems to lie in Mr. Holman's own contributions, whether as exponent or critic. Mr. Holman, indeed, speaks with authority, and the practical teacher who reads the pure Pestalozzi with enthusiasm, and yet with his judgment sometimes in reserve, if not actually in opposition, is no little comforted at the end to find that he has Mr. Holman's countenance in questioning some of the master's most cherished convictions-as, for instance, that teaching is so simple an art that anybody, with a few sound

rules to guide him and an experienced teacher to overlook him, can easily become an adept. Of this sort of Pestalozzianism Mr. Holman will rightly have none.

Very interesting-in view of certain modern movementsare the pages of pure Pestalozzi that deal with moral education, though they are pages in which wisdom and unwisdom are strangely mixed. Would any living Pestalozzian main. tain, for instance, that "it is good for the child, even at an early age, to fear eternal punishment as he fears his mother's rod"? And could any modern moral instructionist make serious use of "The Natural Schoolmaster: a Father's Lessons on the Customary Use of Words, a Legacy from Father Pestalozzi to his Pupils"? Imagine saying this to a class:

Children! the first word I am going to explain to you is Selbstachtung (self-attention, self-respect). This it is which makes you blush when you have done wrong: which causes you to love virtue, pray to God, believe in everlasting life, and overcome sin. This it is that makes you honour old age and wisdom, and prevents you turning aside from poverty and distress, enables you to resist error and falsehood, and teaches you to love the truth. Children! this it is that makes the coward a hero, the idler a worker, and causes us to respect the stranger and go to the rescue of the outcast and fallen.

Those are words, idle words, and no more like the true Pestalozzi than the reviewer to Hercules. Can it be that. like others to whom we owe so much, he had no sense of humour? Or is it merely that we are a hundred years nearer the truth? It is possible to owe one's own chief inspiration to Pestalozzi and yet to ask such questions.

Mr. Holman's illustrations add to the interest of his book, but of Pestalozzi himself the only worthy presentment hangs in the library of the Teachers' Guild.

The Prima Donna. By F. MARION CRAWFORD.

(6s. Macmillan.)

Prof. Bradley has pointed out how false an opinion concerning "Hamlet" might be held if no more were known of it than those incidents in the play which could be so easily turned to sensational account. An even more formidable collection could be culled from the pages of this novel-an explosion, a murder (neatly performed upon a lady in a red dress, we admit), a divorce and a rejected plan for divorce, a suicide committed in a private asylum by one criminal, and the accidental but opportune destruction of another by a bomb.

Mr. Crawford is a clever writer who has made a name for himself, but, though his name is enough to ensure that in spite of such material the book is some way removed from the cheap sensational novel, we cannot feel that he has altogether escaped from the taint of sensationalism. He seems inclined to reverse the principle which Coleridge saw so constantly at work in Shakespeare-the preference of expectation to surprise. True, we are led from the beginning to misdoubt the publicly announced cause of Miss Bamberger's death, but we seem to be elaborately put on the wrong scent with regard to Mr. Van Torp by the girl's dying words, "He did it;" by the Prima Donna's instinctive dread of Van Torp (never satisfactorily explained); by the deaf child's action of horror on board ship. The love of startling effect for its own sake comes out again in Van Torp's meeting in London chambers with a beautiful lady in black velvet; and in the fact that the money relations existing between the two figure through the story as a mystifying element and are explained only in the end pages, instead of being used as a help to the reader's understanding of the characters. The lady who thus makes her first appear. ance is described constantly as most like a beautiful thorough. bred (as though we should say the ploughed fields were the colour of good rich gravy), and as being much too simple, primitive, and feminine' to stick at asking, in the right quarter, for the criminal in the asylum to be tortured secretly to insure confession of a crime that is shadowing Van Torp. The book does not hang fire. There is no lack of incident nor of characters. One of the best and most consistently drawn of these is the great financier Logotheti. Van Torp is interesting, but is never clearly grasped as a whole.

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The

Prima Donna "was two women . . . and each woman was 'complete in herself." This is worked out with a certain amount of convincingness, and the marriage with Logotheti may in the future bring about unification, but in the present volume the fact keeps the reader from any very near approach to the heroine. The German company and the manager with whom her singing brings her in contact are more slightly but well sketched. Some of them supply the most humanizing touches to the book.

Bonaparte and the Consulate. By A. C. THIBAUDEAU. Translated and Edited by G. K. FORTESCUE, LL.D. With twelve Illustrations. (Methuen.) These Memoirs, one of the historical works of Thibaudeau, in his younger days an ardent revolutionist and during the Consulate a member of the Council of State, who lived to be á Senator under Napoleon III-present a remarkable picture of the genius displayed by Bonaparte as First Consul in government and legislation. Apart from their importance as recording the observations of a well informed and acute politician on public affairs, and specially on the overthrow of the Opposition in the Tribunat and the Corps Législatif, and the steps which led to the Consulate for Life, they are full of personal interest; for they enable us to estimate, from Bonaparte's private conversations with the writer and from his utterances in the Council, the character of his mind and, the greatness of his intellectual powers when applied to other than military topics or schemes of foreign conquest. Dr. Fortescue's translation is admirable: while adhering closely to the original, the only departure from it being a helpful rearrange. ment of matter, it is readable and idiomatic. Nor has he been less successful in fulfilling his editorial duties. That few are so well qualified to write on the domestic history of France during the revolutionary and Napoleonic periods is, doubtless, known to many of our readers, and if some are not already aware of it, they can learn it from this volume. His introduction, along with much else that is good, contains some valuable and suggestive remarks on the influence exercised by the Regicides-Thibaudeau was one of themon the course of party politics; his notes tell us what we want to know and no more; and we welcome a minute chronological table of events during the Consulate, the dates being given both according to the Gregorian and the Republican Calendar. We are glad to see that he hopes to follow up this book by a similar edition of Thibaudeau's "Mémoires sur la Convention et le Directoire," "practically the only contemporary work of any authority on the history" from the publication of the Constitution of 1795 and the coup d'état of 1797. Excellent, however, as he is as a translator, we should prefer having his editorial ability employed on the French text: nor can we imagine that those who desire to read Thibaudeau's "Memoirs" would find it more difficult to read them in French than in a translation.

The Little Flowers of St. Francis of Assisi. Translated from the Italian by T. W. ARNOLD, M.A., with a Prefatory Note by Dr. GUIDO BIAGI, and Illustrations in colours and tints from ancient MSS., frescoes, and other sources. (7s. 6d. net. Chatto & Windus.)

There is perhaps no saint of the Church who has received homage from such various and mutually antagonistic schools of thought as St. Francis. He has, indeed, by a curious irony, been the source of much bitter controversy, and a wordy warfare has been waged for the possession of his peaceloving spirit. Each party, in its zest to claim a monopoly, has, consciously or unconsciously, emphasized certain aspects of his character and influence at the expense of others; each has protested at the consequent distortion. Even historians

of unimpeachable integrity have sometimes, in plucking up the weeds, left the ground a little too bare of herbage. There is a danger lest science in the zest of discovery should forget to clothe again in its temporal garments the spirit which it has attempted to lay bare. Psychology must shrink from admitting no excess, superstition, or seeming fraud which served to nourish or adorn-nay, even to warp-a human life ;

and, on the other hand, the faithful may find solace in reflecting that only to fools will the awful rainbow seem less august because something of her woof and texture is known to us; nor is life a whit less worshipful because certain supposed signs of abounding spiritual health have had to rank with physical disease and disintegration. All visionaries and all hysterics have not moved the world: when "destructive" criticism has done its worst, the mystery of personality remains, the potency of genius and of an extraordinarily intense intuition of life.

We agree with Dr. Guido Biagi, who contributes a brief preface to this volume, that the "Fioretti" remain an unrivalled setting for the personality of St. Francis, and we welcome this pleasant edition; but they must be read in the original to be fully appreciated, for these exquisite flowerets of a lowly southern piety do not spring lightly again from our colder northern tongue, and for the tender diminutives of colloquial Italian we have no parallel. We shall not be thought lacking in appreciation for Prof. T. W. Arnold's admirable and now classical translation if we wish that the Fioretti" had had the good fortune to be rendered into English in the century of Berners and Malory or the translators of the Bible.

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Besides various better known illustrations, this volume reproduces for the first time several quaint scenes from the saint's life contained in a fourteenth-century parchment MS.

Introduction to the Natural History of Language. By T. G. TUCKER. (10s. 6d. net. Blackie.) We may briefly describe this volume as an attempt to bring Max Müller's "Science of Language up to date-not that the treatment of the subject is in any way similar, but that the object of the two writers is the same, to present to the non-professional reader a general survey of the facts of modern philology. As an expositor Max Müller could not be surpassed, but in a nascent science fifty years is an æon, and he was, moreover, let and hindered by his esoteric German philosophy. Prof. Tucker, though he dates from the University of Melbourne, has kept well abreast of recent research, as is shown by the list of books consulted. Further, he does not philosophize. On the origin of language, that ignis fatuus of the philologist, there is not a word. For this we are grateful, but he might have told us something of infant speech, a region that the child-students have only recently explored, and of genders, that infant malady through which all languages have apparently passed.

The scheme of the work is as follows :-phonology; writing and alphabets; classification, genealogical and morphological: general survey of languages of the world; Indo-European languages, original seat and diffusion; phonetics; semantics or (as it is here called) semasiology. But these abbreviated headings of chapters convey but a very imperfect impression of the contents and scope. The work is no mere compilation, an ordered exposition of the latest views of the best authorities. Though Prof. Tucker contributes no new facts, yet throughout he exercises an independent judgment and draws his own inferences. Thus he shows how unsatisfactory is the traditional tripartite division of languages as isolating, agglutinative, and inflexional, and proposes in its stead a bifurcation into inorganic or positional and organic languages into subdivisions. On the moot question of the primitive Aryan centre, the author, who follows in the main J. Schmidt, seems to us to speak with more precision than the facts justify, and the diagram of intercepting ellipses on page 259 is a mighty maze, though not without a plan."

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The style is simple and lucid, never dull, though rarely lively, and though the author, warned, as he tells us, bý Sayce, has steered clear of the Scylla of abstruse speculation, he has not always avoided the Charybdis of excessive detail. Who but the specialist (who is excluded from his purview) will care to master the sub-groups of the Turko-Tartaric and Dravidian families?

A Short History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great. By WALTER S. HETT, B.A.. (3s. 6d. Methuen.) This book was written because "there did not seem to be